I wish I had the ability to lay down a spring (crafted one time usage of course) and launch myself up hillsides and over mountains. Parachutes would be good too. Thanks
It is not exploration if you follow a mark on your map for the next Vista or Heart Quest.
Exploration is if you can walk off-path and discover something that was not already marked on your map before.
The world is too small and too much filled up with mini-attractions and lacks any opportunities for real exploration.
Promoting exploration in games doesn't neccessarily mean that you give a small treasure chest behind every three.
I get that you dont like the game and i respect your opinion...but saying that Gw2 doesnt offers any reasonable exploration , that the world is small (for gods sake, cities are bigger than some other mmos zones) and that it is too filled with mini atractions is so facepalm-worthy as to give blisters to your own face.
Wht would be an exploration based mmo in your opinion? A vast desert filled with nothing , so it doesnt distracts you from pressing the W key for a few hours till you reach the end of the zone?
"exploration is if you can walk off-path a discover something that was not on your map before" Imho, GW2 revolves around that concept. Heart quest and vistas are last min additions thought to ease the introduction to the game, not core systems. The game itself revolves around the idea of exploring the map, not knowing wht you are going to find. Many of the DE are mobile to enhance that sensation
I am an explorer at heart, and I dont think the game revolves around exploration. It's an insult to consider this game to be favouring explorers. The world is small, cities have a feeling of a stage (the houses around are just set-pieces, you can't enter them, most you can't even approach), the walk speed is slow and there are no mounts so it creates an illusion that it's larger than it really is. Even on your legs, you can circle the borders of any area in this game within 10 minutes at worst. And there are what, ... 16 zones in total - all made the same way, surrounded by impassable hills.
If you asking me what MMORPG I consider to have a strong exploration, and it actually built around exploration, is Vanguard. And it's an insult to even compare these games in terms of their size of worlds and reasonable exploration opportunities.
Vanguard was big, empty, and not worth exploring. Yes you could run forever in one direction, but in a number of areas you won't see so much as a fightable NPC for minutes. What is easier, packing tons of content into a small detailed area, or having a big empty dead area? I can tell you that it is incredibly easy to make huge landscapes in 3D modelers, you use a height map and pretty much call it a day.
GW2 has more to see, do, and find in every inch of it's playspace that Vanguard was able to muster across whole regions of wasteland. I appreciate exploration, but only when there is something to find.
Did you really play Vanguard? Because that's a common missconception of people who didn't. In Vanguard, you can discover dungeons with bosses and unique drops. Vanguard has more than 100 dungeons (each with unique named bosses and drops, how can you even compare that with GW2 size?) and lots of other meaningful exploration points that are NOT MARKED on your map like they are in GW2 even before you explore them.
The city of Aghram in VG itself is larger than all GW2 cities stacked next to each other. The size of each continent is 25x25 km not counting sea area and there are 2 large continents and one smaller one (with about 15x15km). And I repeat, the game has over 100 dungeons, NPCs that you have to discover to open your CLASS QUESTS or special GEAR QUESTS, that are NOT MARKED on your map.
Exploration in GW2 is consisted of - Vista (marked on map) and DE (marked if you get close).
GW2 is way too structured to offer anything I would personally call exploration.
Whole maps are marked with things like 'points of interest' and you get various points for going to those pre-marked points. Besides game is zoned and those zones are cramped and tightly packed with various mark, points and mobs. No wilds, no real discovering.
It is more like completing pre-defined 'achievement' by going to all pre-marked points on map.
So sorry way too structured for me to get enjoyment from this activity in this game.
Want to what I mean by exploration? Only recent game that had real exploration is Dark Souls.
It is not mmo, but well no decently-funded mmorpg offered any exploration in many years already.
Structured? WHAT???? I know you do not know what you are talking about. The only thing that is structured is the game code itself. You don't even have to do your personal story if you dont want to.
I spent all of last night going through the sylvari starting area with my lvl 21 human necro. Found 2 jump puzzles. Havent even explored much of the underwater landscape.
It is not exploration if you follow a mark on your map for the next Vista or Heart Quest.
Exploration is if you can walk off-path and discover something that was not already marked on your map before.
The world is too small and too much filled up with mini-attractions and lacks any opportunities for real exploration.
Promoting exploration in games doesn't neccessarily mean that you give a small treasure chest behind every three.
I get that you dont like the game and i respect your opinion...but saying that Gw2 doesnt offers any reasonable exploration , that the world is small (for gods sake, cities are bigger than some other mmos zones) and that it is too filled with mini atractions is so facepalm-worthy as to give blisters to your own face.
