Map location indicator needed. Realism

[IronClaw]

The elitist approach to map location in this thread is surprising and disappointing. Telling people to deal with it or GTFO (though not quite as harshly, but you convey the exact same message) is really not acceptable.

 

How is it elitist to say that one simply likes the way the game handles it now? I like it that there's the "risk" of getting lost. That when you take on a long voyage, there's this sense of "I hope I'll make it". I've only ever gotten lost once, which was my own mistake and I had to teleport back to capital. Yes that wasn't nice, but I'll gladly accept the occasional mishap in return for the feeling that my navigation "skills" have an impact on the game.

 

 

Here is what I propose.

 

Knowing your location on the map is dependent on in-game factors.

 

The quality and training of your officers (if they add a feature where you can hire crews of varying quality / skill)

The current weather.

The quality of your current equipment, such as sextants, charts, maps et.c.

 

The better your officers are, the better the weather is (clear skies etc) and the better quality you have on your equipment the more accurately you can find out your position.

 

I do like that idea, but it should cost you upgrade slots to equip your crew/ship with navigational aids. You want a special map and sextant? Should cost you one of your slots, so do away with your powder monkeys. You want a navigational officer? Then do away with your "Engineering Officer" and suffer longer repair times. (Just making up some make-shift officer system here)

It should be a trade-off.

[Ghroznak]

How is it elitist to say that one simply likes the way the game handles it now? I like it that there's the "risk" of getting lost. That when you take on a long voyage, there's this sense of "I hope I'll make it". I've only ever gotten lost once, which was my own mistake and I had to teleport back to capital. Yes that wasn't nice, but I'll gladly accept the occasional mishap in return for the feeling that my navigation "skills" have an impact on the game.

 

 

I do like that idea, but it should cost you upgrade slots to equip your crew/ship with navigational aids. You want a special map and sextant? Should cost you one of your slots, so do away with your powder monkeys. You want a navigational officer? Then do away with your "Engineering Officer" and suffer longer repair times. (Just making up some make-shift officer system here)

It should be a trade-off.

 

I'll elaborate as to what I was thinking.

 

Crew

We should be able to hire crew of varying skill and quality, perhaps even morale. There was an old game called 1869 which had hiring crew. It was a simple system, but worked nicely. You could pay for a low cost crew but they were worse sailors and also had lower morale... meaning, they might actually mutiny if things get rough.

 

My suggestion would be for crew to have their own "slots" on the ship thus allowing you to upgrade your crew separate from your regular upgrade slot which might contain stuff like boarding axes, grog, and so on.

 

The crew slots would be split into sections in the same manner as the guns, and you would have regular crew, officers and marines. Each slot can be upgraded separately and will affect the ship differently.

 

Crew = Good crew means your ship operates well. Sails are managed efficiently, guns are operated efficiently, less likely to suffer morale loss when being at sea for a long time or taking losses in battles.

 

Officers = Good officers allow better navigation, ergo topic of this thread where you can find your location, are better at keeping a low morale crew in check, reduces the amount of morale loss suffered when taking losses in battle and so on.

 

Marines (if applicable, primarily larger ships): Good marines means advantage when boarding (kinda like current marines upgrade, but goes in a marine slot rather than upgrade slot). Also, morale of marines and crew together is what affects the overall morale of the crew onboard.

 

With this system you could have a great crew but crappy officers, or vice versa, or you could have poorly trained marines so you mostly just want to use them for defense. It would also incur a running cost of having the crew and officers onboard, and better skilled the more expensive. It would also open up for a sort of "training system" where over time your crew could improve and become better. In my opinion that would make us a bit more attached to our crew since they were with us from the start, rather than treating ships and crews as disposables as we do now.

 

With a very simple crew management system we could have a nice "minigame" where you have to think about the state of your crew as much as the state of your ship and your gold coins. After all, how a crew worked together, the battles they shared and losses they felt was a huge part of the sailing history, and it would be sad if that goes completely overlooked by the game.

