General Discussion

I remember about a week ago a nice long post was started staing that MMOs are losing immersion.  The example given was exploration without minimaps and icons.

After playing Age of Conan I now truely know that maps and icons ARE A MUST HAVE.

In AoC, party members can only see each other icons in a close radius on their minimap.  If a group members travels to far from the player, the player will not know where he is.  The problem?  finding friends.  You have to try and setup a meeting location. 

You can use obvious landmarks but usually each team has someone who has no clue what the landmark is.  Try coordinates?  After that I now know all of the people who failed math and geometry.  Finding party members in this game is horrific, and further enforces the reason why player need to see where each other are on the map screens.

To top it all off, there are no reliable teleport features to bring members together fast.  The only teleporting capable is to change instances of the same zone, but you still have to travel miles to reach players through hostile lands just to do a quest.

Now a possitive.  AoC forces the player to wander blindly through some dungeons.  There is exploration, and the areas without maps are well designed for exploration.  Large worlds have maps but small instance have you wondering blind, and it is actually fun.  So there is a plus to having no map in at the right time and place.

Quest arrows.  AoC has markers and quest arrows for ALL quest.  This does make the game very easy when figuring out where quest locations are.  Even worse, they grey out large zones that have objectives hidden in them.  so you kow exactly where you ahve to wonder around to find something.  This is good in some cases, and also very bad in others as it makes the game easy, and immersion is lost. 

Items glow with auras.  I don't mind items tht stick out or slightly glow, but a quest item in AoC glows form miles away, telling your that you need to go pick it up asap.  MUCH MUCH Immersion is lost this way. 

Anyone elses thoughts on this?

Maps and icons, really ARE a must-have!

Anyone who's recently played Requiem: Bloodymare can cofirm this. In requiem almost everyone who's looking for a mob asks other players. This is because there are no pins, no arrows, or anything on the map to guide you to the location. Furthermore nothing in the quest log tells you if the monsters you're looking for are daytime, nighttime, or nightmare monsters, so you just end up running around like mad, only to begg people to tell you where your mobs are.

In Lineage 2 I've noticed that the arrow and the pins on the map really do help a lot, even tho the pins aren't very accurate. Also the fact that Lineage 2 has specially detailed maps for some of it's dungeons is a big plus in finding your mobs.

Any self respecting MMORPG should have dungeon maps and icons to help it's players, in any measure.

Yes and a button that moves your toon automatically to the mob or place you want to go! It's a must!

Originally posted by altairzq

Yes and a button that moves your toon automatically to the mob or place you want to go! It's a must!

Is this sarcasm?...or are you serious?

I believe Altairzq is being sarcastic.  Though it doesn't cross the internet well, his post seems to be dripping with it...

*Edited*  I like immersion in my games, but I recognize that many do not (or prefer a mix of both).  My only hope is that developers will eventually realize that and give us the option to turn off what we don't want (overhead markers, minimap markers, glowing "HERE IS YOUR QUEST ITEM!" icons, etc.) 

*Edited* My initial post was rude.  I apologize to anyone who read it.  It was a rough night (kids and all) and I was up early, but that's not an excuse. 

Glad you're enjoying Age of Conan.  I tried it out and couldn't get into it.  Best of luck!

I agree with your points about immersion but here is a perfect example of gameplay vs. realism and the challenge that lies with developers.  Having no markers and no glowing boxes showing items would be more challenging but ultimately I would get bored having to wander around aimlessly, ask in guild chat or be pestered myself.  Personally I like the grey circles showing where the mobs are and the arrows with directions.  However they could easily state that X mission is around the bottom of 'foothills' or something along those lines.  Glowing boxes for items I dont mind but being bright blue could be a little excessive.   I don't hold mission tracking system against the developers because they are trying to make a game that is fun and interactive, so I think its hard a balance. 

Look at Vanguard, at launch they didn't have any fast travel across maps (take out horses) and due to players getting sick of traveling huge distances they introduced teleport shards that allowed you to warp to different locations. Not realistic but players drove that decision and not the company. 

When you think about it, it's not really exploration if you know where everything is.  There are no surprises and not much thought process involved if all you do is talk to a NPC who tells you to go 2.5 KM south west then 200 m south and you'll arrive at this huge X on the ground where you'll find some mob or item to pick up.  This IMO is not exploration, it's following instructions.  If I wanted to get told where to go and what to do I'd get a delivery job and at least then I'd be getting paid instead of paying my own money.

Ok I can see your point about talk to NPC and go to X location etc etc.  However I have gone off track a few times and been rewarded with finding NPCs that I would have otherwise missed.  Its a fine system but as long as they have areas that reward a player for taking the initiative and exploring them.   A combination of both is always good.  E.g. EVE has set locations for missions and stations etc but if you learn the skills and equip the right equipment you can find hidden bases in the same system.  I would love if AoC moved towards an oblivion setting where missions were obvious but you could find a cave or trap door and all of a sudden you are creeping through a crypt just because you stumbled across it.  You dont have to exclude one over the other.

For purposes of immersion, the very best maps are the hand-drawn colored paper and cloth maps that used to come with some of the older games. 

 You might have seen the style:  a forest that's drawn with a dragon inside and the words BEWARE.   Just like the kind of maps Christopher Columbus must have had and which probably on occasion caused him to say, "WTF, there's no edge of the world here", or "that continent is a 100 miles west of where it's showing on this crappy map", or "where's the sea monster that's depicted in the middle of this great sea?"

The old Everquest map was great.  Sort of gave you an idea of very general geography and you would certainly get lost following just the map, but that was half the fun.  And it gave the feel that the maps were drawn by old world cartographers from listening to the high tales of returning adventurers drunken on grog.