The Mini-Map

[Zhinse]

Hello All, lets have a firm discussion on the minimap in this thread!

Since final fantasy X on the ps2, I have disliked the mini-map. It is good at what it's supposed to do, keeping you from not being lost, and a lot of other nice things.

However, the presence of the minimap takes away from the actual graphics most of the time as one can feel like he or she is playing a cursor on the mini map instead of the actual avatar. Sometimes the minimap can be too effective at portraying the game, causing some of the magic to be lost. This is my common complaint against any game with a minimap.

The way the mini map is implemented in FFXIV i find is sort of intrusive. At lower resolutions it takes up a good corner of the screen and becomes very noticeable. When you switch to a higher resolution it does get smaller, and therefore better.

Ways that I think would improve the mini map are to change the coloring in general and make it less obtrusive. I used to think that making it rotate with the camera would be a good idea, but i'm not too sure. I'm sure the developers all have toyed around with rotation and a lot of stuff.

I am also a firm believer that if people didn't have the mini map to stare at constantly and explore with, then there would be a lot less complaints of 'copy and paste' terrain. The 'copy and paste terrain is only noticeable because of the maps. If it was just the player looking at the landscape, its actually pretty hard to notice, for me anyways.

I am for replacing the minimap with a FFXI-compass that showed you the direction that your camera is facing, indicators for what kind of pc's and npc's are in the range and so forth.

So give the developers your general thoughts about the mini map!

[Wolfie]

I am also a firm believer that if people didn't have the mini map to stare at constantly and explore with, then there would be a lot less complaints of 'copy and paste' terrain. The 'copy and paste terrain is only noticeable because of the maps. If it was just the player looking at the landscape, its actually pretty hard to notice, for me anyways.

This makes no sense to me. Copy/paste terrain will be just as obvious without a minimap.

[viion]

The copy/paste makes absolute no sense, its more obvious seeing it than viewing it in the map.

[Rhianu]

This suggestion is dumb. The compass in FFXI was a pain in the ass to use, was extremely limiting, and was one of the biggest flaws in FFXI's interface. There's a reason why people made 3rd party programs like MapMon to display a makeshift mini-map in FFXI.

SE should implement FFXIV's minimap into FFXI, not FFXI's compass in to FFXIV.

[origamikitsune]

^ Indeed. However, that ability to turn off the minimap entirely would be nice because there are plenty of times where I don't need to know whats around me and I just want the !@#$ screen space.

[Rhianu]

^They have that. It's called Scroll-Lock. Just press that key, and you'll have all the screen space you could ever want.