When I go to the grand canyon (as an example) the reward is the view of the grand canyon. However, if I do that enough or if there are not enough diversity of things to see then the reward is not there but its an EASY fix, which Darkfall did.
treasure hunting...
done
Man. I forget it sometimes but Darkfall Unholy Wars had the best exploration system of any game I've ever played.
1. Fog of War - If you've ever played Age of Empires you're familiar with sending scouts around to fill in the black parts of the map. In Darkfall Unholy Wars your map starts black as well, and is filled in as your character explores it. While of course you can just google the map to see the full thing, having your ingame map you can set ingame waypoints on and stuff revealed by actually going places really creates an inspiration to visit more areas of the map you haven't been. It's also just sweet know where you have and haven't been for sure.
2. Treasure Maps - Treasure maps were really cool. You would find them through various methods (The primary of which I'm going to describe in point 3) and then use a system where the radar blinks green if you are headed in the general direction of the treasure, red if you are headed away, and blinks more rapidly the close you get until it just goes solid green and you can dig up the treasure. Treasure maps was my main revenue source in UW and I loved it. It had me going all over the map to find various treasures meaning I wasn't just exploring for the sake of exploration. I was exploring to get a reward. It was pretty awesome.
3. Sea Scraping / Fishing - Sea scraping and fishing gave a point to being out on the ocean in DFUW. You would drive a Sea Scraper around which would turn up various loot including treasure maps and components needed to make more ships. It was highly profitable, especially in dangerous waters. You could also fish. Fishing didn't give quite the value but the ship was cheaper and it was decent if all the sea tiles had already be scraped. This meant people were actually out on the ocean in DFUW unlike in DFO. Pirates loved to target sea scrapers and fishing boats so you either needed to be sneaky, a good fighter, or prepared to lose boats once in awhile.
In no other game have I spent as much time traveling all over the map, enjoying the sights, and just generally doing exploration content. DFUW was the holy grail of exploration games in many ways.
It's definitely how questing is done and how the game world is constructed. Let's be honest, not many modern mmos are even that big. They emulate it by slapping together a couple dozen zones but in reality your playscape is usually THAT zone only for the time being in a linear progression, story arc or area for the quest.
Rewards are typically scaled to that one area as well so is it really exploration knowing the zone you are in has the dungeon or rep grind needed for the gear you know you already want? Ya not. Exploration is simple to do but that sort of game design is mostly lost on developers wanting to confine you to experiencing every bit of game content mapped out before you like a spreadsheet instead of organically.
One of the great examples of an exploration game was Asheron's Call. The game world of huge. Pointlessly huge by today's standards. You could run (and run fast!) for 20 minutes in some random direction and find a dungeon/fort/mob pack/etc that hardly anyone even on a full server knew about.
AC had shared dungeons and you could be the only one in it. Granted, if it had a rare chest in it or loot drop it would eventually be known but surprising rarely super camped because people actually kept secrets back then ... and that is part of the point of exploration: a world so large that it always had secrets to find. In today's games the vast majority of players experience every "secret" in game because it lies smack in the middle of the progression path.
Exploration is mystery. There is no mystery when developers only care about how many players experience content created because it is a project value point. A quest exists because it progresses your character. A part of the map is created because a quest sends you there. That is not mystery ... it is business project management.
Very good points. I love exploration but don't feel there has to be a "reward" for it. Sometimes a beautiful view is more than worth the time.
There is an issue with devs caring about how much a particular bit of content is experience and devs tracking such information. IMhO, exploration is best served with large spaces that players are free to explore.
Darkfall for example had tons of space to explore...but.....
can you guess the rest of the sentence?
If you mean no reward for doing it? Do we need to be rewarded for it?
If you mean there is nothing to see, does it have to have something to see? Exploring is it's own reward isn't it?
City of Heroes had badges for exploration and badges had titles you could select, so ...
depends on what you are calling a 'reward' but yeah.
When I go to the grand canyon (as an example) the reward is the view of the grand canyon. However, if I do that enough or if there are not enough diversity of things to see then the reward is not there but its an EASY fix, which Darkfall did.
treasure hunting...
done
It is a question of motivation. Which is ok. Many people have many reasons to play.
its actually far more quantifiable, scientific and predictable then you think. the 'find' in exploration is the reward. if the 'find' does not change the player will become bored. Landscape is a reward, however landscape diversity can be limited.
its not a theory its just fact.
so unless your world has some reward system out there for exploration then they will only be able to get so much reward from landscape before it become boring, to anyone, regardless of personality
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
I think there are two specific aspects of questing that have had a negative impact on exploration:
1) Map markers
If you pick up a quest and you get told exactly where to go, that is where you will go. You take the optimum route and never need to explore. The game is guiding you along and you're also probably subconsciously aware that the quests will likely take you to all the most interesting places anyway, so there is no need to explore.
