Porygon said:That's my point. I really dont care either way. I will have maps. I just feel like at this point in "the game" some sort of map is commonplace. All you do by not having one is hamstring people that dont use 2 monitors. Every other serious person will have a map pulled up on another screen.
Naunet said:This is how I see it, though ultimately I guess I'm fine with VR's decision. It just seems a little pointless, since people will just google up the map for x zone anyway. And it'll be a challenge for folk with only one monitor. May as well have an in-game map to save folk the trouble of alt-tabbing.
It will indeed disadvantage those with only one monitor. It will also annoy people with two monitors. I have two screens and when I've recently been trying out P99 I've been annoyed when I have to tab out to look at maps on the wiki (it ruins multi-monitor mousing in an odd way). It breaks my flow. For those conscerned about whatever they think immersion is, having to alt-tab out of their larping session should be a problem as well, I assume.
I would like to see maps, just no GPS.
Idea i had on the reddit sub:
I remember playing original Dayz back in the day, and loving the map and compass system. No GPS, you had to use landmarks, sign posts and the compass to find your way. I would love this is in a MMORPG.
My idea is that there could be an item slot on your paper doll for a map and compass. You can get maps multiple ways, ie NPC vendors, Loot drops, perception system, higher the area the harder it becomes to find a map.
Maps are for outside zones only, they shouldn't have all Places of interest, just main roads, and notable land marks, so exploring is still rewarding. Also maps themselves might require exploring the zone to find. Sample map If you want zones where travelling is difficult you could have areas where the players compass goes crazy and starts spinning due to high magic etc, maybe requiring a special compass for that area. Due to the amount of maps a player may collect, some sort of map bag is probably a must too.
No map seems fine. But the amount of time invested for most people, i.e. third party sites will take away from the immersion. This game seems like it is as immersive as any mmo, so I was thinking map copying restricted by server may be a great benefit. Who knows, they only have soo much money and they seem to be doing quite well with it!
Naunet said:That so? Interesting... Would like to see some sort of source.
I think a lack of minimap makes sense and would be a-okay with me. But the lack of an in-game zone map is what I find a bit just... why?
It's a bit confusing going back and listening. Brad more or less says no maps but then Joppa and Brad go into this ( https://www.twitch.tv/videos/298669469?t=01h14m55s ) which seems to generally support the idea of having maps in-game that players can fill out themselves.
When EQ1 first came out I bought the strategy guide because I wanted to have the maps on hand. I made tabs and flipped through it when I entered a zone. The lack of maps also made it so people learned the zone and geography.
Specifically, with a GPS system, you just dip your head and follow the arrow. You never take in the sites or learn where you are at. In EQ you would have to explain to someone how to get from Point A to Point B by explaining the terrain. It forced you to be a part of the world.
As far as a non GPS map system I think a combination of the two is best. Maps in the newbie zones and cities for new players and as you reach the higher tier zones have no maps. You don't have to have the maps be super detailed and you can leave some easter eggs off them, but in general, the new player experience needs a bit of hand-holding to ease people into the game. When EQ first came out there weren't a ton of other options to play games online... so in many ways people had to stick with the bad aspects of the game in order to reach the good. Those unfavorable game mechanics became part of the culture and in a way endeared themselves to veteran players... but times change. People change. People wont stick with a clunky mechanic over nostalgia reasons when they have other options.
Iksar said:It's a bit confusing going back and listening. Brad more or less says no maps but then Joppa and Brad go into this ( https://www.twitch.tv/videos/298669469?t=01h14m55s ) which seems to generally support the idea of having maps in-game that players can fill out themselves.
I really hope they end up implementing that. Sounds like a whole type of progression in itself!
I put together a rough draft cartography proposal awhile back that can be found on this page:
https://www.pantheonmmo.com/content/forums/topic/2420/maps-of-various-kinds/view/page/8
I can live with or without maps but must admit that if cartography functioned as a tradeskill I would definitely take part.
IF there are maps allowed...... they should basically be downloadable image representations of what to expect from third party websites. PDF import or some other img file import. No blinking gps system. No Cartography that parses your location and autodraws a map. We need to trust in the skill of the map-maker. This will create a name for good map-makers!
