Well, some time ago I made a list on how I believe it is possible to make exploration something interesting and meaningful, and I believe it to be quite relevant to this thread. This is an updated version:
1. Great vistas - Self explanatory. Simply put, good looking places attract people's attention.
2. Ambient Sound - While visuals are definitely essential, the audio defines the areas a player explores. It adds tone, complexity, and flavor.
3. Open terrain - Have zones that contain plenty of room. No one likes being engulfed by impenetrable mountains.
4. Hidden "gems" - Acts as an incentive, something players can go after. Can be a fabled location, a sought-after item, a rare NPC/monster.
5. Open dungeons - Real, complex dungeons in the open world that offer great dangers, yet glorious rewards for those brave enough to reach its farthest depths.
6. Lack of teleports - Players shouldn't be able to open a map, click on a destination, and reach a loading screen. Make them see the game world.
7. Many means of travel - Don't just let them run, give them horses, boats, carriages, dragons, etc.
8. Dynamic Entities - NPC/Mob factions that grow, develop, and change. Create interactions within the game world that do not require player input to occur.
9. World-Changing Means - Allow the players to change the game world, be it through constructions, agriculture, social projects, etc.
10. Dynamic Weather/Time - The game world musn't remain static and that includes weather and time. Perhaps allow such elements to influence the world beyond merely visually.
11. Accessability - Being able to go to the places you see makes all the difference in the world. No invisible walls or artificial barriers.
12. Seamlessness - Not seeing a loading screen while going out on exploratory adventures greatly increases immersion and attaches one to the world.
13. Permanence - Allow the players to settle down and meaningfully attach themselves to the places they discover. Make travel something significant so people can value their settlements.
14. Localility - Make locations truly unique in their resources, natural phenomena, and formations. This leads people to seek out new places that grant them advantages on their objectives. For instance, if I want to establish the most profitable port, I need to go explore the coastlines in hopes of finding a cove that offers natural protection to my shipments, is well situated for traders, etc.
When I think of exploration done right in an MMO the one game I can think of that actually made exploration fun and rewarding was Asheron's Call 1. The massive open world meant there was virtually a limitless amount of places to go at any level.
Why does anyone talk in past tense when it comes to Asheron's Call? And why the "1"? AC II is long dead and never really took off. AC (the *real thing*) is still safe and sound though...
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I want exploration to have actual exploration. Like you go out and find things with no maps. In the game I am working on there is no world map exactly. Players who explore will get data for their maps. Maps will be a sellable good and one of the many features of the real fourth pillar of mmorpgs, no, not story, exploration.
For about a year I was playing Xsyon and even though the game was just a shell I really enjoyed exploring. It was a great exploration game. Then some guy released the map (which had been effectively hacked from the data files) and it completely ruined the exploration process for me and within a week I'd stopped playing.
The vision above is excellent but it will never happen 'cos some clever arse will post a map on a wiki and a legion of sheep without care for the game vision will use it.
Google and the Wikis killed exploration in MMOs. It is still fun in single-player games.
Exploration means nothing to me in MMOs. MMO players won't respect a game vision. They simply read on the internet what to wear, what weapons to yield and where to find them.
Did anyone here play EQ? God, I loved that game to bits.
Maybe it was because we were all new to MMO's and we were wandering around with wide open eyes filled with wonder and excitement, or if it was because that 1st generation of MMO gamers was different than the generations of MMO gamers that came later like with WoW, but the community was really awesome, as if we had set foot as pioneers on some new continent or such.
And that same sense of exploration was right there from the beginning: my starter area was Greater Faydark, and that to me is still one of the best areas to start in: the sensation of a dark dangerous forest, the ambient noises in the night, getting lost a lot of the times because of no map, I don't know, to me it made it all feel adventurous and a vast, mysterious world. The first time I discovered Kelethin (my first ingame home was Felwithe) it was a revelation that filled me with awe and wonder. Taking the boat for the first time, my first dangerous trek across Antonica felt as an achievement, and so on.
I think that if the world feels magical and as an adventure, then you'll automatically feel in the mood to go explore more. Atmosphere and music and ambient sound helps too, I think, the first time entering Stormwind or Ironforge, or the first time exploring Cimmerian mountains with that glorious background music playing, somehow it really felt epic and adventurious, it really added immersion and a hunger to explore.
Me, I'n an explorer omnivore: I love to explore all corners of maps, find all the nooks and forgotten corners in them, but I also felt like having explored and gained an achievement when me and some friends of mine managed to reach all the rooftops in Khemi.
I think the real explorers are the ones that feel the urge to explore the locations of areas where his paths and quests don't bring him too. Personally, that's why I like large worlds, because they have more places to explore than smaller games.
Exploration is virtually non-existant in MMORPGs to me. I think of wanderlust when someone says "exploration". Every MMORPG out today has a predefined map, showing every town village and outpost. If MMORPGs really wanted to add elements of exploration, they would need to do away with this, especially for instances/dungeons. I really feel like instance/dungeon maps are kind of ruining the fun of going into it for the first time. How do I know the layout of an enemy base if no one has been there before? MMORPGs are seriously lacking in the "exploring the area" field. I would LOVE it if an MMORPG came out that had secret areas in cities/dungeons/areas. I would be absolutely pleased to run across a random encampment that had something special about it to discover and work around. I would be happy to run around an area and kill the same enemy if the area had secrets hidden. Finding a door under a carpet, finding a new encampment of unmarked enemies, making short cuts through a valley inhabited by monsters, making a secret passage under a large rock, having an abandoned town with hidden treasures. I would rather have an MMORPG with no map unless the player makes it than having a map that shows everything.
