In game Mini map

[bobhope 61]

I like having an in game mini map what are you thoughts on this in wurm online

[Finnn 3,303]

It will be inaccurate if it uses the original map.. some will build islands in water, expand lake shores, trim or canal through some of the shores to reshape the land.. should the mini map incorporate ex-year's map dumps than?

 

WHY do you want a mini map, having issues figuring where you are based on landmarks or there's some other reason?

[Berms 154]

Wurm and (mini)maps don't go together.

Wurm's world is not static as in other games/ MMORPG's. 

 

People can and are constantly adjusting the landscape and terraforming, digging canals, deforesting or planting new forests and etc.

Deeds appear/dissapear, new villages exist and some other villages die out... You can see where i'm going with this I hope.

 

We have a world map with a grid and a compass. That should be enough, especially for smaller servers like Cadence.

Edited May 10, 2021 by Berms

[Locath 533]

1 hour ago, Berms said:

Wurm and (mini)maps don't go together.

Wurm's world is not static as in other games/ MMORPG's. 

 

People can and are constantly adjusting the landscape and terraforming, digging canals, deforesting or planting new forests and etc.

Deeds appear/dissapear, new villages exist and some other villages die out... You can see where i'm going with this I hope.

 

I understand that some people might oppose the idea of having a magical eye in the sky and know exactly where they are and what's around them but ingame map mods for WU exist and they handle it very well, from showing deed borders to terraforming changes (instantly).

There is no technical difficulty there, there is an immersion breaking aspect which some people don't want in the game for some reason, surely if i don't like it, i can close that window and never use it.

 

[Votip 1,611]

+1

[bobhope 61]

Thank you locath there is a mini map use in wurm unlimited that works great and if you hit esc you can open or close it so it wouldnt impact those who didnt want it and those who did could use it it doesnt give you cords so you would still have to figure out where you are on the map it just makes finding your way back from where you came a little easyer and would give you a little insight by being able to see a small part of the map to use with the main map to help figure out where u are.

[Chihuahua 82]

Minimap sucks, cant you navigate in natural way? This was always so amazing and realistic that you have only one big map of island, you need to navigate with compass or bigger deeds, or even landscape. Meh

[Syhl 215]

-1 minimap idea...

 

If Wurm changes into a classic MMORPG with "live" mini-map or auction house (other suggestion recenlty created) or any other themepark MMO feature ... why playing Wurm Online instead of one of those themepark MMO if more and more we turn Wurm Online to look like them ?

 

Wurm Online is unique thanks to all his unique features, remove these unique features and it's just a standard MMO with terraforming and bad graphics ... do you think it will retain many actual players and bring new ones ? I don't think so ...

[Locath 533]

1 hour ago, Syhl said:

Wurm Online is unique thanks to all his unique features in having seven players per server

 

But on a more serious note; 

Maybe it's time to stop listening to the auld gits like you and me who are resistant to change and start listening to some of the players who joined recently (and i raise my hand here, i would oppose a lot of ideas for years which i now think would retain at least some of the players who gave Wurm a try) . 

Even the most loyal Wurmians burn out eventually, we have seen it happen and it is happening still.

Without making the game more friendly to the new player, who in these days has a comparison of thousands of other games and Wurm no longer is one of the 4 or 5 MMOs available on the market, there will be no player retention.

We see people quit for a number of reasons, we see obituaries on the forums, we see people quitting quietly too. A lot of those are the players who were here for over a decade.

 

I used to think that some of the changes were bad for the game because they were dumbing it down or making it too easy. Now, seeing how things go, i changed my opinion. It doesn't matter that i don't like the new GUI, it doesn't matter if i think that having a live map in game makes it too easy. If i don't like it, i can quit and nobody will notice.

What does matter is the new accounts created daily to stay and it's no longer the times when we had to spend hours messing with files, configs, redownloading stuff for Ultima Online to run. Majority of current audience is used to having things work correctly and efficiently.

 

So the choice someone has to make is whether to cater for the 50 - 100 "old" players and hope we don't all die off at once or adjust to the market and the customer's needs.

 

I know my opinion about the in-game map means absolutely nothing and this is just a suggestion but it's one of probably over a dozen topics suggesting this exact thing.