When LotRO first released, it didn't have map markers, even though it was quest based. Everyone explored the shit out of that game! You had to carefully read the quest text to get directions (so, forced immersion into the story), but even then you'd end up exploring large areas of the game trying to find quest objectives - sometimes because you'd misread the quest text, sometimes because the quest text was wrong, other times just because you were deliberately not given directions.
As soon as they added map markers, all that went out of the window. I can barely recall any quests, or even zones, following the release of map markers. Even though I could turn the feature off, I kept it on because I enjoyed endgame far more than leveling, so I was happy to save time.
2) XP / Rewards
In your standard themepark, questing is by far the most efficient way to level - more xp, plus loads of loot rewards to keep your gear up to date. Exploring hardly ever rewards anything in an MMO - sure, you get some nice views and if you're lucky, a miniboss that drops something interesting.
So, sticking to quests just makes sense.
For this reason, I am a big fan of completely disconnecting quests from experience. I think quests should purely be done for the story and the occasional loot, never for experience. It should be the actions you carry out during a quest that earn experience (killing stuff, exploring new places, solving puzzles).
If done this way, it puts players back in charge of how they level - they can follow the guided experience as determined by the quests, or they can just go off and explore naturally, or they can just farm mobs if they want.
Worked really well in SWG in my opinion. Most of the time, I'd just farm mobs in a leveling group or solo in specific locations, but some nights I'd be like "right, not been to that planet in a while, I'm gonna go exploring" and then just explore a new planet, killing stuff as I went for experience. As a result, SWG has been my favourite leveling experience to date.
Currently Playing: WAR RoR - Spitt rr7X Black Orc | Scrotling rr6X Squig Herder | Scabrous rr4X Shaman
I honestly think it is player's that have eliminated exploring for the most part. You can pretty much pick any MMO out there, log in, and watch chat for a minute or two, and aside from the trolling/shit talking that tends to go on, you will see a lot of player's asking other player's where something is, instead of reading the quest text and going out and looking for it.
Most of the time, player's will either give the exact location, or say something along the lines of "google is your friend", instead of hinting at the area the one asking should look.
Look at SW:ToR, most player's space bar through the cut scenes, which explain what they are supposed to be doing, then get stuck, and ask another player what they should be doing.
Even in TSW, when it first launched, and now, in SWL, games that have quest's that require player's to try and work out answer's to puzzle's, to actually go around the game world looking for clue's, you see a lot of player's asking for the answer to something, and being given it instead of a hint or two.
So yea, maybe quest marker's and quest hub's share some of the blame, but ultimately, it is the action's of player's that we should be looking at.
A creative person is motivated by the desire to achieve, not the desire to beat others.
World of Warcraft - There were some zone choice of where a player can choose to level in but typically when they enter a zone they're directed to follow a path form quest hub to quest hub. A very contrasting approach to Everquest.
This is actually not true if we talk about Vanilla and TBC WOW. You had to read the quest texts to find the location. People may remember the "where is mankriks wife" or asking for the location of the white lion quest mini boss in barrens, just because they couldn't be arsed to read and understand a simple quest text.
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
It's Quest Hub that ruined exploration not Quest in general.
I think that was the OP's position as well. To the OP I would say yes I completely agree with you, having played years of EQ but never WoW; I did play Vanguard at launch, which had WoW's quest hubs. Didn't like it; no one truly connected; all interactions were simply a means of completing the next "quest."
I dunno, questhubs certainly is boring but overusing the quests doesn't help either. EQ had some awesome quests but they watered them out with plenty of really boring stupid quests as well.
We don't need tons of silly pointless quests, a "Quest" should feel epic and interesting, not delivering a letter to someone standing 20 feet away. You could possibly call that a "task" but the rewards for such should be rather small.
I don't really need a quest to go into the forest and kill 10 orcs, there certainly could be a bounty (Lineage handled that great by having most orcs drop totems you could sell to a bounty vendor). To kill the evil orc king is fine but lets get rid of anything not epic and just let the players roam the land and find small situations, band of mobs and similar they run into during their travels instead.
Now, a good epic quest can be very fun, I loved EQ2s heritage quests for instance when you spent a rather lot of work to get an epic classic EQ item, they felt rewarding, often took teamwork and you were really happy when you got the reward.
