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The Daily Quest - How can we bring back exploration to MMOs? -
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
The Daily Quest - How can we bring back exploration to MMOs? -
Earlier this week Bill asked, "What does the MMO need?" In that piece he focused on group content. I'd also argue that another thing that MMOs need to bring back is a real sense of exploration. But how?
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remove Instant Travel ...
reward for exploration and discovery , in titles ,housing items , vanity items , mounts etc.. easy to do ,
But does todays redbull chuggin , hotpocket eatin xbox generation want to discover anything without it being handed to them on a plate with a bib , want this , i dont think so , the soccer generation that has invaded this genre wants to be rewarded for participating in logging in , let alone putting forth any sort of effort ...
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remove DF ..
remove Instant Travel ...
reward for exploration and discovery , in titles ,housing items , vanity items , mounts etc.. easy to do ,
But does todays redbull chuggin , hotpocket eatin xbox generation want to discover anything without it being handed to them on a plate with a bib , want this , i dont think so , the soccer generation that has invaded this genre wants to rewarded for participating in logging in , let alone putting forth any sort of effort ...
I don't understand the bitterness against instant travel, we are mostly playing either fantasy or sci-fi games. Fantasy games filled with magic and oddities but instant travel is a big "no no"? doesn't make sense to me. And do i even need to start about sci-fi? And if they remove dungeon finder then they should add dungeon specific port spell after that dungeon have been discovered by players.
Boobs are LIFE, Boobs are LOVE, Boobs are JUSTICE, Boobs are mankind's HOPES and DREAMS. People who complain about boobs have lost their humanity.
Crowfall is trying to eliminate this problem with procedurally generated worlds that are erased and re-created periodically. It'll be interesting to see how it will work in practice and how intriguing the generated worlds will be.
Trove does it OK, but the sort of voxel world rarely has me in wonder when I stumble upon something, since the dungeons etc you find are just placed in new areas, but not really new each time.
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I envision a day when you will never be able to look up a quest or puzzle online for a solution and when revisiting an area having a completely different experience than the first time through.
The strength of a procedurally generated area is tied to how it works with the game we are playing in. If the game is about collecting resources that are normally finite, such as precious minerals or an old forgotten ruin of minor significance procedural generation can add to immersion since we would always be looking for new resource locations that are untapped.
Another mechanic they could utilize is having procedurally generated areas that players can explore, and once the explorers stake the area out it becomes a static zone. Sort of like playing a big game of carcassonne with certain areas or zones. The developers could put key dungeons and locations in the discoverable zones and release new ones later when they make new permanent areas.
The moment you know or think you know, the magic is gone.
So if exploration is something cared about, one would have to ignore super detailed maps or walkthroughs and explore with a child's eyes and no preconceived judgements.
On the developer side, there is no shortcut for creating worlds. They need to weigh if creating living breathing worlds that don't hold your hand or cater to the individual is worth it if it makes players uncomfortable or pushed them away, there is an edge to walk.
The goal is dynamism, destruction, mystery, and choice all creating emotional weight. I doubt one mmo alone will encapsulate all that.
That being said, just as open PKing has never been fully punished like it should be, exploration has never been rewarded like it should be. Not a single title out there really gives exploration it's due. All they'd have to do is offer items of value, rare enchants, rare parts (like gems etc depending on the game), decorations for housing, skins for armor, etc. It could even be multiple choice giving people the ability to pick what they'd prefer when they get rewarded.
The other thing they could do is randomize exploration zones, so that sometimes they could be one thing like a witch living in a cave or a pirate captain who is in the process of telling his ship crew to hide a burried treasure after players empty out the cave of the witch, or they could even have the option of finding creatures in these caves that don't exist in the rest of the natural world that they could tame, raise and turn into mounts or combat companions. Really do they not have imaginative enough people on their staff to make these kinds of ideas come to life?
SWTOR, Aion, LotRO, AoC (Tortage storyline) was more interested in the story then exploring.
