OW Navigation

[Preble]

Dear @admin,

As you and the team finalize the Open World UI, I'd like to make the case for bringing back the feature which gives the player's latitude/longitude coordinates in the map, as was in place before one of the previous wipes.

• Historically, mariners could plot their position with a reasonable degree of accuracy using celestial navigation.  This was obviously not perfect but by the time of the period of the game (roughly 1750-1820) navigators had at their disposal both chronometers and accurate almanacs (for example, The American Practical Navigator, which was published in 1802 as an update to several preceding works on practical navigation).  These were the key instruments for reliably accurate open-water navigation (which had by that point been practiced effectively, though with less certain accuracy, for nearly three centuries).
• The current system of the protractor and line essentially forces players to only sail from one plotted point to another, generally forcing players to hug coastlines in order to maintain visual points of reference as their only means of knowing their position is by line of sight and dead reckoning.  This is particularly important for when players quit the game while at sea in the OW--since ship orientation can change on the next startup (and plotted course and position disappears) it's impossible to know exactly where you started in the last instance.  This discourages long cruising voyages (which given the speed of travel can practicably only be accomplished across several game sessions), and more importantly, discourages players from attacking targets of opportunity out of sight of land when such an attack would take them off their plotted course to their next visual bearing.  This is harmful to gameplay dynamics for PvP and especially for PvE, and as stated previously, is ahistorical.
• It would be salutary to bring back the coordinates feature, and perhaps alter/augment it with a periodic mark on the chart made, say, every game hour, to represent celestial fixes taken at a realistic frequency.  This would give players greater freedom and confidence to cruise and engage beyond sight of land as was the historical norm of the period.

Many thanks for your kind consideration.

[Jack Jones]

16 minutes ago, Preble said:

with a periodic mark on the chart made, say, every game hour, to represent celestial fixes taken at a realistic frequency. 

That's a cool suggestion.

I would not want coordinates though.

[Norfolk nChance]

Simply it’s not needed. A bit of thought a Pencil and Paper, with advice from Captain Norfolk nCook you can reach the bottom left corner of the pacific.

Don’t need to give away all the secrets, leave a bit of mystery.

 

One of the few times I’d say to @admin Less is more...

 

Norfolk nChance [ELITE]

[Slim McSauce]

3 hours ago, Norfolk nChance said:

Simply it’s not needed. A bit of thought a Pencil and Paper, with advice from Captain Norfolk nCook you can reach the bottom left corner of the pacific.

 

Don’t need to give away all the secrets, leave a bit of mystery.

 

 

 

One of the few times I’d say to @admin Less is more...

 

 

 

Norfolk nChance [ELITE]

 

 

mystery for the sake of mystery isn't good. Give us the navigation tool and advanced map plotting so I'm not in my room, in the dark huddled by faint candle light with one of hundreds pre-printed out copies of the NA map trying to plot my course and expected arrival time for fish meat from charlston to shroud because lives depend on it and i'm on a quota

[Macjimm]

The sextant is currently available in game as F11.  Shrouded Recluse's map has accurate co-ords. 

I too would appreciate some form of sextant after release, when F11 is removed.

Navigation is easy, but Preble makes a good point; it is difficult to navigate while reacting to enemy in a chase.  Using triangulation with the Trader Tool is meta gamey.   A sextant to determine latitude would be better, even if it were a simplified tool.  Personally it would be fun if;  longitude was only available with a moon (but that would mean the addition of a moon), and the sextant would work only when the sky was clear.

I hope that a GPS icon is never added to the map

Edited September 16, 2018 by Macjimm
Grammar

[Guest]

 I played when we had lat and long and Ive played after they were removed, using the protractor. I see no problem and have no difficulty navigating. It sounds like some want a way to have exact coordinates in order to coordinate attacks better or for calling help to an exact location. I get it, i just dont think we need lat and long again. Protractor works well.

 

Edited September 16, 2018 by Guest

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Headless Parrot said:

 I played when we had lat and long and Ive played after they were removed, using the protractor. I see no problem and have no difficulty navigating. It sounds like some want a way to have exact coordinates in order to coordinate attacks better or for calling help to an exact location. I get it, i just dont think we need lat and long again. Protractor works well.

 

we can already do that by F11 coordinates and type them into the 3rd party map. What he means is a way of navigating with realistic tools. Also in the age of sails the sextant was within 1 kilometer accurate

[Guest]

13 minutes ago, Wraith said:

I find this debate ridiculous. Something like the OP's suggestion (a periodic way of fixing your position on the map, that potentially gains uncertainty the longer you're at sea?) should have been in the game from the beginning.  Take away F11 coordinates and the use of outside map tools and see just how much people like triangulating from the Trader Tool...

