Not a lot of time here, but I did want to talk about some recent adventures in Vanguard. After completing the Veskal’s Keep quests (including a very nice, nearly epic one about purifying the Tree of Life), I thought, “Self, it’s time you started working on your racial mount. After all, what’s a halfling without a giant, carnivorous, ugly, smelly, dangerous, awful, disgusting, mutant, radioactive ant to ride upon?” Sure, other races get cool mounts. We get friggin’ ANTS. “Ma’am, your giant radioactive ant is eating the children. Could you please park it elsewhere?”
That meant a quick trip to Rindol Fields, but unfortunately, Rindol Fields is not on the increasingly unhelpful map, which seems to show and discard points of interest for no apparent reason. Here’s a paradigm-smashing idea: Why not show THEM ALL? Or at least the ones I have BEEN to?
I hate the Vanguard map so much. There’s good maps, then there are marginal maps, then there are maps that by their very presence make it HARDER to find things, MORE useless than having no map at all. Such are Vanguard maps. Put it this way. If I were using a VG-style map to get from here to Boston — Boston wouldn’t be on the map. Neither would any roads. There would be no towns on it except one named, oh, Millbury. There would be no indication that Millbury was anywhere near Boston, but it being the only town on the map, I would head my car in that general direction and hope for the best. However, every hill and river would be shown (but no, no roads).
THAT is the Vanguard map.
The rift from Veskal’s Exchange brought me to Renton Keep, and I picked up some quests there. I looked around for awhile for Rindol Fields, but no dice. Map, again, absolutely useless. Thrushk is not on it. Rindol Fields, my STARTING AREA. is not on it.
Vanguard has a lot of nice bits. It’s very beautiful. But that map ruins it all. I’m sorry. Even a blank piece of paper would be a better map, because at least it wouldn’t imply by its existence that it would be possible to find your way to something using it. I could be RIGHT OUTSIDE Veskal’s Exchange, looking up at it — and it wouldn’t be on the map, but a couple of other pointless PoIs would be.
SOE, just remove the map. You’re just promising something with it you have no intention of delivering.
In beta, people were upset that there was even an in-game map at all. There was outrage when points of interest starting showing up on it.
Because, um, its not immersive that your character might be literate and taking notes… or something…
I don’t use a map, ever. At least I do not use a map from the game. I have printed out a nice blank one, and fill it in myself. I started it a while ago and called it the Immersion Project, kind of an art project and for some fun.
I love it! I don’t ignore my in game map because I think the game should be “hardcore” or something, but I love things like that. I love my paper maps. They are beat and as I find out more information they are slowly getting filled in.
My character is literate and so am I. I just decided to keep the map in THIS world! 🙂 I also have other rules for weather, food, death,…all part of the experiment. And it’s been so much FUN. I can’t even play other games now with chat windows and maps..the quest text and the actual landspace (just like in real life) give me enough clues.
Anyway, on my website you can look at the “Immersion” section for all the rules and stuff.
Beau
I come from EQ. I can totally understand that. Like I said, NO map would be an improvement. Having a USELESS map is worse than no map.
But I use the map on EQ now. Just as I used them in WoW, EQ2 and LotRO. I’d like to have sat in on the meeting that said, “okay, for a map, we’re going to use an overland topographic map with limited zoom — say, super far away, and slightly closer. Even though large cities and towns and even roads would be visible from such a height, we will not include them. Things a new player would need to know, such as the locations of nearby towns which, if they think about it, they must have grown up in and near all their lives to this point, we will not show. Their own town, where they live, we will not show. However, we will include a random city on the coast. They will not need to go to this city, we will just include it to taunt them.”
@Beau — I’ve been told to use a player-created map utility, but I think I like your idea better. I loved my old EQ hand-drawn maps. I even loved the piece of paper on which I had written every point of interest and its coordinates for every place I found until I reached level 10 or so. After that, I just memorized landmarks. Go down the hill, turn right at the glowing yellow tower, then left at the road…
SOE just needs to remove the world map (keep the mini-map, but make it useful. If you’re RIGHT THERE, you should be able to see roads and towns, after all), tell everyone from now on to get their graph paper and pencils out, and then they will be all set.
The Vanguard map really is the worst of all modern MMO maps. Aside from the seemingly random POI information it sometimes deigns to bless you with, it tells you pretty much nothing of value.
