This week, in his most recent MMOWTF column, Staff Writer Dan Fortier tackles the idea of dynamic content and true MMORPG exploration.

A few weeks ago, I vented my frustration with the linear advancement scheme of most MMOs, but there is another aspect of this that is worth its own topic. A lot of work goes into the visual aspect of most modern games, but unless there is a decent level of interactivity in the environment, it quickly turns into a slide show more akin with a game like Myst than an actual virtual, persistent world (especially if the engine hasn't been optimized). This week, I want to explore the lost concept of exploration in MMOs. Make sure that your second chute is packed and jump on in!

This whole issue is tied directly into the whole Simulation vs. Game debate. At a certain level, most games try to simulate some aspect of our life, history or culture if only to suspend the disbelief and make a fantastic world more lifelike and enjoyable. Depending on the design philosophy and the type of game, aspects of realism are replaced with more simplistic, or measured systems that maximize fun rather than replicate boring realism ad nauseam. Obviously, it's important to keep only the elements that promote fun while removing elements that don't, but different people will have different ideas about what actually constitutes a fun game.

Read the whole column here.

As always, it has to be a balance.  Exploration can be extremely fun...but for some, completely unrewarding.   So, when developers design a zone, it has to consider that multiple playstyles.  Mission/content lovers don't want to have to wander for "miles" just to keep their mission/storyline going.  Explorers don't want to get funneled into the same, static areas, where there's nothing new.

It's a tricky balance.  I think, as these games get BIGGER, and the tech improves for "zone transitions", you'll find more balance between exploring and burning content...at least more than between the other camps (PvP/PvE, etc.).

 

Some games put out some interesting, exploraton-centric content:

1)  SWG was going to use POI's from the movies as areas where one MIGHT encounter a random, special mission.  Basically, content that was placed way off the beaten path.  Didn't come to fruition though.

2)  CoH has their badge system.  Explore the city, go to certain places, or even read a bunch of plaques, and you earned a badge.  Some badges are even part of a greater reward system.  Granted, they never really asked you to go outside of populated zones....but it really fostered an "scavanger hunt" mindset for many.

3)  LotRO's title system, like CoH's badges, promote some exploration, while fitting it into the IP nicely.  Don't just go visit places from the novels...or check out some random hill.  Go off the beaten path and DO something non-mission related, and, who knows, you may get a special title.

 

Explorers are gonna get their dues....it will just take more time, better tech, and more demand.

SWG's developers are now discussing adding a "Colletion" system that is in EQ2.  This will be an attempt to help fill sum of that empty space with desired goals in mind.  I guess they have finally taken to heart that the worlds are really full of empty space minus the wild spawns.  The new SWG team is doing a good job on thier limited resources (20 member team).  They are finally making the progress the game has deserved all these years.

I say this fully aware of the trouble this game has had.  Basically it hit bottom, bounced a few times and is now being aired back up for play.  SOE is, however, using a simple hand pump instead of aircompressor (in other words slowly).  The added content is part of this build up.

I couldn't agree more with the article. I play EVE Online and one of the best, but understandablly least developed parts, of the game is the freeform travel and ability to explore new places. I can remember when I was stuck flying a lowly bantam frigate into areas of space I had never gone before. The surprise when my ship, a Bantam, had come accross a solar system that I had to warp 12 times to get accross to the next stargate instead of the usual 2 or 3. The time I found a solar system that was so dark that when warping accross it I saw nothing but the lights on my ship and a faint star in the distance found my self next to a derilict ruin of a space station that I only saw when I panned my camera behind my ship. I had flown so close to It I almost bumped into it and didn't even see it. There was no content that drove me to find these things and to my knowledge there never was, but I can tell you in detail those experiences. I can't tell you what I did last time I played except I paid a bonus to a courier I do regular business with. The games that don't have this type of content put there for no other reason than for other people to find them and enjoy them is why I don't play those games. Now if they would only make these explorable enviroments more interactive and useable by the players of the game.

"Of course, some projects like Dark and Light that actually promoted exploration, failed miserably in virtually every other aspect, which is a shame since it only serves to dissuade other developers from taking a shot at making larger and more freeform worlds."

Perhaps Dark and Light failed so miserably in every other aspect because they tried to put such emphasis on a ridiculously sized world.   There has been a recurring idea in the MMORPG industry that somehow bigger must be better, and in spite of failures of recent games that have tried this (Dark and Light, Vanguard), it still continues.

I enjoy exploring and I intensely dislike it when I find areas cordoned off or made inaccessible so they can only be eye-candy.   The answer is simple, remove the eye candy and only make a world as big as you can afford to make.   Fill that smaller world with quality content, not shiny chrome that is only there for show.