But then you have the quests you forgot as soon as you done them with some crap reward you really don't need, you grind a zillion of them just for XP. Those quests are as grindy as camping a spawning ground, a MMO should be about adventure and killing the inns rats feeding a peasants cows and similar is menial work, not adventuring.
My general rule is "Would Conan have done this?". If not then I have to quote "Journeyquest" and say "sod the quest".
World of Warcraft - There were some zone choice of where a player can choose to level in but typically when they enter a zone they're directed to follow a path form quest hub to quest hub. A very contrasting approach to Everquest.
This is actually not true if we talk about Vanilla and TBC WOW. You had to read the quest texts to find the location. People may remember the "where is mankriks wife" or asking for the location of the white lion quest mini boss in barrens, just because they couldn't be arsed to read and understand a simple quest text.
Apologies, I did play the back half of Vanilla and front half of TBC. I couldn't recall if there were quest markers on world/mini map or not. I did PVP quite extensively though. I suppose I was just use to the current state of the game and assumed it's always been there.
Even though, the point of the thread is still valid. Sure, you still had to explore some areas in Vanilla WoW to find the correct area/mob to complete the quest but you were still bouncing around from quest hub to quest hub.
My argument is that, are quest hubs the primary desire of lack of exploration? I personally like the Everquest approach but I also think there should be some centralized areas for quests that spread across multiple zones. Unmarked of course, with no mini map. That will negate linear content but yet still give some guidance without holding your hand.
after playing mmos for the last 10+ years i now have developed a immediate revulsion for games that have: minimaps, full size maps, way points, fast travel, and even worse.... highlighted pathways to quest objectives.
i HATE highlighted pathways so damn much...... can you please kill exploration any more than by highlighting a pathway, in the game world, that takes me directly to the object of my quest?
its like a retardation path of neon dementia.....for kids that cant read good.
i hated it so much man. one of the main reasons i couldn't play Black Desert.
the whole point of exploration is to discover places and things without knowing where they are. if a game has no exploration, then what's the point of going anywhere? might as well be a lobby game.
It's Quest Hub that ruined exploration not Quest in general.
I think that was the OP's position as well. To the OP I would say yes I completely agree with you, having played years of EQ but never WoW; I did play Vanguard at launch, which had WoW's quest hubs. Didn't like it; no one truly connected; all interactions were simply a means of completing the next "quest."
I dunno, questhubs certainly is boring but overusing the quests doesn't help either. EQ had some awesome quests but they watered them out with plenty of really boring stupid quests as well.
We don't need tons of silly pointless quests, a "Quest" should feel epic and interesting, not delivering a letter to someone standing 20 feet away. You could possibly call that a "task" but the rewards for such should be rather small.
I don't really need a quest to go into the forest and kill 10 orcs, there certainly could be a bounty (Lineage handled that great by having most orcs drop totems you could sell to a bounty vendor). To kill the evil orc king is fine but lets get rid of anything not epic and just let the players roam the land and find small situations, band of mobs and similar they run into during their travels instead.
Now, a good epic quest can be very fun, I loved EQ2s heritage quests for instance when you spent a rather lot of work to get an epic classic EQ item, they felt rewarding, often took teamwork and you were really happy when you got the reward.
But then you have the quests you forgot as soon as you done them with some crap reward you really don't need, you grind a zillion of them just for XP. Those quests are as grindy as camping a spawning ground, a MMO should be about adventure and killing the inns rats feeding a peasants cows and similar is menial work, not adventuring.
My general rule is "Would Conan have done this?". If not then I have to quote "Journeyquest" and say "sod the quest".
I agree with you here Loke. Honestly, quests are not quests, but rather tasks. I like the idea of layering the 'quest' system into different categories.
Missive Board - Sort of like Vanguard but more indepth. Essentially Missives are soloable tasks, collection, bounty, harvest, escorting, stuff of that nature that reward in low to moderate coin and low to moderate exp.
Quests - Sort of the Everquest Epic 1.0-2.0 (Never played EQ2), that often take a group to complete with some soloable parts as well. These should be static, like the example you give where you earn and work towards something that takes time and effort. This should take you all over the world. These reward on moderate to high experience and moderate coin based off the collection of things you have to do. Quests reward in obtaining a rare/epic item.
