Locator and Explorer maps no longer show your rotation when far away

@unknown This is a bad changes, especially for peoples that rely on Locator maps, as they can no longer get back to their home and/or to their destination because the pointer/arrow no longer show the direction when far away (and fully gone after 320 blocks away (MCPE-184844)), forcing them to kill themself/turn on coordinates to get back to their base/destination, this changes is also undocumented and this issue has been confirmed by Mojang so it's up to them whenever this is an intended changes or not (well i hope not, it would be much better if they port this to Java instead of removing it from Bedrock.)

Locator maps no longer show location.
this parity exists in java. However, those of us who play on bedrock, it's terrible that we don't have a debug screen, where we can see the direction we are going.

please developers have a little more affection with those who play bedrock, we are suffering from bugs and more bugs. It's now this horrible parity where we have no information about cardinal points.

PLEASE GO BACK TO WHAT IT WAS BEFORE!!!

The arrow icon changing to a dot when the player is off the map is an older feature/behavior that was removed in 1.2.5 (see changelog and MCPE-34088). It seems to have been brought back as part of a larger map fix + parity project that included the fixes to MCPE-182681 and MCPE-61891.

The idea that you can't find direction because of this is not convincing to me. Maps are always oriented with north at the top and the position of the dot tells you where you are in relation to the map. There are already many natural and conventional indicators in the game to tell you which direction you are facing: sun position and sunflower orientation, and various directional textures like pumpkin stems. The pointer changing to a dot actually gives more information, because it tells you if you are on the edge of the map or off the map. When MCPE-184844 is fixed the size of the dot will also tell you whether you are far away or close to the map.

I and many other still prefer the Maps system introduce on Bedrock 1.2.5 tho, as it is easier to use and more accessible for people with disabilities. I don't want to carry sunflower/pumpkin just to use the Maps, and the sun direction method won't work on underground, other dimension, or when it's raining/thunder.

On Java Edition, you can always see your cardinal rotation by using F3, which we cannot access on Bedrock Edition.

Also there's a much better way to show the players that you're at the edge of the Maps without removing the pointer rotation (by making the pointer icon smaller, for example).

@GoldenHelmet what do you mean it's not convincing you?? The locator map feature of direction indicator is absolutely great and advice to refer to sun or sunflower when you crafted the mapo with a COMPASS is lame.
Please check here and ALL VOTE: https://feedback.minecraft.net/hc/en-us/community/posts/29315924692493-Please-change-locator-maps-back-to-the-way-they-were?page=1#community_comment_30577187518861

Yes the problems still exist it is difficult to get there I hope there is a fix  

Mojang could fix this, many players have some difficulties with locator maps, and this dot turns the return to somewhere the player would like to go pratically impossible. Mojang could make smaller pointers instead of a dot, and this change can save a lot of players.

On bedrock addition, if you place the map in a picture frame the location arrow appears and will tell you the direction to start to travel (right, left, ahead (up), backwards (down).  This is a poor work around but should help to find the structure on the map. 

You need to fix this, stop coming up with radical arguments like thinking that a pumpkin texture that always faces one direction is a great solution to this problem, of course it isn't. Think about younger people who haven't had geography in school yet, of course they may already know the cardinal directions but a game with an age rating of 7+ shouldn't require this knowledge. Think about us die-hard gamers who have been playing Minecraft for many years, we love Bedrock exclusive features like this and our blood boils when you gradually take our version away from us. Remember what made Minecraft so successful in the first place, it was its simplicity, the fact that the game never required great knowledge and quickly became a perfect relaxing adventure without having to figure out directions in the rain when the sun disappears.

PLEASE FIX THIS. My little sister spent hours trying to find her way back onto the map. Older players can use coordinates but younger players have a VERY hard time without the pointer. Please fix this as soon as possible.

This isn’t a bug. It’s actually an intended feature. But now I just don’t get the point of those explorer maps, because you are usually off the map to start. Mojang, please change this.

@unknown I'm never talked about "think of the children", but my friends that has a disabilities (can't say what kind of disabilites to respect her privacy) used locator maps to explore/navigate her world since it's easy to understand which direction you're currently in by looking at your player marker, but now she cannot do that due to these changes.

While i understand your point, they can just create a smaller variant of the player marker instead of removing the direction (or the entire marker for locator maps, see MCPE-184844) while on the maps boundaries, that way it can inform you whenever you're outside of the maps boundaries (just like how Explorer Maps work) while still showing your current direction, also this count as a accessibility features so why removing it while it can be improved.

Also we shouldn't discuss in here, this is not the right place to do that, this also sends an unnecessary notifications to people who watches this.

I just stopped using treasure maps ever since they removed this. It’s just not worth the effort.

I’ll never understand why they’d remove such a net positive feature.

Was rummaging around the internet today to find out why the arrow wasn’t showing up on my maps which lead to this article. Earlier I had looked through some old loot chests and came across a stash of maps I had found, tried to find the locations on them but it ended up being a futile effort. Not sure how I’m supposed to find what the map is trying to show me, am I missing something here???????

Please fix this, it’s an essential part of the maps core functionality.

As a primarily Java player this was one of the features I was excited to see ported over to vanilla Java - instead it was lost to a bug. I’d love for that to be fixed or reconsidered.

I swore bedrock maps used to show the pointer- but got confused when I started playing again, and notoced they were gone. Was really helpful, if you had a home map, but had travelled far off it. It was useful to find your way back home.

This useful feature was removed by accident due to a bug, please bring it back. The map pointer is critical for many players!

Really counted on being able to see what direction I was facing without having to establish big landmarks while exploring, then the pointer disappeared. Bring it back please!

Should be very simple to fix - please address this soon as it both increases game quality of life and accessibility!

2 things: One, north is always in the negative zed direction, and you can find the rest from there. Second, the pointer has always turned into a little square when you are too far away since at least Update Aquatic.

I thought that the pointer always turned into a square when far away.

Even on really old versions.

Confirmed on XBOX 1.

I think this was an intentional but I don’t it was a good one.

I believe this was an intended parity change to match Java Edition.

It’s still possible to see which direction you’re going by using the sun (or coords) as a guide.

Given changes in 26.3 snapshot 7 the above justification seems to no longer apply.

It probably is, but the problem is they never documented it in the changelog.

Either way, this was changed on Java Edition in the latest snapshot (26.3 Snapshot 7), the player arrow will now always show the direction the player is facing (similar to how it works previously on Bedrock), the only difference is it's use the small version of the player marker instead of using the regular one.