So what is good support for exploration.

[Phred]

Recently I've seen people write off various MMO's as not supporting exploration so I'm curious what most people's criterion is for good exploration. Specifically I saw this charge leveled at SWToR, which I no longer play but when I did I found it great for exploration. To me exploration is the ability to see something cool far away and go find out what's there and SWToR had that in spades as the opposite faction's quest areas were largely accessable to either side. As a bonus I found it very rewarding because the chests you have to fight so hard to get in your own quest areas are free for the taking in the enemie's areas. Kind of how several of my characters had over a million credits thanks to the jumbo chest rewards of purples, oranges and money.

So what does an MMO need to be explorer friendly to everyone else?

[Malakili]

I guess if I could sum it up briefly I'd say it has do with being able to find things where no one told me to go looking.  Almost all MMOs have this to some degree, but I'm not talking about the occasional little sidequest or easter egg.  The main problem is that with the advent of sites like wowhead, etc, this never truly exists no matter the game.   You can make the argument that you could choose not to use these sites, but I guess this reveals another things - which is that it really does depend a bit on what other people are doing.  If I want to just go wandering in a forest, and 20 people are bee lining right for the point of interest, it pretty much nukes the exploration.

I'd say the best example of exploration I've come across (probably ever) is Minecraft, simply because it is randomly generated.  I'm honestly not sure it will be possible to create an MMO with exploration ever again since information spreads easily and quickly, and an inherent part of exploration is the unknown.

[Hawkbit]

I'm sure this will go off-rails, but Everquest was my explorer's best memory.  Rolling a mage for the first time out of Qeynos, hitting the hills and the Karanas.  It all seemed so big and elusive at the time.  The fishermen down by the water in WK, the scarecrows in the fields.  And then seeing Highpass for the first time.

I'm positive that I've been ding-conditioned out of loving exploring, but to me it is seeing something that isn't explained and appears to have a purpose that I can't figure out.  I personally look back fondly at those times and have a hard time recapturing that feeling with new games, regardless what everyone thinks of it.  I only wish the nostalgia was as good as going back to play it now.

[Phred]

I'm positive that I've been ding-conditioned out of loving exploring, but to me it is seeing something that isn't explained and appears to have a purpose that I can't figure out.  I personally look back fondly at those times and have a hard time recapturing that feeling with new games, regardless what everyone thinks of it.

Ya I think the need for efficiency has been so conditioned in at this point that people rarely feel the urge to explore for exploration's sake.
Still odd how not exploration friendly is such a common criticism though.

[Nebu]

Large, expansive worlds with min-events that can pop up randomly.  My fondest experience with exploration was in a Tale in the Desert where 'body' tests and mushroom hunts forced you to explore the world.  Also having resources that were unique to areas forced people to roam in order to find/gather them or to have inter-regional trade to obtain them.  The game had a massive scale and required that you explore to find rare items that were very valuable for trade etc.   

[Lantyssa]

GW2.

[Xuri]

The following points just concern physical exploration of the world, but I don't think that "exploration" is necessarily limited to that. There are (or should be) more ways of creating gameplay for explorers.

• If I see a mountain-top, I want to be able to get to the top of it.
• If I see a cliff, I want to be able to jump off it - even if it kills my character.
• Invisible walls that block movement in areas that do not look like they would block movement kill immersion and lowers my will to continue exploring.
• I don't like "You have explored all 14 points of interest in zone X!"-achievements. Instead of promoting exploring in general, it promotes finding all the listed points of interest then moving on to the next area.

[SurfD]

Asheron's Call would be the pinnacle of Exploration for me.  The world was freaking HUGE, and there were little dungeons, caves, huts, houses, camps and all sorts of things scattered everywhere.  And I also think that pretty much every square inch of the world was explorable. No invisible walls or the like blocking your way.   I probably spent at least 2 years in that game and only saw maybe 1/5th of the whole map.   And since, other then the loosely connected portal networks, there was no "fast travel" like flightpaths and whatnot from every minor stopping point to every other one, simply getting places was often a big adventure in and of itself.