 

Anyways, I know this became a long read, but to properly explain how I feel the addition of trained officers to improve the estimation on the map to know your location I had to also explain more about how I propose a crew management feature could be implemented to the game and give us a wide range of new challenges to consider as we sail across the sea

 

**edit**

 

Found an old image of the 1869 game to illustrate how simple they made the crew management there. I honestly don't remember what the V and E bars were anymore, but it was related to their skill and such. Also, the picture of the smiling sailor means they were happy with the pay. If you cut their pay the portrait would change and you would get a grumpy face

 

Edited February 2, 2016 by Ghroznak

[Admiral 8Q]

Navigating is not that difficult. The land hight has been extremely exaggerated. So spotting things is easy unless you're in a squall. You don't need to be precise. Just use your compass. If you want to go up-left from where you are on the map, then that's a heading of North-West. If it's a bit more west than north , than go a bit more west on your compass heading.

If you're scared of the open sea, then stay withing visual sight of land. If you wand to "jump", then see the heading on the map. Like, to "jump" from Jamaica to Cuba, just go due North.

Edited February 3, 2016 by Admiral 8Q

[Admiral 8Q]

As for a "position indicator", just check what town you're closest to and compare it on the map.

[SyberSmoke]

The elitist approach to map location in this thread is surprising and disappointing. Telling people to deal with it or GTFO (though not quite as harshly, but you convey the exact same message) is really not acceptable.

 

Simple fact; this is a game.

Simple fact; this game contains many unrealistic features added for the sake of gameplay, i.e. teleport to capital, not needing to worry about food and water, being able to sail hundred of leagues back to port despite being about to sink when you managed to escape a battle. I could go on and list numerous other unrealistic features which are in the game for the sake of making the game enjoyable.

 

Another fact; every officer was trained in finding the location of their ship using the sextants, charts and stars. This is realistic.

 

We have no way to estimate our positions in the game as we have no sextants or stars to navigate by. We have faint outlines of islands in the distance and a rough guesstimation of where we are based on where we think the last port is at. Navigating near islands is less of a problem since you can just sail until you find a port, then verify with the map. However, sailing for long distances, or trying to find mission areas, or even your friends so you can actually group and play the game rather than play hide-and-seek for 45 minutes is simply frustrating and negatively impacts the enjoyment of the game for the average gamer.

 

That all said...

 

Here is what I propose.

 

Knowing your location on the map is dependent on in-game factors.

 

The quality and training of your officers (if they add a feature where you can hire crews of varying quality / skill)

The current weather.

The quality of your current equipment, such as sextants, charts, maps et.c.

 

The better your officers are, the better the weather is (clear skies etc) and the better quality you have on your equipment the more accurately you can find out your position.

 

Your position would never be a pinpoint pixel telling you exactly where you are. Your position on the map would be shown as a circle indicating that you are, most likely, somewhere within that circle. If you have a well trained crew and good equipment and blessed with fine weather the circle with be smaller, ergo more accurate. If you have a cheap, shoddy crew fielding rubbish equipment while it's overcast, then your circle would be much larger... to the point where it might simply cover half the map and it doesn't help you at all.

 

This way it is up to YOU as a player to ensure you are able to find out where in the blazes you are, or you simply rely on visually seeing islands as you sail from island to island to get to where you need to go.

 

This also provides a money sink in the game (buying equipment and crew) which is something I think the game needs.

 

Again, to stress the point... you would never have a pinpoint location of your ship. It would, even with the best of crews, be a rough indication of where you are.

 

That would be both realistic, and it would meet the requests from average gamers to have a way of knowing where they are without it being an unrealistic GPS system that breaks the immersion for those wanting a more hardcore mode.

 

I suggested something similar.  I do not need to know EXACTLY where I am, I just need some idea of where I am.  Just like if I had the ability to draw a line on the map from Town A to Town B...it would tell me Compass heading, Distance, and apx travel time based on your ship.

