Back in July of last year, H1Z1 players learned that the game’s engine could support a landmass of more than 16,000 square kilometers. At this point, however, development on that large-scale map is not happening. Two posts by the game’s developers on Reddit have confirmed that the team as a whole is refocusing its efforts and taking both the city-style map and the extremely large map off of the table.
According to the posts, the team is refocusing its efforts on squashing bugs, finishing the existing map, and providing a better overall play experience within the game. The senior environmental artist Devin Lafontaine explains:
We feel it’s best to actually finish our map to a polished, shippable state before trying to build something 1000x bigger. I can’t say if or when that tech plan might resurface, those conversations happen on a level above me. It’s safe to say you won’t hear about it for awhile. We feel what’s best for H1Z1 right now is to finish what we started and make it great.
The current goal for maps is to finish the existing map and fully flesh it out, completing the forests and rearranging locales that weren’t central enough to be interesting before. Once the revised map is live and working properly, that’s when the team will start worrying about things like expanding the map.