In each of those topics there were people opposing the idea because "immersion", because "too easy", "can't you use landmarks to navigate, you silly goose?" and so on.

But then there is the player who can't navigate using the landmarks. There might be more than one. Those players can't play a game which they likely researched before giving it a try and it scratches that itch exactly, except they die and can't find their way back home.

They quit (if i had trouble navigating by landmarks, i would probably quit after my first death as well, there were barely any community maps, drawn in paint, because -learn how to navigate or go play diablo- attitude).

 

There are many reasons why people who try out Wurm don't stick around and we will never know majority of those reasons but at least part of them just couldn't be bothered opening some website to look at a map and still not know where they are.

 

This is just one of the suggestions i would bash into oblivion 5 or 10 years ago but now i see that it's one of the very common questions new players ask and react shocked when they hear "yeah, no mate, git gud. Use mountain tops to navigate and there is compass which settles day after tomorrow and there is a sundial compass on each village token". People want it, people are rarely vocal about their inability to navigate by landmarks, in fear of humiliation perhaps.

 

Yes, there are thousands of other games which offer in-game maps and we could tell every player to go play WoW if they want a radar.

Sadly, there aren't thousands of Wurm players whom we could say that to.

 

[Antony 280]

7 hours ago, Chihuahua said:

Minimap sucks, cant you navigate in natural way? This was always so amazing and realistic that you have only one big map of island, you need to navigate with compass or bigger deeds, or even landscape. Meh

I mean... you could say the same thing about highways but we still got a highway system implemented. Did we need it? No. Has it helped a lot of people? Yes. Do veterans use it? Perhaps not so much on their home servers, but a lot of them link their deeds up to it to make it easier for others to find their way to them.

 

We do need the dial to move more toward creativity and away from tradition, that much is for sure. If I were a new player and didn't know how to get from Zero to Hero, and didn't have some amazing friends in game, I wouldn't stick around. I think Wurm's biggest problem is the amount of money that goes into development. I genuinely believe a lot of the suggestions made, the devs would love to put into the game, but they're limited to a slow development method because of the budget.

Edited May 11, 2021 by Antony

[Zexos 468]

3 hours ago, Locath said:

There are many reasons why people who try out Wurm don't stick around and we will never know majority of those reasons but at least part of them just couldn't be bothered opening some website to look at a map and still not know where they are.

If you want to see some of the reasons why people don't stick around then check out the Steam reviews for Wurm Online.   Just filter out the reviews about people being banned first though.

Here are Three Reviews - One Positive

Spoiler

You log in and all the buildings are empty and there is nobody around.
It's Friday night and I logged in the supposedly busiest starting town and there were no other players around.

There is practically no in-game info.
I eventually figured out how to heat up a smelter, smelt ore and create a cauldron.
I foraged some blueberries, placed them inside the cauldron and put it over a camp fire but nothing happened. I searched wurmpedia and google for information as to why it wasn't making blueberry jam but there was no information and there were no players around to ask for help. So I logged off.

I'm really interested in the concept of a sandbox mmo based on trading, crafting and building but this game is too time-consuming and newbie unfriendly to attract enough players to keep it going.

The game suffers the fatal design flaw of being grindy and repetitious to an extreme degree. By it's very nature, the game cannot and will not attract enough players to make it a worthwhile investment of your time and patience.

As such, it seems to me that this game is stuck in some sort of vicious cycle:
The only thing that would make the extreme grind and monotony tolerable would be a large and active community but it is also that very same extreme grind that precludes it from ever gaining a large enough player base.

But with all that said and done, I still recommend you give Wurm Online a try because this game is a truly unique experience. It's unlike any other MMO out there. If your computer is powerful enough, I recommend you set the draw distance to the farthest possible setting and that you set graphics as high as your system can tolerate because some of the scenic views are truly immersive. This game is unique and worth trying even if you don't intend on playing it long term.

Two Negative:

Spoiler

From what I know, this game is the first person of the dev team that created it back in June 2006.
It seems that mechanics were never improved or iterated upon, thus the result is a bland and shallow game.
This game is literally chores. It should have been scrapped and remade LONG ago.
It should be a hint enough that only 2.7% of Steam players have the "Tutorial Completed (Wurmian)" achievement.