 

On a different note...this thread has broken down into the usual.  You have players have have been backers and post a lot say "I like it as is, deal with it" while you have new players...possibly more casual players (Casual being time they have available to play, may be an hour or two at best) wanting a way to know where about they are so they can get stuff done in the time they have.

 

This is common to any game community, and sadly it is one of the most frustrating parts of any community.  That the older players may not get the idea that May be...just may be some of us would like to not get lost and waste what time we have on a game before we have the tens if not hundreds of hours of play time to learn to navigate without it.  May be we want to get something done before our kids, our wives, our work, our beds come a calling.  THAT is what many consider elitist...the divide between the new green players and the grizzled veterans.

 

It is not about trying to dumb anything down, it is not about making anything simpler.  It is just a desire to not waste time, time that no one is ever getting any more of, on a game that should be for enjoyment...not a job.

[Mojava]

 How about this, you stop your ship at any given location, access a navigation skill or upgrade that gives you a rough estimate of where you are on the map. The same round locator you have when your in  town.  Nothing on your compass , no exact position, but still a working navigation tool that is closer to realistic. Your ship must be stopped and it doesn't give you an exact location, same result a navigator would get using a sextant and navigation charts.

[SyberSmoke]

How about this, you stop your ship at any given location, access a navigation skill or upgrade that gives you a rough estimate of where you are on the map. The same round locator you have when your in town. Nothing on your compass , no exact position, but still a working navigation tool that is closer to realistic. Your ship must be stopped and it doesn't give you an exact location, same result a navigator would get using a sextant and navigation charts.

Technically you need a sextant and a chronometer (clock). Sextants only let you know your latitude. The chronometer is needed to know your longitude. With both you know your location on a map.

You can also get the location by knowing direction and rate of speed. But with a variable speed and a need to change coarse with the wind...it is far less accurate.

Edited February 3, 2016 by SyberSmoke

[Nerdwing]

"Oy men, look what I found!" shouted Old Curly.  He'd been across the Atlantic a dozen times, and had more hours at sea than any of the other scum aboard.

 

The crew ushered around to find out the cause of his outburst.  What they found sent them into a fury, and an immediate mutiny ensued.

 

As the noose tightened around his neck, the Captain's bulging eyes laid upon the cause of violence as the items in question pelted him, thrown by outraged crew; a compass, ruler, and chronometer.

 

"Too easy!" shouted Curly.  "Casual scum!" roared a filthy bald man. 

 

"Tis a skill!  Tis a skill!" the crew joined in unison.

 

The ship sunk and none were missed.

Edited February 3, 2016 by Nerdwing

[Ghroznak]

 How about this, you stop your ship at any given location, access a navigation skill or upgrade that gives you a rough estimate of where you are on the map. The same round locator you have when your in  town.  Nothing on your compass , no exact position, but still a working navigation tool that is closer to realistic. Your ship must be stopped and it doesn't give you an exact location, same result a navigator would get using a sextant and navigation charts.

 

This is pretty much what I am suggesting, and that the accuracy of the circle / round locator as seen when you are using map while docked at a port is dependent on the skill of the officers you have hired for your ship.

[Salty Dog.]

sigh................................................................................................  Here we go again and again and again and again.

 

Learn to read a compass.

 

Navigation is a SKILL, like any other skill you need to work at getting better.  Shooting your cannons is a SKILL, like any other skill you need to work at getting better.   Manual sailing is a SKILL, like any other skill you need to work at getting better. Crafting  is a SKILL, like any other skill you need to work at getting better.  

 

Sure I had my problems navigating for the first day or two, now I have no fear, because I increased my skills.  I also have had problems turning, shooting, and multiple other things that require a few minutes to figure out.

 

The game is fine, increase your skill.

 

 

Love everyone that claims realism as their defense to not add a feature that brings the game more in line with the age in which they sailed.

 

Realistically captains knew where they were and how to get where they were going.

 

If you are clamouring for realism, then I think some other things need to be adjusted for the sake of realism.