To me, Exploration is finding hidden or unknown content that has some novelty to it.
I want exploration to have actual exploration. Like you go out and find things with no maps. In the game I am working on there is no world map exactly. Players who explore will get data for their maps. Maps will be a sellable good and one of the many features of the real fourth pillar of mmorpgs, no, not story, exploration.
For about a year I was playing Xsyon and even though the game was just a shell I really enjoyed exploring. It was a great exploration game. Then some guy released the map (which had been effectively hacked from the data files) and it completely ruined the exploration process for me and within a week I'd stopped playing.
The vision above is excellent but it will never happen 'cos some clever arse will post a map on a wiki and a legion of sheep without care for the game vision will use it.
Google and the Wikis killed exploration in MMOs. It is still fun in single-player games.
Exploration means nothing to me in MMOs. MMO players won't respect a game vision. They simply read on the internet what to wear, what weapons to yield and where to find them.
Well, we will see about that. I am not actually opposed to guild members or kingdom members sharing maps per say, though I intend to incentivize against it. But having one person explore the world and then tell everyone blows, even with all the dynamic stuff I am adding. I was thinking of maybe not having any critical files on the client side or using a confusing file type.
I want exploration to have actual exploration. Like you go out and find things with no maps. In the game I am working on there is no world map exactly. Players who explore will get data for their maps. Maps will be a sellable good and one of the many features of the real fourth pillar of mmorpgs, no, not story, exploration.
For about a year I was playing Xsyon and even though the game was just a shell I really enjoyed exploring. It was a great exploration game. Then some guy released the map (which had been effectively hacked from the data files) and it completely ruined the exploration process for me and within a week I'd stopped playing.
The vision above is excellent but it will never happen 'cos some clever arse will post a map on a wiki and a legion of sheep without care for the game vision will use it.
Google and the Wikis killed exploration in MMOs. It is still fun in single-player games.
Exploration means nothing to me in MMOs. MMO players won't respect a game vision. They simply read on the internet what to wear, what weapons to yield and where to find them.
Well, we will see about that. I am not actually opposed to guild members or kingdom members sharing maps per say, though I intend to incentivize against it. But having one person explore the world and then tell everyone blows, even with all the dynamic stuff I am adding. I was thinking of maybe not having any critical files on the client side or using a confusing file type.
Good luck, and I mean that - really. I would play your game. Still, you'll really have to work to protect your game map. Some arse will try to get it and post it. A lot of players really don't want exploration, they want huge arrows telling them where to go. They have no interest in your vision and will cheeer when a map is posted. This exactly what I witnessed in Xsyon (a game desined to NOT have a map).
As a part of exploration in a wider sense I expect a game *never* taking me by the hand or wants me to be sucessful rather than want to be *conquered* itself.
Nobody uses scenery to tell a story anymore. How many games have you played where you stumble across an area, look around, and without having an NPC spout of any lore to you, tell just by looking that some kind of battle or something else interesting happened here at one time?
Some places in TOR actually does really well to tell the story by what you see. The Ship Graveyard on Hoth is an example where what you see tells you about as much as you would read about it in the codex.
For me exploration starts when I know there are things out there to find. The problem in TOR is I really don't feel that. Sure there are treasure chests but they respawn at nodes and aren't rewarding to find or loot, Bosses- well more like only world bosses which require a group, and datacrons. Datacrons are about the only good thing, although as someone else said aren't easy to find even if you are on explore mode.
Hunting down named boss in EQ2 and Vanguard was my favorite exploration activity. Vanguard especially was great because of the open worldness made the process of safely getting to the bosses very fun too. Those bosses came in a variety of difficulties too. There were either soloable or very hard to solo making victory much sweeter.
A few days ago, I was playing Uncharted Waters Online. I got a quest in Santo Domingo claiming that there was some nearby civilization that somehow managed to thrive without any obvious source of water. The quest giver basically wanted me to find out how that was possible. I talked to some NPCs around Santo Domingo to pick up some rumors, and one suggested I try asking around Havana. So I sailed to Havana and talked to a few more people who gave some more information on the civilization. One pointed me further west toward Merida. So I went and landed at Merida, wandered around the jungle for a while, and suddenly found this huge pyramid off in the middle of the jungle. I used the recognition skill and the game said I had found Chichen Itza, and gave me a blurb of text explaining some history of the site, beyond what the various NPCs had told me.
Now, a lot of theme park games have a few things that you can point to and say, whoa, that was cool the first time I saw that. But Uncharted Waters Online has literally thousands of things built into the game to go discover. Each discovery gives you a picture and some text about what you found, and it keeps a list of all of the things you've discovered, with a picture and text description of each. I've now got 700 discoveries on my list (and made #700, the Comoros Islands, while typing this post). And there's a wide variety of stuff to find, too. For example, I've found Angkor Wat, Zheng He's compass, a statue of the Egyptian goddess Anuket, Raphael's painting Madonna and Child with St John, King Richard I's armor (which is actually quite a nice armor for adventurers to wear), boa constrictors, driver ants, a great white shark, the port of Hiva Oa, and the St. Lawrence River, among other things.