Lastly, you meet a VERY PECULIAR type of people in this game. You'll know what I mean if you play for more than a few hours. Sure, there's friendly folk, but oh my...

 

-----------------------------------------------------------

This game doesn't offer anything much to the table, as in : all of the activity in this game is you waiting from 30 secs to 5 secs and clicking the 'craft' or 'build' or 'forage' or 'botanize' or ... button again and again. Sure you can build a house, dig a mine, kill a bear with bare arms, become a priest, pray to god, but everything is you waiting and staring at that screen, not interacting much with the game other than just clicking that button and waiting...
So... this game lacks gameplay - They could of made some simulation thingamajig for crafting, like how it is in games such as Jacksmith. Why not instead of the character doing the work, make the player do the work and some thinking?

Now you might notice, i have 109 hours. Behind the complicated-looking mechanics, content filled exterior, is really just a clicker-fest game, it is very addicting, some players i met there play ridiculous amount of hours!

 

 

If I did not have someone who was at the Newbie Spawn Point recruiting for villagers, then I would of joined the game solo.  Without joining a village.  When I do that and have done that in other sandbox type games, I soon get confused or fed up pretty fast.  It was more so the community of the village that I joined that made me stay. Helping me out. showing me what to do.  Otherwise, I would of seen all of the mass loads of reading as a chore.  I mean, when people join a game, they are normally joining to "Play" and not to "Read a guide book on how to play"

 

I've got to say that making things more easy such as adding a mini map, speeding things up, more interactivity, more NPCs that actually talk and more tips for Newbies when they join would help.

You know though, I just thought that if wurm was a Mobile Game then it might actually get alot of people playing it.  This is because there are ###### loads of AFK/Clicker....etc type games.  Even sandbox type games that are Clicker and Timers by Design do very very well on Mobile Phones. Since you can go on it wherever you are. Take Wurm anywhere.

Edited May 11, 2021 by Zexos

[kkkisha 0]

I think the mini maps are ok as long as they are not very detailed, sometimes this can bother. And I didn't want it to be too big. As others have mentioned, it can be a folder with some suggestions or a compass. That would help because sometimes I walk through the forest and don't understand where to take it. The main thing is not to put ads in the game, like Garden Scapes or game apps that pay you real money, haha. That would be weird.
I hope they don't change the game a lot because I like it the way it is now.

Edited June 11, 2021 by kkkisha

[Ekcin 2,407]

I do not like the mini map idea. And I fail to see that it would attract a lot of new players, or would keep them from leaving.

 

There have been better proposals for some directional information, such as giving tower guards a short dialogue ("Where are we here") with some information ("This command post is in <north/south../northwest/..> of grid tile G14 of the island of <server>. Next capital <starter town> is xx tiles southwest from here." ) to give a player who lost her way some idea where to go. That would not break Wurm experience or immersion like dumb GPS type maps (which might be cause of nonending bugs and lags moreover).

[KillerSpike 295]

23 minutes ago, Ekcin said:

There have been better proposals for some directional information, such as giving tower guards a short dialogue ("Where are we here") with some information ("This command post is in <north/south../northwest/..> of grid tile G14 of the island of <server>. Next capital <starter town> is xx tiles southwest from here." ) to give a player who lost her way some idea where to go. That would not break Wurm experience or immersion like dumb GPS type maps (which might be cause of nonending bugs and lags moreover).

I like this idea

[Drayka 485]

 

On 5/11/2021 at 2:16 AM, Zexos said:

If you want to see some of the reasons why people don't stick around then check out the Steam reviews for Wurm Online.   Just filter out the reviews about people being banned first though.

Quote

Lastly, you meet a VERY PECULIAR type of people in this game. You'll know what I mean if you play for more than a few hours. Sure, there's friendly folk, but oh my...

 

I resent that virtual nationalism! We're Wurmians, and our behaviour is perfectly wogical!

Tourists... thinking they can come here and condemn our culture without so much as a by-your-leave... 😂

 

Wurm is unique. And not everything that makes it unique is universally laudable, granted.

Not everyone who visits your culture looking for a fun holiday is going to become a permanent citizen, and nor should you want them to - it wouldn't be right for either party.

That said, there's no need to be hostile to foreign visitors. Today's newbies may be tomorrow's Devs.

 

New player or veteran player, we are the same mixed demographic every RL community has.