Wht would be an exploration based mmo in your opinion? A vast desert filled with nothing , so it doesnt distracts you from pressing the W key for a few hours till you reach the end of the zone?
"exploration is if you can walk off-path a discover something that was not on your map before" Imho, GW2 revolves around that concept. Heart quest and vistas are last min additions thought to ease the introduction to the game, not core systems. The game itself revolves around the idea of exploring the map, not knowing wht you are going to find. Many of the DE are mobile to enhance that sensation
I am an explorer at heart, and I dont think the game revolves around exploration. It's an insult to consider this game to be favouring explorers. The world is small, cities have a feeling of a stage (the houses around are just set-pieces, you can't enter them, most you can't even approach), the walk speed is slow and there are no mounts so it creates an illusion that it's larger than it really is. Even on your legs, you can circle the borders of any area in this game within 10 minutes at worst. And there are what, ... 16 zones in total - all made the same way, surrounded by impassable hills.
If you asking me what MMORPG I consider to have a strong exploration, and it actually built around exploration, is Vanguard. And it's an insult to even compare these games in terms of their size of worlds and reasonable exploration opportunities.
Vanguard was big, empty, and not worth exploring. Yes you could run forever in one direction, but in a number of areas you won't see so much as a fightable NPC for minutes. What is easier, packing tons of content into a small detailed area, or having a big empty dead area? I can tell you that it is incredibly easy to make huge landscapes in 3D modelers, you use a height map and pretty much call it a day.
GW2 has more to see, do, and find in every inch of it's playspace that Vanguard was able to muster across whole regions of wasteland. I appreciate exploration, but only when there is something to find.
Did you really play Vanguard? Because that's a common missconception of people who didn't. In Vanguard, you can discover dungeons with bosses and unique drops. Vanguard has more than 100 dungeons (each with unique named bosses and drops, how can you even compare that with GW2 size?) and lots of other meaningful exploration points that are NOT MARKED on your map like they are in GW2 even before you explore them.
The city of Aghram in VG itself is larger than all GW2 cities stacked next to each other. The size of each continent is 25x25 km not counting sea area and there are 2 large continents and one smaller one (with about 15x15km). And I repeat, the game has over 100 dungeons, NPCs that you have to discover to open your CLASS QUESTS or special GEAR QUESTS, that are NOT MARKED on your map.
Exploration in GW2 is consisted of - Vista (marked on map) and DE (marked if you get close).
I did play Vanguard. I was one of the suckers that bought it and played since day one (i didnt last long, obviously).
Apart from the horrible buggy state, it was a totally empty world when it was released. I also played Dark and Light, which was considerably bigger than Vanguard (the only feasible way to explore it was flying) and just as empty. Dont talk to me about size zones. I already fell for that twice. It amazes me that still works for some people, though.
Go play FFXIV, theyve refined the technique. They no longer give you hundreds of miles of nothing, now they give you the same tiny zone repeated fifty times in a row. Got to move with the times
Sorry, but if all you are doing is going to the next vista and heart quest, you are not exploring... The vast majority of cool stuff is not marked. In fact, the Hearts weren't even added till right around the press BWE, and the vistas only came in after pre-purchase. The reason for them is to give people who can't figure out that they are supposed to explore a reason to move around the map and possibly notice other things. They said that they found in the earlier betas that people had a lot of trouble because there wasn't enough hand-holding...
Sorry, but if you haven't found anything but what was marked on your map, you aren't really an explorer.
I did play Vanguard. I was one of the suckers that bought it and played since day one (i didnt last long, obviously).
Apart from the horrible buggy state, it was a totally empty world when it was released. I also played Dark and Light, which was considerably bigger than Vanguard (the only feasible way to explore it was flying) and just as empty. Dont talk to me about size zones. I already fell for that twice. It amazes me that still works for some people, though.
Go play FFXIV, theyve refined the technique. They no longer give you hundreds of miles of nothing, now they give you the same tiny zone repeated fifty times in a row. Got to move with the times
Well Vanguard has alot of people also 'in wilds'. For first 2 weeks that is ;p
Absymal performance (which was getting lot worse with more people around and like 90% of people I've know could not even play this game at more than 10 fps on average and many got even absymal performance like 2-3 fps that made then log almost insantly) and insane amount of bugs and exploits that ruined economy in matter of days and spawned lot of gold sellers - drown people away fast and THEN it got one big huge deserted game.
With this amount of problems Vanguard had even WoW would fail.
FFXIV actually paid for this darely with huge fail and supposedly SE fixed this problem with FFXIV 2.0.