Furthermore, while a lot of theme park games will let you go wander around the map, they'll constantly bash you over the head saying, you could be grinding for levels in something, or farming for gold, or some such. And because you're exploring instead, you're not accomplishing anything, and falling further behind those who are. And that makes you a failure at the game.
But UWO doesn't do that. UWO gives you experience points for making discoveries, so that spending a few months going out and exploring and making discoveries is a perfectly viable way to level--and indeed, all but necessary if you're looking to level adventuring. A large fraction of the best gear in the game comes only from players going out and discovering it. That is, much (but far from all) of the game's best gear is not dropped by any mobs, is not sold by any NPC, and cannot be crafted. (Also much of the game's best gear is crafted by players.)
I'd submit that that's how you do exploration, if you want to make it into a major game mechanic. Not just a few easter eggs, but something that you can spend months on.
The only other game I'm aware of with much of an emphasis on exploration is A Tale in the Desert.
A few days ago, I was playing Uncharted Waters Online.
I'd submit that that's how you do exploration, if you want to make it into a major game mechanic. Not just a few easter eggs, but something that you can spend months on.
The only other game I'm aware of with much of an emphasis on exploration is A Tale in the Desert.
The more I read your posts about UWO the more tempted I am to give it a serious try. (I gave up midway through the tutorial)
Keep sharing your experiences in that game, I enjoy reading them.
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
I want exploration to have actual exploration. Like you go out and find things with no maps. In the game I am working on there is no world map exactly. Players who explore will get data for their maps. Maps will be a sellable good and one of the many features of the real fourth pillar of mmorpgs, no, not story, exploration.
For about a year I was playing Xsyon and even though the game was just a shell I really enjoyed exploring. It was a great exploration game. Then some guy released the map (which had been effectively hacked from the data files) and it completely ruined the exploration process for me and within a week I'd stopped playing.
The vision above is excellent but it will never happen 'cos some clever arse will post a map on a wiki and a legion of sheep without care for the game vision will use it.
Google and the Wikis killed exploration in MMOs. It is still fun in single-player games.
Exploration means nothing to me in MMOs. MMO players won't respect a game vision. They simply read on the internet what to wear, what weapons to yield and where to find them.
Well, we will see about that. I am not actually opposed to guild members or kingdom members sharing maps per say, though I intend to incentivize against it. But having one person explore the world and then tell everyone blows, even with all the dynamic stuff I am adding. I was thinking of maybe not having any critical files on the client side or using a confusing file type.
Good luck, and I mean that - really. I would play your game. Still, you'll really have to work to protect your game map. Some arse will try to get it and post it. A lot of players really don't want exploration, they want huge arrows telling them where to go. They have no interest in your vision and will cheeer when a map is posted. This exactly what I witnessed in Xsyon (a game desined to NOT have a map).
Well ideally it would be sub based and have warnings about stuff like that. Like:
"If you want quest arrows fuck off"
as a big banner on the game site
You would have to intentionally come to the game trolling and expecting to fuck people over. But also try to put extensive protections against map finding.
But yeah people are lazy and selfish and assholes. its not really shocking to me that dev's rarely do cool stuff.
A few days ago, I was playing Uncharted Waters Online.
I'd submit that that's how you do exploration, if you want to make it into a major game mechanic. Not just a few easter eggs, but something that you can spend months on.
The only other game I'm aware of with much of an emphasis on exploration is A Tale in the Desert.
The more I read your posts about UWO the more tempted I am to give it a serious try. (I gave up midway through the tutorial)
Keep sharing your experiences in that game, I enjoy reading them.
If the game wasn't based on Earth history I would probably play it.
A few days ago, I was playing Uncharted Waters Online.
I'd submit that that's how you do exploration, if you want to make it into a major game mechanic. Not just a few easter eggs, but something that you can spend months on.
The only other game I'm aware of with much of an emphasis on exploration is A Tale in the Desert.
The more I read your posts about UWO the more tempted I am to give it a serious try. (I gave up midway through the tutorial)
Keep sharing your experiences in that game, I enjoy reading them.
It's a very complicated game, and hard to get into for that reason. Do check my two really long posts in the UWO forum on this site if you haven't already.
A few days ago, I was playing Uncharted Waters Online.
I'd submit that that's how you do exploration, if you want to make it into a major game mechanic. Not just a few easter eggs, but something that you can spend months on.
The only other game I'm aware of with much of an emphasis on exploration is A Tale in the Desert.
The more I read your posts about UWO the more tempted I am to give it a serious try. (I gave up midway through the tutorial)
Keep sharing your experiences in that game, I enjoy reading them.
If the game wasn't based on Earth history I would probably play it.
If you prefer fantasy, that's fine.
But if you're worried that you'll know what and where everything is ahead of time, then that's not going to happen. You can guess some of the discoveries ahead of time (e.g., I correctly guessed that a map to a "large horn animal" near Sofala would be a rhinoceros), but for many, you won't know what it's going to be until you find it. Remember also that anything that happened in the last 480 years or so in real life hasn't yet happened in the game, so everything is very old.
A few days ago, I was playing Uncharted Waters Online.
I'd submit that that's how you do exploration, if you want to make it into a major game mechanic. Not just a few easter eggs, but something that you can spend months on.
The only other game I'm aware of with much of an emphasis on exploration is A Tale in the Desert.