And we are naturally going through the same core challenges every RL community has, to understand our identity, improve our interactions and build our future together, in real-time.

 

The frontier always attracts a different sort of person than flourishes in 'normalised' society.

I love that we are such a mongrel group of superficially incompatible personalities.

I love that there are many players who adore the very aspects of the game which others find makes it unplayable.

I'm not against change, far from it. But not all things that could be changed are equal.

Wurm was conceived as a PvP game. It was founded in its core code and design to support PvP.

 

I used to play SFI, and rarely crossed a server border. I never went to Epic.

A lot of what I thought didn't make sense about Wurm, has become self-evident since returning to play Northern Theatre.

By the time I first discovered Wurm, Freedom was well established.

The economy was broken, the mailboxes bugged every week, Traders were the cast-cows of the whales, and you had to pay big money to become a priest.

A lot has changed, but a lot has remained the same.

It's all very well to desire the familiar UI of popular games, but there's so much rich history to be discovered about WHY things are the way they are already.

So much about what makes Wurm unique, that we all have yet to learn.

One can learn every mechanic in the game, and still not understand its true significance to the whole.

 

Freedom may be the most populous for various reasons, some of which are ... not based on real freedom-of-choice, shall we say.

But Freedom isn't the only Kingdom that needs to be catered to.

And nor are hardcore players the only ones that ought to be catered to.

 

Now if all Starter Towns had a Starter Area of influence that a mini-map worked in (for default Kingdoms) and beyond that one had to rely on Community maps...

Then I would consider that to be a good programming code-foundation, from which to CONSIDER whether Wurm culture would truly benefit from extending the scope of that mechanic.

 

No reason not to develop new-player areas to be more new-player support biased. Explore at your own risk beyond that; it is your spawnright as a Wurmian to do so.

[Minnie 178]

Many players mistakenly believe that that if they’re unable to navigate on day one, they’ll never be able to.  When I first started playing the game, I would often get lost within 50 tiles of my own deed.  Now I go anywhere and everywhere without a problem or a care.  To to get better at navigating, you have to practice.  If you practice, you will get better at it, and if you don’t, you won’t.

 

It's one of a handful of skills in the game that reside entirely in the player, rather than in the character.  For this reason, I’d be extremely saddened and disappointed to see it disappear.  It would make the game a lot less interesting and a lot more run-of-the-mill.  Therefore it's a hard no on the mini-map from me.

[Katrat 2,296]

+1 As someone who has a directionally challenged friend in Wurm this would be a great help. As it is I am often spending a good deal of my time guiding them from one location to another. A compass is of no use to an individual who is severely dyslexic and for those that would argue to use the catseyes...there are no catseyes in the middle of the wood, on steep mountain tops or in the lakes and seas! For those who don't want it simply make it easy to toggle off. Problem solved.

[elentari 2,660]

Nothing would break immersion if minimaps were introduced as an optional feature. 

 

People, especially vets, have this "all or nothing mentality" which is a bit narrowminded. Your immersion can stay safe. Minimaps could be optional. Have it in the quickbar as an option to toggle on off. 

 

Want to navigate old school with the static map? Go for it. 

 

Want to use the minimap because you aren't sure how the server is scaled in square km / tiles? Go for it. 

 

We can accomodate best of both worlds without ruining immersion or going for the dreaded "theme park" approach. 

As someone recently said, wurm is unique in that its so resistant to change it's perhaps the most powerful reason why people keep leaving. Change is inevitable, but it can be desirable if it's done right. 

 

Not all change is bad. A lot of things that make wurm "unique" are also the criticised points on steam and negative reviews. 

[Zuelatak 235]

A minimap sounds great. I'm all for features that provide players with more information as I do believe the lack of info is what causes most new players to quit. Something I would love to see this be implemented with or perhaps later is a Cartography skill. So player's can get the benefit of additional info through effort and skill. Player's would have to go around and investigate map grids to make map pieces that they can put together to improve the main map and their minimap with new info. One concern I do have though is how this would pair with compasses. Currently it's an awesome achievement to get a high QL high WoA compass and with a minimap showing where you are at all times I see no reason why you would ever need a compass. Or at least it would be needed in very few situations. 

