Resources dry up, treasure gets taken, animals get hunted out, etc; maps will keep changing.

Plus there will be intentional misinformation (though that will be in game as well).

And a wiki will change with the first wiki-friendly person to walk up to the changed instance. "Oh, this thing isn't here anymore? Better inform the wiki admin so they can change it." Mass market information and the internet is going to be way faster than any individual or even guild of cartographers with in-game systems.

Well that's the problem with having actual languages in game too, people out of game have allot of time on their hand to decode and archive this game information.

But despite this i don't think they should change the system because they can't stop it from happening so might as well just let it happen.

Posted By ZombieSue at 10:21 PM - Wed Nov 15 2017

And a wiki will change with the first wiki-friendly person to walk up to the changed instance. "Oh, this thing isn't here anymore? Better inform the wiki admin so they can change it." Mass market information and the internet is going to be way faster than any individual or even guild of cartographers with in-game systems.

A wiki editor doing it for free (or paying for maps) isn't going to stay as up to date as career cartographers.

You're underestimating the scale of the game.

Unfortunately that same scale of the game inhibits the career cartographers. You need to get maps drawn up, copied a bajillion times and distributed around the world. Sure the immediate region might update marginally quicker, but on a world scale it'll take real-world days (multiple) for a region update to make it to the far reaches.

Meanwhile, after the initial influx of maps, all a wiki editor would have to do is get the call to change something, and quick whip up photoshop (or the inevitable applet that brings the actual in game system to the browser) for a quick stamp here or an erase there and repost it.

The only thing I think we can hope for is that the people who actually care will maintain their immersion by buying the custom maps.

Posted By ZombieSue at 10:38 PM - Wed Nov 15 2017

Unfortunately that same scale of the game inhibits the career cartographers. You need to get maps drawn up, copied a bajillion times and distributed around the world. Sure the immediate region might update marginally quicker, but on a world scale it'll take real-world days (multiple) for a region update to make it to the far reaches.

Meanwhile, after the initial influx of maps, all a wiki editor would have to do is get the call to change something, and quick whip up photoshop (or the inevitable applet that brings the actual in game system to the browser) for a quick stamp here or an erase there and repost it.

The only thing I think we can hope for is that the people who actually care will maintain their immersion by buying the custom maps.

Why would someone on the northern edge of the world want to buy a local map from the southern edge?

Maps of all scales and all areas will be necessary and sold to completely different groups. There will be more than enough work for cartographers in their localities.

Posted By Scheneighnay at 10:45 PM - Wed Nov 15 2017

Why would someone on the northern edge of the world want to buy a local map from the southern edge?

Resource maps. Many rare ingredients will be needed for other crafts, and knowing where to send your runners, or where to request trade shipments from will be important for them.

I still feel that there will be a sizeable population that will support and confide in wiki sites to gain their information, and Cartography will be the only skill to be affected by metagaming.

Posted By ZombieSue at 11:52 PM - Wed Nov 15 2017

Posted By Scheneighnay at 10:45 PM - Wed Nov 15 2017

Why would someone on the northern edge of the world want to buy a local map from the southern edge?

Resource maps. Many rare ingredients will be needed for other crafts, and knowing where to send your runners, or where to request trade shipments from will be important for them.

I still feel that there will be a sizeable population that will support and confide in wiki sites to gain their information, and Cartography will be the only skill to be affected by metagaming.

In that case, people would probably have support services in that region - guilds that gather or guilds that ship to that region - who would be responsible for maintaining up to date on those local map changes. While it would get there eventually, the North doesn't need to have a copy of the map for someone in the South to offer them access to that new resource. If they cared that much, they would have their own network of cartographers in the area.

The challenge of the game being so open-ended is forcing players to invest in things they care about. If map-making dies out, then it means the community has deemed it a useless mechanic - SBS will probably need to revisit it or anything that fails like that.

Hopefully the requirement for map usage to be the source for name changing and for NPC movement and rumours is what will keep the map makers in business.

Wiki information is only a 1 way path from the game to the wiki, PC cartographers are who will put the information into the game.

