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.
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.
Maps. Compasses, mini-maps, world maps, map pins, GPS systems.
I have a poor sense of direction in real life, but games are workable with the same crutches that make real life workable, for the most part.
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’m the same way! My partner was surprised when we played a game together and I always knew where to go and they kept getting lost.
I think it’s because video games do a lot more useful sign posting than real life. Plus a mini map (in some games).
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.
I used to make maps by hand. Over time I got better and better at holding on to where I was. I’ve read studies that playing 3d games increases spacial awareness, so it might get better over time.
Other options I do when I’m too meh to bother is mods to add maps and quest tracking if the game doesn’t already have it
Yes as long as the game has a good map system. I hate it when some games don’t have an option to rotate the map to where you are currently facing.
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’m we’ve opposite I want my map fixed north. It’s the only way I get around lol
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.
I enjoy the opportunity to try to navigate by landmarks, roadsigns, and other natural means of finding your way. Games like Skyrim are great for this, games like Mass Effect are understandably not. Unfortunately I am more of a sci-fi guy so I’m used to being railroaded through steel corridors anyway.
I have a pretty horrible sense of direction, and I find that looking for important (clearly visible) landmarks helps reorient me, as well as relying on a minimap wherever available. Also if there’s any way to place markers or waypoints to show you a route then that helps too. Navigating still sucks but it’s a bit less painful with those!
Actually I have an excellent sense of direction in real life and a relatively poor one in games.
It’s okay though - being lost in a game is part of the fun for me.
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.
Yeah - I’m not sure why it is.
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.
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).
No offence intended to the afflicted but some of them are absolutely hopeless. My best friend is so bad with directions that despite having never left he goes around our hometown with a GPS because he gets lost. A few years ago, the main road through the town was closed and I ended up having to text him directions how to get home.