 

On a side note: I just learned too that if you use a Dioptra on a planet it'll tell you roughly where you are on the map (Ex: northeast regions). Not nearly as useful as a minimap.

[elentari 2,660]

8 hours ago, Zuelatak said:

On a side note: I just learned too that if you use a Dioptra on a planet it'll tell you roughly where you are on the map (Ex: northeast regions). Not nearly as useful as a minimap.

 

Never knew that. Good info. 

[PotatoOnStick 84]

I would be against the implementation of a mini-map. It just does not feel like it belongs in this game. On top of that i would be for an implemented physical map as an item but not a hovering UI element so to say.

[Zuelatak 235]

Something that I think is relevant to this convo that I put in another post as well. 

 

 

If it were to be implemented as a skill I had the idea that players could use tools like a dioptra and sextant to investigate map grid spaces in order to create a report of the area, and by learning said report that would update the grid on the map to the current time. Perhaps QL and skill someone effect how well you investigate the area, create the report, and/or apply it to your main map. 

 

As a bonus idea if people were wanting things like a minimap or a dot on the map where they are. I think standing still in an area that you've reported could result in some information about where they are potentially based of QL and skill. Similar to the compass. 

[Idlamn 297]

 

The game needs to have "game". If it's a minimap you just need to spend time in Wurm to travel. It's the lack of a minimap that makes exploration more challenging.

 

Also think about this: Wurm has large landscape, a compass feature, a map. It has all the tools necessary for a nice sandbox exploration experience. Wouldn't it be a shame if they wouldn't make use of this to make the game more interesting?

 

Look at Mortal Online: no minimap and no map either. It is left to the players to find the places of interest which they can share with others or keep for themselves. This is a feature of that game. A selling point. Sandbox players want that exploration experience, and Wurm has plenty of that to offer. It only needs polished a bit if anything:

In addition to making sure the exploration tools work consistently, they could also add something more in depth to the tutorials so that players know what this is about.

 

 

On 6/16/2021 at 10:35 AM, elentari said:

Nothing would break immersion if minimaps were introduced as an optional feature. 

 

People, especially vets, have this "all or nothing mentality" which is a bit narrowminded. Your immersion can stay safe. Minimaps could be optional. Have it in the quickbar as an option to toggle on off. 

 

Optional feature? Why would anyone navigate without a minimap? Just so they can say they do?

 

I don't like brick making so why not make an optional feature to allow to make bricks afk, while keeping the possibility to craft them the clicky way for players who do?

Because that's how the game is supposed to be played. You don't like making bricks you either buy, or get better tools/skills to make bricks faster.

Edited June 21, 2021 by Idlamn

[Locath 533]

3 hours ago, Idlamn said:

Look at Mortal Online: no minimap and no map either. It is left to the players to find the places of interest which they can share with others or keep for themselves.

 

A pattern emerges:

 

[Ekcin 2,407]

There is more than one reason why a mini map would be a bad idea.

 

Generally, such "GPS style" maps as in tripe A games constitute an enlarged cut out of the "big" ingame map, usually the shown section displayed in the main ingame map when that one is invoked. There are several problems with that in Wurm.

 

First, the level of detail of the ingame map is fairly low, so an enlarged section of that map would not give too much information. That would cause the next avalanche of complaints and requests once such a feature would be implemented. Not to speak about probable bugs and performance issues of such an implementation.

 

Second, the size of ingame maps is not the same on different Wurm servers. On Xanadu, a grid tile represents 400x400 tiles ca.. on Independence 200x200, and on 8x8 servers 100x100. An ingame map necessarily would display different levels of detail.

 

Further on, any underground part of Wurm is not represented on ingame maps. In a tunnel or a mine, ingame map information is of questionable relevance if any. And mapping and display of mine operations in ingame maps would be game breaking, particularly for PvP.

 

Btw. I fail to see how a mini map with rather condensed information would help a lot to someone who has troubles to interpret a compass. And I agree to Minnie that learning to get around, to understand landmarks etc. is a basic part of getting started in Wurm. I am not at all against some further help as described before e.g. at guard towers.  Also, there might be directional information being added to deed tokens in a similar fashion ("This village is located in northwest G13 of <server>. It is <nn> tiles away from <starter town> in <e.g. southwestern> direction.")

 

 

Edited June 21, 2021 by Ekcin
addendum