 

REMOVE the teleport button, pretty sure at no time in the history of humankind has anyone be able to teleport ever. Pretty far removed from realism.

Make it so it takes months to get from point A to B, since you know that is how it REALLY happened. Pretty sure you can't sail from the upper east coast of the U.S to Brazil in 2 hours of sailing. Pretty far removed from realism.

Crafting a ship, I think it took months if not years to craft a ship of any notable size, instantenous crafting pretty god damned far removed from realism.

 

All you people not wanting certain features for realism, yet love all of the other non real things in the game remind of the bible thumpers that hate gays cuz the bible makes some obscure reference to it, yet eat, seafood, pork, and have tattoos.

Only take the parts that pertain to you and the hell with everyone else.

 

Yes captains knew where they (approximately)  were, they did it by keeping track of what direction they sailed, time they sailed that direction. and a guess at leeway, currents, ect.  They did not know exactly where they were but they had a good idea.  In NA someone that is skilled in navigation, knows approximately where they are as well.  I know if I leave port and sail NW for a period of time/speed then sail South/speed for a period  of time, to return to port I need to head roughly east.  Do I know exactly?  No. but I am close enough to make corrections once I see land and make out landmarks.

 

now, all your other drivel about teleports, crafting, ect.  is all about TIME, and not a factor of skill.  Navigation is skill, the others reduce time for playability.  

Edited February 3, 2016 by Sea Daddy

[Bach]

The elitist approach to map location in this thread is surprising and disappointing.

It's not elitist. Let's me try explaining this on a different tack.

It's just a game. Correct.

Some people play chess. They like the complexity the problem solving and the long term planning.

Some people play checkers. They like the simplicity, the quicker pace and not having to plan long term.

Both are just games.

What your asking me to do is to give up playing chess and go to playing checkers. EVE and now NA are amoung the few games out there offering a chess match. POTBS is still a viable game and they are offering checkers. It's not that anyone is saying GTFO. They just don't want you to destroy the chess match with your good intentions of simplifying it down to checkers. Can we meet in the middle? I'm sure we can somehow. But we're only a few days into learning the game. If players are already calling for simplification of the match rather than putting in the time to learn the game more indepth then that isn't a good sign. If you ask us every week for a new compromise on the chess match then eventually we're all just going to be playing checkers again. Which seems a waste of NA potential as we still have POTBS for that.

Edited February 3, 2016 by Bach

[Cpt Farragut]

Would it not be easiest to make the game map topographical to allow for easier dead reckoning, but keep the suspense of travel?

[Bach]

How about this, you stop your ship at any given location, access a navigation skill or upgrade that gives you a rough estimate of where you are on the map. The same round locator you have when your in  town.  Nothing on your compass , no exact position, but still a working navigation tool that is closer to realistic. Your ship must be stopped and it doesn't give you an exact location, same result a navigator would get using a sextant and navigation charts.

How about this? You print out a copy of the game map from the forum section above this one. You set your smart phone timer on and get a ruler. Now sail from one port to the other on a run tack. Measure the distance and time. Now do it on a reach and finally on a haul. Keep that map, your phone, the ruler and a pencil next to your computer and you will never get lost. The movement in this game is so slow you will have plenty of time to occasionally check your position. Stop being lazy. No one needs to program the solution into the game for you.

[SyberSmoke]

How about this? You print out a copy of the game map from the forum section above this one. You set your smart phone timer on and get a ruler. Now sail from one port to the other on a run tack. Measure the distance and time. Now do it on a reach and finally on a haul. Keep that map, your phone, the ruler and a pencil next to your computer and you will never get lost. The movement in this game is so slow you will have plenty of time to occasionally check your position. Stop being lazy. No one needs to program the solution into the game for you.

 

A game should give you everything you need in it to do what you need to do.  To suggest that you need to use outside mechanisms just to get from point A to point B is silly.  This is why this discussion is going on in the first place.  Some people find the tools given adequate, other do not.  May be you should see our point of view as valid as I see yours as valid instead of being whatever your being in this post.