I personally will or will not download 3rd party maps depending on the complexity of the zone. I don't want to see maps with filter'd layers or any other complex cartography features.
Thats my opinion. I do not want to become dependant on gps location maps. That would be a disservice to the community.
kreed99 said:Thats my opinion. I do not want to become dependant on gps location maps. That would be a disservice to the community.
I have a thought regarding this. I'm personally worried about it but for someone else it might be positive, who knows? Let's say VR decides to allow custom graphics in addons, yea? Very easily, then, third party maps could be placed in addons. Then there's step two which is about /loc. Depending on how they handle addons, it isn't unrealistic to think there's be an addon that checks /loc and prints a dot (gps location) on said map. I don't know if that would or wouldn't be possible with a parser and a stand-alone program. But yea, that's a thing that occured to me. Thoughts, anyone?
Pilch said:It wont cripple players that have only 1 monitor... I play with only 1 monitor and look up stuff on my phone in seconds.
It sure will. It doesn't take seconds for me to glance left at my second monitor. By the time you even picked your phone up I already know where I'm heading. Maybe doesn't sound like a big deal but depending on your level of dedication and competitiveness it sure is.
Spluffen said:Pilch said:It wont cripple players that have only 1 monitor... I play with only 1 monitor and look up stuff on my phone in seconds.
It sure will. It doesn't take seconds for me to glance left at my second monitor. By the time you even picked your phone up I already know where I'm heading. Maybe doesn't sound like a big deal but depending on your level of dedication and competitiveness it sure is.
I meant it only takes seconds to find the webpage, as it would with your monitor also. After that it is just glancing at my phone, which I lean just below the monitor. I do this in many games when looking for item locations etc, works great!
Best,
Pilch
I'm absolutely fine with no maps at all, but I wouldn't object to crude, zone-wide maps slowly revealing the areas my characters has visited, allowing me to mark my own points-of-interest and attach a note to them. This would be a convenient way to pretend my character is drawing while exploring and wouldn't feel like a cheat, IMHO. You could think of it as another kind of XP, where XP stands for eXPloration.
Drawing maps with a pencil is just not going to happen for me. I'm hopeless at drawing, and I would have to redraw over and over again to get the proportions right and make everything connect correctly. I also doubt I will ever use a 3rd party map, at least not until I believe I have exhausted a zone, and want to be certain I haven't missed anything vital. But by then other players will probably have drawn my attention to everything I would otherwise have missed, anyway.
Dungeon maps? No, thanks. Radar/GPS maps? No, no, no, no!
Well if you take a zone like Solusek A/B in EQ , it is sure that looking at a phone or even an alt tab would have killed you faster than it takes to write it . Without an in game map there is only one way to get from entrance to Nagafen without dying and it is to learn the path and the see invis mobs by heart . Mostly it took many deaths and many XP camps on different places to get to this result .
And this is what everybody did . I could go from Guk entrance to the Lord and switch from invis to undead invis at right spots even today after 18 years . In all other games I played since that time I don't even remember how the zones were called let alone where was what .
Obviously this is the road that the devs have taken for travelling in Pantheon . Some will find it good and other evil . It is just a matter of taste .
Well, lacking maps in EQ and even the inability to alt-tab (they had it locked out), people learned the areas more intimately. Instead of relying on maps, they knew where they where and where to go. And it made zones like Sol A/B, MM, LGuk, etc, that much more deadly if you werent invested in knowing the zone.
So we're going back to a conversation about player investment, and a lack of maps being a part of gauging how skilled a player was. Knowledge mattered. Memory mattered. Assessment, and attention to detail mattered. At least more so than when everything is spoon fed.
Calling this crippling is an overstatement, and really only heavily impacted players lacking the capacity to invest.
Well it was neither skill nor knowledge . It was just time . After 20 hours in Blackburrow everybody simply knew where was what and how to go there . The difference with other MMOs is that I know of none where one would spend 20 hours or more in a single zone and a low - mid level at that .
F.ex in WoW everything was a few hours max so a map was really a big help because no one had time to learn a zone .
