So what is good support for exploration.

[Lantyssa]

A lot of ToR planets weren't very interesting to explore.  I did some, but not to the extent I would in other games.  Hoth, Tattoine, Balmora, Belsavis... I basically wanted off these planets ASAP.  Some of the Heroic 4 areas made it really unpleasant to wander around in, too.

[Zetor]

That's kind of weird to me, since I feel like SWTOR supports exploration much more than most of the other MMOs I've played as my primary game - there are some Area quests that you'll only find if you're trying to expose blacked out map areas, and the whole datacron hunting game. There's a lot of map on most planets that you never get sent to as part of the standard questing path.

I would agree the fatigue zones on Tattooine are kind of annoying in a couple spots. (Hoth never really came up for me, that's the other one I see people complain about.)

In most of the other games you could call my "main" MMO at some point - DAOC, WoW, City of Heroes, DDO - there's either no real exploration at all, or nothing interesting to find in the places you can explore to. DAOC was probably as close as any of them came to good support since useful mob camps were worth finding, but everything else is post-camping. I do like exploring in LotRO but that's entirely about finding book references for me (with a side course of marveling at just how ridiculous Moria is.)

The best exploration in COH is done within the Mission Architect building. To boldly play what no player has played before -- ~500k player-made mission/story arcs, that is. What could possibly go wrong?! 

[Count Nerfedalot]

As a 100% Bartle Explorer, I can say it isn't the danger, specifically, which adds interest.  Sometimes I like danger.  Sometimes I like a pretty view.  Sometimes I like simple but idyllic.  Chaotic.  War-torn.  Out of the way.  Alien.  Beautiful.  Exotic.  Plain.  Etc.

I enjoy it all, because I want different experiences each time.

A thousand times this, ideally sweetened with the added wrinkle of uncertainty.  It's nice to go exploring with a specific objective/expectation in mind, and even nicer when you discover something else really cool that you didn't expect in addition - or even instead of - what you were looking for.

[Kail]

Just booted up Skyrim again, and I think one of the big advantages it has in terms of exploration is that it allows you to pick up quest chains midway through.  Most MMOs are really hampered by their reliance on linear quest based progression, I think.

In Skyrim, the world is filled with stuff to do, which rewards exploring.  In WoW, the world is also filled with stuff to do, but it's all gated by quest progression: you can't do any of it without somene telling you to.  In Skyrim, you might find a wrecked house or strange corpse or something else odd and decide to investigate: sometimes it'll be explained, sometimes not, sometimes it'll be a big, full on quest. There might be a quest to take you there, but regardless, once you're there, you automatically start the quest.  In WoW, you can't do jack without the breadcrumb quest that led you there, so there's no point in exploring anywhere you're not led to.

Additionally, in WoW (or most MMOs that I've played) most useful rewards are quest rewards, you generally get crap for drops off of normal enemies and treasure chests.  In Skyrim, almost all of your XP and items is going to come from the enemies that you fight, and the quest rewards are generally pretty junky.  Usually you just finish the quest because you're interested in how it turns out (or just to clear it out of your quest log) rather than because you really want the reward.  So even if you do spend a lot of time exploring somewhere and there isn't a quest there, exploring in itself is a fairly useful activity for gaining power and advancing your character.

[Khaldun]

Phasing, by the way, is the absolute death of exploration. If you're not even in the world that other people are in, and what you're seeing won't be there once you've done some quest, you don't ever really "find things" that have any in-game reality.

[UnSub]

In Skyrim, the world is filled with stuff to do, which rewards exploring. 

... and you're the only character doing the exploring.

[Kail]

In Skyrim, the world is filled with stuff to do, which rewards exploring. 

... and you're the only character doing the exploring.

Yeah, not sure how that's relevant to my point though?  I'm saying that a lot of MMOs are just as packed with content as Skyrim (or more packed), but because you can't jump in halfway through a quest, it kills your ability to get to that content by exploring, and the world ends up looking empty.  You have to stick to the rails or you don't get to do anything.  I'm not seeing why you couldn't design an MMO around the idea of allowing quests to have multiple "jumping on" points, or why that wouldn't work with multiple players.

[Malakili]

I'm not seeing why you couldn't design an MMO around the idea of allowing quests to have multiple "jumping on" points, or why that wouldn't work with multiple players.

It seems like this is in part what Public Quest systems are trying to do. You sort of stumble into an area where something is happening, and you can just start helping.  In practice, players just seems to ignore them or grind them, depending on their mood.