[Arinon]

I guess if I could sum it up briefly I'd say it has do with being able to find things where no one told me to go looking.

I take this one step further and think of exploration as finding places, doing things, or discovering interactions that haven't had a designer's hand all over them.  Basically the sense that I'm finding something novel and maybe, just maybe, having an experience that's unique to me rather than premeditated and being shared by everyone. 

That probably just sounds like a broken game to a lot of people these days.  No idea how to reintegrate this into MMOs.  As mentioned, I'm sure this is all coloured by nostalgia too.

[Pennilenko]

Exploration for me is traveling in a direction for like a long time, and then thinking to myself, holy shit I am lost. That simple sort of possibility really brings the world to life for me. An example would be Vanguard for me, I know they could have done much more with the space they had and often fell short with big empty areas, but Vanguard was a game you could get lost in easily.

[Margalis]

I take this one step further and think of exploration as finding places, doing things, or discovering interactions that haven't had a designer's hand all over them.

I agree, the authorship needs to be subtle.

A lot of games now are designed the way Chekhov said stories should be written, where every part plays some vital role. In MMOs this usually means that every bit of the map is part of some quest, that you will eventually be breadcrumbed towards it, and if you "explore" it you are simply going there out of order.

For me to feel like exploration is cool I have to feel like I'm going there of my own volition and when I get there I don't think "oh, this is clearly for some quest but the thing I'm supposed to collect isn't popping."

[5150]

The ones that stick in my mind are...

Anarchy Online - until I found the antiguardians/auno website (which in retrospect killed the enjoyment of the game and turned it into a 'collect them all' operation)

SWG - I particularly recall one evening when I was collecting hides/meat/milk for crafting and levelling Scout for shits and giggles on Tattooine and roamed far and wide (before mounts/speeders)

Neocron also had some good exploration in places, I remember spending loads of time attempting to map the main sewer (there was nothing of note down there so none of the guide sites had bothered)

[apocrypha]

Something else that could encourage exploration would be a diminishing of the exclusive focus on the endgame and the way that, as a result, the rest of the game (talking about MMOs here) is a means to that end. Because of this there is an active disincentive to exploration - it slows your levelling down!

One of the games that I did the most exploring in was EVE. My skills levelled up on their own without me having to do quests, and there was a vast universe out there to explore. And a LOT of that exploration was incredibly dangerous with no tangible reward, and when you got there it mostly looked exactly the same as the zone your first character started in! But damn, if it didn't feel good to reach some deep 0.0 backwater in a Rifter. 

[Koyasha]

Making sure your game can't be datamined for every bit of information about every NPC out there and drop rates and everything else.  I don't know, technically speaking, how possible this is to do, but at the very least it should be as hard as possible to gather this information automatically.  This is the first step, I think, to making exploration meaningful again.  Back in the EQ days, we had spoiler sites like Allakhazam, but the information on them was gathered manually at the time.  That meant that when you went out there, you might check Allakhazam's for zone spawns and such, and then you might run into something that wasn't on the list, because nobody had reported it yet.  Somebody almost certainly had seen what you're fighting, and they had probably fought it before.  Perhaps many times.  But nobody had actually bothered to take a moment to write a note describing the monster, so it wasn't on Allakhazam's.  You could find something that wasn't listed on the spoiler site, and then, if you felt like it, you could send that bit of info in yourself.  You would be credited with its discovery.  The screenshot of Innoruuk on this page is one I sent in, and the fancy glowing-letters signature on the screenshot of the loot here is the character I was playing at the time.  I found that pretty cool, that my screenshots were put up on Allakhazam's.  Hell, it's still pretty cool that they're there after all these years.  But none of that would have happened in WoW, because someone running a datamining addon probably would have killed him before me, and the info would have been thrown up on wowhead.

