Joppa: We are planning on having an in-game, topographical map that unveils through fog of war as you explore. Note that this is not a minimap.
From the November additional AMA questions..
I realize there are a ton of map threads but since we now have Confirmation of an in-game map I figured the discussion around the confirmed feature shouldn't be buried on page 8 of a 3 year old thread. Apologies.
As fog is removed that means you will at the very least know your rough location judging by where the fog is (until it is gone).
This likely means we will have a player location indicator on the map as well, because it would look funky without it. Imagine the fog vanishing around an invisible point on the map.. Not the most solid evidence but it rings true to me.
@Joppa care to confirm?
Community thoughts? Am I off base on this assumption?
My concern with this is that you may as well have the minimap because I will just be hitting M every 5 seconds while on auto run to check my location. It is VERY hard to resist using a map.
Why learn landmarks to navigate by? It's a shame because there is pride and accomplishment in learning confusing zones and leading a group through them.
Having GPS makes the world feel smaller and helps to trivialize travel, landmarks, immersion in the world. When you don't have GPS you are forced to look around the world. When you have GPS, you are forced to use that tool because it is so powerful.
I would much prefer a map with no indicator that you must visually find the landmarks in game to compare to the map and figure out your position yourself with the compass, like you would IRL. No map indicator enforces immersion by causing one to look around the world to navigate through it rather than be separate from the world through magic GPS.
There's enough room between "topographical map that basically has GPS" and "topographical map that only fills in when you find points of interest" that you could drive three WoWs and an FFXIV through the gap.
There's literally no reason to panic until you actually see the map. How is it revealed? Is it tied to a skill? Do I need to find points of interest? Will the map show those points of interest? Can I zoom in? Is it centered on me? Does it show what direction I'm facing or do I need a compass for that? Until we get those questions answered, nothing has truly been revealed.
I seem to recall this being mentioned recently. No gps.
My assumption is the fog would not indicate player positioning. So any fog of war reveal would need to be inexact.
And what ByProducts said :)
Byproducts said:There's enough room between "topographical map that basically has GPS" and "topographical map that only fills in when you find points of interest" that you could drive three WoWs and an FFXIV through the gap.
There's literally no reason to panic until you actually see the map. How is it revealed? Is it tied to a skill? Do I need to find points of interest? Will the map show those points of interest? Can I zoom in? Is it centered on me? Does it show what direction I'm facing or do I need a compass for that? Until we get those questions answered, nothing has truly been revealed.
Except for Joppa literally just said "map that unveils through fog of war as you explore".
That sounds very straight forward to me but I suppose you could read "as you explore" to mean explore POI, gain skill points etc.
I read it as any other game with fog of war. As you walk, the fog dissipates at a certain distance from your character...
Lafael said:I seem to recall this being mentioned recently. No gps.
My assumption is the fog would not indicate player positioning. So any fog of war reveal would need to be inexact.
And what ByProducts said :)
Joppa mentioned in the chat of a streamer recently but he did not clarify the GPS part.
I wonder how far up/down the Z axis, erm, Y axis? I mean if the fog lifts only 10 ft above your head and 10-15 yards around you on your map and thats it,
with no distance indicator, like to friends, meaning- you need to stay in first person and be able to follow them and your friend leading needs to be sensitive to those following- compassionate empathetic if you will, human- so they stay following and act intuitively accordingly- like taking a sharp left behind a wall and taking a step back and forth a few times, to allow those behind them to see them going back and forth in this area they might have appeared to vanish into when taking that sharp left- Human. Object permanence, tiktoks of people fooling dogs by hiding under a blanket- same happens when you take a sharp left behind a wall to those following- even with fog of war.
fog 15 yards and run speed buff slow down needs 16 yards , heh, yep, you'll fall off that cliff.
GeneralReb said:Except for Joppa literally just said "map that unveils through fog of war as you explore".
That sounds very straight forward to me but I suppose you could read "as you explore" to mean explore POI, gain skill points etc.
I read it as any other game with fog of war. As you walk, the fog dissipates at a certain distance from your character...
Lots of games don't have the fog of war lift until you find a specific POI or perform a certain task. A couple of examples that are simultaneously good and bad would be Breath of the Wild and the Assassin's Creed games. Climb a tower to reveal the map. I say they're both good and bad because they are an example of what I'm referring to, but of course the maps in those games were super revealing once you accomplished the task.
Revealing the inn on your map when you step inside, putting the statue of Aradune on your map after you read the plaque, drawing the road between them once you've visited both... that's an example of "unveiling the fog of war as you explore" without actually revealing your location the whole time.
You're thinking of like Warcraft 2 or 3 where you have a little map that starts out completely obscurred and then slowly gets revealed based on the vision of your units, which is fair because that's where I first remember encountering "the fog of war" in a game. But it doesn't have to apply to only that style of fog of war. It's not straightforward at all. There's a fog of war and we can reveal it as we explore. That's all we know and jumping to conclusions about what that means based on a narrow interpretation of the terms isn't helpful.
As others have said, I hope this to mean a POI-based fog of war, rather than a player-based one. So, I take the confirmation to mean something like that. I feel that is still very much satisfactory while still providing that element of discovery and desire to explore places you haven't been. It's also neat to look back to your map and see you've been to all of the POIs, seeing a nice colored-in map.
I also agree that a GPS (player centered) fog of war could be easily turned into a player marker, and I hope they don't take this route.
Just a nice map with POI fog of war, and maybe a line of text on top saying what POI we're in/near. I feel like that's the perfect balance.