I agree Vanguard maps really are the most unhelpful I’ve seen. I downloaded the maps from soresha.net and it’s helped tremendously. Also, another little trick in helping me find cities, especially when I need to know what direction to head while flying on a griffin…bring up quest journal and go to the locations tab. Look for something along the lines of racial faction npc’s or something like that. You’ll see several npc’s from various cities listed. Click one off and you’ll see the red indicator pointing you in the right direction.
Was really annoying how once you were done questing in an area, it just left your map. Never saw anything like that.
I still keep a treasured collection of printed out maps from EQ Atlas. You really had to know the landmarks in your zones back in the day, if you wanted to survive a trip anywhere. It forced you to know the zones like the fabled back of yer hand and also led to that feeling of the world being larger than your computer.
Maybe that old feeling is what they were shooting for in Vanguard? The world may never know…
Well, Egat, that is a topic for my next VG post — how dead the world seems compared to EverQuest. It’s so big and empty, and the NPC towns so small and far apart, that Telon really looks like a world where intelligent life is dying out. It’s a cold, sterile world, filled with ruins and here and there, small settlements. It’s creepy. I never feel like I am in a living world like I feel for EQ or WoW. Telon is a dying world, and walking through it is like walking through a cemetary. EQ totally didn’t feel like that for me. There was always someplace close by to run to.
Well, I disagree with that view of Vanguard! 🙂
I travel only by boat, horse, foot. I have seen so much of the world slowly, there is so much to see! Trust me, there are some areas that are emptier than others, but the world is awesome.
I’m not saying this because I’m some SOE fanboy (I forget if that’s even the proper term now! lol) but because I mean it! There are areas in Vanguard that are full of life, and full of beauty.
Give it some time, get used to the layout. Maybe it’ll grow on you?
And anyway, they are just starting to go into the next phase of their development which is to add more and more things to the world.
It’s what I feel. Cold and alone everywhere I go. Sometimes I am near a settlement, but usually it’s in a wilderness, running a very long way to the next quest hub. Since I haven’t gone to any Vanguard spoiler sites, don’t have any add-ons, just am playing the game straight without help, advice or other people, and I am just lost all the time. Mostly I am sitting in the middle of nowhere wondering where to go next and avoiding high level mobs 😛 The only LIFE I see is on Thestra regional chat, and sometimes someone rides past me on a horse. Sometimes I come across a place, like an abandoned (by PCs, anyway) high elven city, and run around. Sometimes I just pick a direction and run there, and after awhile I come to someplace new… But no, I have to definitely say that it feels like running around on a dying world. It’s kind of like DAoC, which was a similar deal — a “seamless” world which managed this feat by absolutely severely skimping on their non-procedural content. Cotswold was, what, three building? Snowdon up near the Frontier was one, maybe two. The difference was, everything was relatively close together so you never really felt that isolated. On Telon, everything was made far apart on purpose, and it takes FOREVER to run from one side to the other.
And when I get home, I can look forward to half an hour trying to find Rindol Fields again, and this time I will probably make a map so I can find it more quickly next time. I will probably remap the ‘M’ key so I’ll stop hitting it, expecting to find anything helpful on it.
Does anyone remember Morrowind. That single player game also had an unhelpful map more like an artistic impression than a navigation aid. The developers did spare a thought for hapless players though and the in game characters used to give some of he most outrageously unhelpful directions I have ever come across in a game. A 1000 mile journey across the continent would summarised as “Go West for a bit and then turn left at a tree”.
@Tipa
You have hit the nail…HARD on VG.
I always felt like these people were part of a dying world. Everytime I logged in, and felt the emptiness, the miles between life (NPC or mobs), broken ruins…it felt decayed, but also, so empty that I did not wish to return.
Imagine how a person feels when they are depressed, even if we really cannot. I have seen those who suffer this condition, and their abject look of dismay, and how around them nothing else matters.
This is Vanguard. I want Prozac before I log in.
Now that I think about it, this is why I did not like LOTRO either.
Everyone who spoke to me with a voice was like “Woe is me” or “Can you help me?”. I know it was sad during this time, but all of these people could have cheered my arrival as the hero or something. There was no happiness (except them there Hobbitses who smelled of the Pipeweed everytime I saw them…darn hooligans)
I guess I like some color, brightness, some humor along with my ability to destroy and commit Genocide of all the Wolves and Boars of these MMO’s.