I've only been playing for a month, and the first 1.5 weeks or so, I was frustrated because of how hard it seemed to find NPC's and spots out in the wild. But now, I know how the game works. It takes a bit more brain power, but that's ok. I even took the 2 "find" skills off my hotbar, because I never use em.
I do however, refer to the zone maps on the Wiki, some (maybe all) have been updated fairly recently (whoever did that, thank you!). I save the map onto my computer, and if I just can't find something, and my in-game map is still mostly fog, a general idea of "where" from the wiki map does the trick.
The only time I use map pins is when I am doing surveys / treasure maps, or to mark something I want to research for later (this is a portal in Eltibule that I marked because I have no idea what it does, and I keep meaning to research that).
I like that there are not neon signs all over, etc. It feels more like a real world. Including the time it takes to get anywhere, arg.