Adventures - I think it would be interesting to have dynamic quests, which I will call Adventures. This is were you as a group or potentially solo can go out and adventure in the world. It would be something vague, like obtain the Moonstone, it was last scene being sold at an auction at the Gypsy Bazaar off the coast. You go there to investigate and learn by talking to NPC's that another NPC might have bought it or simply was stolen by a thief. Keep it vague so it caters to exploration in and having many different parts. Sort of like your 'choose your own adventure' books but encapsulated into an in game adventure. I think if done right, Adventures can go along way.
after playing mmos for the last 10+ years i now have developed a immediate revulsion for games that have: minimaps, full size maps, way points, fast travel, and even worse.... highlighted pathways to quest objectives.
i HATE highlighted pathways so damn much...... can you please kill exploration any more than by highlighting a pathway, in the game world, that takes me directly to the object of my quest?
its like a retardation path of neon dementia.....for kids that cant read good.
i hated it so much man. one of the main reasons i couldn't play Black Desert.
the whole point of exploration is to discover places and things without knowing where they are. if a game has no exploration, then what's the point of going anywhere? might as well be a lobby game.
yup they often actually take time and effort putting in code to that makes the experience less compelling then if they just left it alone.
hard work
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
well yeah there's a big culture of doing content fast to reach the "end game" in these conventional mmorpgs, nobody cares about the quests themselves, they don't find them fun, they just want to level up to go do whatever they think will exist in the end game, this is all a design flaw of these mmorpgs, the concept of leveling to end game, where all your friends are already playing and you can't join until you do, it's all extremely bad design. it's gated content, why even bother gating content behind hundreds of hours of extremely repetitive tasks like fetch this kill that quests?
mmorpgs are in the end, bad games from a design perspective, they compromise a ton of things in the name of this multiplayer formula of do content (which in turn has to be grindy to last) wait for following update, have the best equipment/skill/whatever to show, but the gameplay itself is never altogether that much fun, they're very shallow games under the guise of "long term fun or progression"
I blame the people constantly saying that a rather mediocre game will turn fun at the endgame and the people considering leveling up is and should be a long tutorial.
Of course people who think the game will become far more fun at max level will rush things but the problem is that things usually becomes worse instead.
There is also the look of the gear to blame, when a newbie see an vets awesome looking gear they want it as well, preferably fast and it does look more fun to run in epic looking gear then starting rags. It helps create the illusion that the endgame will be more fun.
Now, if MMOs actually could get a really fun and rewarding endgame it would make sense to cut down the time it takes to level far more then they already done, We don't need a 3 weeks tutorial after all but besides a few good epic dungeons and raids the endgame actually becomes old fast in themepark games.
The game now is still set up mainly like EQ though if you look content wise, almost all content is for leveling up, the part people skip through as fast as possible and leaving you with the bland endgame. A game with fast leveling speed should have 75% of it's content after you level up, not 80%+ for leveling.
So either we will need far slower leveling time (and for that matter harder zones while you level so the whole thing feels meaningful) or a game focused on a severely improved endgame.
Also, if you go for longer leveling you need to improve the fun factor while playing, players should not get most of their kicks from reaching a new level which condition players to run through things as fast as possible. If you focus on combat then combat needs to become more fun, putting more focus on tactics, timing, in combat movement and working together with allies. Winning a fight should always feels like you achieved something, not just another grinding fight that takes time but no skill.
I dont mind questing but when it became the main way to level it got bored with it very quickly...it used to tick me off in games like LoTRO also wehre youd get tons more XP for doing the most mundane quest than you did for killing anything. By the time I was done with LoTRO, EQ2, and WoW I never wanted to see another quest again.
I explored a lot in Everquest 2 because the game was designed to reward exploration: the zones were large and there were actually things to find by exploring. You could climb mountains and find interesting views or places to hide and rest. Even named mini-bosses with loot. Or a dungeon you wouldn't know was there if you didn't have a map. Also, it took a lot longer to level. And, at the time, I wasn't so concerned with getting to max level. I just wanted to experience what the game had to offer.
But I do think the entire experience would have been better without quest hubs. And if there were no maps at all that I didn't make myself, be given by another player, find, or purchase somewhere in game. (However, maps do not necessarily need to be accurate. There can be incomplete, inaccurate, or even deliberately fake maps.) The dungeons themselves had no default maps, which was good. And EQ2 did have fog of war (map was clouded until I explored.) Though I did grow to hate wandering around looking for things and running into mobs constantly while I was doing it. Quests where I had to find something and pick it off the ground several times became my least favorite. Also, epic quests that ask you to basically just wander around the world until you stumble upon something by accident are stupid. I enjoy an epic quest that takes time, but I want to be able to logically figure out how to complete it by hints and clues I can find in game. NPCs can be somewhat vague, but they should tell me enough for me to be able to figure it out. I can't usually ask them questions like I could in a P&P RPG. Still, I enjoyed EQ2 until after I played endgame for awhile. Then I quit.