And ignore those people who continue to cling to the idea that a virtual world can only feel alive and meaningful if it's oversized and huge.

 

 

I love to adventure in games, to explore out of the way places. I like to see gorgeous waterfalls, fields of flowers, different flora and fauna. As for interactive, I just don't want to have to fight my way through too much aggro everywhere I go. That is so unrealistic. I would like to run across a cabin in the woods with an npc that offered a quest, or up in the mountains, run across a camp with npc's that offered quests. Or perhaps run across a monument, hidden chest, etc. with scrolls that contained puzzles or treasure maps. How fun it is to find a hidden cave to explore.

While I do like quests that give you an ongoing story that lead to more quests, I don't think a game has to be entirely made up of that. A world does have to be large enough so that players don't stumble over each other when they are exploring off the beaten path. But, there does have to be a lot of stuff in those areas to find and do. I prefer not having quests that lead you to those quests in those out of the way areas. That defeats the purpose.

A friend of mine would like to see more areas, like dungeons, where a group of friends could get together just to grind for experience, and have fun doing it. It might have to be an instance, otherwise it would be full of other players, too. I'm enjoying LOTRO for what it is, but your best experience comes from quests. Right now, we are doing a troll cave instance. It is extremely difficult and we die a lot, but the challenge and fun make it worth while. We don't get much experience from killing the trolls, however. The reward will come from the npc who gave us the quest.

  I enjoy these musings. 

   I see people comment that these games are always negatively affected by the cost of producing them.  Ideals are used to hype them up, then ultimately not fulfilled.     I wonder how an inferior product that was made cheaply, or cut corners in production, could be profitable.  I wonder how these companies think their bottom line will not benefit from a superior product.  It's the entertainment industry.  If people are having fun, it will have customers.  Granted, a higher cost runs a greater risk.  So does making a game that promises and doesn't deliver.

  

It wasnt really an exploring trip but when i played with Anarchy Online at the first time, i didnt had the map upgrades to expand my minimap, so when i zoned, i didnt saw a thing on it, i just had my compass and my quest that i aquired. I didnt knew how far should i go, what level of monster may i encounter, etc. It was a nightmare and a good little trip at the same time. (btw i saw the iron reet! man it was huge and stunning :D)

Most peoples want useful stuff.  For me playing COH, i could care less about badges.   However i'm still waiting for a MMO that has more to offer then the usual kill 10 wolf, gather 10 petls kinda quests.   LOTR is new but it's all the same thing.

Have to say that I love exploring. I wish there was more reward for doing it. I am not talking about anything great. I would be happy to find a long forgotten altar to a god that was used by people who lived in wilderness and it has a relic that could be returned to the church of the god for a little fame or something. Would be nice to have this type of thing on a timer that is not able to be determined. Might show up once a month to 3 months. Make it where someone out having fun enjoying the world will find.

SWG Vanguard have more exploration that you can shake a stick at.  Are you saying all that is wrong with those games is that players aren't rewarded for exploring?  Ironically. the only game I can think of that gives a a reward any same human would care about for exploring is the LotRO, which has most of the "on rails" features that you railed against in your editorial. 

Oh yeah, and there's that weird Egyptian MMO that had exploartion as one of the majot career paths.  I that still going?  And doesn't EVE have some exploration rewards? 

I don't count the meager XP that you get in WoW for exploring or the "badges" you get in CoH as very enticing rewards, personally.

How's that for rambling...

This is going to be a hot topic button to press here, but please note that I am not arguing against the following game mechanic. I am simply making an observation.

I believe one of the real killers of exploration was the global marketplace. By which I mean the single location to buy/sell all the player sold goods (auction hous). In the games where this option was not implemented you would find players exploring far, far more. It also gave a purpose to exploring outside the realm of a leisure activity.

Now you were looking for some paticular item. 

Now you were looking for the best prices.

Now all of the sudden you realize that you are exploring somewhere you have never been before and realize it's actually quite fun.

Most players, on their own, will not explore the world. But give them reasons to do so and add dynamics to the landscapes, and you have a recipe for a great exploration.

Please note that I understand why people want the global marketplace system. Ebay is immensly popular in our world too. But sometimes people just want to "get out" for the experience of it. And I think you would agree that this is ok too. 

Asheron's Call had it right. No zone walls period. You could just login in and pick any direction you wanted to go and just explore for hours. I loved how if you ran long enough you'd slowly enter different climate zones (deserts, forests, snowy mountains, ocean beaches).

So many people haven't had a chance to really get to experience that. I defiantly suffer from Wanderlust.