Is the GW2 launch and associated issues making SWTOR look good and shifting momentum back to WoW. Swtor launch was smooth as a babies butt compared to this. If they don't get this fixed in like 21 days does anyone think people will bail on it for a couple months and then come back for a second chance?
It is not exploration if you follow a mark on your map for the next Vista or Heart Quest.
Exploration is if you can walk off-path and discover something that was not already marked on your map before.
The world is too small and too much filled up with mini-attractions and lacks any opportunities for real exploration.
Promoting exploration in games doesn't neccessarily mean that you give a small treasure chest behind every three.
This is the most laughable and false statement here. I've played most of the major MMO releases over the past decade, and GW2 offers more rewarding exploration than any of them. I say that not along the lines of "GW2 is the best MMO eva!" but that the devs have specifically made the game with exploration in mind. There are custom, secret caves and places all over the place with treasure rewards, there are jumping puzzles, there are strange and custom gameplay mechanics which have been built specifically for little exploration areas... saying what you've said here is just ignorant of the game. The world is massive.
What else, besides events (I mean the events which haven't been triggered by another player), jumping puzzles and caves can you find while exploring?
well for one- there are many unique creatures to kill-which you get aachivement for- if you play with the sound off, you will missout on the conversations from villagers pay attention to what they say- they may lead you somewhere you havent seen.
personal story will grant you access to areas you wouldnt normally goto. clicking on things and reading (YES READING LORE) is a vast point of GW2 game play not just goping around aimlessly killing stuff. like 95% of current mmos are doing today.
this- my friend, is a very intellectual mmo. no dumbed down-spoon feeding- hand holding MMO.
this is good enough for me to put away any other mmos ive been playing in the past.
Exploration comes in different forms with each game,GW2 has a wonderful world full of adventure around every corner.
But your line in yellow is wrong,Vanguard makes GW2 look small,their is no comparison i'm afraid.And before you say it,Vanguard has so much content that it would take years to complete,it is vast on an epic scale.
What else, besides events (I mean the events which haven't been triggered by another player), jumping puzzles and caves can you find while exploring?
Lots of stuff - example I am an old GW1 player and I found the remnants of ToA (Temple of the Ages) in GW2 as well as other things that I saw in that game - it is interesting to go back and see all of it.
Exploration comes in different forms with each game,GW2 has a wonderful world full of adventure around every corner.
But your line in yellow is wrong,Vanguard makes GW2 look small,their is no comparison i'm afraid.And before you say it,Vanguard has so much content that it would take years to complete,it is vast on an epic scale.
I tried Vangaurd and it was so buggy that any explorations I did made the experience unenjoyable.
Don't forget in GW1, we went to Elona and Cantha and those are very small zones.
Also based on GW lore, Humans were brought to Tyria from another planet. It would be interesting to go back and explore the region where Humans forst came to Tyria. The poin of the video is to show HOW much A.Net thought ahead. We shall see home much they add in in expansions.
It is not exploration if you follow a mark on your map for the next Vista or Heart Quest.
Exploration is if you can walk off-path and discover something that was not already marked on your map before.
The world is too small and too much filled up with mini-attractions and lacks any opportunities for real exploration.
Promoting exploration in games doesn't neccessarily mean that you give a small treasure chest behind every three.
While there are markers, there are loads of stuff that is not marked in anyway. Found some good things just by wandering to some place that on map had absolutely nothing interesting going on.
There areall sorts of things that aren't marked on the maps.
Just yesterday I did the dragon's mouth Vista in Lion's Arch and I decided to see what happened if I jumped down the mouth.
First you have to survive the jump,then you find the maze,then you go through 2 invivible walls,then there is the longest jumping puzzle I've found so far-with corridors,spikes coming out of the walls,jumping,climbing,etc.
the jump quests are the only real exploration bit... going to the vistas and POIs do not count as exploration as they are clearly marked on the map.. my idea of exporation is you go out not know what you will find.. like the jumping bits.. tho GW2s controls are a bit clunky for it to be a fun platform jumpnig game..
It is nice to see them trying somthing a bit different when it comes to exploration but its a shame they decided to mark nearly everything else on the map.
As I said in another thread. I can go grab a map of my state or whatever and see the cities on the map. It doesnt mean I know the details of everything between or wont find anything interesting.