The more I read your posts about UWO the more tempted I am to give it a serious try. (I gave up midway through the tutorial)
Keep sharing your experiences in that game, I enjoy reading them.
If the game wasn't based on Earth history I would probably play it.
If you prefer fantasy, that's fine.
But if you're worried that you'll know what and where everything is ahead of time, then that's not going to happen. You can guess some of the discoveries ahead of time (e.g., I correctly guessed that a map to a "large horn animal" near Sofala would be a rhinoceros), but for many, you won't know what it's going to be until you find it. Remember also that anything that happened in the last 480 years or so in real life hasn't yet happened in the game, so everything is very old.
You underestimate my knowledge of history. I won't know every little thing, but I suspect I'll know most of it.
It's not in a game where every square inch of a zone is put to use, and you're bound to end up all around it for quest objectives. To explore, you pretty much have to go someplace without being told - that's it!... and every game these days makes a habit of overcompensating and requiring players to continually rehash every inch of a map for whatever reason. Like they are grabbing you by the ear and saying "here! look at that! because that took a lot of effort and I want to make sure you see it. Did you see it? Cool... now turn in that quest".
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But if you're worried that you'll know what and where everything is ahead of time, then that's not going to happen. You can guess some of the discoveries ahead of time (e.g., I correctly guessed that a map to a "large horn animal" near Sofala would be a rhinoceros), but for many, you won't know what it's going to be until you find it. Remember also that anything that happened in the last 480 years or so in real life hasn't yet happened in the game, so everything is very old.
You underestimate my knowledge of history. I won't know every little thing, but I suspect I'll know most of it.
I would be very, very surprised. For example, in my above description, when the quest talked about a civilization somewhat to the west of Santo Domingo that survived wtihout any obvious source of water, did you think, well obviously that's Chichen Itza? If not, then you're not going to guess half of them before you make the discovery.
Let's take a list of archaeology discoveries that I've found:
Dagger of King Narathihapate
The code of Hittite
The Statue of Lamassu
Ancient Hook
Cartouche
Queen's Lyre
Bronze Decoration
Zheng He's Logbook
Celt
Compass of Zheng He's Fleet
The Colossi at Abu Simbel
The inscription of Merneptah
The Note of Admira Colon
Magellan American Adventures
Earthenware Roller
The Sceptre of King Khufu
The Scaly Pottery of Kot Dijian
The Sceptre of Ptolemy I
Skull with a Hole
The Gold Cup of Julius Caesar
Acha
Bone Flute
Ancient Cart
Gravestone of a Spartan Soldier
The Atacama Giant
The Triad of Menkaure
Jade Bowl
A Mummy
Nilometer
Decorated Earthenware
The Coins of Lydia
The Ivory Statue of King Khufu
Silver of Ancient India
The Treasures of Hulagu
Cyrstal Pitcher
Phoenician Glass Jar
Ancient Boomerang
Stone Arrowheads
The Jewel of Augustus
Sculptured Group of Soldiers
Shell
Clay Work Statue
Incense Burner
Nonstriated Pot
Tetrapod Vessel
The Scepter of Antoninus Pius
The Ramkhamhaeng Stele
Can you describe each of those in a few sentences? Some of those don't a name specific enough to specify a unique real-life object. Even if you know all about Julius Caesar, Ptolemy I, and Zheng He, you're probably not going to guess exactly what their relic will be until you find it.
And let's suppose that I told you that four of those discoveries had Pernambuco as the nearest city. Could you guess which four? (I'm not sure if I went down far enough on my list to pick up all four of them, but the really low level stuff at the bottom of my list does tend to be in Europe.)
The problem is, I think, many people are looking at exploration as being superfluous mainly because in the MMO model they're imagining it being inserted into, it simply doesn't make sense and isn't justified. That's not to say games prior to WoW nerfing MMOs didn't pull it off, because they certainly did in quite a few instances.
Exploration in DAoCs frontiers made sense, for example. There were distinct benefits to finding an out of the way hunting area with fresh bonus exp, rare mobs & drops (plus the one time drop mobs) and little chance of being discovered by opposing realms. Exploration in EQ made sense as there were obviously rare encounters off the beaten path (frontier mountains named cycle was a little known secret for example), mini events that weren't labeled by a large exclamation mark, rare merchants and loot.
Those games were designed with exploration in mind, and it worked. Even early on EQ was so large that hunting down specific information on the web wasn't always guaranteed to be better than in game word of mouth information. Then, after it had a few expansions under it's belt the sheer amount of areas, mobs and loot made tracking down specific event triggers or loot drops more of a challenge than we'd find with the full disclosure we see with WoW Head, for example.
We don't see exploration tacked on to modern day WoW clones because these newer worlds only exist as a surface on which to plop down click x tasks, rather than being the fully fleshed out interactive worlds we used to see, ripe with mini events and secrets, that could stand on their own as content.
Some games have justified having large land masses to explore and travel in by virtue of the tucked away esoteric secrets they held.
More recently though we've seen developers opting to assert more direct control over player experiences by providing linear, preordained paths of advancement and heavily scripting encounters to limit the ways we can approach situations.
Some gamers were introduced to MMOs in just that way and may not have had the opportunity to experience games in which exploration was justified. To them they're probably imagining running around Azeroth for no reason, simply because if you were supposed to be there a giant arrow would be sending you there in the vast majority of cases.