[maturin]

Real captains didn't have to aim guns, buy ships, build ships, pay crew, install upgrades, choose sails to set all the time, give precise yard commands, steer, direct repair parties, plan invasions, choose ammo, etc.

They could delegate all of this to their officers or admiralty bureaucrats and drink themselves into a stupor if they chose. So let's just automate everything and get rid of all this extraneous 'gameplay' crap.

IRL there were good and bad navigators, and some ships had good equipment while others got lost, sometimes fatally. This precisely the outcome we see in-game. Realism of outcomes.

And for you scrubs who can't grasp the concept: the game is realistic when it makes the game better. At other times, realism goes out the window.

[DazednConfused]

From the perspective of an early OW tester (who has contributed in various ways to 3 maps in this game) I can tell you that navigating becomes very easy - all you need is a tiny bit of recall and all of a sudden you won't get lost in your area of operations.

 

Hell in the leeward islands, and greater antilles i don't even need the map anymore unless i'm contemplating a major water crossing - then ill need a good bearing (tdamap.com is currently the best map for this until hovering compass rose is in the in game).

 

Its because even after a small time you begin to recognise the islands and can easily confirm your location by going close enough to a port to see its name.

 

It adds that awsome element of uncertainty into sailing in groups too. instead of being able to get all your friends from all corners to zerg onto some poor fool, you will have to give approximate directions instead - giving the enemy the chance to escape.

[Bach]

A game should give you everything you need in it to do what you need to do. To suggest that you need to use outside mechanisms just to get from point A to point B is silly. This is why this discussion is going on in the first place. Some people find the tools given adequate, other do not. May be you should see our point of view as valid as I see yours as valid instead of being whatever your being in this post.

Yes I am suggesting you use an outside mechanism. It's called Math.

It's really not that hard to get around in this game. The islands can be seen for tens of miles at sea. They made them extra tall for that reason. Once you become familiar with your chosen local region you won't need the map. For those rare occasions you decide to open ocean travel the Compas, a timer and a bit of math is all you need. If you don't want to do that you can just follow the islands to where you want to go. The carribean is practically one big circle of island.

The idea is that as players we identify regionally and not the entire Carribean. The complexity in the travel helps promote this and in the end it will be better for the game because of it.

Edited February 3, 2016 by Bach

[Tennessee88]

But I am really enjoying having printed charts, a stop watch, and some cool tools I don't know how to use on my desk....

 

Seriously, it really isn't that hard to navigate. The easy button should be the last option, especially in PVP servers. 

[Prater]

All the required tools are available through the game to create any tools whatsoever that you could possibly wish for navigation.  The only tools I or Obi have not been able to develop is the ability to put in your current location, current ship, current wind, and your destination, and output the fastest route to take.  Unfortunately, I think that is impossible, but I'm not the best with math and maybe someone can eventually come up with it (maybe they already have).

 

What have I been able to develop?  Well, the first thing I developed was a tool to estimate your latitude and longitude on google maps.  Accuracy was between 2 and 30 miles (viewing distance) for the majority of the game world, but between 2 and 100+ miles in the Atlantic Ocean where no land is present.   The 2nd thing was the first actual landmass map for Naval Action along with navigation tools (Obi helped with this).  Third, I was the first to figure out what the knots value on open world mean.  With all this, it is impossible for me to get lost and I can always easily calculate the bearing for the route I want to take and decently estimate the time.  Plenty of other people have developed similar tools, some of them better, though Obi and I have always strived to have our tools available on the web so the community can use them.

[Sylven1]

The teleport is for people who get lost or stuck in shallows.

Well the realism crowd should be up in arms about this too. I mean in real life if you got lost or stuck on a sand bar it usually meant loss of the ship, or loss of all your goods in the hold and the tossing of you cannons to try and lighten the ship and get it to raise up off the sand and get moving, or sending out a longboat to try and pull it loose.

