Rewarding exploration

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?

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

Noaani

godmilk wrote: »

This is a super important aspect of an MMO and the answer lies with value. There needs to be incentive to explore out into the corners of the world that main quest lines or pathing wouldn't normally take you.

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.

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.

tautau

Unless the NPC who gives the recipe moves...'maybe the NPC recipe family' has 24 cousins, each with a different recipe, and they all walk around the world to visit each other. So there are 24 places to visit, though part of the time the NPCs are walking between them so there isn't anyone in the village, though you might meet him on the road.

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.

godmilk

I love the ideas being floated around! I also agree with the point @Noaani brought up regarding it can feel like a early bird gets the worm situation but thinking through it a bit more, doesn't that kind of promote a cool multi-culture aspect to the world?

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!

Voidwalkers

I think one of the keys to rewarding exploration is that the rewards / achievements must be HIDDEN. i.e. you only know it exists after you've attained it.

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!"

daveywavey

Wandering Mist wrote: »

Question for you all: What kind of things would you like to find while exploring the world?

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?

Dygz

APOC had a small grove with an effigy of a Wood God.
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.

BigRamble

For titles and the map, I have no issue with check point exploration. Exploration rewards should more be in finding pretty/interesting spots, odd caravan passes, and resource spawns. Especially as if the world doesn't change except by nodes, then the actual map isn't changing, just the specifics on it - so general area exploration only rewards those on day one.

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.

Noaani

BigRamble wrote: »

For titles and the map, I have no issue with check point exploration. Exploration rewards should more be in finding pretty/interesting spots, odd caravan passes, and resource spawns. Especially as if the world doesn't change except by nodes, then the actual map isn't changing, just the specifics on it - so general area exploration only rewards those on day one.

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.

This would very quickly be reduced by the general population to the fastest way to get from point to point in order to gain access to the dungeon.

Basically, you are just talking about an access quest for a dungeon, not exploration.

Asgerr

BTW do we know if the nodes have specific names? Or are they just a Node?
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?

Noaani

Asgerr wrote: »

BTW do we know if the nodes have specific names? Or are they just a Node?
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.

Percimes

I think the greatest reward achievable through exploration should be doing so much in a remote area on your own that you get the node to village stage, and you name to place.

Nagash

Why do I feel im going to get a ton of grave robbers and tomb raiders at my door

Dygz

Nodes have several names that Mayors can choose.

Ryoshin25

Unique and very different areas of the world. The biomes will be a important part of making it interesting to explore and lose yourself in Vera. The ever changing nature I think will help drive it as well. I think the Art style book Ramirez linked earlier is very cool some may think its still a checkbox thing but I believe many would enjoy that artbook. Since there is so much drive on moving from place to place I think exploration will become many players natural enjoyment.

Rinta

Wandering Mist wrote: »

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.

Wandering Mist wrote: »

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 with you on this - it would be great if exploration, or at least some part of it, was not reward-driven.
A hidden beautiful view drastically loses its charm when everyone and their grandma went to this same spot because you have to collect all the "vistas" to get the "map bonus".
And it would definitely be great if despite that - there were still deliberately crafted places worth exploring.

Unfortunately some of the comments in this thread seem to be missing the point.
"A hidden Dungeon/Achievement/NPC with rare recipe"? This is not a single player game, it's not "hidden" - it's going to be listed in the Wiki because if this Dungeon or Recipe is useful at all - everyone will want it, and if it is an Achievement - well, most people probably know this nagging feeling of dread when you don't really care, but you need to unlock all the little squares on the achievement page...
A hidden place worth to be explored, really explored and not autopathed to or found with a guide from wiki, must have no gameplay value apart from maybe text-based lore.

