People with bad sense of direction, can you enjoy open world games?
I have always liked open world games as a concept, but I have a very bad sense of direction. So whenever I play open world games I keep getting lost and frustrated. Eventually getting bored and dropping the game. I am curious how other people with bad sense of direction cope with this problem.
For those that do have a bad sense of direction: I’m positive that you’d slowly get a better sense if you continued to play the games that trouble you and work through being lost. Most people aren’t great at something they don’t do often (or ever).
This would be the worst tool for someone with poor sense of direction. The best would be a map fixed north to the top, so you don't have to keep track of your direction at all. Spinning maps make even us peeps with a decent sense of direction a bad time
I can navigate game worlds more effectively than I can the real world. I can struggle to visualise a local route but could probably walk you through several zones of a Souls game.
I get super lost in them. Honestly even if it isn’t open world, if it’s still a 3d overworld, I will get lost. I think what saves me is helpful accessibility features like in Xenoblade 3 for example, with the glowing red line on the ground leading you toward your destination. It won’t clear your obstacles for you but it will help you orient yourself and not get super lost. I would never get through a game like that without that feature. Anything less is honestly not sufficient for me to not get lost, unfortunately. I do try to play other games but I will absolutely be lost for ages in them.
The two are surprisingly unrelated. I have an excellent natural sense of direction in real life, and I easily get lost in open world games if I don't have a map.
@Drusas i would add another data point in the opposite direction: I have a terrible sense of direction in real life but I was pretty good sense of direction playing open world games
Open world games usually give me a killer map that shows my exact location and heading. I can navigate the real world, too, when handed Google Maps. But I remember playing Minecraft back before the maps update and it was mostly just an exercise in nomadic survival. I'd leave my home for a 20 minute mining run and then never ever find the mfer ever again. Eventually I started a habit of creating a huge pillar of cobble near my home that stretched up to the map height limit and dumping lava buckets around it to make a literal glowing waypoint that I could follow back home.
I was going to say the same thing. I’ve always prided myself on being able to tell you the general direction anything was in, and could drive in a general direction (before Google Maps) and find my way. But I am complete crap at in-game directions even after really trying to get a feel for the surroundings.
In the real world, I just automatically keep my bearings. It's like I have an internal compass that just tracks it all the time so I don't even pay attention.
And for whatever reason, it doesn't translate to games. If I get myself oriented in a game, I can keep it going for a while, but it never lasts.
I can only assume that there's some physical aspect to it - that the part of my brain that's keeping track of bearing relies on physical cues that I don't get when I'm just sitting in a chair looking at a screen. So when I get my bearings in a game, then keep it going for a while, that's some other part of my brain stepping in and taking over, and it never lasts because it's just a stopgap measure.
I LOVE them, but yes I am constantly lost. I have the worst time streaming because I get lost and feel bad about any viewers watching me wander around Vanaheim going "Where was that place again?"
I will say, the more distinctive the environments are from each other, the better off I am. In Stray or Ragnarok I've had a lot of problems. In Control, even though the map is weird (The map shows levels that are above and below each other by overlapping, so the lowest areas are the lightest color and the highest areas are the strongest color) I get around pretty well because every hallway and room is pretty distinct and unique.
In Spider-Man I barely notice I'm lost, travel is so fun.
Usually with a mini map I’m good but all bets are off with Deep Rock Galactic and it’s 3D version. My friends can dig through a wall and pop out up in the right place were as I’m hopelessly lost as soon as I go in…
Usually with a mini map I’m good but all bets are off with Deep Rock Galactic and it’s 3D version. My friends can dig through a wall and pop out up in the right place were as I’m hopelessly lost as soon as I go in…
There is a game called minetest, similar to minecraft. You can view coordinates and the direction you are facing. There is also a mod called tpad (teleporter pad) that can take you to places without walking. You can try it out.
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