Anyway, having said that, one of the main problems with Quests, Quest-Givers, and Quest Hubs in games is most of the Quests are just Tasks, Missions, and Chores that any individual or group of soldiers, mercenaries, henchmen, or underlings could do. They don't actually require the services of an adventurer or a hero. I don't really know how some of these quests help my character to become better at being a paladin or a bard or a wizard or whatever else.
Quests, Quest-Givers, and Quest Hubs are not needed so much in a sandbox game. Certainly not Quest Hubs. There could be some quests and quest-givers, but they wouldn't (or shouldn't) be obvious and easy to find. Of course, items, a dead body, or even reading an ancient inscription on a monument could be the start of an epic quest or adventure.
If a themepark with continuous questlines ever wants to be fun again, they would need to be different for every class, race, nationality/place of origin, and alignment. With different starting areas and different branching paths. The players should actually be able to choose not only what path their character takes through the world, but there should also be different ways of completing quests for different classes that don't always involve combat. An evil character should be able to become good if he or she chooses, just as a good character should be able to become evil if he or she makes evil choices.
Post edited by Brald_Ironheart on
Roleplayinn.com - New forum for people who love role-playing of all kinds - tabletop/pencil & paper, live-action, and role-playing in mmorpgs.
the whole point of exploration is to discover places and things without knowing where they are. if a game has no exploration, then what's the point of going anywhere? might as well be a lobby game.
Yes, that is why there are so many lobby games based on game-play. MOBAs, Diablo-ish games, Warframe .... no exploration is needed. No world is needed.
The real question is whether there is an enough market for "exploration" game. There is no question that lobby games are successful.
The problem with themeparks is that they offer us a cookie-cutter experience. Even with multiple branching paths, and many different ways to progress or level through the game, it's all eventually meaningless if I can't effect or change anything about the world through my character's words and deeds. Especially if all I do at endgame is grind for gear in dungeons and raids. Even realm vs realm pvp at endgame doesn't mean much if territory cannot be conquered, occupied, and garrisoned. Similarly, wars over wealth and resources don't matter much if wealth and resources in the game are infinite. If I have no possibility of completely destroying the realm I'm fighting against, then battles and wars become ultimately meaningless. To me anyway.
Post edited by Brald_Ironheart on
Roleplayinn.com - New forum for people who love role-playing of all kinds - tabletop/pencil & paper, live-action, and role-playing in mmorpgs.
Another thing I'll say about dungeons without default maps. It would be better if we could mark where we've been in large, maze-like dungeons by writing on walls, floors, or dropping items. Some characters should be able to draw maps, but I would prefer that they would need cartography or at least rudimentary drawing skills in order to do so. And NPCs or other players could discover marks or dropped items and try to cover them, erase them, or pick them up. Also, we can have monsters that start following and trying to catch players in dungeons, not just ones that wait for us to show up and fight them. Even monsters or mobs that run and alert others if we don't kill them or catch them in time.
Roleplayinn.com - New forum for people who love role-playing of all kinds - tabletop/pencil & paper, live-action, and role-playing in mmorpgs.
No it don't . What eliminated the exploring aspect of gameplay is the laziness of developers .
exploring = something hidden , but you know those lazy potato will never doing extra work to set hidden things around . Nowadays they even leave the quest design task to machine
The exploration was ruined the moment homo sapiens figured out maps.
Sure, you can go even further and blame the ability to use tools or even articulate what one would call language...
Yeah, maps like this certainly made exploring worthless: Game maps that shows everything is not good, I agree there. A game map should just show major cities and let players write their own comments for the rest but even with modern maps well crafted hidden zones still makes good exploration.
The exploration was ruined the moment homo sapiens figured out maps.
Sure, you can go even further and blame the ability to use tools or even articulate what one would call language...
Yeah, maps like this certainly made exploring worthless: Game maps that shows everything is not good, I agree there. A game map should just show major cities and let players write their own comments for the rest but even with modern maps well crafted hidden zones still makes good exploration.
I think the other point that is missed is that maps are created by.....explorers
one could say the art of map making is dependent on the desire to explore
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Quest hubs, quest markers, pre marked maps all ruined exploration. No need to find a new area if your led right there, no need to talk to npc if you know they don't have anything to offer. You don't need to go and explore past the tree in the distance if you know there are no quest mobs, loot or anything of worth.
