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Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Rewarding exploration
Wandering Mist
Member, Founder, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
In a lot of mmorpgs, exploration is rewarded with achievements and/or titles that always seemed very arbitrary to me. They basically turn into tick-the-box activities of "go here" "now go there" "congrats, you've explored the world" when all you really did was go from point A to point B to point C.
To me, this isn't exploration, especially when the world is basically the same no matter where you go. All the houses you go to look the same, all the creatures you find are at best re-colours of things you've seen in previous zones.
In order to truly reward exploration there needs to be interesting things to find, things that aren't found anywhere else, like a hidden waterfall in the middle of a jungle, or a unique creature that only lives in a specific part of the world, or a sunken ship that contains a little piece of lore.
TLDR: You don't need a tick-sheet or achievement to reward exploration, just give us interesting and unique things to find.
Question for you all: What kind of things would you like to find while exploring the world?
To me, this isn't exploration, especially when the world is basically the same no matter where you go. All the houses you go to look the same, all the creatures you find are at best re-colours of things you've seen in previous zones.
In order to truly reward exploration there needs to be interesting things to find, things that aren't found anywhere else, like a hidden waterfall in the middle of a jungle, or a unique creature that only lives in a specific part of the world, or a sunken ship that contains a little piece of lore.
TLDR: You don't need a tick-sheet or achievement to reward exploration, just give us interesting and unique things to find.
Question for you all: What kind of things would you like to find while exploring the world?
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Comments
I would like to see special areas of interest as part of a quest chain to either assault these areas or do some form of recon mission. If this were tied into the story, it would add to the lore while we explore those points of interest. Some of these areas just simply deserve to be viewed and it is nice to be rewarded for doing so.
haha
I want to find a player worth 3 million tree stumps.
But seriously black deserts talk to everyone and go here and there for energy pts was the worst, at least it had autopathing.
Why reward exploration though?
Exploration is its own reward. You learn how to better navigate the world. That is what is important about exploration in both the real world and fake worlds. Anything beyond that is just making exploration out to be more than it actually is.
Back when I played Elite: Dangerous there was a guy who spent like 6 months going as far away from the starting area as possible. A lot of news was generated online about the guy who spent months exploring space that no one had ever seen before. People were excited and praising the game. None of the news about the guy really told the reality of the story. It is extremely repetitive gameplay. Warping... Scooping fuel... Scanning... Warping... Over and Over for months on end. No breaks from that loop, you are too far from any other content. It is about as boring as the Dessert Bus game from Penn and Teller. Yet, people were celebrating this game like it was some sort of explorers dream game. My point is that the act of exploring is over hyped.
What is more important to me is that the landscape stays mostly the same so you are rewarded in learning to get around well, but the locations of creatures and resources change. Which is something I understand Ashes is doing with the hunting grounds and adaptive content. This means that you will always be exploring looking for the mobs you want to grind and the resources you want to gather. While it might seem like a pain in the ass if you are used to knowing where everything is like in other MMOs. I think the dynamic content will reward everyone that is willing to explore and it will make getting resources that much more valuable.
To me just having the adaptive content is a way better exploration system than what most games do. It is part of the reason why Minecraft is so popular. Every time you leave an area and come back there are different mobs there. Anyone who has played modded Minecraft with a ton mobs in the game knows this to be true. Just having less things in the game be static is huge.
This is my personal feedback, shared to help the game thrive in its niche.
Exploration is indeed it's own reward, IF there are varied and interesting things to find. I never bothered to go exploring much in Elite Dangerous because 99% of the game looked exactly the same. Occasionally you'd find a different nebula visual, and it was cool going to the Sol system and seeing Earth from outer space, but that was about it.
I agree that adaptive content is important which is why I love the dynamic world Ashes wishes to craft. One thing I read on the wiki recently was that entrances to the Underrealm will open and close based on happenings in the overworld. This alone will reward exploration more than most other mmorpgs.
This was something I was thinking about recently. Remember in the old Zelda games when you went into a dungeon the first time you were essentially going in blind with no minimap to follow until you found the compass and map for that dungeon.
I would like to see a similar system implemented for Ashes. There is no minimap at the start, just a compass on the UI. In order to get a map you had to buy one. You could buy a basic map from an NPC that would give a very basic lay of the land, only showing things like roads and settlements of the local area. However, you could freely annotate that map and sell your annotated maps to other players.
This kind of exploration is the kind of thing I can see working in an MMO.
Exploration where you get to a spot in the world, gain some advantage (experience, coin or an item - or even just achievement credit to those that think this important) will always be just a check list of points to go to when you have the time.
However, if the reward for exploration is simply a better understanding of the world, that is likely to be more rewarding for players actually going out and looking at the world.
By that I mean, will the world map appear fogged if I don't leave my corner of the world? Or will the fog disperse with other players discovering more of the world?
In the event that the fog of war is personal to your character, I would make it so you get an achievement and title for clearing 25-50-75-100% of it in those increments.
Otherwise I wouldn't mind exploration be tied to series of specific interest points, or to having to visit all the nodes, rather than having to explore every square kilometer of the world (including the sea).
Like in every area you have a page in you book, you need to discover and learn about all monster in that area , kill them a certain amount of times, you have always some hidden storys/quests and 2 mains quests about the region, dungeons, view points, type of collectable items and recipes from the region ... While you going filling you page to 100% you will get great rewards.
Something like this
How is that any different to the sightseeing log in FFXIV, or the map completion in GW2?
