useless ink

[amasarac]

With the advent of Salems mapper making maps is totally useless. Perhaps if there was someway to draw and or write on the made map or plain parchment it would be a useful way for hearthlings to leave messages. Much better than silly rune stones with a tiny word count.

"excuse me friend hearthling, wheres that node you told me about?"
"here is a map, I have circled the hotspot for you and drawn warning signs for the foraging route of murderers."

Also... treasure maps.

[tremlingrendel]

Well, the external mappers only apply to those who use external sources for their information. Those whom attempt to play the game as it's presently designed would still rely on the in-game mapping mechanics to obtain information about the region.

However, I do like the idea of expanding the overall applications of the in-game maps to include things like such:

- Known claims/borders.
- Waypoints and "Locations of Interest", where you can name points on the map
- A "decay effect" where the map fades in places to show that the information is getting out of date.
- A map requirement to use some/all fast-travel abilities.
- Attach parchments to the map with notes, legends, important information (and compose navigational books).
- Having a map of your location and destination slightly increases your speed when traveling on an official road.

[LuKo]

Yea... some upgrade for Maps and any related skill would be nice

I liked the fast travel thing, maybe the req would be building something specific [must be considerably hard to build] and then marking it on the map, or ignore all that and just being necessary to have a Wagon (or maybe a Raft?)

[TeckXKnight]

Inks and maps have gone from some of the most valuable items in the game to some of the most useless. Mind you they have never been useful for the purpose of mapping; we've had auto-mappers since w3 -- maybe before then even. Ink was used for lp in w3 and w4 and beyond that it became useless in the new curiosity system.

Parchment can already be used to write long messages.

Teleportation is the root of nearly every exploit in the game and giving maps the ability to teleport you around will only lead to abuse and decreased value in other current systems such as wagons. Current teleportation methods have been made substantially less viable and more expensive for this reason already, such as the added steel nugget and metal bar costs to crossroads.

Movement bonuses will only lead to raiders running down everyone in their path. Movement is an integral part of combat and, in my opinion, needs a lot of work still. Adding an arbitrary element that greatly upsets the system negatively for the sake of giving purpose to an antiquated system is a bad idea.

As a system, the idea of cartography was really cool and should be explored but in an entirely new direction that gives value to exploration and discovery versus being something you grind to be better at combat or to skip the terrain. Something such as, expanding on the idea of treasure maps, revealing hidden resources that can be dug up and collected or strange markings from your ancestor's spirits that reveal how dangerous an area is or how civilized; information that is fun and rewarding for the mapper.

[tremlingrendel]

Teleportation is the root of nearly every exploit in the game and giving maps the ability to teleport you around will only lead to abuse and decreased value in other current systems such as wagons. Current teleportation methods have been made substantially less viable and more expensive for this reason already, such as the added steel nugget and metal bar costs to crossroads.

Meant as in, making the ability even more expensive by requiring maps to fast-travel. Perhaps like, if you're x distance from your hearth or village, you need a map from where you are to where you're going to get back.

Movement bonuses will only lead to raiders running down everyone in their path. Movement is an integral part of combat and, in my opinion, needs a lot of work still. Adding an arbitrary element that greatly upsets the system negatively for the sake of giving purpose to an antiquated system is a bad idea.

Meant as in, when you're using Milestones to travel from one place to another, having a map that covers that region (or is attached to the milestones, kinda like an ancient version of "auto-nav waypoints" that was used in trade roads) would be used as a merchant's guide to his destination, and thus provide a slight bonus in speed that would require said raiders to plan out their assault on wagons moving through the area rather than just tag the cart half-way across and run it down.

[TeckXKnight]

No one uses crossroads to trade long distances, they just use alts. Not only is it safer but it's cheaper to oath an alt over rather than to try to teleport more than a SG. Putting heavier prices on normal crossroad jumps will just cement alt-oath trading further.

Also, no one uses milestones. We've all tried but all that they do is attract bandits and they're pretty terrible even without them. I swear they snag on longer trips no matter how carefully and meticulously you plan them out. Worse is how easy it is to just block the movement path of anyone using them to catch them since the pathing is so simplistic. I have nothing to oppose providing a speed boost if you have a map in hand and you're traveling with milestones but it feels like you're tacking an obsolete system onto an obsolete system and hoping that they make each other relevant again. In all likeliness, no one will use them for anything besides the occasional novelty.

[AnnaC]

Teck pretty much covered everything. The last half of world 3, and what little I played in world 4, the majority of my LP gain was through cartography and related foraging. The LP gain was decent enough, but beyond that the handling of map objects in-game left much to be desired, so without the LP gain for the action of cartography, obviously nobody is gonna bother with it. Map objects were laggy, and god forbid if you had to look through a cupboard full of maps to find a particular one (because you couldn't label or name them, like atleast keys), and you generally couldn't do much with regards to sharing them or posting the information they have in a publically viewable method (like imprinting a localmap on a runestone, or having a bulletin board structure to display them).

About the LP gain, I don't see why you can't get discovery LP for each new map tile you map with the Cartography action? Perhaps keeping track of which areas you've mapped or not might not be feasible for this?

Back to Ink in general, I've liked the ideas for using it as a base for paint or dyes; having a couple coloring options for objects would be a godsend for organization, what with how all cupboards, crates, etc. look exactly alike.

[Sevenless]

*scoffs*



My hat finds your term "useless" offensive.

[SuperNoob]

*scoffs*



My hat finds your term "useless" offensive.

whats the charisma bonus on that?

beyond party hats ink is pretty much useless. I found out late last world you don't actually need ink to write on parchments...if that changed it would be a bit more useful(but most people send pms on the forum anyway), but would make it annoying. I still like the idea of maps being a curio!