[tazelbain]

In who's practice, in GW2 it exactly opposite.  I have triggered a Dynamic Event by myself with no around and 30 seconds have the thing swarmed by players because it popped up on their map.

[Malakili]

In who's practice, in GW2 it exactly opposite.  I have triggered a Dynamic Event by myself with no around and 30 seconds have the thing swarmed by players because it popped up on their map.

Lets see if it lasts after release, we saw the same thing in WAR beta too.

[Lantyssa]

That's because in WAR the requirements to beat a PQ got worse and worse while the numbers of people needed to help kept increasing.  The numbers completable solo or duo were miniscule, grindy, and far fewer in number.

[Malakili]

That's because in WAR the requirements to beat a PQ got worse and worse while the numbers of people needed to help kept increasing.  The numbers completable solo or duo were miniscule, grindy, and far fewer in number.

Yes, this is certainly true.  And if GW2 has truly improved enough on the formula so it actually works well, then I will be pleased.  I'm merely indicating that the way people played WAR in beta it looked like it was going to be the best thing going.  Only to find out that once it went live everyone ignored the fun stuff for the sake of optimizing leveling speed and loot acquisition.  This experience has made me very hesitant to point at something like this working in beta as evidence it will work the same way in launch, that's all.

[Dark_MadMax]

In who's practice, in GW2 it exactly opposite.  I have triggered a Dynamic Event by myself with no around and 30 seconds have the thing swarmed by players because it popped up on their map.

Lets see if it lasts after release, we saw the same thing in WAR beta too.

Yeah thats my main concern for PvE side as well. As area without dynamic events  is extremely bland and boring.

[Phred]

In Skyrim, the world is filled with stuff to do, which rewards exploring.  In WoW, the world is also filled with stuff to do, but it's all gated by quest progression: you can't do any of it without somene telling you to.  In Skyrim, you might find a wrecked house or strange corpse or something else odd and decide to investigate: sometimes it'll be explained, sometimes not, sometimes it'll be a big, full on quest. There might be a quest to take you there, but regardless, once you're there, you automatically start the quest.  In WoW, you can't do jack without the breadcrumb quest that led you there, so there's no point in exploring anywhere you're not led to.

That must be something they polished out after I left because I sure as heck remember finding npc's in the middle of nowhere with quests, in the plaguelands and that first started zone in the first expansion but others I can't remember as well.

[Sheepherder]

Most of that shit was still there up until Cataclysm, which if I'm not mistaken has added more "I killed a random thing and got a quest" type events to the leveling areas.

[Kail]

I don't know that "I killed a random thing and got a quest" is really encouraging exploration, since you don't know ahead of time that killing a specific mob will give you a thing or even that there's a thing out there to look for.  You're not going to be cruising along and suddenly go "hey, that one hyena that looks like every other hyena looks like it would be really interesting to fight for some reason, let's go do that".  It's just something that you sometimes bump into while you're doing something else, generally.

I don't mean to imply that WoW has NOTHING that starts off the beaten track, but it's the exception rather than the rule.  And even if there are guys standing around in the middle of nowhere, it doesn't fix the problem that if I run into their widget or whatever without getting permission from them first, I can't pick it up.  Like every time I ride through Ashenvale, there's some area where everything is flames and tentacles and Malfurion screaming battle cries and I have to ride through like it's a Disney World ride because I levelled up in a different zone and don't have the appropriate quest prerequisites to do whatever it is that happens there. 

Malaki reminded me of PQs, and I do think it would be a benefit for explorer based games to switch to a more PQ based system.  Maybe instead of getting a quest to kill ten ostriches you get a quest to go to a specific place and at that place is a PQ to kill ten ostriches that you can do even without the breadcrumb quest (they don't all HAVE to be these ten stage "kill fifty elite monsters" quests like they were in WAR).  Or something like that, I dunno.

[Phred]

Maybe instead of getting a quest to kill ten ostriches you get a quest to go to a specific place and at that place is a PQ to kill ten ostriches that you can do even without the breadcrumb quest (they don't all HAVE to be these ten stage "kill fifty elite monsters" quests like they were in WAR).  Or something like that, I dunno.

Or you could not get the quest at all but just wander around and discover the event to kill off the invading ostrichs, then do another quest to go steal their eggs or something. Like guild wars 2 maybe? Appearantly originally guild wars 2 wasn't going to have the "heart" quests at all but it was felt that it was too nebulous for all the people used to being led by the hand around zones so they put in the heart quests.