When I found that Crypt of Nadox Innoruuk, it was because me and a few friends got together and were killing our way around the relatively new zone to see what was there.  At the time, the zone had already been out for several weeks, perhaps a month or more, if I remember correctly.  We didn't just run in there on the first day of the expansion.  We were casually exploring a mostly empty zone, late at night.  We found a weird luggald that conned indifferent, we killed a couple luggalds near it.  I went to Allakhazam's to see what was up with this indifferent luggald, but there wasn't much of anything there, because nobody else had written anything about it, and there wasn't any datamining at that time.  I posted a message commenting on it, and as I was doing this, Innoruuk suddenly spawned and killed us because we had no idea what was going on at all.  Then we regrouped, came back, I took the screenshot, we kicked his butt, and I sent in the loot.  The fact that a spoiler website like Allakhazam's exists doesn't hinder exploration.  It helps it.  Without Allakhazam, there is no 'person who discovered X' because we lack any shared information.  With wowhead, there is no 'person who discovered X' because fifty thousand people uploaded their data and it was parsed and added to the database.

There's a lot of other little things that add up to making a good exploration game.  As others have noted, not putting pointers toward every damn thing.  Making expansive zones, full of mobs that are just there rather than there to be killed for a specific purpose helps a lot.  Less lead-by-the-nose quests also helps a lot.  And one thing that is really, really big is making sure that quests don't always have one point to start at.  In EQ, until the Serpent's Spine, I think it was that started to change that, quests could be started not by talking to the quest-starter NPC, but by finding a weird thing when you killed a mob, and then investigating the weird thing you found.  You didn't need an arbitrary flag on you that says 'you are now on the quest', you would get a quest item and then research the item, working your way backwards to the NPC that wants it.  In WoW, it feels like a waste of time to kill anything you haven't been instructed to kill, because you won't get credit for it.  Even if it's a quest mob, even if, when you're on a quest, that mob drops a rare item for the quest, if you haven't specifically been told to kill it, the item just isn't there.  Most games now, including EQ since TSS, are this way.  Also, just as important as having things drop in random places is having places where absolutely nothing important happens at all.  Not every corner of the world needs to have important stuff in it.  It's not believable and it stymies the sense of exploration if you're finding cool shit everywhere, because then it stops being special and interesting.  So it's not just being able to find things where you haven't been directed to, it's also not finding things in areas where there's nothing to find. 

A dungeon should have rooms that you're directed to for quests, rooms that you have to go through to get to the quest rooms, then it should also have rooms that nothing directs you to that have some cool stuff in them, as well as rooms that nothing directs you to that have absolutely nothing in them.  It's no different than random loot mechanics.  Sometimes something drops and you're excited, sometimes nothing drops.  Well, to make exploration interesting, there have to be times when nothing drops (areas that there just isn't anything interesting about) along with times when something drops (areas where you find something unexpected).

I'm...kind of rambling here, I know, because my thoughts aren't all that coherent on the subject (also because I haven't slept all night) but I think the thoughts I'm pointing out are solid.  Exploration is possible in games again, but it needs to go down to basic zone design and how your quest system works and how little your game allows external programs to interact with it.

[Xuri]

Making sure your game can't be datamined for every bit of information about every NPC out there and drop rates and everything else. 

Unfortunately, any information that is sent to the clients can ultimately be datamined even if the game doesn't officially support addons for such. People will write tools that listen to the data-stream and extract the relevant bits (literally) from there.

[Sky]

I don't mind datamining, I can easily ignore it and let people who don't like exploring just get their info and move on.

I do like exploration. I like seeing cool areas with a lot of detail and vignettes/set pieces, related to the questing or not. The remains of a card game gone bad, like a crime scene. If it lends clues to the questing, all the better. Part of what I like about TSW is that it rewards the observant player, and everyone else can google it.

But I do like to have incentivized exploration, it's nice to get rewards either tangible or story from little out of the way places.

[Scold]

I don't mind datamining, I can easily ignore it and let people who don't like exploring just get their info and move on.

One way to do this is to have randomization in place -- the NPC who starts Quest XYZ can randomly spawn in one of 10 places, say. The challenge then is to make a game that you actually want to play through organically, rather than grind through as quickly as possible.