Would be cool if maps had like a fog of war minimap for each zone/area you had to clear yourself. Couple games did that but still had everything marked once it was cleared.
Quest hubs, quest markers, pre marked maps all ruined exploration. No need to find a new area if your led right there, no need to talk to npc if you know they don't have anything to offer. You don't need to go and explore past the tree in the distance if you know there are no quest mobs, loot or anything of worth.
Would be cool if maps had like a fog of war minimap for each zone/area you had to clear yourself. Couple games did that but still had everything marked once it was cleared.
I like the idea of zero in game map.
Granted it depends on the full context of the game and its objectives but I have played some early access titles that didnt yet have a map and it was a mini game basically creating a road system so that I could navigate. of course in that game (Rising world) you could create paths
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
What made exploration IRL worthless is when we ran out of land to explore. That and we can now take pictures of any part of the earth via satellite. Of course that's not fully true because deep ocean exploration and space exploration are still very much a thing, you just need better technology to pull it off.
Keeping exploration interesting in games largely revolves around creating things that can't just be posted to Wikipedia. The simplest way to do this is to have certain elements of the game be non-static. Yesterday when you walked through an area, nothing. Today, a camp of minotaurs with a hoard of loot that will require a decent sized party to take the down. That information is valuable, and can't just be pulled from the wiki.
Comments
1. Fog of War - If you've ever played Age of Empires you're familiar with sending scouts around to fill in the black parts of the map. In Darkfall Unholy Wars your map starts black as well, and is filled in as your character explores it. While of course you can just google the map to see the full thing, having your ingame map you can set ingame waypoints on and stuff revealed by actually going places really creates an inspiration to visit more areas of the map you haven't been. It's also just sweet know where you have and haven't been for sure.
2. Treasure Maps - Treasure maps were really cool. You would find them through various methods (The primary of which I'm going to describe in point 3) and then use a system where the radar blinks green if you are headed in the general direction of the treasure, red if you are headed away, and blinks more rapidly the close you get until it just goes solid green and you can dig up the treasure. Treasure maps was my main revenue source in UW and I loved it. It had me going all over the map to find various treasures meaning I wasn't just exploring for the sake of exploration. I was exploring to get a reward. It was pretty awesome.
3. Sea Scraping / Fishing - Sea scraping and fishing gave a point to being out on the ocean in DFUW. You would drive a Sea Scraper around which would turn up various loot including treasure maps and components needed to make more ships. It was highly profitable, especially in dangerous waters. You could also fish. Fishing didn't give quite the value but the ship was cheaper and it was decent if all the sea tiles had already be scraped. This meant people were actually out on the ocean in DFUW unlike in DFO. Pirates loved to target sea scrapers and fishing boats so you either needed to be sneaky, a good fighter, or prepared to lose boats once in awhile.
In no other game have I spent as much time traveling all over the map, enjoying the sights, and just generally doing exploration content. DFUW was the holy grail of exploration games in many ways.
the 'find' in exploration is the reward. if the 'find' does not change the player will become bored.
Landscape is a reward, however landscape diversity can be limited.
its not a theory its just fact.
so unless your world has some reward system out there for exploration then they will only be able to get so much reward from landscape before it become boring, to anyone, regardless of personality
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
1) Map markers
If you pick up a quest and you get told exactly where to go, that is where you will go. You take the optimum route and never need to explore. The game is guiding you along and you're also probably subconsciously aware that the quests will likely take you to all the most interesting places anyway, so there is no need to explore.
When LotRO first released, it didn't have map markers, even though it was quest based. Everyone explored the shit out of that game! You had to carefully read the quest text to get directions (so, forced immersion into the story), but even then you'd end up exploring large areas of the game trying to find quest objectives - sometimes because you'd misread the quest text, sometimes because the quest text was wrong, other times just because you were deliberately not given directions.
As soon as they added map markers, all that went out of the window. I can barely recall any quests, or even zones, following the release of map markers. Even though I could turn the feature off, I kept it on because I enjoyed endgame far more than leveling, so I was happy to save time.
2) XP / Rewards
In your standard themepark, questing is by far the most efficient way to level - more xp, plus loads of loot rewards to keep your gear up to date. Exploring hardly ever rewards anything in an MMO - sure, you get some nice views and if you're lucky, a miniboss that drops something interesting.
So, sticking to quests just makes sense.
For this reason, I am a big fan of completely disconnecting quests from experience. I think quests should purely be done for the story and the occasional loot, never for experience. It should be the actions you carry out during a quest that earn experience (killing stuff, exploring new places, solving puzzles).