I've had the opportunity to see both sides of the fence and I can say with certainty that I much prefer the less guided approach worlds designed to be explored have taken. I find that open world interaction brings a number of dynamics to the table that you simply cannot have when everyones closed off from eachother in their own little scripted hallway dungeons.
Basically, exploration really only works in game worlds that are designed with the expectation that players will explore. Tacking it on to games like SWTOR or WoW, in which the game world itself only seems to exist as a place to promote their click 10 jugs task content, makes no sense as you'd generally be shooting yourself in the foot by steering off the linear path developers intend for you to take.
I saw someone in another thread bemoan the lack of exploration in SWTOR, and it got me to wondering, what is it exactly that they are looking for in this feature?
I mean sure, on the surface it sounds easy, give me a large interesting gameworld that takes some significant time to traverse and I'll be happy.
But wait. What exactly do you hope to find or do in this large universe? I remember Vanguard and it had a large world to explore, but when I went out into it I ran into three things, nice scenery, mob choked areas that had to be fought through, and barren areas that were probably just unfinished. Not much after that and not nearly as interesting as I would have hoped for.
Looking at the pretty scenery can be fun, but that only goes so far, eventually you have to give people something to do in that big world.
I've seen a couple of variants over the years. There could be resource nodes perhaps, or a dungeon that people could visit, or a treasure chest laying around for someone to find. Perhaps there might be a mini-quest, who knows, maybe Devs could put in some white water rafting? In EVE exploration was an actual PVE mechanic, where you went out in your ship trying find hidden space junk and what not which you could profit from.
Anyways, I'd be interested in learning what other folks think exploration really entails and what sort of content they expect developers to provide outside of pretty scenery.
edit: I had to mention SWTOR because lately all threads in these forums must have an obligatory reference to it.
Sorry but, isn't the question kind of an Oxymoron?
I mean, how can you have Exploration really in a Themepark?
When you enter a Zoo or an Actual themepark, you are being handed a Map, you know exactly where your going and how to get there, you are never lost, and the experience is mainly about Seeing the excibits or experiencing each ride..but there isn;t exploration really to be had "Hey I found the MCDonald'ss Stand!!"... hehe..
So surelly, a Themepark MMo functions the same way, the NPC tell you where to go, the Maps shows you exactly how to go there..so..what is there really to explore and Discover that is anot already part of the Path laid out for every player?
Ummm...nothing.
Who builds a Themepark where the Rides are hidden from the public?...
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I saw someone in another thread bemoan the lack of exploration in SWTOR, and it got me to wondering, what is it exactly that they are looking for in this feature?
I mean sure, on the surface it sounds easy, give me a large interesting gameworld that takes some significant time to traverse and I'll be happy.
But wait. What exactly do you hope to find or do in this large universe? I remember Vanguard and it had a large world to explore, but when I went out into it I ran into three things, nice scenery, mob choked areas that had to be fought through, and barren areas that were probably just unfinished. Not much after that and not nearly as interesting as I would have hoped for.
Looking at the pretty scenery can be fun, but that only goes so far, eventually you have to give people something to do in that big world.
I've seen a couple of variants over the years. There could be resource nodes perhaps, or a dungeon that people could visit, or a treasure chest laying around for someone to find. Perhaps there might be a mini-quest, who knows, maybe Devs could put in some white water rafting? In EVE exploration was an actual PVE mechanic, where you went out in your ship trying find hidden space junk and what not which you could profit from.
Anyways, I'd be interested in learning what other folks think exploration really entails and what sort of content they expect developers to provide outside of pretty scenery.
edit: I had to mention SWTOR because lately all threads in these forums must have an obligatory reference to it.
Sorry but, isn't the question kind of an Oxymoron?
I mean, how can you have Exploration really in a Themepark?
When you enter a Zoo or an Actual themepark, you are being handed a Map, you know exactly where your going and how to get there, you are never lost, and the experience is mainly about Seeing the excibits or experiencing each ride..but there isn;t exploration really to be had "Hey I found the MCDonald'ss Stand!!"... hehe..
So surelly, a Themepark MMo functions the same way, the NPC tell you where to go, the Maps shows you exactly how to go there..so..what is there really to explore and Discover that is anot already part of the Path laid out for every player?
Ohh My ...Such Explorers of unknown worlds you seem to be...
Guess what...You can explore every game, if you ignore everything and just run around looking ...
The problem here is that developers needs to put things there for you to discover, and if you put things there ..someone WILL find it ...and it will get spoiled on the internet..
That means ...these items/locations/quests/villages or treasures that can be found by exploring , must not be to powerful, because EVERYONE will have these things for free, and it doesnt matter if you ACTUALLY found it or just looked it up..
Just look at the datacrons in SW: TOR , every player WILL have them..part from the honest player that doesn't look for walktroughs on certain websites, he may or may not find them all..So he will be weaksause or weaker than the guy who cheated.
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Well, some time ago I made a list on how I believe it is possible to make exploration something interesting and meaningful, and I believe it to be quite relevant to this thread. This is an updated version:
1. Great vistas - Self explanatory. Simply put, good looking places attract people's attention.
2. Ambient Sound - While visuals are definitely essential, the audio defines the areas a player explores. It adds tone, complexity, and flavor.
3. Open terrain - Have zones that contain plenty of room. No one likes being engulfed by impenetrable mountains.
4. Hidden "gems" - Acts as an incentive, something players can go after. Can be a fabled location, a sought-after item, a rare NPC/monster.
