Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Digital_Utopia
At any rate, I was going to use existing sources to build a quest list, so at the very least, a smart search should be more than possible
|
Sounds good...this should certainly be sufficient as long as the quests sources are accurate, up to date and have the necessary details. If you're just searching by quest name, it's probably fine. Sometimes I may want to go the other way though - look for available quests that I don't yet have. In that case they would need to be filterable by level and party size, exclude limited-time or retired quests that aren't currently available, etc. The Compendium plugin demonstrates some of this, but often the filtered list is still so long as to be unusable.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Digital_Utopia
The one thing that troubles me about it - more than anything else, is the tendency of a lock-up happening.
|
Darn technical limitations...you're right though - I'd rather have it work well in zone format than be seamless, but work sporadically. Requires quick navigation short-cuts to be well designed, as you've said, but that's completely solvable.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Digital_Utopia
I'm not entirely sold on the necessity for the arrow indicators though.
|
Agreed that your color-coding and other ideas address most of the concern here. My main frustration is when I'm looking at the parchment map for the rings and can only find 4 out of 5, only to realize after scouring the entire map several times that one of them is in another zone. The color-coding, provided it's visible while I'm looking at the map, should address that.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Digital_Utopia
Of course, those arrows would only be visible if you're in "GPS mode".
|
Thinking of GPS for a moment, I wonder how feasible it would be to develop some kind of path-finding algorithms for travelling between points. I realize this wouldn't be easy, but it would be extremely helpful to see a dotted line on the map indicating the most direct, reachable route between two points. I can't begin to count the number of times I've headed towards a point on the map only to realize that the direct route is impassible, causing me to have to backtrack around half the map to find another route. Could possibly even allow users to manually adjust the line with waypoints in order to manually plot out a path to follow that avoids known areas of certain death. This would also enable a much-improved version of the in-game Track Nearby Quests feature, since it could take actual travel distance into account.
Of course, another aspect of the navigation idea would be to consider nearby stables and their destinations, swift travel options, etc., but that would complicate things by a large degree, as it would depend on the character what options would be available. Just having wayfinding by foot/mount would be huge.
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Digital_Utopia
That really might not be as much of an issue as one would think.
|
You're right - multiple notes on a point, with server/neighborhood included in the notes, would address the issue.
Another idea as food for thought, though perhaps way down the road - could character coordinates be shared across users, such that I could authorize members of my fellowship/kin/friends to see where I am, and vice-versa? Could be a nice community-building feature.