[Lantyssa]

That's what I loved about SWG Creatures.  I submitted so much data to that site because I was out exploring all the planets, taming babies, and just wandering aimlessly.

One way to do this is to have randomization in place -- the NPC who starts Quest XYZ can randomly spawn in one of 10 places, say. The challenge then is to make a game that you actually want to play through organically, rather than grind through as quickly as possible.

To stop it completely, everything has to be randomized.  NPC names, can spawn anywhere, can wander anywhere.  You almost need NPCs to live in the world and be able to take up professions, tasks, and adventures on a 'whim'.  Mobs have to migrate and compete, etc.  Landscape has to be cable of changing.  Basically a true sandbox.

Short of a Minecraft-like world, I'm not sure it's possible.  Even that can end up with Google Map snapshots.

[Engels]

Aside from 'vastness', I think there's another factor for exploration, and that's art direction. Technically speaking, space is space. The 'geographical' distances in WoW were probably larger, fake meter per fake meter, than EQ SWG or AO, but by basing itself off a cartoon art style (nothing wrong with that!), it prevented one's mind from the genuine touch of the uncanny, mysterious or foreboding vistas that were legion in EQ and AO.

You can futz with risk/reward, you can futz with randomization, you can throw clever game theory mechanics at something all you want, but if the art direction and environmental design aren't done by actual real artists, you just aren't going to get a sense of venturing into something both unknown and real.

[Mrbloodworth]

I really liked LOTRO for exploration. I think LOTRO is reinforced by what Engels just said.

[Xuri]

It's more to do with distance between points of interest rather than art direction or size of the world, I think. Take Skyrim; didn't they build it using some kind of "maximum 60 seconds between PoIs"-mantra? And it worked for me - I could weer off the "story"-path, pick a random direction and no matter where I went there was interesting stuff to see (and do!).

"Largest world ever made! Over 9000 billion square miles to explore!" doesn't mean much if there's nothing in it.

[Malakili]

To stop it completely, everything has to be randomized.  NPC names, can spawn anywhere, can wander anywhere.  You almost need NPCs to live in the world and be able to take up professions, tasks, and adventures on a 'whim'.  Mobs have to migrate and compete, etc.  Landscape has to be cable of changing.  Basically a true sandbox.

Short of a Minecraft-like world, I'm not sure it's possible.  Even that can end up with Google Map snapshots.

I agree with this completely.  The problem is that, aside from Minecraft which you mentioned, gaming has been moving further and further away from this concept.  People want predictable experiences, and exploration is by definition unpredictable.  You can't really tack on anything which allows for that type of exploration without alienating all the people who either 1) don't like to explore or 2) don't have the time to explore.

For example, my friend and I love Minecraft because we can head out in a random direction for 20 minutes until we find something interesting, then just delve down into the mine/cave/whatever and see what we find.  But for the same reason that most MMOs now have an LFG feature - this would not go over well for a lot of people.  They want to start the dungeon right away. 

As an aside, I remember my first few days of WoW when the game was still brand new to me - I knew nothing.  I was in Ashenvale and saw some people looking for a healer for Blackfathom Depths.  I of course volunteered and realized I had no idea where the dungeon actually was.  In fact, only one guy in the group did, and he only knew approximately.  So, we had to find the place, fight out way to the entrance, and THEN actually did the dungeon.  To this day it is one of my favorite WoW memories.  But the problem is - even IF sites like WoWhead (then it was Thottbot) didn't exist, you still only get that experience ONCE.

[Engels]

Although my exposure to LoTR was limited, I think you're right, BW.

Xuri, while I agree that its not simply space, its not simply dodads to find within the space that makes or breaks immersion. In fact, Skyrim is a very good counter example for me. The fact that within 40 seconds of walking just about anywhere there was SOMETHING either out to get me or about to reveal its vast troves of deep historical lore was stimulus overload. Dark Mysteries of Ancient Times shouldn't be 40 seconds away in every direction.

