Mini Map

Just watched the newest livestream and I think the day/night cycle, gameplay, group mechanics, and environment all looked amazing and in line with what we've come to expect as this development has progressed. I'm excited for it to come out.

The only piece that I felt could use some significant improvement is the UI mini map. It just seems to not convey any useful information about where you're at--as the party went through the graveyard no buildings, staircases, walls or anything appeared to be readily visible. As best I can tell it may just convey elevation changes? It's very hard to parse out, and not of the same caliber visually as the rest of the game.

I think it's fair to keep the map vague, particularly if the constellation system ends up being a main navigation tactic--but if that's the case perhaps a more stylized, visually pleasing mini map? It looks very much the way it appeared in Alpha One, and honestly I didn't find it at all helpful during that. My ideal would become more detailed as you discovered more of the specific elements of the area you're in, but short of that I still think changes could be made to improve it.

Again, a relatively minor area for opportunity in an otherwise continually impressive development cycle, but Steven asked for feedback on that element (amongst others) and I'd be curious if I'm the only one who thinks this.

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Comments

Dygz

UI is definitely not their current focus when it comes to demos.
It just has very basic functionality - it does what it needs to do to help them navigate as they play.
For all we know, the devs plan to have something as innovative as the NW compass, instead of a mini-map.

Fantmx

I have always wanted to see a game that let me open the map in a separate window that could be on my second monitor and remain open. That would be a great improvement over mini maps and opening the in game map, blanketing out the view of everything else.

The same for inventory and social/guild tabs.

Arya_Yeshe

I'm fine about having no minimap at all and having just a map with landmarks and player notes

Player notes rule!
You can write where people live, write the spawns, reminders, etc, could be saved in a folder as xml and shared

If you could save notes as Personal, Guild, Custom then you would be able to share the notes with the guild and other people. Then while looking at your map you would be able to turn off this or that family of notes if the map has too many things written down

Merow

Dygz wrote: »

UI is definitely not their current focus when it comes to demos.
It just has very basic functionality - it does what it needs to do to help them navigate as they play.
For all we know, the devs plan to have something as innovative as the NW compass, instead of a mini-map.

All due respect, they specifically asked for feedback on these elements. If this is just a holdover from alpha one and is due for an upgrade then that’s perfect and I look forward to seeing what they come up with.

But asking for feedback makes me think that may not be the case, and I would say that one element is incongruous with every other aspect of the game as its developing.

Fantmx wrote: »

I have always wanted to see a game that let me open the map in a separate window that could be on my second monitor and remain open. That would be a great improvement over mini maps and opening the in game map, blanketing out the view of everything else.

The same for inventory and social/guild tabs.

This would be pretty cool, although the aesthetic could still use an upgrade.

Arya_Yeshe wrote: »

I'm fine about having no minimap at all and having just a map with landmarks and player notes

Player notes rule!
You can write where people live, write the spawns, reminders, etc, could be saved in a folder as xml and shared

If you could save notes as Personal, Guild, Custom then you would be able to share the notes with the guild and other people. Then while looking at your map you would be able to turn off this or that family of notes if the map has too many things written down

I think a highly stylized map that is a mechanism to enable this would be very cool as well.

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