Deadshade said:And this is what everybody did . I could go from Guk entrance to the Lord and switch from invis to undead invis at right spots even today after 18 years . In all other games I played since that time I don't even remember how the zones were called let alone where was what .
This is really strange to me, because I've only ever played MMOs that have in-game maps (and even minimaps!), and I still know all the zones and remember where everything is down to little details, random quest objectives, etc... even for zones/games I haven't been to in years.
Either I'm really weird, or people are massively exaggerating.
Deadshade said:Well it was neither skill nor knowledge . It was just time . After 20 hours in Blackburrow everybody simply knew where was what and how to go there . The difference with other MMOs is that I know of none where one would spend 20 hours or more in a single zone and a low - mid level at that .
F.ex in WoW everything was a few hours max so a map was really a big help because no one had time to learn a zone .
Yeah I am the same way. Played a ton of MMO's with maps and fast play and don't really remember the zones. I do remember classic zones in WoW because I spent a lot of time in Classic WoW and leveled up multiple characters of the same races so I experienced the same stuff over and over again and remembered some stuff. But I also think that with a lot of QoL being implemented the reason we don't really remember is because it never gave us a reason to remember. Many QoL mechanics allow you to not have to remember, so why should you then lol.
A relatively minimal map in-game will do a lot to keep us from feeling the need to alt/tab or look at a second monitor or device.
Not one of the newfangled radar abominations where you see quest objects and mobs wherever they may be real-time but the kind of thing an explorer would have in real life. General indiction of where you are, where you came from and any major known points of interest ahaead of you.
Naunet said:Deadshade said:And this is what everybody did . I could go from Guk entrance to the Lord and switch from invis to undead invis at right spots even today after 18 years . In all other games I played since that time I don't even remember how the zones were called let alone where was what .This is really strange to me, because I've only ever played MMOs that have in-game maps (and even minimaps!), and I still know all the zones and remember where everything is down to little details, random quest objectives, etc... even for zones/games I haven't been to in years.
Either I'm really weird, or people are massively exaggerating.
No you are right . It is actually a simplification and there are several factors . One is the number of MMO - I have played too many since 98 . 30 + ? Perhaps . What were the zones in Asheron's Call (2000), Anarchy on line (2001) or Warhammer OL (2008) ? No idea . The second is the time one played a game . 5 years Lotro , 4 years EQ , 3 years Anarchy OL , 3 years WoW , 3 years Vanguard less than 2 years the rest . Even if I remember nothing from Anarchy , I remember well Lotro .
But , clearly , there is no game where I remember so many tiny details like where you had to hug what wall in Guk to avoid a trap or aggro when going down to the Lord or what was the name of the Dark Elf counsellor of the Crushbone's emperor :)
Deadshade said:No you are right . It is actually a simplification and there are several factors . One is the number of MMO - I have played too many since 98 . 30 + ? Perhaps . What were the zones in Asheron's Call (2000), Anarchy on line (2001) or Warhammer OL (2008) ? No idea . The second is the time one played a game . 5 years Lotro , 4 years EQ , 3 years Anarchy OL , 3 years WoW , 3 years Vanguard less than 2 years the rest . Even if I remember nothing from Anarchy , I remember well Lotro .But , clearly , there is no game where I remember so many tiny details like where you had to hug what wall in Guk to avoid a trap or aggro when going down to the Lord or what was the name of the Dark Elf counsellor of the Crushbone's emperor :)
I can definitely see how things might blur together over time after so many MMOs. ^^ I've played quite a few myself (the ones with any significant amount of time include WoW, Rift, Aion, TERA, FFXIV, GW2, WildStar, Blade and Soul, and ESO). I still remember where all the obscure quests and easter eggs and various hidden fun RP locations and stuff are in WoW zones. I remember how to get to all the little hidden puzzles in Rift. I could navigate zones in all but ESO practically blindfold (well, metaphorically lol) and that's only because I only just started playing ESO.
I guess based on my experience, I'm just not seeing how not having a map would in some way impart to me another level of zone knowledge beyond what I've already been able to accumulate.