Even with some stuff marked on the map, there is still plenty to find on your own. Theres jumping puzzles, triggers to DEs that dont occur automatically, hidden niches where youll find tough groups of mobs gathered together with some sort of boss at the end and treasure chests or rich ore nodes, and just really cool loking and fun places to run through and see. None of those things are marked on the map. You find them by actually paying attentiont to your surroundings and exploring to find hidden paths/tunnels/caves and stuff. I laugh at the people who simply walk from Point A to Point B only focusing on getting to point B, then claiming there arent things to explore and discover. Youre only getting your hand held and being lead from place to place if you let it happen.
and let's not forget the hidden farms! Great xp and rarer cooking mats (love finding those)
the jump quests are the only real exploration bit... going to the vistas and POIs do not count as exploration as they are clearly marked on the map.. my idea of exporation is you go out not know what you will find.. like the jumping bits.. tho GW2s controls are a bit clunky for it to be a fun platform jumpnig game..
It is nice to see them trying somthing a bit different when it comes to exploration but its a shame they decided to mark nearly everything else on the map.
You know you can toggle everything off if you like.
Am i the only one who went and explore places with no vista or POI , i found at least 5 underground passage or cavern with no poi or vista, i explored anyways and sometime there are villages, champion mobs or random chest..
I an explorer at heart. Until now my preferred mmo worlds were AC1, EQ1, VG, etc... I love to explore vast worlds.
GW2 is the first mmorpg in a long time that has an amazing amount of exploration. The amount of hidden areas in this game has been staggering, and I am only level 30 so far! Lion's Arch alone is massive and has a lot to explore. There's plenty of hidden areas and tough to get to spots. So much to discover in this game.
There's TONS of explorer stuff to do. Even when it IS marked on the map, that often doesn't tell the whole story.
You can get into secret places, spawn boss/world mobs, all kinds of stuff that you have to figure out on your own. Kneeling in front of a certain altar, for example, opened up some lore as well as the secret to spawning an area boss by saying its name.
There are a number of these sorts of things I've run into that I've yet to figure out. A tree with some letters carved into it. An old graveyard deep in a cave underground. NPC's whose pets are missing...
It feels a ton like the old school adventure games; so many things I've run into where there's obviously more to the story.
Underwater caves and the like aren't the half of it.
Comments
Did you really play Vanguard? Because that's a common missconception of people who didn't. In Vanguard, you can discover dungeons with bosses and unique drops. Vanguard has more than 100 dungeons (each with unique named bosses and drops, how can you even compare that with GW2 size?) and lots of other meaningful exploration points that are NOT MARKED on your map like they are in GW2 even before you explore them.
The city of Aghram in VG itself is larger than all GW2 cities stacked next to each other. The size of each continent is 25x25 km not counting sea area and there are 2 large continents and one smaller one (with about 15x15km). And I repeat, the game has over 100 dungeons, NPCs that you have to discover to open your CLASS QUESTS or special GEAR QUESTS, that are NOT MARKED on your map.
Exploration in GW2 is consisted of - Vista (marked on map) and DE (marked if you get close).
REALITY CHECK
Have you played the game? i have never played a game with more secret adventures hidding in it.
first time a ran the pirate puzzle was one of the most original and fun experiences i've ever had in a game period, let alone an mmorpg
Structured? WHAT???? I know you do not know what you are talking about. The only thing that is structured is the game code itself. You don't even have to do your personal story if you dont want to.
Again, another uniformed soul speaks.
nice article- and i believe pvp needs a whole write up!.
when i entered- it just expanded the game a thousand times over!!!!= thats a whole ball park!
it felt like a whole new expansion to gw2!!!!
I did play Vanguard. I was one of the suckers that bought it and played since day one (i didnt last long, obviously).
Apart from the horrible buggy state, it was a totally empty world when it was released. I also played Dark and Light, which was considerably bigger than Vanguard (the only feasible way to explore it was flying) and just as empty. Dont talk to me about size zones. I already fell for that twice. It amazes me that still works for some people, though.
Go play FFXIV, theyve refined the technique. They no longer give you hundreds of miles of nothing, now they give you the same tiny zone repeated fifty times in a row. Got to move with the times
@Thillian
Sorry, but if all you are doing is going to the next vista and heart quest, you are not exploring... The vast majority of cool stuff is not marked. In fact, the Hearts weren't even added till right around the press BWE, and the vistas only came in after pre-purchase. The reason for them is to give people who can't figure out that they are supposed to explore a reason to move around the map and possibly notice other things. They said that they found in the earlier betas that people had a lot of trouble because there wasn't enough hand-holding...
Sorry, but if you haven't found anything but what was marked on your map, you aren't really an explorer.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Antre_of_Adjournment
These types of things aren't marked on your map. People had to explore and look very closely to find them.
This is not a game.