If done this way, it puts players back in charge of how they level - they can follow the guided experience as determined by the quests, or they can just go off and explore naturally, or they can just farm mobs if they want.
Worked really well in SWG in my opinion. Most of the time, I'd just farm mobs in a leveling group or solo in specific locations, but some nights I'd be like "right, not been to that planet in a while, I'm gonna go exploring" and then just explore a new planet, killing stuff as I went for experience. As a result, SWG has been my favourite leveling experience to date.
You can pretty much pick any MMO out there, log in, and watch chat for a minute or two, and aside from the trolling/shit talking that tends to go on, you will see a lot of player's asking other player's where something is, instead of reading the quest text and going out and looking for it.
Most of the time, player's will either give the exact location, or say something along the lines of "google is your friend", instead of hinting at the area the one asking should look.
Look at SW:ToR, most player's space bar through the cut scenes, which explain what they are supposed to be doing, then get stuck, and ask another player what they should be doing.
Even in TSW, when it first launched, and now, in SWL, games that have quest's that require player's to try and work out answer's to puzzle's, to actually go around the game world looking for clue's, you see a lot of player's asking for the answer to something, and being given it instead of a hint or two.
So yea, maybe quest marker's and quest hub's share some of the blame, but ultimately, it is the action's of player's that we should be looking at.
A creative person is motivated by the desire to achieve, not the desire to beat others.
Not fair to bring facts into the conversation!
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
We don't need tons of silly pointless quests, a "Quest" should feel epic and interesting, not delivering a letter to someone standing 20 feet away. You could possibly call that a "task" but the rewards for such should be rather small.
I don't really need a quest to go into the forest and kill 10 orcs, there certainly could be a bounty (Lineage handled that great by having most orcs drop totems you could sell to a bounty vendor). To kill the evil orc king is fine but lets get rid of anything not epic and just let the players roam the land and find small situations, band of mobs and similar they run into during their travels instead.
Now, a good epic quest can be very fun, I loved EQ2s heritage quests for instance when you spent a rather lot of work to get an epic classic EQ item, they felt rewarding, often took teamwork and you were really happy when you got the reward.
But then you have the quests you forgot as soon as you done them with some crap reward you really don't need, you grind a zillion of them just for XP. Those quests are as grindy as camping a spawning ground, a MMO should be about adventure and killing the inns rats feeding a peasants cows and similar is menial work, not adventuring.
My general rule is "Would Conan have done this?". If not then I have to quote "Journeyquest" and say "sod the quest".
Even though, the point of the thread is still valid. Sure, you still had to explore some areas in Vanilla WoW to find the correct area/mob to complete the quest but you were still bouncing around from quest hub to quest hub.
My argument is that, are quest hubs the primary desire of lack of exploration? I personally like the Everquest approach but I also think there should be some centralized areas for quests that spread across multiple zones. Unmarked of course, with no mini map. That will negate linear content but yet still give some guidance without holding your hand.
i HATE highlighted pathways so damn much...... can you please kill exploration any more than by highlighting a pathway, in the game world, that takes me directly to the object of my quest?
its like a retardation path of neon dementia.....for kids that cant read good.
i hated it so much man. one of the main reasons i couldn't play Black Desert.
the whole point of exploration is to discover places and things without knowing where they are. if a game has no exploration, then what's the point of going anywhere? might as well be a lobby game.
Missive Board - Sort of like Vanguard but more indepth. Essentially Missives are soloable tasks, collection, bounty, harvest, escorting, stuff of that nature that reward in low to moderate coin and low to moderate exp.
Quests - Sort of the Everquest Epic 1.0-2.0 (Never played EQ2), that often take a group to complete with some soloable parts as well. These should be static, like the example you give where you earn and work towards something that takes time and effort. This should take you all over the world. These reward on moderate to high experience and moderate coin based off the collection of things you have to do. Quests reward in obtaining a rare/epic item.
Adventures - I think it would be interesting to have dynamic quests, which I will call Adventures. This is were you as a group or potentially solo can go out and adventure in the world. It would be something vague, like obtain the Moonstone, it was last scene being sold at an auction at the Gypsy Bazaar off the coast. You go there to investigate and learn by talking to NPC's that another NPC might have bought it or simply was stolen by a thief. Keep it vague so it caters to exploration in and having many different parts. Sort of like your 'choose your own adventure' books but encapsulated into an in game adventure. I think if done right, Adventures can go along way.
hard work
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
Of course people who think the game will become far more fun at max level will rush things but the problem is that things usually becomes worse instead.