[Ingmar]

Champions Online also had PQs, with less stringent requirements than WAR (from what I saw, admittedly limited) and nobody did them. Hopefully that won't happen to the GW2 ones.

[Phred]

Champions Online also had PQs, with less stringent requirements than WAR (from what I saw, admittedly limited) and nobody did them. Hopefully that won't happen to the GW2 ones.

I kind of doubt it judging by the beta but release may be a different animal. Except I don't think you can level efficiently just killing mobs so..

[UnSub]

Champions Online also had PQs, with less stringent requirements than WAR (from what I saw, admittedly limited) and nobody did them. Hopefully that won't happen to the GW2 ones.

CoH/V has proto-PQs; zone events where something would randomly trigger and there would be a call to (depending on the zone) deal with the Ghost Ship / put out a building fire / stop a Troll rave etc.

They were fun for a while, then players ignore them. Once they've worked out the time / benefit analysis, the majority move on and leave the new players to get excited about those events.

Same happened with ChampO (at least when I played). You'll get people joining in at the final stage, but the actual trigger events leading up to that stage are usually done by individuals / duos.

Anyway, my point with Skyrim is that it's much, much easier to feel like you are exploring when you are the only person to come across something, not when you get a location question of "Explore the Lost Ruins of Khjouinl Koudq" and there's four PC teams waiting outside the door doing /dance emotes.

[Malakili]

Champions Online also had PQs, with less stringent requirements than WAR (from what I saw, admittedly limited) and nobody did them. Hopefully that won't happen to the GW2 ones.

Same thing happened in Champions that happened in WAR.  They were pretty active when the beta was going on, but soon after release everyone stopped doing them. It also didn't help that the higher level you got the more of them required groups past the first stage (like WAR).  So while the low level stuff was pretty accessible, the higher level ones simply couldn't be soloed.

[tazelbain]

GW2 Dynamic Events are not a sideshows like in other games.  They are the meat and potatoes of the PvE experience.  During BWE it was always worth your will to do the DEs.  In many cases completing a DE would simultaneous complete a heart (think regular quest).  Two birds for one stone xp.  The only time I have real trouble completely them solo is if I am under-leveled or I get lazy and stop dodging.  Obviously the scaling isn't perfect, but it pretty good.  What other game can you go on a impromptu raid with 60 strangers? 

Obviously we haven't seen the whole game, so we can't say 100% what is going to happen but I think it is safe say that it DE are much more elaborate and harder to ignore than any previous PQ system.

[Khaldun]

I think the thing with dynamic events, public quests and so on is that they have to auto-scale to whomever is there. Toontown, of all things, sort of had that--if you were just fighting a cog yourself, you got one spawn; as more people joined your line, the next group of cogs was tougher. On a more elaborate scale, that's what exploration-triggered content needs--it has to be doable by the explorer himself/herself if he's the only toon around, but scale up and up and up depending on how many people are there and participating.

[Malakili]

I think the thing with dynamic events, public quests and so on is that they have to auto-scale to whomever is there. Toontown, of all things, sort of had that--if you were just fighting a cog yourself, you got one spawn; as more people joined your line, the next group of cogs was tougher. On a more elaborate scale, that's what exploration-triggered content needs--it has to be doable by the explorer himself/herself if he's the only toon around, but scale up and up and up depending on how many people are there and participating.

I think this is generally speaking true.  But it is also neat to find stuff that you can't do alone.  One issue I have with MMOs in general these days is that the world is created far too much with my character in mind.  One of the things I'd really like - I guess this is similar to what Rift did - is have totally random spawns that do stuff on the map.  Maybe they have a task to do, and they either do it and despawn, or a player finds them in the middle and can stop them.  Basically, just things that happen that indicate that the game world has some sort of existence besides for the fun of the players.  I guess that sounds a little weird when talking about a game, which DOES exist for the players, but the best exploration things I've seen in games tend to be when I come across something that makes me feel like I am NOT the center of the universe.

[Lantyssa]

There are events in GW2 that probably aren't going to be soloed.  Not a huge number from what I've seen, but they do exist.  There are others which can be soloed, but would be much easier with a group due to how they are structured.

[Khaldun]

If a game is centered around the player, then I don't see why we pretend otherwise. Not being centered around the player shouldn't be "centered around groups that have to be formed through deliberate social effort": the alternative is "centered around all the players acting in aggregate" or "centered around a procedurally generated world w/autonomous agents as well as conscious players". Making a lot of content that requires people to form into coordinated groups of 5-50 people or so is a bad idea if all the things which change or are explored or experienced matter only on the level of individual characters.