As with another thread discussing use of NPC/OPC carriage drivers, the quality of the map should affect the level of details their instructions/scripts can be.

I understand your concerns, but I think that something like this will not happen. First of all, as the other people already said, the world is changing. You need to travel a long time to make a big map. Updating such maps would need such a big afford, that not a lot of people will want to do that Maybe even some people will try to spread wrong information. Even if you got the Map out of the game, you still need to navigate yourself with this map. If your skilled enough and get lucky to get a good map from the wiki, you may get to your destination. If you're not skilled enough, you may depart from the route and get lost. If you may be skilled enough, but get a fake map, you may run into some bandit who wants to steal your money you didn't invest in the Map. If you get your map from a trustworthy in-game map merchant you get guidance from the game and get save to your Destination. Selling fake maps in-game will harm the reputation of the Merchant, spreading them in a Wiki is mostly anonym and don't get punished any way in-game.

So I really like the idea that NPC and OPC's might use current in game maps to navigate.

As for other guilds having their own cartography division, a semi competent cartography guild would contract with them. Cartography is an intensive process, and paying to have a whole group dedicated to the task would be a much more efficient method.

This will happen. Pretending it won’t is akin to those who believe they will be competitive in pvp combat without using external voice coms.

However a third party site only offers screenshots and such of items in game. If you are a cartographer who is famous and has many people using your maps you get to name things even to the point of changing the prevailing name of POIs and such.

May not seem like much but those using third party sites cannot change the game world those using game systems can.

When creating a map, the cartographer has the ability to select regions that he/she has identified on the map and give those regions a name. This is true for forests, mountain ranges, villages, mines, etc... If something can be stamped, drawn, or enclosed on the map it can be given a name.

Why is this such a powerful feature? Because the Soulborn Engine keeps track of all the names given to a town, village, watershed, lake, Kingdom, etc... And whichever name appears most frequently on maps for that landmark, that's the name that it will be referred to by NPCs and by recent in-game lore.

source

I believe it will happen but on a small (or large deepening how you look at it) scale - we will most likely see websites having maps of kingdoms and duchies.

Reason I do not think it will be such an issue it's because of the amount of maps that will exist (city, county, duchy, region etc, a single duchy can have at least 50 maps for it) and the fact that maps will be constantly updated - new resources will be discovered, old ones will be depleted, animals will change locations etc. keeping track of even 1 kingdom can be tricky, and you would need a dedicated team for that.

Add that people may be sending fake maps, so you either need to have a trusted person to update maps, which will limit the amount of them on website, or have everyone send them which leads to additional time sorting out which is old, which is fake.

In addition if map will be available for a cheap price in-game, it will be much more convenient in most cases to just come to a new area and get map in-game since you can always pinpoint your location, it's always good to know exactly where you are, you can try to refer to online screenshot but it may take you longer to find a way because of world size, not to mention you can get lost because you took a wrong turn.

Posted By Malais at 08:18 AM - Thu Nov 16 2017

This will happen. Pretending it won’t is akin to those who believe they will be competitive in pvp combat without using external voice coms.

However a third party site only offers screenshots and such of items in game. If you are a cartographer who is famous and has many people using your maps you get to name things even to the point of changing the prevailing name of POIs and such.

May not seem like much but those using third party sites cannot change the game world those using game systems can.

When creating a map, the cartographer has the ability to select regions that he/she has identified on the map and give those regions a name. This is true for forests, mountain ranges, villages, mines, etc... If something can be stamped, drawn, or enclosed on the map it can be given a name.

Why is this such a powerful feature? Because the Soulborn Engine keeps track of all the names given to a town, village, watershed, lake, Kingdom, etc... And whichever name appears most frequently on maps for that landmark, that's the name that it will be referred to by NPCs and by recent in-game lore.

source

Of course people will try, but their attempts will be pointless compared to in-game maps.

Online maps will be a thing

I would expect that the 'public' ones will detail out the land masses, the geographical features like rivers and mtns, settlements, roads etc

more private versions will be used for recording resource locations, criminal ot pvp activity to map out hotspots, location of artifacts, planning military/economic campaigns etc