I am honestly very disappointed. Oh, the new map is absolutely gorgeous; I have some gripes with its aesthetics (like the square-grid river path, what gives?) but honestly that’s something I can get used to, and I recognise they’re a matter of opinion anyway. However, the usability of the new map is absolutely atrocious. And I’m sorry for being so harsh, but it really appears to be a stark failure of gameplay and UI design.
I really looks as if, during development, there was a lot of effort put in to make it look good and work well, but almost no thought as to how it would actually work gameplay-wise. Oh, if this was a tech demo showcasing the world of Fallen London, I’d ooh and ahh and appreciate it. If it was something you only had to use rarely (e.g. on login) or optionally (e.g. allowing a fallback on the old map), I’d have no issues using it occasionally. But unfortunately, travel is an extremely frequent part of Fallen London gameplay, and the new map’s design absolutely does not take that into account. It’s a prime example of putting form over function, in a core part of the game whose functionality is paramount. I would very honestly rather have a list of unstyled text links sitting at the top of the page - it would be horribly unsightly but it would be functional, and when playing this game extensively that’s far more important.
While I’m sorry for anyone experiencing technical issues, I agree with you there that they will probably be sorted out given a bit of time. Even something as simple as parsing the user-agent and defaulting the map to non-interactive for devices which look to be older (e.g. anything containing "Android 4.4" in the UA string can probably be assumed to not be suitable for the interactive map) would solve a large proportion of the issues mentioned in this thread. However, the main problem here lies in the core design decisions.
The non-interactive map - or equivalently, the interactive one in zoomed in state - is huge, cannot be zoomed out, and has to be dragged around. Some people have complained that there is a large amount of free space around it. I play on a smaller screen, and I’m sure mobile phones don’t have much space available either. There is no conceivable reason the map couldn’t be made smaller to fit on the screen - even if you wanted to fit the extra locations, you could do so by increasing the map size slightly, not by making it gigantic.[/li][li]The interactive map is especially grating given the need to zoom in before doing anything. My browser has WebGL turned off, so when I saw the giant, painful experience of the "compatibility version", I had some hope that the full version was more usable. After enabling WebGL I was met with the exact same experience, except requiring an extra click and waiting for an extra zoom-in animation before having the privilege to start dragging the map around.[/li][li]The map now sticks around for about a second after travelling to a new place before fading out. Like many of the other issues, this doesn’t sound like much - and the first time I tried using the map, I barely even noticed it - but it very quickly became extremely grating. In regular play, this is infuriating.[/li][li]Replacing the text with icons made locations harder to quickly find. I wouldn’t mind this too much if the locations remained in the same places they always have been - the rearranging of locations that came with the website redesign was far more jarring in that regard - but the fact that the map has to be dragged around, meaning locations don’t even have a set place on the screen anymore, does magnifiy the annoyance of not being able to recognise them at a glance.[/li][li]All of the above issues are greatly amplified by the splitting of locations. I can somewhat understand the reasoning behind that - the effort for a more "immersive" experience, to group things spatially and require travel between places that aren’t immediately adjacent. However, combined with the rest of the redesign, the effect is to make the new experience even more unpleasant: firstly, what used to take a fraction of a second now takes multiple seconds filled with animations, panning, zooming, fading, and what used to be almost muscle memory now requires proper focus, reading through names and trying to find the right location; and at the same time, a change is implemented that requires performing the above even more frequently than was previously necessary, amplifying the annoyance and frustration.
This about sums up my issues with the map. I am not exaggerating when I say that this makes many long-term grinding strategies nearly unplayable: anything which requires multiple location changes is now so tedious and time-consuming, that repeating a 40-action cycle two-three times a day for any extended period of time is now practically not sustainable.
I hope Failbetter takes the feedback into account and creates a usable version of the map. Whether that involves fixing the design issues with this new version, adding an option to use the "legacy" map, or even an option to replace the map with a bloody list of links - I would be happy.
None of my devices have performance problems in the standard mode, but I’ve enabled compatibility mode in all of them simply to skip the extra step of zooming in to a level where the locations are clickable.
Ideally I’d like to keep it permanently zoomed out to a level where all locations are on the screen at once, and clickable.
Yes, I see what you mean, but the actual description is "a haunt of poets, prostitutes and other low types" so all that really is in the eye of the beholder, isn’t it? I always thought that was a touch ironic… I mean, poetry isn’t exactly respectable in the Neath! edited by theonie on 3/11/2020
[quote=Miss Verity Green]The compatibility map has been resized to fit without dragging, with an option to zoom in if desired! Thank you so much to the Failbetter team![/quote]This little fix actually makes such a big difference!
It would be really nice to have a shortcut keys for traveling (like "f" for Flit, for example).
Map is nice, and neat, and immersive. But its much slower, 3 actions in most cases to move from A to B (unzoom, click new area, click again for sub-area), when old map was 1 click. edited by Waterpls on 3/17/2020
[quote=Miss Verity Green]The compatibility map has been resized to fit without dragging, with an option to zoom in if desired! Thank you so much to the Failbetter team![/quote]Glad if it works better for you now, but visually I’m not a fan of this change. Everything’s very small now, and with so many locations stamped upon it the map suddenly looks very clattered. I was using the compatibility mode out of sheer practicality, but now I’ve switched back to full mode.
the problem with the map is its quite good it just needs a few tweeksI think that a lot of the maps problems could be solved by being able to enter an area without zooming in (I am also aware that making such changes would probably do more harm than good)
So, apparently an update dropped today that reduces the size of the map to a relatively tiny letterbox within the browser window? Now, just as I was starting to get used to the new map (compatibility mode always, of course), the usability regresses to the bad old days of having to click and drag to be able to travel to locations near the edges, such as the Base Camp and Labyrinth of Tigers.
Please make it so the entire map is visible in compatibility mode again, with no extra clicking nonsense! edited by hwoosh on 5/26/2020
[quote=hwoosh]So, apparently an update dropped today that reduces the size of the map to a relatively tiny windowbox within the browser window? Now, just as I was starting to get used to the new map (compatibility mode always, of course), the usability regresses to the bad old days of having to click and drag to be able to travel to locations near the edges, such as the Base Camp and Labyrinth of Tigers.
Please make it so the entire map is visible in compatibility mode again, with no extra clicking nonsense![/quote]
While I did see the update I can’t see a difference in the map? I need to drag a little bit but not more than before the update. Or are my nightmares rising to high and am i going mad?
Game refuses to load for me. I have cleared cookies and cache. It prompted to refresh and then showed the shower of sparks message, now it’s just stuck loading.