 

This whole topic got me to thinking back to some things that early on made games very enjoyable for me, but as they diminished or disappeared, took away from the experience.

I think I started in EQ1 in late '99, back when Kunark was the only expansion.  I never did get to the high level content of the game, or at least any more than to just get my foot in the door by tagging along with higher level friends.  But in all the expansions and content that came along between those days and when I left the game a year or so ago, I loved to explore and see more of the game.  It drove me more than "I have to get to level X by day Y" that many people get into.  Nothing against people who play to reach the "end" of the game, but for me it's the journey along the way that is the real value.

My S.O. was someone who loved to play the market in the earlier days, buying things in one place and selling in another, or just selling quest rewards or crafted content.  She would follow a route from one zone to another, visiting and spending a lot of time at each place that had lots of people and lots of trading going on.  (I'm sure any old time EQ player knows many of these kinds of places.)  And the fact that these places had more people in them also made them popular places to be, to experience the content of.  Many times the set spawn areas or wandering spawns were heavily utilized and it was hard to find your own spot or to find a spot with others due to at times overcrowding.

But then came the Shadows of Luclin expansion, which later brought a specific zone for trading in: the Bazaar.  In my opinion, this was the start of the end for me, and it took away a lot of what the game had to offer for me.  My S.O. at first thought it was great, as did I, but we soon realized that without the people in all those other usual places, it removed a lot of the interaction and community that had been long established in those places.  The previously well-populated zones were now turning into ghost towns.  It made for easier questing and level grinding at times, but it just felt so empty.

And the final blow to all this was the addition of a transport hub zone, the Plane of Knowledge, where you could click on a teleporter and transport yourself right to any of the major cities of the game.  No more need to travel across the world to reach where you needed to go, aside from a small amount of travel needed away from the city itself.  But this meant that you no longer had to travel from city to city across the wilderness, you could just transport into a safe hub zone, then transport to the destination city, no risk.

But this lead to a lot of older zones that no longer had people utilizing them to become empty (and hard to find groups for), and many of them were later converted by the developers into more content for only high level players, thus further limiting what was available for progression up through the levels.

I know this rambled, but my point is that as games age (or try to "avert" supposed problems of previous games), they add aspects of convenience and some of the exploration and feel of the game usually gets lost.

The thing that kills exploration is, I hate to say it, sites like this one.

I remember when I played Star Wars Galaxies.  The exploration factor was huge, and there were mysteries to be found.

However, they don't stay mysterious for long.  Due to sites like Stratics and Alakazham, plus all the "secrets to SWG/cheat codes/level info" sites made exploration pretty useless within days after the launch.  What is the point in actually exploring an MMO, when all the exploration is already catalouged, referenced, and made public knowledge to anyone with Internet Explorer?

That's why its pretty much useless for MMO developers to do much with exploration content, and they fall back on linear content.  Because they have discovered that even in the most free form environments, players will make it linear, because they already know everything about the worlds without even having to play in the worlds.

Interestingly, the longest-running successful MMO (UO) has virtually no "content".  It's all freeform.  SWG was my favorite, with just a little content but mostly do what you like.  Horizons had that too...little content, lots of exploration.  LotRO has a lot of exploration and rewards, but with a quest-directed "pointer", if you will, to that exploration, giving rewards for exploration.  LotRO also has a nice touch in that you can just skip quest lines if you don't want to do them.  Kind of free-form questing.  I'll deliver the mail, sure, but I draw the line at getting the pies past the hungry hobbits.

Sandbox vs. directed.  I think EVE is very free-form, but since it's all space and, to paraphrase Douglas Adams, "Space is BIG...really really BIG", there's not a whole lot of differentiation to the exploration.  There's a lot of dark black before coming upon those beautifully rendered space stations.  And, of course, there's no "you", just a ship.

Again, we're left with what the suits behind the game see as the best opportunity to make money.  A few months and out is really what they prefer, with a cycling of new players every few months that won't strain their dev dollars in coming up with new content, and with linear worlds that get the players in and out quickly and efficiently.  A Disney-World approach.  It works.  It makes them some cash.  And who really cares about the true "gamers" out there.  Games are for kids and we all know kids have very short attention spans, yes?  (being sarcastic here...don't start flaming please, younger gamers with long attention spans who love depth in their gaming...I know you're out there)

We really need another UO to break some new ground and be a big hit, full of choices and complexity.  But, then again, there can really only be one "first" and, after that, taking chances will come less and less quickly.

