On-demand access to Overworld Map and walk between Hexes

Who thinks there should be on-demand access to the Overworld Map - meaning that there is a hotkey or command to enter the map.

At least from non-town areas it seems very arbitrary that the Avatar needs to navigate to the edge of a "hex" (which is a totally artificial construct) to access the Overworld Map. When I'm in the middle of a multi-hex forest I should be able to access the map when I am in the middle of a hex just as readily as when I am at the edge of a hex.

In cases like towns and certain areas (e.g. labrynth or "trapping zones") I can see needing to navigate "out." But in the mountain and forest (and placeholder) scenes from R4 it was frustrating and immersion-breaking to have to find the edge of the hex to access the map.

Also it would be nice to be able to walk from hex to hex without having to access the map.

 

I thought about to offer an option when you exit a zone to go directly to the next one (according to your orientation) or to get out to the map layer.

 

I think you should be able to exit by running to any border, just MO...

 

Well I was thinking about this when I played and was thinking about a map commando when you are in a city, there you would always be able to walk to an exit without any danger. In the wilderness there might be danger in in the way and therefore a bad idea to auto move from.

 

But my point is that there is no exit unless you are in what I had called a labrynth or "trapping zone." The middle of a forest is the middle of the forest.

 

I like the idea of being able to exit to the map with a hotkey. There would have to be caveats. Like if you're currently threatened by an enemy, you can't do it (imagine Iolo saying: "There are enemies nearby Avatar!" or "I do not think that is wise."). I'm sure there are other situations where you would want to limit it, but I think it's inclusion is a good idea.

 

I think that's a great idea, the World Map MUST be an essential exploration tool that we refer to throughout the game.
Tbh, I don't plan on spending all my time crafting furniture for my Man Cave, I want to be out and about exploring every inch of the world, writing travel books about the various wonderful locations in the game or mapping resource locale's and I can only do that with a proper interactive and intuitive map, not some minimal travel tool.

This new World Map makes a mockery of my Cartographer pledge doesn't it?

 

Well to be honest we're talking mechanics here, not imagery

I think with the caveats like what DocDoom mentioned we should be able to access the overland map at any point outside of a city/town zone.

 

Would these same restrictions then apply at the edge of "non-trapping" hexes? So in the case of a dungeon, or an enemy camp, there would be an exit(s) most likely at the edge of a hex where pursuit would likely end. But in a multi-hex forest or mountain area maybe you should not be allowed to exit to the Overland Map even at the edge of the hex under certain conditions (e.g. enemy pursuit).

This leads to my second point about walking between hexes. Why can't you just walk (or run!) from one hex to the next without accessing the map? So if you were in an enemy camp or multi-hex forest and there is a raider or bear hot on your tail, you just need to keep on running or fight before you can "pop out" into the map.

The default should be walking between hexes rather than blacking out at the edge (in many cases, an artificial edge) and popping into map mode.

A good example of how arbitrary a hex edge was in R4 was the unnamed forest town in the left of the map. A bunch of people got lost in there (why did everyone have to pick knight houses for goodness sake?) They were no less lost at the edge of the hex, just overjoyed that the screen starting blacking out to get out of there

 

My initial thought is "no" it would not apply to running out to the edge. If you can outrun the enemy long enough to get to a real exit, then that represents a successful escape, but just hotkeying out of a deadly combat is another thing altogether.

Even if you could run from one hex to another without entering the map, there would be a load screen and you wouldn't take the bad guys with you. I'm fairly certain that's beyond what the devs have planned from the beginning.

 

I don't think we will get a seamless hex to hex navigation due to the reason that there are hexes to begin with is so the dev team can change out locations based on world happenings as need be, and the hexes are supposed to zone you out of one group of live players and into the next.

So if we had 150 players in a town, and you seamlessly walk into the next map that has 50 players in it already. If the player cap on a location is 150 and all 150 players from the town want to go into that zone that already has 50 players in it, then as you cross that imaginary hex boarder, 50 of those players are going to vanish into thin air. That would either mean the those 50 players got kicked from the zone they were in, or you transported into a new zone where those people you might have scene just vanished from you.

The over world map gives the best transition from zone to zone for what they are trying to design, but access to it without needing to go to the boarder of an area would be nice, with stipulations as docdoom77 has stated.

 

We're NOT getting hex to hex navigation, it's never been something they've shown or mentioned IIRC. But if we're to go by the released 3 month video so far, as those who are yelling about the Overhead Map are, then we should be able to jump right back out to the OM where ever we want (with caveats I'm sure) as LB does it as soon as he gathers the wood from the chopped down tree.

 

Good points made above. If artificial hex boundaries are going to be a necessary evil then I would probably support actually incorporating the boundaries into the game visually as suggested here:

 

Depends entirely if we get mounts or not. If we DO get mounts then I'd say no. If they decide against mounts (terrible idea) then I would say its is a must.

 

If we really HAVE to use a OOC map for travel, then yes please a button would be more fun...