Well Vanguard has alot of people also 'in wilds'. For first 2 weeks that is ;p
Absymal performance (which was getting lot worse with more people around and like 90% of people I've know could not even play this game at more than 10 fps on average and many got even absymal performance like 2-3 fps that made then log almost insantly) and insane amount of bugs and exploits that ruined economy in matter of days and spawned lot of gold sellers - drown people away fast and THEN it got one big huge deserted game.
With this amount of problems Vanguard had even WoW would fail.
FFXIV actually paid for this darely with huge fail and supposedly SE fixed this problem with FFXIV 2.0.
No one answered my question:
What else, besides events (I mean the events which haven't been triggered by another player), jumping puzzles and caves can you find while exploring?
This is the most laughable and false statement here. I've played most of the major MMO releases over the past decade, and GW2 offers more rewarding exploration than any of them. I say that not along the lines of "GW2 is the best MMO eva!" but that the devs have specifically made the game with exploration in mind. There are custom, secret caves and places all over the place with treasure rewards, there are jumping puzzles, there are strange and custom gameplay mechanics which have been built specifically for little exploration areas... saying what you've said here is just ignorant of the game. The world is massive.
well for one- there are many unique creatures to kill-which you get aachivement for- if you play with the sound off, you will missout on the conversations from villagers pay attention to what they say- they may lead you somewhere you havent seen.
personal story will grant you access to areas you wouldnt normally goto. clicking on things and reading (YES READING LORE) is a vast point of GW2 game play not just goping around aimlessly killing stuff. like 95% of current mmos are doing today.
this- my friend, is a very intellectual mmo. no dumbed down-spoon feeding- hand holding MMO.
this is good enough for me to put away any other mmos ive been playing in the past.
i have not explored underwater much but i assume theres things to find
underwater is certainly not "all mapped out"
EQ2 fan sites
Exploration comes in different forms with each game,GW2 has a wonderful world full of adventure around every corner.
But your line in yellow is wrong,Vanguard makes GW2 look small,their is no comparison i'm afraid.And before you say it,Vanguard has so much content that it would take years to complete,it is vast on an epic scale.
Lots of stuff - example I am an old GW1 player and I found the remnants of ToA (Temple of the Ages) in GW2 as well as other things that I saw in that game - it is interesting to go back and see all of it.
I tried Vangaurd and it was so buggy that any explorations I did made the experience unenjoyable.
Don't forget in GW1, we went to Elona and Cantha and those are very small zones.
Also based on GW lore, Humans were brought to Tyria from another planet. It would be interesting to go back and explore the region where Humans forst came to Tyria. The poin of the video is to show HOW much A.Net thought ahead. We shall see home much they add in in expansions.
There areall sorts of things that aren't marked on the maps.
Just yesterday I did the dragon's mouth Vista in Lion's Arch and I decided to see what happened if I jumped down the mouth.
First you have to survive the jump,then you find the maze,then you go through 2 invivible walls,then there is the longest jumping puzzle I've found so far-with corridors,spikes coming out of the walls,jumping,climbing,etc.
None of it is on the map.
the jump quests are the only real exploration bit... going to the vistas and POIs do not count as exploration as they are clearly marked on the map.. my idea of exporation is you go out not know what you will find.. like the jumping bits.. tho GW2s controls are a bit clunky for it to be a fun platform jumpnig game..
It is nice to see them trying somthing a bit different when it comes to exploration but its a shame they decided to mark nearly everything else on the map.
and let's not forget the hidden farms! Great xp and rarer cooking mats
(love finding those)
You know you can toggle everything off if you like.
Am i the only one who went and explore places with no vista or POI , i found at least 5 underground passage or cavern with no poi or vista, i explored anyways and sometime there are villages, champion mobs or random chest..
Vista and poi shows a lot, but not everything
I an explorer at heart. Until now my preferred mmo worlds were AC1, EQ1, VG, etc... I love to explore vast worlds.
GW2 is the first mmorpg in a long time that has an amazing amount of exploration. The amount of hidden areas in this game has been staggering, and I am only level 30 so far! Lion's Arch alone is massive and has a lot to explore. There's plenty of hidden areas and tough to get to spots. So much to discover in this game.
There's TONS of explorer stuff to do. Even when it IS marked on the map, that often doesn't tell the whole story.
You can get into secret places, spawn boss/world mobs, all kinds of stuff that you have to figure out on your own. Kneeling in front of a certain altar, for example, opened up some lore as well as the secret to spawning an area boss by saying its name.
There are a number of these sorts of things I've run into that I've yet to figure out. A tree with some letters carved into it. An old graveyard deep in a cave underground. NPC's whose pets are missing...
It feels a ton like the old school adventure games; so many things I've run into where there's obviously more to the story.
Underwater caves and the like aren't the half of it.