Ideally there could be exploration quests just as difficult as anything else lots of trap puzzles and occasional npcs you either haver to avoid or take advantage of the terrain somehow ala breath of the wild like you could drop a boulder on them or run them off a cliff those npcs should be hard enough theyre impossible to power through. These exploration quests could largely be solo oriented, but there could be team ones as well.
Hmm, interesting. If I understand correctly, accentuating the "E" in PvE. And if I really understand correctly, more than just a solo "get to know the area" kind of task.
Although a portion are against jump-style puzzles, this kind of exploration could lend itself to having a jump-style action as part of the solution- like the only clue you have is an image- someone a long time ago mentioned in these forums how the maps should be like an image as how you would see it from your perspective (some anime type game?)- kind of like how Mr Incredible was able to read Gazerbeams message in the caves on the island from getting in the right spot in the animated movie "The Incredibles". So could the success on the exploration, on ONE of the exploration checks, be seeing that view of which one way to get to that vantage point was by jump puzzling, or climbing or whatever sandboxxy way, it doesn't have to only be from jump-puzzling but can be gotten to by other sandboxxy means.
I dont see how you could take it out of a solo adventure to make it a group adventure unless it could be shared, or for those that do not have the quest- make it known to them as an accidental accomplishment to avoid the pain that is backflagging. To completely avoid the pain that is backflagging the exploration success checks would have to be soloable, with maybe a final check being group/raidable for the uberest of ubers. That way if people are not working on the quest, once they get the quest they wil have some filled in and can work on the other stuff.
My gosh look at the success of Pokemon Go, something like that where you would have to pause and sketch might be cool-in lava! or while being harried by Egrets that are constantly interrupting your sketches. then again- solo, unless you had help keeping the egrets away so you could sketch faster and get exp at the same time!
If there were open world triggerable things like avalanches or boulder dropping, or pit traps, there might be a tendency to use/exploit these traps in regular adventuring- although from a natural faction perspective its not a bad thing. For instance: orcs will attack the undead in South ro if you train undead to orcs. if your faciton is balanced enough the orcs will turn from you and turn against the undead and you can pick them off with the orcs tanking :)
my idea for group exploration theyre all shared some classes would get say supreme climbing buff or acclimation buff or some sort of other thing that they might need to get somewhere or move something or activate something like a warrior might need a druid to provide a climbing buff, but that druid might need the warrior to push a boulder, and they all might need a rogue to deal with traps, there might even be raid type ones where you neeed every class to get somewhere or do something. And i wasnt thinking really involveing much jumping that can be tricky with bad latency and not really fair
The group exploration is tricky, because you don't want to create a bottleneck on groupcomposition.
The obstacles you're presenting should be; 1) mitigatable by multiple classes and not just that 1 class. and 2) if that group doesn't have a required class an alternative route should be available to those players. This detour could demand more time.
I wouldn't want to encounter a situation where my group is just at a dead end because we don't have a specific class with us to get passed an obstacle. And as result we just can go back home and call it a day. Although it might be intriguing, it would be too much of a let down and actually might be perceived as an artificial design. I'm ok with a dead end as long as my group can backtrack a bit to take a detour. And still continue their adventure. It would still be a good tease to imagine what lies beyond the obstacle we didn't get passed at the time.
More than one way leads to Rome and it would be nice that I didn't need to walk on every road to get to Rome. It gives me some replayability.
We've briefly talked in the past about giving players XP for exploring the world. They could do that, and it wouldn't be much XP, but wandering around seeing "You've discovered blah blah and have gained experience" message would be neat.
One thing about that, they could add new areas/points of interest into the game over time (and maybe not tell us). That would give players an incentive to continue exploring the world even after you've previously visited a zone.
I imagine a location based "discovery" mechinism will be already be in full effect with the perception system. Along with any other restrictions/requirements for a specific perception ping. Although even when there there is an area with no perception linked to it, it would be nice to still get a personal "discovery" ping for it. Maybe even some sort of hidden accolade system for explorers where one can earn titles or other fluff for "discovery" acheivements.