Sigh, the people arguing against a tool like this are simply trying to make life harder than it should be, especially for the casual, new players that this game needs more than anything else.

This is one of the rare cases where historical accuracy would actually enhance game play, and relying on some stupid, game-y Trader tool triangulation (which honestly shouldn't be there unless you're in port) is just needless complexity.

A degrading degree of certainty or better yet, the possibility to manually ad in positions on the map wouldn't exactly be groundbreaking in terms of either realism.. We already have the magic of insta communication on prices (traders tool), magical positional reinforcements (players jumping into battles in reinforcementzones) and ofc my favourite - the wizards conjuring of magical reinforcements.. A map tool is hardly going to break realism.

[Raf Van Boom]

Where the .... is my sextant.

[Slim McSauce]

let me draw on the map, let me exchange copies of my own map to people in my clan/nation Let us draw up advanced battle plans to distribute. Even go so far as to let a enemy player see the map of the player he sunk to get intel. Let us name our maps!

Edited September 16, 2018 by Slim McSauce

[Hugh Latham]

A "sextant" feature might follow realistic sightings. During daylight one would get an arch from sun sight until noon, when an exact position is possible. At night one would get a triangle (3 celestial sights). During a storm, no position available.

[Guest]

34 minutes ago, Wraith said:

In the same magical black hole that swallowed the moon. >_> 

ok.. That one made me laugh.. Look to the sky.... just not in NA

 

[Capn Rocko]

I got lost more before the protractor was introduced. I think it is a good feature

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Slim McSauce said:

let me draw on the map, let me exchange copies of my own map to people in my clan/nation Let us draw up advanced battle plans to distribute. Even go so far as to let a enemy player see the map of the player he sunk to get intel. Let us name our maps!

would be a cool addition that the only safe map that you cant loose is the "world map" but you can draw or find maps for all ports, and if you die with (same as gold with no magical wallet) its either destroyed or other players can loot it from you

[Preble]

3 hours ago, Wyy said:

we can already do that by F11 coordinates and type them into the 3rd party map. What he means is a way of navigating with realistic tools. Also in the age of sails the sextant was within 1 kilometer accurate

F11 is the bug reporting feature and isn't designed to be used as a navigational tool.  Using it as such along with trader tool triangulation and third party maps are workarounds for navigation calculations that should be able to be done in-game.  The crews of real ships would know how to do take celestial fixes and would do so regularly--due to the nature of OW and the UI it's not possible for the player to take star shots on their own (which would be a kind of silly premise that would make the game overly work-intensive and unplayable).  Since ships had dedicated navigators to tell the captain where they were, navigation processes should be aggregated and simulated through the hourly track chart, perhaps supplemented by coordinates (perhaps updated hourly like the track chart as opposed to continuously).

2 hours ago, Capn Rocko said:

I got lost more before the protractor was introduced. I think it is a good feature

Not proposing we get rid of the protractor--it's a good feature to determine headings, but it's not particularly useful without known positions, either on land or out at sea (we have the former when we're within line-of-sight; I'm arguing that we should have the latter too).

3 hours ago, Wraith said:

I find this debate ridiculous. Something like the OP's suggestion (a periodic way of fixing your position on the map, that potentially gains uncertainty the longer you're at sea?) should have been in the game from the beginning.  Take away F11 coordinates and the use of outside map tools and see just how much people like triangulating from the Trader Tool...

Sigh, the people arguing against a tool like this are simply trying to make life harder than it should be, especially for the casual, new players that this game needs more than anything else.

This is one of the rare cases where historical accuracy would actually enhance game play, and relying on some stupid, game-y Trader tool triangulation (which honestly shouldn't be there unless you're in port) is just needless complexity.

Agreed.  Only point where I would differ is that of increasing uncertainty the longer you're at sea, since the accuracy of celestial fixes is independent of that factor as opposed to things like time of day and weather.  Everything else, preach.

[Jean Ribault]

I have fallen asleep a couple times while sailing long distances, woke up and had no idea where I was (in the game  ).  Just used the trader tool to locate myself.  There's no need for additional mapping tools, although some people may enjoy using them just for fun.

[Guest]

5 hours ago, Jean Ribault said:

I have fallen asleep a couple times while sailing long distances, woke up and had no idea where I was (in the game  ).  Just used the trader tool to locate myself.  There's no need for additional mapping tools, although some people may enjoy using them just for fun.

imo the trader tool should be removed. There were no fastlane of communication during the age of sails and the ability to check prices just by typing the item in the map is imo immersion breaking. Realistic tools for navigation would at least be realistic and I fail to see how adding them would change much for the lesser players.