Considering DmHarms and Byproducts, I thought of Big PoI's which are like stone markers with Arrow signs chiseled in them (amberfaet -> / / syronais rest <-) and then small PoI's which are also stone markers with similar arrow chisel marks, so, maybe on your "map" you dont see everything, but if you have been/touched the stone marker, you see the marker on your map and you see where you are relative to the marker(s).
Your conversation would be like: I am south and left a bit from the second big marker that you will run into heading east from wildwood ZI - just before the small marker further south- if you have touched that one. but otherwise the "map" would be featurless, except for edges, and large/small dots where the markers are.
I don't see how GPS applies, even if the first time one travels they can sort of tell their general location by following fog of war reveals. It takes many more than a single pass nearby an area to really learn the land or ones position in it.
I am more concerned of their being /loc, as that can be used to third party GPS.
Byproducts said:That's all we know and jumping to conclusions about what that means based on a narrow interpretation of the terms isn't helpful.
My intent was seeking clarification from the devs. Your statement is a bit harsh for no reason. I am a fantheon too man, started MMOs in EQ vanilla in 1999 and I do not want a player indicator on a map.
I think that jumping to this conclusion is reasonable and asking the devs to clarify doubly so. You saying this isn't helpful, isn't helpful.
This still being a development forum, I think this is the time and place to make these concerns known (for the 10th thread lol).
@iksar part of my jumping to this conclusion is because of what you just said. Having fog of war reveal around an invisible point on the map would be strange. Therefore they will probably put a player indicator on the map. Hello GPS.
It seems as though all of the replies are Against a player indicator on the now confirmed topographical map, and yet no-one but me wants to consider that the devs may in fact be doing just that. Don't you want to know if they are and if so speak out against it?
I find it odd that everyone here believes the devs are going to put a bunch of effort in to basically a plug and play system that the topo map + fog of war is with Unity.
The statement by Joppa seems very straight forward to me and if something unique was in store I would have expected more mystery and teasing going on with it. Like "We are planning on having an in-game, topographical map that unveils through fog of war via a unique Pantheon system that we are very excited about as you explore. Note that this is not a minimap." Bold/Italic is my addition of a teaser and Not the original quote.
If the fog of war is cleared via POI why not say "unveils through fog of war as you encounter important areas of the map"?
For me it's more that they were against maps for a very long time to begin with.
Having maps at all is a comparatively recent decision, I think solidified in this roundtable. It would be a massive about face to then also add GPS to things but I am not against having a dev come forward to clarify their stance on such a thing.
Iksar said:For me it's more that they were against maps for a very long time to begin with.
Having maps at all is a comparatively recent decision, I think solidified in this roundtable. It would be a massive about face to then also add GPS to things but I am not against having a dev come forward to clarify their stance on such a thing.
I took a look through the library and everytime they were asked if there would be an in-game map they either didn't give a definite answer (but then explained what they would want if they did have a map) or did say either yes or no but then gave a pretty similar explanation about what they would want.
The only departure I can see from what they've said is that they have repeated that they would want the players to have to manually keep track of points of interest.
Of course, that might not even be a departure, we still don't know how things will be revealed on the map. A cartography skill isn't off the table.
I heartily approve of having a map. No shock there I have been taking this position for five years.
In real life you know where you are and know how that relates to significant landscape features nearby. In real life you generally remember more or less where you have been recently. The player may not have logged-in for weeks but to the *character* areas recently passed through would be fresh in the mind. A map simply refelcts this fact.
I think there should be an icon showing where you are. Somewhat ridiculous to reflect what a character would know, having seen it with his or her own eyes recently, but not to have the character know his or her own location.
What a map shouldn't have are magical conveniences such as icons showing where animals or people are unless they are actually in view of the character. Or icons showing their disposition as in red for hostile or green for friendly. Or icons showing quest objectives.
But if my character is 50 feet from the local equivilent of the Mississippi River or 10 miles from the Himalayas a map showing these features is nothing more or less than a reflection of what the character would be able to see unless kidnapped and blindfolded. If my character is 5 miles from Qeynos having the city on the map is neither more nor less than what he or she would know having talked even casually to any local. Big cities are known to essentially everyone within many miles after alll and the character can hardly be expected to have no idea that there is a city in the area and what direction it is in. Small hamlets are, of course, a different matter.
Like instancing, I see "gps" style maps as something that could solve some problems, but creates others if used as a blanket feature.
I think features like Rangers ability to track animals, a priest ability to cast a "sentinel" type spell, or a spell that locates harvesting resources are a few examples of how a minimap that pops up with GPS is acceptable in a rolelaying sense. But as a general feature that is on at all times, absolutely no.
Having maps isn't really that big of a deal, BUT GPS on the map is. I can generally look at a map and tell roughly where I am at but a GPS takes away all the guessing and mystery of where you really are. I think not having a GPS on your map makes you pay attention to monuments more and gets you to look around more. Sometimes you can find great places totally by accident because you thought you were in one place but end up in another all because you got turned around some place. I mean back in my EQ days I run into a lot of great people because I didn't Know where I was and got help from friendly strangers. The game came with a nice cloth map as well which I always had near me to get me a rough idea where to go and paths to take, granted it was not prefect as it had places on it that were not in game at the time but it was good enough to be useful. Also I do not see too much issue with a /loc option either, I remember EQ having that in the early days.
Just a top down look at the land. No marks, no compass, no waypoints.
That's what I heard. So you'll have to learn landmarks and the general areas but could still get lost from time to time.
For abilities I thought my rangers tracking would be text in the chat window. { /Tracking Befuddled Ferret- ENE }.