5. Open dungeons - Real, complex dungeons in the open world that offer great dangers, yet glorious rewards for those brave enough to reach its farthest depths.
6. Lack of teleports - Players shouldn't be able to open a map, click on a destination, and reach a loading screen. Make them see the game world.
7. Many means of travel - Don't just let them run, give them horses, boats, carriages, dragons, etc.
8. Dynamic Entities - NPC/Mob factions that grow, develop, and change. Create interactions within the game world that do not require player input to occur.
9. World-Changing Means - Allow the players to change the game world, be it through constructions, agriculture, social projects, etc.
10. Dynamic Weather/Time - The game world musn't remain static and that includes weather and time. Perhaps allow such elements to influence the world beyond merely visually.
11. Accessability - Being able to go to the places you see makes all the difference in the world. No invisible walls or artificial barriers.
12. Seamlessness - Not seeing a loading screen while going out on exploratory adventures greatly increases immersion and attaches one to the world.
13. Permanence - Allow the players to settle down and meaningfully attach themselves to the places they discover. Make travel something significant so people can value their settlements.
14. Localility - Make locations truly unique in their resources, natural phenomena, and formations. This leads people to seek out new places that grant them advantages on their objectives. For instance, if I want to establish the most profitable port, I need to go explore the coastlines in hopes of finding a cove that offers natural protection to my shipments, is well situated for traders, etc.
Why does anyone talk in past tense when it comes to Asheron's Call? And why the "1"? AC II is long dead and never really took off. AC (the *real thing*) is still safe and sound though...
EvE
Life IS Feudal
This is exploration:
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For about a year I was playing Xsyon and even though the game was just a shell I really enjoyed exploring. It was a great exploration game. Then some guy released the map (which had been effectively hacked from the data files) and it completely ruined the exploration process for me and within a week I'd stopped playing.
The vision above is excellent but it will never happen 'cos some clever arse will post a map on a wiki and a legion of sheep without care for the game vision will use it.
Google and the Wikis killed exploration in MMOs. It is still fun in single-player games.
Exploration means nothing to me in MMOs. MMO players won't respect a game vision. They simply read on the internet what to wear, what weapons to yield and where to find them.
Maybe it was because we were all new to MMO's and we were wandering around with wide open eyes filled with wonder and excitement, or if it was because that 1st generation of MMO gamers was different than the generations of MMO gamers that came later like with WoW, but the community was really awesome, as if we had set foot as pioneers on some new continent or such.
And that same sense of exploration was right there from the beginning: my starter area was Greater Faydark, and that to me is still one of the best areas to start in: the sensation of a dark dangerous forest, the ambient noises in the night, getting lost a lot of the times because of no map, I don't know, to me it made it all feel adventurous and a vast, mysterious world. The first time I discovered Kelethin (my first ingame home was Felwithe) it was a revelation that filled me with awe and wonder. Taking the boat for the first time, my first dangerous trek across Antonica felt as an achievement, and so on.
I think that if the world feels magical and as an adventure, then you'll automatically feel in the mood to go explore more. Atmosphere and music and ambient sound helps too, I think, the first time entering Stormwind or Ironforge, or the first time exploring Cimmerian mountains with that glorious background music playing, somehow it really felt epic and adventurious, it really added immersion and a hunger to explore.
Me, I'n an explorer omnivore: I love to explore all corners of maps, find all the nooks and forgotten corners in them, but I also felt like having explored and gained an achievement when me and some friends of mine managed to reach all the rooftops in Khemi.I think the real explorers are the ones that feel the urge to explore the locations of areas where his paths and quests don't bring him too. Personally, that's why I like large worlds, because they have more places to explore than smaller games.
Exploration is virtually non-existant in MMORPGs to me. I think of wanderlust when someone says "exploration". Every MMORPG out today has a predefined map, showing every town village and outpost. If MMORPGs really wanted to add elements of exploration, they would need to do away with this, especially for instances/dungeons. I really feel like instance/dungeon maps are kind of ruining the fun of going into it for the first time. How do I know the layout of an enemy base if no one has been there before? MMORPGs are seriously lacking in the "exploring the area" field. I would LOVE it if an MMORPG came out that had secret areas in cities/dungeons/areas. I would be absolutely pleased to run across a random encampment that had something special about it to discover and work around. I would be happy to run around an area and kill the same enemy if the area had secrets hidden. Finding a door under a carpet, finding a new encampment of unmarked enemies, making short cuts through a valley inhabited by monsters, making a secret passage under a large rock, having an abandoned town with hidden treasures. I would rather have an MMORPG with no map unless the player makes it than having a map that shows everything.
To me, Exploration is finding hidden or unknown content that has some novelty to it.
Well, we will see about that. I am not actually opposed to guild members or kingdom members sharing maps per say, though I intend to incentivize against it. But having one person explore the world and then tell everyone blows, even with all the dynamic stuff I am adding. I was thinking of maybe not having any critical files on the client side or using a confusing file type.
Ever play EQ1?
That.
I used to play MMOs like you, but then I took an arrow to the knee.
Good luck, and I mean that - really. I would play your game. Still, you'll really have to work to protect your game map. Some arse will try to get it and post it. A lot of players really don't want exploration, they want huge arrows telling them where to go. They have no interest in your vision and will cheeer when a map is posted. This exactly what I witnessed in Xsyon (a game desined to NOT have a map).