FFXIV never played, but in gw2 the exploration system never felt the rewards useful, and didn´t give me motivation to explore... The presentation of the books pages like sticker collector from lost ark was really appellative, is like filling a Page in your diary about the lore of that area, and the rewards you get are useful even in the endgame... But yes in general is similar to gw2
Finding cool/important stuff that not everyone else has seen outside in the world and you know people could potentially find you and sabotage that quest or event or whatever just gets the adrenaline going and triggers all my reward systems in an mmo.
The most useful thing about Fog-of-War and 'checklists' is that they let you know that you still haven't trod everywhere a toon can trod. Wouldn't mind it, if there was something like a sight-seeing log.
A friend of mine convinced me to play an indie MMO with a more old-school feel to it called Projoect Gorgon. Originally I was apprehensive because it looked quite unpolished and rough around the edges but I love what they did with rewarding exploration.
Not only are you encouraged to talk with everyone (there are no quest markers) but various NPC's and stuff you find around the world unlocks various new abilities or you can find crafting recipes you can't find anywhere else. Stuff like this is often entirely absent from MMOs now days and the genre has turned into nothing more than follow the linear quest arrow. I truly hope Ashes shy's away from this and incorporates stuff like this to encourage exploration.
Maybe you have to journey for 20-30 minutes fighting your way through the wilds to get to a waterfall with a special type of collectable resource. Maybe there's a lone quest giver out by that waterfall that pushes you further into the wild but offers a unique quest reward item!
It could be as simple as a small little village with a unique, charming culture where you can pickup some unique stat boosting recipes.
Exploration needs to feel rewarding and the way you do that is by bringing value to the time you spent doing it. I'm not a big fan of rewards built into a game system, like an achievement system that pumps out rewards as you hit "100% explored for X area" It doesn't promote the feeling of being rewarded by the specific area you exploring, only that you're doing another go to x location, walk around, get your reward.
While the style used to present t the tasks seems like an interesting idea, the tasks themselves are still just a check list of things to do. You are not exploring an area so much as going to an area and doing the same list of a limited number of things that everyone else is doing in the area.
The issue with these things is that they reward the first person to go out and find them, and then after that everyone knows they are there.
If there is a village with rare recipes, then the first person to find it (likely in beta) did the exploring, and everyone else just knows that is the village you go to if you want those recipes.
This kind of thing is less about exploration and more about adding in a minimum amount of effort to get what ever is in that location.
I do agree with you that the notion of an achievement system for exploration simply wouldn't work.
To add to it, don't have them walk a discoverable route. Have a RNG in their routing so each two days (or whatever the time is) they go somewhere, so there is a 1/24 possibility the cook with the great elk stew is going to actually be in Noaanitown on a given day. But another cook will be there with a cherry pie recipe. The cherry pie will buff your magic attack while the elk stew buffed physical attacks.
Beware the egg salad recipe, it slows you for two hours to imitate giving you the runs. Serve that to your enemies! The recipe for Irish Coffee gives you a free 'drunken stumble' emote for a two hours and mis-spells words you type in chat.
In my mind, it makes me think of different areas around the world being hot spots for different professions or classes for these types of incentives. Maybe some village in the mountains has a master healer and you see classes with that discipline seeking them out for that specific value that he brings! Bonus points for this not being spoon fed to the player via quest line!
Does this create a situation where a player could have an advantage over another player that hasn't yet located or made the trek yet? It absolutely does and I would argue that's a good thing! How rewarding and alive does the world feel when your exploration rewards you in that way! All of a sudden you have players actively seeking out and enjoying every inch the world has to offer!
And I agree there are definitely ways to keep things more dynamic so it's not like a discovered and done type deal. The way the nodes evolve and develop can and should put changes into these types of area! Perhaps you can only learn from that healing master in the mountain village during a time of peace in the node.
I'm just throwing out examples off the top of my head, but the way the world works in this game really allows for exploration to be one of the most exciting aspects to look forward to!
Unlike in wow, where you can see the whole list of possible "exploration" achievements to get ...
As soon as you get the "list of things to explore", it goes from an "exploration" game to an "achievement" game (ticking the checklist), which is a whole different thing ... (for some ppl, this means going from "exciting, inspiring experience" to "tedious chores").
Say, if I have a special title attained through exploration, the reaction I'd love to see is:
A: "Wow, how did you get that title?"
Me: "haha you want to know? Well study the lore and GO FIND OUT YOURSELF. Hint: You can't even find it on the internet!"
A series of isolated statues scattered across Verra?
Natural markers, such as lakes, mountain peaks, unusual trees, etc?
Ancient monuments built by the previous inhabitants of Verra?
I would definitely love to have ways to learn more about the lore of such Points of Interest.
I don't think early-bird-gets-the worm is necessarily problematic because Points of Interest should also be tied to Node development, including Stage, Racial population, Social Org status, services built, etc... in addition to biome, geographical location and pre-exodus/post-exodus history.
I would love to have some hidden dungeons and maybe a secret map system. I imagine markers or statues may be hidden on the world, and when found or interacted with, marked on your map. After long searching you start finding enough of ones with a theme (Birds, God symbols, whatever) to triangulate between them and when you search that point, find a hidden spot a dungeon has been spawned. Or if triangulation is too hard, a map with the symbols on it as land marks found as a drop, or instructions in lore of a library spawn the search.
Basically, you are just talking about an access quest for a dungeon, not exploration.
Please tell me they don't allow players to name them. Or we'll have the dumbest ones.
Also I shall ask again: is the world map's fog of war shared between all players?
Do I have to explore all the world for it clear? Or does other players exploring the world clear it for everyone?
They have already ruled out players naming the nodes.
The most likely scenario is that there will be a list of names for players to select from.
As to the fog of war thing, it wouldn't make sense for it to be one that is shared between all players. With 10k players on a server at a time, it wouldn't take long before it was all cleared.