I don't see many people at all asking for some sort of GPS locater, I see people asking for tools in game to help with navigation that ship crews would be profeciant with at the time table we are playing.

[Sir Richard Bolitho]

As the one who originated the thread what has been shown from all the comments is that we need an "option". If you don't what to use a locator don't click the box. Simple.

[LeeUK]

We don't need an option to do that, with the option available you will just be gimping yourself in PvP if you don't use it.

 

The only thing I'd like to see is a "draggable" compass template of some kind on the map, so you could drag it over the location you want to sail from and get your basic general direction. The player would still need to judge his own distance traveled and whereabouts after traveling for some time, but this is basically what I am just doing with tdamaps website anyway, using the map compass to give me a direction and then using my head to make sure I get to where I want to go.

Edited February 4, 2016 by LeeUK

[Bach]

As the one who originated the thread what has been shown from all the comments is that we need an "option". If you don't what to use a locator don't click the box. Simple.

That is not what I am saying and I don't think it is what others are either. What I'm saying is that not only do I not need an option but you don't either and it will hurt my game if you get one.

Consider this, I am ship builder and cargo running on a pvp server. Often I carry large value cargoes and often I need to carry them in bulk. Now the average joe pirate/privateer is a coast hugger and unless he/she gets an easy button to navigate, the open ocean is a safer zone for my cargo. if I put in the effort using the in game hints to navigate it. Crossing open ocean can get me there quicker on occasion too as well as allows me to use a bigger hauler. Spanish Galleon treasure fleets didn't coast hug for this same reason. Not all ship captains in the 1600's were open ocean capable navigators.

Now some day a crafty pirate is going to figure out what in doing and be waiting for me in the middle of my open sea trade route. But he will have to find the route and plan it. If players get an easy " where am I map locator " anyone with an account can find the mid open ocean point between two ports.

So this is just one way what you are suggesting is destroying an aspect of the game for others. I'm sure there are others. PVP is about combat and warfare. To win you pit your strength against the other guys weakness. Sometimes that strength is numbers, sometimes it's tech and sometimes it's knowledge. so please stop harming my game play advantage by demanding easy buttons.

Edited February 4, 2016 by Bach

[MrCardoso]

I am finding I am wasting a lot of time trying to find locations and getting lost and giving up due to having to rely on compass and  guess work, and not really knowing where I am on the map. In reality a Captain was rarely lost and logged his location on his charts. He was able to do this because he had a sextant to shoot the stars/sun. This game is about being as close to reality as we can have. To not be able to see our position on the map is not realistic to the times. If the game mechanics were able to replicated a sextant type system great, but of course this would be far too complicated. In order to accurately reflect the historical reality and for the very same reasons Captains needed it, can we please have our location marked on the map with a dot/ship icon.

 

Why don't we add lasers to the ships as well?

 

Back then, people had little to no tools to navigate, and they still conquered the seas and land.

 

I know not everyone can devote research time to this game, since it's hard for beginners.. but you can look up information to help you online. I think this is a major problem nowadays, and with so many tutorial videos on Youtube that didn't exist when i started well.. i think you are either lazy or a very very casual gamer that likes everything handed to them.

Don't forget, if you learn to navigate the seas you have advantage over people like you.

[Thymoral]

I am gonna add my voice to this as well. 

 

When I started playing I really wanted a marker as well.  It would make the game so much easier!!

 

But now that I have put some time in (not all that much really)  I can see that there are so many reasons not to have a marker:

 

1. Navigation is really not hard.  I do open ocean crossings all the time now and all I do is eyeball a heading and hope for the best.  I am not always right on, but I have never missed terribly.

2. This is actually fun because it creates RISK and when you overcome RISK it is REWARDING.

3. Not having a marker creates a good aspect in the game where, as mentioned above, open waters are a safe(er) option for traders.   If everyone had a marker everyone would be taking the EXACT same routes and trading would be such a pain.  

 

 

As for the guy saying that games should provide everything you need to succeed has has clearly never played a game like MYST.