There is also the look of the gear to blame, when a newbie see an vets awesome looking gear they want it as well, preferably fast and it does look more fun to run in epic looking gear then starting rags. It helps create the illusion that the endgame will be more fun.
Now, if MMOs actually could get a really fun and rewarding endgame it would make sense to cut down the time it takes to level far more then they already done, We don't need a 3 weeks tutorial after all but besides a few good epic dungeons and raids the endgame actually becomes old fast in themepark games.
The game now is still set up mainly like EQ though if you look content wise, almost all content is for leveling up, the part people skip through as fast as possible and leaving you with the bland endgame. A game with fast leveling speed should have 75% of it's content after you level up, not 80%+ for leveling.
So either we will need far slower leveling time (and for that matter harder zones while you level so the whole thing feels meaningful) or a game focused on a severely improved endgame.
Also, if you go for longer leveling you need to improve the fun factor while playing, players should not get most of their kicks from reaching a new level which condition players to run through things as fast as possible. If you focus on combat then combat needs to become more fun, putting more focus on tactics, timing, in combat movement and working together with allies. Winning a fight should always feels like you achieved something, not just another grinding fight that takes time but no skill.
But I do think the entire experience would have been better without quest hubs. And if there were no maps at all that I didn't make myself, be given by another player, find, or purchase somewhere in game. (However, maps do not necessarily need to be accurate. There can be incomplete, inaccurate, or even deliberately fake maps.) The dungeons themselves had no default maps, which was good. And EQ2 did have fog of war (map was clouded until I explored.) Though I did grow to hate wandering around looking for things and running into mobs constantly while I was doing it. Quests where I had to find something and pick it off the ground several times became my least favorite. Also, epic quests that ask you to basically just wander around the world until you stumble upon something by accident are stupid. I enjoy an epic quest that takes time, but I want to be able to logically figure out how to complete it by hints and clues I can find in game. NPCs can be somewhat vague, but they should tell me enough for me to be able to figure it out. I can't usually ask them questions like I could in a P&P RPG. Still, I enjoyed EQ2 until after I played endgame for awhile. Then I quit.
Anyway, having said that, one of the main problems with Quests, Quest-Givers, and Quest Hubs in games is most of the Quests are just Tasks, Missions, and Chores that any individual or group of soldiers, mercenaries, henchmen, or underlings could do. They don't actually require the services of an adventurer or a hero. I don't really know how some of these quests help my character to become better at being a paladin or a bard or a wizard or whatever else.
Quests, Quest-Givers, and Quest Hubs are not needed so much in a sandbox game. Certainly not Quest Hubs. There could be some quests and quest-givers, but they wouldn't (or shouldn't) be obvious and easy to find. Of course, items, a dead body, or even reading an ancient inscription on a monument could be the start of an epic quest or adventure.
If a themepark with continuous questlines ever wants to be fun again, they would need to be different for every class, race, nationality/place of origin, and alignment. With different starting areas and different branching paths. The players should actually be able to choose not only what path their character takes through the world, but there should also be different ways of completing quests for different classes that don't always involve combat. An evil character should be able to become good if he or she chooses, just as a good character should be able to become evil if he or she makes evil choices.
The real question is whether there is an enough market for "exploration" game. There is no question that lobby games are successful.
What eliminated the exploring aspect of gameplay is the laziness of developers .
exploring = something hidden , but you know those lazy potato will never doing extra work to set hidden things around .
Nowadays they even leave the quest design task to machine
Sure, you can go even further and blame the ability to use tools or even articulate what one would call language...
Game maps that shows everything is not good, I agree there. A game map should just show major cities and let players write their own comments for the rest but even with modern maps well crafted hidden zones still makes good exploration.
one could say the art of map making is dependent on the desire to explore
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
Would be cool if maps had like a fog of war minimap for each zone/area you had to clear yourself. Couple games did that but still had everything marked once it was cleared.
Granted it depends on the full context of the game and its objectives but I have played some early access titles that didnt yet have a map and it was a mini game basically creating a road system so that I could navigate.
of course in that game (Rising world) you could create paths
Please do not respond to me, even if I ask you a question, its rhetorical.
Please do not respond to me
Keeping exploration interesting in games largely revolves around creating things that can't just be posted to Wikipedia. The simplest way to do this is to have certain elements of the game be non-static. Yesterday when you walked through an area, nothing. Today, a camp of minotaurs with a hoard of loot that will require a decent sized party to take the down. That information is valuable, and can't just be pulled from the wiki.