As a part of exploration in a wider sense I expect a game *never* taking me by the hand or wants me to be sucessful rather than want to be *conquered* itself.
Some places in TOR actually does really well to tell the story by what you see. The Ship Graveyard on Hoth is an example where what you see tells you about as much as you would read about it in the codex.
For me exploration starts when I know there are things out there to find. The problem in TOR is I really don't feel that. Sure there are treasure chests but they respawn at nodes and aren't rewarding to find or loot, Bosses- well more like only world bosses which require a group, and datacrons. Datacrons are about the only good thing, although as someone else said aren't easy to find even if you are on explore mode.
Hunting down named boss in EQ2 and Vanguard was my favorite exploration activity. Vanguard especially was great because of the open worldness made the process of safely getting to the bosses very fun too. Those bosses came in a variety of difficulties too. There were either soloable or very hard to solo making victory much sweeter.
A few days ago, I was playing Uncharted Waters Online. I got a quest in Santo Domingo claiming that there was some nearby civilization that somehow managed to thrive without any obvious source of water. The quest giver basically wanted me to find out how that was possible. I talked to some NPCs around Santo Domingo to pick up some rumors, and one suggested I try asking around Havana. So I sailed to Havana and talked to a few more people who gave some more information on the civilization. One pointed me further west toward Merida. So I went and landed at Merida, wandered around the jungle for a while, and suddenly found this huge pyramid off in the middle of the jungle. I used the recognition skill and the game said I had found Chichen Itza, and gave me a blurb of text explaining some history of the site, beyond what the various NPCs had told me.
Now, a lot of theme park games have a few things that you can point to and say, whoa, that was cool the first time I saw that. But Uncharted Waters Online has literally thousands of things built into the game to go discover. Each discovery gives you a picture and some text about what you found, and it keeps a list of all of the things you've discovered, with a picture and text description of each. I've now got 700 discoveries on my list (and made #700, the Comoros Islands, while typing this post). And there's a wide variety of stuff to find, too. For example, I've found Angkor Wat, Zheng He's compass, a statue of the Egyptian goddess Anuket, Raphael's painting Madonna and Child with St John, King Richard I's armor (which is actually quite a nice armor for adventurers to wear), boa constrictors, driver ants, a great white shark, the port of Hiva Oa, and the St. Lawrence River, among other things.
Furthermore, while a lot of theme park games will let you go wander around the map, they'll constantly bash you over the head saying, you could be grinding for levels in something, or farming for gold, or some such. And because you're exploring instead, you're not accomplishing anything, and falling further behind those who are. And that makes you a failure at the game.
But UWO doesn't do that. UWO gives you experience points for making discoveries, so that spending a few months going out and exploring and making discoveries is a perfectly viable way to level--and indeed, all but necessary if you're looking to level adventuring. A large fraction of the best gear in the game comes only from players going out and discovering it. That is, much (but far from all) of the game's best gear is not dropped by any mobs, is not sold by any NPC, and cannot be crafted. (Also much of the game's best gear is crafted by players.)
I'd submit that that's how you do exploration, if you want to make it into a major game mechanic. Not just a few easter eggs, but something that you can spend months on.
The only other game I'm aware of with much of an emphasis on exploration is A Tale in the Desert.
The more I read your posts about UWO the more tempted I am to give it a serious try. (I gave up midway through the tutorial)
Keep sharing your experiences in that game, I enjoy reading them.
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"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Well ideally it would be sub based and have warnings about stuff like that. Like:
"If you want quest arrows fuck off"
as a big banner on the game site
You would have to intentionally come to the game trolling and expecting to fuck people over. But also try to put extensive protections against map finding.
But yeah people are lazy and selfish and assholes. its not really shocking to me that dev's rarely do cool stuff.
People: The reason we can't have nice things.
If the game wasn't based on Earth history I would probably play it.
It's a very complicated game, and hard to get into for that reason. Do check my two really long posts in the UWO forum on this site if you haven't already.
If you prefer fantasy, that's fine.
But if you're worried that you'll know what and where everything is ahead of time, then that's not going to happen. You can guess some of the discoveries ahead of time (e.g., I correctly guessed that a map to a "large horn animal" near Sofala would be a rhinoceros), but for many, you won't know what it's going to be until you find it. Remember also that anything that happened in the last 480 years or so in real life hasn't yet happened in the game, so everything is very old.
You underestimate my knowledge of history. I won't know every little thing, but I suspect I'll know most of it.
... I can tell you what exploration is *not*.
It's not in a game where every square inch of a zone is put to use, and you're bound to end up all around it for quest objectives. To explore, you pretty much have to go someplace without being told - that's it!... and every game these days makes a habit of overcompensating and requiring players to continually rehash every inch of a map for whatever reason. Like they are grabbing you by the ear and saying "here! look at that! because that took a lot of effort and I want to make sure you see it. Did you see it? Cool... now turn in that quest".
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I would be very, very surprised. For example, in my above description, when the quest talked about a civilization somewhat to the west of Santo Domingo that survived wtihout any obvious source of water, did you think, well obviously that's Chichen Itza? If not, then you're not going to guess half of them before you make the discovery.