And I think I should clarify that when I say art direction, I don't mean simply the looks of something. Sound plays a dynamic factor that can't be brushed aside. There was enormous work done on simply making the sounds of the various zones of EQ (sorry to keep harping on EQ, but its the one I know best). Some of you will remember that 'not quite an echo' done in some of the darker zones of Luclin, like Grimling Forest. Sometimes even the lack of sound was the most unsettling aspect of a zone. The sunny and bright Plane of Disease was also dead quiet for the most part. Someone in their art department thought about the fact that desert dunes absorb sound and made the zone bristle with silent hostility.

[Riggswolfe]

GW2.

Weird, one of several things I didn't like in the beta weekend is there felt like no exploring at all in GW2. Just "go to the scout guy, expose map, go to Heart #1 which is totally not a quest hub, we promise."

Asheron's Call would be the pinnacle of Exploration for me.  The world was freaking HUGE, and there were little dungeons, caves, huts, houses, camps and all sorts of things scattered everywhere.  And I also think that pretty much every square inch of the world was explorable. No invisible walls or the like blocking your way.   I probably spent at least 2 years in that game and only saw maybe 1/5th of the whole map.   And since, other then the loosely connected portal networks, there was no "fast travel" like flightpaths and whatnot from every minor stopping point to every other one, simply getting places was often a big adventure in and of itself.

Agreed. It was the first and last game that I remember logging in sometimes and going "hmm...I think I'm going to head 'that' way because that directions looks like fun to explore." I remember my friend and I would find, for example, some random structure out in the middle of nowhere and we'd kill all the mobs then stand on the structure saying things like "I wish I had a flag to put here!" It was the last game I remember where it truly felt like you could find places no one else had seen.

[Lantyssa]

Weird, one of several things I didn't like in the beta weekend is there felt like no exploring at all in GW2. Just "go to the scout guy, expose map, go to Heart #1 which is totally not a quest hub, we promise."

If you just follow those, yeah.

There are a lot of little hidden areas.  One place I followed a stream.  That led up a small hill and into a stream, which I had to work at entering.  Once I did, there was a massively long cave complex which eventually came out high above a body of water and a small town.  I've found other interesting places like that.

Use the Scouts and Hearts for when you want something active to do.

[Nonentity]

The thing that killed any desire to explore in MMOs for me is the lack of any sort of consequence for dying. Now, from the perspective of a time sink, this is a good thing, but part of the terror of exploring in EQ was the fact that if you died, you had to do a corpse run, so it made exploring all that much more terrifying.

Nowadays I regularly throw myself off cliffs and kill myself in MMOs because it's a slap on the wrist and you're back in the game.

I'm NOT advocating the return of terrible death timesinks, but that's why exploration died for me.

[Phred]

Weird, one of several things I didn't like in the beta weekend is there felt like no exploring at all in GW2. Just "go to the scout guy, expose map, go to Heart #1 which is totally not a quest hub, we promise."

Actually there are a lot of spots outside of the hearts that will spawn events as well. Sadly most people seem to see the hearts and the skill markers and make the same assumption you did. But we all know what assumptions are made of right?

[Xuri]

Bread. Apples! Very small rocks? Cider...? Great gravy. Cherries? Mud! Churches! Lead!?

[UnSub]

It's more to do with distance between points of interest rather than art direction or size of the world, I think. Take Skyrim; didn't they build it using some kind of "maximum 60 seconds between PoIs"-mantra? And it worked for me - I could weer off the "story"-path, pick a random direction and no matter where I went there was interesting stuff to see (and do!).

"Largest world ever made! Over 9000 billion square miles to explore!" doesn't mean much if there's nothing in it.

I know Skyrim gets mentioned a lot for encouraging exploring, but that's because it tells you something is there long before you see it. It's like having the guide book and map so you know if you head this way it will be worth your time.

There are a few places that aren't marked and are interesting, but they are the exception.

Red Dead Redemption is better for unmarked exploration and random spawing events. The events get a bit samey after a while, but they can come out of nowhere.