[Slim McSauce]

16 minutes ago, Lars Kjaer said:

imo the trader tool should be removed. There were no fastlane of communication during the age of sails and the ability to check prices just by typing the item in the map is imo immersion breaking. Realistic tools for navigation would at least be realistic and I fail to see how adding them would change much for the lesser players.

I don't remember the last time I used the trader's tool for prices. It's always been how far am I from x port. Seems like it would be easier to just create a navigation tool that does roughly the same thing with a realistic spin

[Cetric de Cornusiac]

Trader tool as it is performs well as a help for new players to orientate. I would rather like to change the bug reporting window in such ways F11 coordinates are not visible (but to devs when receiving the message of an actual bug report). So at one blow the unintended abuse of that feature would cease to exist.

I would welcome the arrival of a sextant though, for map position finding, just for the fun of it. And for immersion. Only when the weather allows it.

[vazco]

On 9/16/2018 at 9:22 AM, Preble said:

Dear @admin,

As you and the team finalize the Open World UI, I'd like to make the case for bringing back the feature which gives the player's latitude/longitude coordinates in the map, as was in place before one of the previous wipes.

• Historically, mariners could plot their position with a reasonable degree of accuracy using celestial navigation.  This was obviously not perfect but by the time of the period of the game (roughly 1750-1820) navigators had at their disposal both chronometers and accurate almanacs (for example, The American Practical Navigator, which was published in 1802 as an update to several preceding works on practical navigation).  These were the key instruments for reliably accurate open-water navigation (which had by that point been practiced effectively, though with less certain accuracy, for nearly three centuries).
• The current system of the protractor and line essentially forces players to only sail from one plotted point to another, generally forcing players to hug coastlines in order to maintain visual points of reference as their only means of knowing their position is by line of sight and dead reckoning.  This is particularly important for when players quit the game while at sea in the OW--since ship orientation can change on the next startup (and plotted course and position disappears) it's impossible to know exactly where you started in the last instance.  This discourages long cruising voyages (which given the speed of travel can practicably only be accomplished across several game sessions), and more importantly, discourages players from attacking targets of opportunity out of sight of land when such an attack would take them off their plotted course to their next visual bearing.  This is harmful to gameplay dynamics for PvP and especially for PvE, and as stated previously, is ahistorical.
• It would be salutary to bring back the coordinates feature, and perhaps alter/augment it with a periodic mark on the chart made, say, every game hour, to represent celestial fixes taken at a realistic frequency.  This would give players greater freedom and confidence to cruise and engage beyond sight of land as was the historical norm of the period.

Many thanks for your kind consideration.

A better approach would be to show player on a map, but disable F12 coordinates. This way GPS accuracy for homing revenge fleets would be gone, but player would still know more or less where he is.

[speijk]

Can i just propose something?

Let the 1st lt aboard ure ship every once in while make a marking where u are. Every 12 min or so

[Raf Van Boom]

Navigation can't be a pain in the ass, why complicate it? Give the player the location of his ship on the map and be done with it. What does all this extra fluff really add?

[Sir Texas Sir]

They need to brin the grid back to the map and rough cords of where you are.  Wasn’t each square 25km?  You have them off by 5-10 or even to the nearest 25km.  I should be able to tell folks to meet me at this long /lat roughly and they should be able to find it by looking at the map and tracing those cords.  It’s up to them to get close to it through in game navigation.

if you don’t like those options than turn them off.  Most of us Vets know the in game map so well we don’t need those things but new players that haven’t been playing the game for 2 years need some way to find out where they are.  No one asked for pin point gps which we have with F11 and third party apps.  It’s not fair to the casuals and new players that don’t know about these things.

[admin]

we will give an example from Rust 
initially they started without the map, then added them map that you had to uncover
then they added your location and initially veterans complained, but that complains stopped because everyone realized that identifying the location is not the core part of the game.

We initially did not want the map. but then community shown us the way when community map became very widely used and popular. 
We now do not want to show the location, but thinking logically the captain in 1790 could realistically identify his location with good enough precision.

We are very conflicted about this feature. 

 

[Sir Texas Sir]

3 minutes ago, rediii said:

Beginners have a hard time atm navigating. Maybe showing your exact position inside the safezone could be something nice?

Or just show exact location. I don't think it's such a big thing anyway because everyone is using your F11 coordinates together with Felix's map.

That why I mention bring back the grid and give them a rough cords so it’s not exact but close. 25km squares where still pretty big when we had them.  Just not red dot on the map saying I’m here.  They still have to look at the map and see what we that long/lat crossed