Let's take a list of archaeology discoveries that I've found:
Dagger of King Narathihapate
The code of Hittite
The Statue of Lamassu
Ancient Hook
Cartouche
Queen's Lyre
Bronze Decoration
Zheng He's Logbook
Celt
Compass of Zheng He's Fleet
The Colossi at Abu Simbel
The inscription of Merneptah
The Note of Admira Colon
Magellan American Adventures
Earthenware Roller
The Sceptre of King Khufu
The Scaly Pottery of Kot Dijian
The Sceptre of Ptolemy I
Skull with a Hole
The Gold Cup of Julius Caesar
Acha
Bone Flute
Ancient Cart
Gravestone of a Spartan Soldier
The Atacama Giant
The Triad of Menkaure
Jade Bowl
A Mummy
Nilometer
Decorated Earthenware
The Coins of Lydia
The Ivory Statue of King Khufu
Silver of Ancient India
The Treasures of Hulagu
Cyrstal Pitcher
Phoenician Glass Jar
Ancient Boomerang
Stone Arrowheads
The Jewel of Augustus
Sculptured Group of Soldiers
Shell
Clay Work Statue
Incense Burner
Nonstriated Pot
Tetrapod Vessel
The Scepter of Antoninus Pius
The Ramkhamhaeng Stele
Can you describe each of those in a few sentences? Some of those don't a name specific enough to specify a unique real-life object. Even if you know all about Julius Caesar, Ptolemy I, and Zheng He, you're probably not going to guess exactly what their relic will be until you find it.
And let's suppose that I told you that four of those discoveries had Pernambuco as the nearest city. Could you guess which four? (I'm not sure if I went down far enough on my list to pick up all four of them, but the really low level stuff at the bottom of my list does tend to be in Europe.)
The problem is, I think, many people are looking at exploration as being superfluous mainly because in the MMO model they're imagining it being inserted into, it simply doesn't make sense and isn't justified. That's not to say games prior to WoW nerfing MMOs didn't pull it off, because they certainly did in quite a few instances.
Exploration in DAoCs frontiers made sense, for example. There were distinct benefits to finding an out of the way hunting area with fresh bonus exp, rare mobs & drops (plus the one time drop mobs) and little chance of being discovered by opposing realms. Exploration in EQ made sense as there were obviously rare encounters off the beaten path (frontier mountains named cycle was a little known secret for example), mini events that weren't labeled by a large exclamation mark, rare merchants and loot.
Those games were designed with exploration in mind, and it worked. Even early on EQ was so large that hunting down specific information on the web wasn't always guaranteed to be better than in game word of mouth information. Then, after it had a few expansions under it's belt the sheer amount of areas, mobs and loot made tracking down specific event triggers or loot drops more of a challenge than we'd find with the full disclosure we see with WoW Head, for example.
We don't see exploration tacked on to modern day WoW clones because these newer worlds only exist as a surface on which to plop down click x tasks, rather than being the fully fleshed out interactive worlds we used to see, ripe with mini events and secrets, that could stand on their own as content.
Some games have justified having large land masses to explore and travel in by virtue of the tucked away esoteric secrets they held.
More recently though we've seen developers opting to assert more direct control over player experiences by providing linear, preordained paths of advancement and heavily scripting encounters to limit the ways we can approach situations.
Some gamers were introduced to MMOs in just that way and may not have had the opportunity to experience games in which exploration was justified. To them they're probably imagining running around Azeroth for no reason, simply because if you were supposed to be there a giant arrow would be sending you there in the vast majority of cases.
I've had the opportunity to see both sides of the fence and I can say with certainty that I much prefer the less guided approach worlds designed to be explored have taken. I find that open world interaction brings a number of dynamics to the table that you simply cannot have when everyones closed off from eachother in their own little scripted hallway dungeons.
Basically, exploration really only works in game worlds that are designed with the expectation that players will explore. Tacking it on to games like SWTOR or WoW, in which the game world itself only seems to exist as a place to promote their click 10 jugs task content, makes no sense as you'd generally be shooting yourself in the foot by steering off the linear path developers intend for you to take.
Sorry but, isn't the question kind of an Oxymoron?
I mean, how can you have Exploration really in a Themepark?
When you enter a Zoo or an Actual themepark, you are being handed a Map, you know exactly where your going and how to get there, you are never lost, and the experience is mainly about Seeing the excibits or experiencing each ride..but there isn;t exploration really to be had "Hey I found the MCDonald'ss Stand!!"... hehe..
So surelly, a Themepark MMo functions the same way, the NPC tell you where to go, the Maps shows you exactly how to go there..so..what is there really to explore and Discover that is anot already part of the Path laid out for every player?
Ummm...nothing.
Who builds a Themepark where the Rides are hidden from the public?...
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ESKA, Playing MMORPG's since Ultima Online 1997 - Order of the Silver Serpent, Atlantic Shard
*hug*
Ohh My ...Such Explorers of unknown worlds you seem to be...
Guess what...You can explore every game, if you ignore everything and just run around looking ...
The problem here is that developers needs to put things there for you to discover, and if you put things there ..someone WILL find it ...and it will get spoiled on the internet..
That means ...these items/locations/quests/villages or treasures that can be found by exploring , must not be to powerful, because EVERYONE will have these things for free, and it doesnt matter if you ACTUALLY found it or just looked it up..
Just look at the datacrons in SW: TOR , every player WILL have them..part from the honest player that doesn't look for walktroughs on certain websites, he may or may not find them all..So he will be weaksause or weaker than the guy who cheated.