[SurfD]

The thing that killed any desire to explore in MMOs for me is the lack of any sort of consequence for dying. Now, from the perspective of a time sink, this is a good thing, but part of the terror of exploring in EQ was the fact that if you died, you had to do a corpse run, so it made exploring all that much more terrifying.

Nowadays I regularly throw myself off cliffs and kill myself in MMOs because it's a slap on the wrist and you're back in the game.

I'm NOT advocating the return of terrible death timesinks, but that's why exploration died for me.

This is another thing I would agree about also.  The corpse run (my experience with them being Asherons call again) definately added an element of danger and excitement to your "out in the world" exploration adventures.  Nothing quite matched the feel of being in hostile, unexplored territory and potentially dying to an overpull or unexpectedly strong monster and knowing that simply getting back to your body was going to be an adventure in itself.   Now a days, death is completely meaningless.  Especially with the way graveyards work in WoW, where no matter where you die, it is always a matter of twenty seconds to a minute to get back to your body.  In AC, if you died, it was entirely possible that your Life Stone location could easily be a 10+ minute run from where your corpse is, and you would have to murder or avoid numerous monsters on your way back to it.

[Rendakor]

The biggest thing for me is that there need to be things out in the world that are useful/interesting, but that you are not directed to specifically. Some recent examples would be the puzzle things in Rift, or the datacrons in SWTOR; useful, non-gamebreaking rewards for heading off the beaten path. My personal exploration highlight would be EQ2 (although this comes from playing it extensively at launch and thus, much of the content was unspoiled); there were these items that you could right click and mark with your name: "Rendakor was here" and they'd stay that way until the server reset. Most of them were hidden well off the beaten path, with only some discovery exp and maybe a named nearby if you were lucky. EQ2's early quest design was also a lot less directed than WoW (and all that have come since) so there were quests scattered all over the place, which gave you a real incentive to wander around instead of just following the breadcrumb.

Honestly the constant hub to hub, breadcrumb style questing is what killed exploring most for me because (as Margalis said earlier) if you wander around you're just going to be seeing quest content before you're supposed to be. Put in areas/mobs that don't have quests. Bring back named mobs that just wander around in the world and drop real, useful loot. Put in random events that just spontaneously happen (but don't over-do it like Rift). Hell, an easy fix would be to tone down quest XP and increasing mob XP (specifically, increasing the level range of mobs that grant full xp) so you could actually level by just wandering around killing things instead of having to follow the breadcrumbs.

[Ingmar]

That corpse run thing seems exactly backwards to me. It totally disincentivizes risk-taking.

[Dark_MadMax]

That corpse run thing seems exactly backwards to me. It totally disincentivizes risk-taking.

If  one is  trained on instant gratification of today flavor of MMOs  it might appear so. But  the thrill of danger is worth something in itself - you play a game to experience  something entertaining, exploration of new places with potentially dangerous consequences is one of such things. What do you experience facerolling the filler world mobs or grinding dailies for rewards besides the  junkies addiction to "dings" and achievements?

One of the blogger reviewing tsw complained that one part he doesnt like in TSW is that there is no feeling of achievement by getting the long laundry list of meaningless quest marked as "done", as TSW doesnt even allow to have long laundry list!

The endless stream of "achievers" MMO is ever present on the market - endless treadmills grinds for loot and rewards that is all that is in there.  But some of the elements which were present in older games are almost gone.

[Sky]

That corpse run thing seems exactly backwards to me. It totally disincentivizes risk-taking.

I agree with this. Apparently I was trained on instant gratification for my junkies addiction.

[Hutch]

That corpse run thing seems exactly backwards to me. It totally disincentivizes risk-taking.

To me, the death penalty is what influences risk taking the most.
1) Oh you died, you have to repair your gear? Drat.
2) Oh you died, and you left some of your more expensive items on your corpse? Oh you better run back to it (possibly organizing a party on the way) and get that stuff back. Annoying but not as bad as 3.
3) Oh you died, and you lost xp? Or better yet, you de-leveled? Fuck that shit. Zero risk taking, please.