I already mentioned in some earlier thread - my favourite example of this kind of exploration is Skyrim (it is also singleplayer unfortunately, I have no good multiplayer examples). One of the best exploration bits in Skyrim were random skeletons, each of which would "tell" a story. A skull with two skeletal hands above it - haha, funny deer. A skeleton at a mountainside with a dozen of swords piercing its chest - well, someone must have hated this one. Many were way off the roads and definitely not something everyone was expected to find, and many would give me a good chuckle. No quests, no lore, just some funny skeletons.

Gubiak

To my experience a beautiful area with absolutely nothing in it ultimately will leave area forgotten by average mmorpg player since there was no point of interest there that would either reward them for finding the place or even compensated for the time spent on navigating there. While areas like that might be appreciated by hardcore Role Playing audience most will label this as a nice place with nothing in it. I would say that having anything there would sometimes suffice. Scenario I envision would be abandoned ruins of a coliseum with an open roof that lets moonlight shine down on a half-broken, unreadable grave with a fresh flower at it's base. If a player would collect the flower another would appear another day/week. It could create a source of speculations and telltales that could have some following in NPC dialogue... or not, and have lore youtube channels freak over a nameless grave and a reappearing flower trying to figure it out like it's a pendant from Dark Souls, it might just not yield anything but with very little effort a place that was empty and bound to be forgotten could be made interesting making it a sufficient non-material reward for people willing to explore without having a: monster, loot, collectable node, NPC (which is not to say it's bad to have those kinds of rewards in my opinion but I am assuming we are trying to avoid that in this thread).

neuroguy

I think different players will require different carrots for exploring. Some will want explicit rewards (like loot) while others will be happy with a cool scenery. I think have explicit things in the game that rewards exploration where exploration heavy players (those of us who enjoyed elder scrolls style games a lot) can invest in and make their natural tendency to explore anyways, rewarding. In my opinion that would be the gathering artisan tree and some treasure hunting mechanic (finding a map or riddle where you hunt down some undisclosed reward that requires you to have that treasure map to yield loot). This way, you are not over-rewarding exploration to force people who are not that into it to be interested. Similarly, those who have a natural tendency to explore will feel their efforts rewarded on top of finding cool sceneries and all the other inherent/implicit rewards AoC provides.

Voidwalkers

Nagash wrote: »

Why do I feel im going to get a ton of grave robbers and tomb raiders at my door

I suspect your freehold will become a famous tourist spot/trap.

There'll be a whole bunch of selfie-screenshots on the internet titled something like "Me at Citadel of Nagash, dwelling of the world-famous necromancer"

What they do after taking a selfie is ... a different story.

Jamation

So, I’m not sure if this is exactly what you mean or how this would necessarily work in an MMO, but I love seeing the NPC’s doing what they’ll say they’ll do. I also love seeing if a random comment or line of text holds weight in the game world.

For the first point, in one game there is a side quest that takes place at the beginning of the game, almost as part of a tutorial to teach you about dungeons. It’s just a single quest given by this new party and they’re never really mentioned again. However, if you talk to the members of this party, they’ll mention going to X location or doing X. After progressing through the story, you can find them doing exactly what they said they would. They aren’t doing anything to draw your attention and if you’re blindly running through the game, you’d never notice them. But if you sit down and talk with them at these various locations, you’ll learn about their personal struggles with becoming adventurers and the loss they’ve experienced along the way. It's just a small storyline with no tangible reward or benefit other than to the player's own experience.

On the second, there are times when an NPC will have flavor text about how they’ve dropped something or seen something crazy in a certain location. Just a line of floating text over their head to make them seem alive and give them a bit of movement. Most of the time it’s nothing more than that, just some text that pops over their head over and over as the player gets close to them. But when it turns out you can go to the field and see the picnic this person dropped, even if you can’t do anything with it, it’s always neat.

So, in short, I love finding bits of lore that won’t impact a normal player but will enhance the experience of those looking for it. As well as characters having even the slightest shred of depth even if nothing but the journey comes from it.

Blackhearted

Havent they already stated that there will be rare resources to look for and gather? Wouldnt this already be enough to reward exploration?

Child Item