Ingame notepad and editable map?

An ingame notedpad would be nice, though I prefer to make my own notes on paper.

With the the map I guess Im a minority because I'd like it to be minimalistic. Maybe you could get more info to show on the map with better Cartography skill or something, but in the beginnig it could be like an old handwritten map showing only some trees and mountains and maybe roughly where some larger cities are supposed to be located. With this system it would be nice to be able to make own notes on the map.
It can actually be fun getting totally lost

 

I don't think an in-game notepad is needed, they already have books as seen in the house deco video, all that is needed is the ability to write our own

 

Honestly writing some information at a digital kind of paper right after a conversation would be good enough in my eyes.
But what if I do not play for a couple of days…can I still remember what my notes mean? What if I missed an important part during conversation…does the NPCs supports an unlimited number of redoing conversation or does she/he just say “Are you stupid…I already told you 3 times yesterday…”?

If they answer your question just one or two times in full length and start to grumble if you ask a third time an automatic co-writing would be nice but if you can ask NPCs again and again and again…a generally automatic co-writing of your conversation would be nice but not necessarily needed.

With or without co-writing…if I have to take care what information are important, then you must be able to write much more than just a small “hint” on a map and it must be editable to change the information if you get some more. An easy understandable system would be something like this forum. You start a thread with a more or less good “quest”-description as topic and post your information text. To make it more “realistic” I would use a book as it looks like they already exists. Every page starts with a small one-liner field for your “quest”-description and the rest of the page is for your information.
The first two pages of that book are the index displaying your chosen “quest”-descriptions. There are not limitless entries possible...maybe 50. By clicking on an entry e.g. “creepy house near city” you automatically page down to page 25 and take look at your notes.

On your map you could now place some numbered marks from 1 to 50 representing your entries in your book.

Generally I would like to see a skill based map system…I don’t know where it was but I can faintly reminiscent of a game with such a map system. You started with a sketched map…where is more or less the coast line…where are some mountains. With your rudimentary cartographical skill you documented e.g. by walking a road just standards like the road itself and villages. With a higher skill the around your character mapped area got larger and more details where shown…with the highest skill even hidden walls or buttons appeared at your map.
Something like that would be awesome.

 

I hope to do exploring and have enought festures in the game to make and sell maps. To that end, I think a notebook and ability to annotate maps are important. I'd totally be fine if the feature to annotate/make maps required a slill that has to be practiced/unlocked.

 

I want books that you can write in, like in UO, except with permanent writing and with more pages!

 

Along wiht the Map and notepad, Id like to be able to export the info from the game.

 

Didn't we have the journal back in UO that we could write in? This will be a good implimentation. Now how to add drawings to the notepad...

 

SotA should come with a blank notepad titled "Quest Log" and some graph paper, and that's fine by me. Actually, I wouldn't mind buying some SotA branded stationary like that from the Store.

 

I would like both the ability to put in your own notes and an automatic noting system which LB has forshadowed. However on the automatic system, it HAS to be better than Skyrims. That system was useless, if you turned off the tracker then you were ****ed because it gave you no useful infomation

Also there are things the player wants to note down that the game wont find important, good stores for buying weapons for example

 

I think its likely that when people go through the dialog and figure out how things work it'll be very easy to google an area and pull up the exact conversation triggers needed to get what you want. It'll all end up getting documented online.

So, the end result is that if you want to discover it yourself you're free to do that, but if you find it too difficult you just look it up online and then know exactly how to get what you want from the NPC.

My point is that it there shouldn't be a problem of it being too hard for some due to the above.

 

I really like the editable map idea. Exploring and adding my own notes to the map is something that I have enjoyed in the few RPGs that offered it.

Wouldn't it be great if you could then make a copy of your map with annotations to an in-game item, and then sell it? Map-makers, Cartographers and Explorers rejoice!

 

Oh yeah and RP purpose of Treasure hunts is strong in this one.

 

I would think AUTO populating a notebook would be too close to a Quest Journal, but an ability to click on the text, and 1 button to copy to the notebook and open the notebook for you to add to it... Think of the example of the bartender maybe saying that you have a number of villagers that went 'west of town' into a mine for a rare ore, and most never returned and those that did never spoke of the adventure... Now instead of copying all the text or AUTO populating, lets say you could click on "west of town" and that was copied... then you were taken to the notebook, were you could add who was the source, what town or area you were in, what was the rare ore that was discussed, (because you would naturally ask, what rare ore, right?)

Then you as the adventure have to do a bit more than just have an auto populated journal, and you can quickly get to it in game. So if I was on the way to a town east of the place I was in, I could later know to go back, head west and see if there was any rare ores...