Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Why?

This too. About the only time I've used/heard of people using the term 'north' is when using the map in flattened mode, since Guristas space is towards the top of the screen. But it's not actually north, it's just a direction on the map that's short for saying 'towards the top of the screen when you have the map in flat mode'. There's no reason whatsoever to have it showing all the time in the game though, it would be useless and a waste of screen space. And on top of that, compasses wouldn't work so well in the 3D space that Eve is set in.

Besides, any good SciFi fan knows that there's only one direction you need to know about in null-G, "the enemy's gate is down".

We also know that the known systems of EvE are only a small portion of the galaxy we are in. You would need a magnetic pole in two locations to correctly calculate a true "north" or "south" for a compass to work. The galaxy is not a round planet. This would not work. Not to mention that a compass in space will give you absolutely no information as to your location at all. It's space...ok...my brain is hurting just thinking about how to explain this. A normal compass will not work.

Well...if those axis's retain their orientation, then isn't that just as good as a compass?

but even knowing what way is "north" won't add much to the game....

most of the time, things end up with "OK, got him, everyone warp to me at zero"

In terms of gameplay it would add nothing good, but also nothing bad either.

Though I imagine it would add more immersion to the game. Seeing direction in which I'm warping and jumping through the gate would help keeping sense of direction and position through travel. "Y'know, the best route to Jita is five jumps eastwards up and then all the way north". Well, I don't expect such lore to appear but I hope you catch my, nomen omen, drift.

In general it will be hard or next to impossible since star systems aren't nicely aligned. But on small scale it would surely work at least this way: I jump certain gate and let's say it shoots me straight to the north. It's nothing special as today the same gate will shoot me to the EVE's north anyway. The only difference is that in this case I know it's north. So at the destination I can look south and see a star blinking at me and I could say "hey, I got here from there".

As I said, the only thing which would it accomplish is to give general sense of location within the star cluster. Yeah, I can look up star map but it plainly sucks. And actually breaks immersion. When jumping and seeing where do I warp/jump, I can keep dots connected in my mind.

Point is, EVE already has global directions because its engine uses Cartesian coordinate system. So the only thing needed to implement OP's proposal is to show which direction is which.

Yes, I figured it myself. Though you didn't make an effort to understand what I'm talking about. If such feature would be useless to you, no problem. It's not giving any advantage or disadvantage to anyone. It just would help some people to feel more in space. Like nebulae did. Like stars did.

Look, we already have absolute notion of one axis: up-down. Why introducing the other two would make such problem for you?

What I'm talking about is the simplest possibility ever. In x,y,z coordinate system, make north the direction which increases y, make east the one which increases x, exactly as up is where z grows.

As for your example, we have two a little bit separate notions of direction:

1. Inter system: unless I'm mistaken, after Crucible expansion every gate points to where target system is so there is no fancy business here. If I was shot to the north in one system, in the destination the return gate must point south.

2. Intra system: it's totally up to what CCP designers were smoking when they were positioning all the celestials. I understand it's totally possible that gate pointing to the north may be on the east end of the system, or wherever else.

I have no problem with combining those two. If I jump to the north, then warp to the west and then jump to the north I still know that I moved to the north on the star map.

[edit]I assumed 3D world and flattened examples to simplify discussion. In case you have just mentioned I'd expect to know that I went up-down-otherdirection. I may loose sense of absolute position (see below) but not direction nor relative position.[/edit]

As I mentioned in earlier post, after enough jumps to the left and then steps to the right one would eventually get lost. Esp. considering we don't get information how long the jump is (yes, map, but we're not talking about map). But even if we got it I can't imagine traveling 40 jumps just on compass. This is what map and autopilot is for. The main purpose of compass, sorry for repeating myself, is to give better feeling of being in and traveling through space. I don't know how about you but for me travel as it is now is always forward between targets selected from a list on overview. The only sense of position I have is "I'm at the object ABC". With the sense of direction you could say "I'm at ABC, which is in northwest part of the system, east from object DEF, and BTW I've just jumped from the south".

And all it takes is to hack tactical overview so one half axis is somehow marked as different from the others.

Also mind you that this information, where is north, is already available. It's just PITA for practical means: I can move in one direction and make bookmarks to see which coordinate changes. So what are we talking about is only a little bit of convenience. If you believe it can be exploited for unfair advantage, please let me know how?