As long as MMO's give me incentives to explore and don't block higher content access for low level characters I'm happy.
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Remember the original GW....you left the Ruins of Ascalon without really knowing where the next quest hub was...found Sardelac Sanitarium....wandered a bit more...up into the hills, dying a few times...and then you turned a corner and this vast vista opened out, with the huge crystal embedded in the earth....it was spectacular. Now THAT is how to do exploration in MMORPGs. No trail of quest givers, you had to find the way yourself.
I don't have a lot of fond memories of running around in the woods/mountains of DAoC just to see what's out there. Exploring dungeons, on the other hand, was often a tense and rewarding experience. Of course, this was back before everything was available in an online map within a week of open beta, so it was easier.
The only way to keep exploration interesting for MMORPGs is randomly generated paths/maps, which seem to result in bland and uninteresting environments (at least, with current technology).
Much better to simply create dynamically spawning mobs that have a defined agenda and behavior patterns than try to put that much time into making the environments uniquely special. If you never experience the same thing when you visit the same place twice, it will always feel unique, even if it looks familiar.
I hated exploration in GW2 because it was setup for XP rather than exploration for the sake of it.
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ESO just released and it's one of the best exploration MMOs of all time, if not the best.
People don't even know what exploration is anymore, as seen in that article. WoW had at best mediocre exploration at it's peak, not worth mentioning. It's simple really, if you want to have a great exploration game, first you'll need a game that is very story-driven with high quality voice acting (99% of all MMOs fall out). Then Zones shouldn't be copy-pasted with the same assets over and over again (WoW). New assets for every Zone is a MUST, and even ESO didn't get it 100% right, at least with the new DLCs they are improving on that. Lastly there should be many points of interest, even if they are just there for you to read a note or a book, oh and creating great views is a must as well.
I know that MMOs were generic most of the time since they got invented, but it's time to make everything more dynamic. And most of the new-generation MMOs are doing just that.
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Lore libraries. Tie things you read about in game books to certain locales. Make books hints on how to improve you character. Also - what the hell - make books hard to find too. Collecting rumors, paying off specialists for information or - maybe - other players that might know where the book is. Add to game talking artifacts and magic trinkets that show direction or glow in presence of treasure. This will be harder to implement as procedure-generated content, but still possible.
SWG mentioned... Who the hell cared about POI before it turned out player need them to unlock Force-sensitivity? Dedicated few. After the fact became known? Almost everyone.
Exploration should be meaningful. Not just roaming around, but find new things people will use in their adventures. General rule is: find something new = development. Find something that makes character more powerful. Nothing else works or works poorly.
The only real solution to keep the world's configuration a mystery, is some sort of dynamic generation of content. Either instanced quest destinations that are randomly generated (and populated) or dynamically generated quests that aren't easily investigated (and documented). The level of AI needed to generate suitable text hasn't really been achieved in academic environments, much less games. Creating dialog and narrative (a mini-story for a quest) that matches the environment is very complicated.
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Dynamic spawn locations - hunting should involve ... hunting. Quest givers don't need exclamation points above their heads, nor do they have to stand in a predictable location. They can travel between towns just like players do. Mini-maps are unnecessary and larger maps need not contain details beyond the basic landforms, roads, and towns. Wilderness zones need not be gated sequentially by difficulty. A new player should be able explore areas which are very dangerous, as long as they are willing to risk dying. Rewards can include valuable resources and rare spawns that only happen in places which take time and effort to reach.
All of that has been done before, and successfully. How to do this is not a mystery, it is just a business decision which must include the fact that most paying players don't care about exploration and would not play a game which included the things I mention above.
In original SWG, the players were out exploring like crazy to figure out how to unlock Jedi. Every little skull, every little ruin - you name it, it was evaluated. There was even a website compiling all that information.
Sadly, it turned out that the method to unlock Jedi had absolutely nothing to do with exploration or anything else sane. But until we all knew that exploration was very fun and important!
Forget about mobs and chests and the like. Give us a mystery and a reason to be out beating the bushes.
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