Part of the problem is what was mentioned above - Spoiler sites.  Why bother striding gallantly across all this beautiful landscape, crest these marvelous hills, surmount that majestic mountain, when you can glance at Stratics and know that Uber Sword #4 drops off Mob X, which spawns over there, or that you can pick up the Big XP Quest between seven and ten PM over that way?   When you take out the mystery and instant gratification, you lose people's attention... Sadly.

Xix13 touched on another point - Ultima Online.  When it was originally released and during the late '90s when Origin still controlled it, it wasn't a game - It was a virtual world.  That's what they were aiming for, and by God that's what they made.  Does anyone else remember those advertisements for it, where it would show the average Joe who was Average Job by day in the real world, and a Dragon Tamer by night in Sosaria, followed up by a clever blurb about how much of a world UO was?  Nostalgic.  Back When, you could run into people all the time, just poking around the woods or traveling the roads between cities, or chatting about the moongates waiting for them to shift to the desired destination.  But then a selectable gump was intro'd for  the gates, mark, recall, and gate spells were delegated from a cool trick of mages to runebooks, and now there's no necessity for foot travel.  C'est la vie.

MMOs these days don't strive for that, for being a virtual world, though - Nowadays they're just games.  UO had spiffing notions for ecologies and the like, which I think you could probably scrounge up somewhere on the intarweb (I wish I still had the link, scrounged as it was off the Stratics general forum for UO;) I believe said plans were scrapped because they couldn't be feasibly implemented.  It's amazing though - Today's technology and the resources available to the mega-companies and all that, and there's no semblance of a realistic, streamlined, living, breathing world. 

Crazy.

Exploration maybe, but not at any price.

 

See, I prefer the DragonLance goldboxes over the other series.

 

I felt lost in the Secret of the Silver Blades and never finish it...while I really loooove the Death Knight of Krynn.  I like to feel surrounded and the linear story...and the option to do side missions or not.

 

So exploration is great for me as long as it doesn't overwhelm me.  A zone, with borders, with dungeon entrances (instances, live, or other zones), a place where I understand my surrounding is great.  In life, I have better perception skills, so even if the world is "seemless", I never really feel that lost...in a game, it is easy to get me to feel lost and that isn't good.  There are moments where feeling lost is good.  See, no 2 rocks are identical in life...and if in the game they are, this is okay, but I need some geography hints to understand where I am...and on a screen, the amount of relevant information you can give is limited.  In life, I use 360 to know where I am and recognize my surrounding...on a computer, you have between 15 to 45 degree to achieve the same recognition...and my mind isn't taking more information, which result in me been lost easily in a video game while in life, I am doing better (eh, men are hunters after all, aren't we?  ).  Seemless, is not only overated, it is a flaw if you cannot integrate, in a way or another, all my recognition tools...and if you fail doing that, zones are much better, not only lagwise, but to make me feel home and in an environment I understand...and try to master!

 

See, in EQ, players love and hate some zones.  In a seemless world, your hating area will grow to a surrounding...so instead of hating 1 zone, you will hate about 8 zones (but it is seemless), all these which are close to the hating source from your perspective.  In a game like EQ, you can absolutely love 1 zone and find it the best zone ever, while hating at the same time an adjacent zone.  Hate often override love and pleasure, now in a game...

EQ was so great in the beginning, because it had great exploration. So many hidden places and wonderful discoveries to make. Too bad other MMOs have not followed this path. Even EQ2 didn't bother to reward the explorer any longer.

Originally posted by Beatnik59

The thing that kills exploration is, I hate to say it, sites like this one.

I remember when I played Star Wars Galaxies.  The exploration factor was huge, and there were mysteries to be found.

However, they don't stay mysterious for long.  Due to sites like Stratics and Alakazham, plus all the "secrets to SWG/cheat codes/level info" sites made exploration pretty useless within days after the launch.  What is the point in actually exploring an MMO, when all the exploration is already catalouged, referenced, and made public knowledge to anyone with Internet Explorer?

That's why its pretty much useless for MMO developers to do much with exploration content, and they fall back on linear content.  Because they have discovered that even in the most free form environments, players will make it linear, because they already know everything about the worlds without even having to play in the worlds.

to Dan:  I agree 100% Exploration is my #1 motivation! [forget the actual numbers but I Bartled  something like 75% Explorer, 20% Achiever, 4% Socializer and 1% Killer.]

to Beatnik: I somewhat agree, however, you DON'T HAVE to use spoiler sites.  I end up using them when the Achiever kicks in, but I really enjoy just running around exploring for myself. 

That's why I Ryzom and LOTRO - there seems to be a lot to explore.  I know some will disagree and claim that LOTRO is too linear, but they are the ones that are too linear - get off the roads [and stop doing quests for a bit] and explore!  There really is a lot to see/explore besides where you are sent for quests.