One of the larger themes for Guild Wars 2 is the idea of exploration. In our latest GW2 column, we take a look at exploration in all its various forms. Check it out before leaving your thoughts in the comments.

I love when games add in some lore, and let you walk around in a world to see some of the great landscapes that you hear or read about.  You used to find this in only traditional RPG games, but now games of all genres are using this tactic to draw players in.  ArenaNet played with this idea a bit, putting in all these great areas to discover, you just have to find them first instead of waiting for them to find you.

Read more of David North's Guild Wars 2: Go and Explore.

While discovering a node, you could discover a dark and eerie looking cave.

GW2 hardly offers any reasonable exploration.

It is not exploration if you follow a mark on your map for the next Vista or Heart Quest. 

Exploration is if you can walk off-path and discover something that was not already marked on your map before.

The world is too small and too much filled up with mini-attractions and lacks any opportunities for real exploration.

Promoting exploration in games doesn't neccessarily mean that you give a small treasure chest behind every three.

I just love the fact there are so many hidden areas in GW2 that are not marked on the map and require you to explore each zone to find.

I've never been much of an explorer in games but I find myself strangely compelled to check everywhere in GW2 which says something in itself.

Love the game, but I would prefer hearts, vistas, waypoints and discovery areas to be hidden until found - not marked on the map to spoon feed me their location ie scouts giving them away etc.

if you'd never been there, you wouldn't know where to find them.

@Thillian,

As I said in another thread. I can go grab a map of my state or whatever and see the cities on the map. It doesnt mean I know the details of everything between or wont find anything interesting.

Even with some stuff marked on the map, there is still plenty to find on your own. Theres jumping puzzles, triggers to DEs that dont occur automatically, hidden niches where youll find tough groups of mobs gathered together with some sort of boss at the end and treasure chests or rich ore nodes, and just really cool loking and fun places to run through and see. None of those things are marked on the map. You find them by actually paying attentiont to your surroundings and exploring to find hidden paths/tunnels/caves and stuff. I laugh at the people who simply walk from Point A to Point B only focusing on getting to point B, then claiming there arent things to explore and discover. Youre only getting your hand held and being lead from place to place if you let it happen.

Originally posted by Thillian

GW2 hardly offers any reasonable exploration.

It is not exploration if you follow a mark on your map for the next Vista or Heart Quest. 

Exploration is if you can walk off-path and discover something that was not already marked on your map before.

The world is too small and too much filled up with mini-attractions and lacks any opportunities for real exploration.

Promoting exploration in games doesn't neccessarily mean that you give a small treasure chest behind every three.

 

While there are markers, there are loads of stuff that is not marked in anyway. Found some good things just by wandering to some place that on map had absolutely nothing interesting going on.

Originally posted by Thillian

GW2 hardly offers any reasonable exploration.

It is not exploration if you follow a mark on your map for the next Vista or Heart Quest. 

Exploration is if you can walk off-path and discover something that was not already marked on your map before.

The world is too small and too much filled up with mini-attractions and lacks any opportunities for real exploration.

Promoting exploration in games doesn't neccessarily mean that you give a small treasure chest behind every three.

 

There are many areas that are not marked. I guess if you have played the game, you must not have looked around enough.

The world is already larger than any other game out there (the world is small - smoking something?).

I should put this up - http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jdyAXWj3YAM

That video explains it all!!

The one thing I found out was that jumping puzzles (which I enjoy) and Cherry MX Red keys don't mix in Guild Wars 2. Due to how sensitive my keys are I often found my character evading to his death. Disabling double tap fixed that of course. ;-P

Originally posted by Thillian

GW2 hardly offers any reasonable exploration.

It is not exploration if you follow a mark on your map for the next Vista or Heart Quest. 

Exploration is if you can walk off-path and discover something that was not already marked on your map before.

The world is too small and too much filled up with mini-attractions and lacks any opportunities for real exploration.

Promoting exploration in games doesn't neccessarily mean that you give a small treasure chest behind every three.

 

He is IGNORANT!!!

This is from wiki: "Ignorance is a state of being uninformed (lack of knowledge)."

Last night my guild hosted an event with prizes, all you had to do was to solve a puzzle but omg that puzzle wasn't as easy as most think let's say not even tomb raider games have something that good.

The puzzle was inside a cave and even the best of us took a good hour to solve it and the exploration was amazing also there was a spirit of a pirate that was acting like a guide but was lieing to you.

You are either obvious TROLL or just an IGNORANT acting like you know shit.

I've found underground dungeon in WvW to be particulary challenging and fun. It's a long jumping puzzle with loads of traps and hidden areas (and darkness!), and it's quite difficult, because you can get ganked by other players and most of the traps are player-controlled!

This huge underground dungeon is not marked on the map.

Originally posted by Thillian

GW2 hardly offers any reasonable exploration.

It is not exploration if you follow a mark on your map for the next Vista or Heart Quest. 

Promoting exploration in games doesn't neccessarily mean that you give a small treasure chest behind every three.

 

If this is how youve been playing it- (and there is not right way or wrong way to play an mmo.)  then you are missing out on so much more GW2 hasto offer. It sounds to me that what you are describing has been done in other mmos for the last 5 years.

you sir need to check your mmo thinking cap outside and enter this game with fresh new eyes.

Iam currently level 40 and so far i havent repeated any goals or live events nor even left my race zone (much) unless its for my personal story.

and my world discovery is only 9%!!!!!!

it has been the smoothest and refreshing leveling experience ive had in any mmo i have played( and Ive played a FEW!)

Originally posted by Thillian

GW2 hardly offers any reasonable exploration.

It is not exploration if you follow a mark on your map for the next Vista or Heart Quest. 

Exploration is if you can walk off-path and discover something that was not already marked on your map before.

The world is too small and too much filled up with mini-attractions and lacks any opportunities for real exploration.

Promoting exploration in games doesn't neccessarily mean that you give a small treasure chest behind every three.

 

I get that you dont like the game and i respect your opinion...but saying that Gw2 doesnt offers any reasonable exploration , that the world is small (for gods sake, cities are bigger than some other mmos zones) and that it is too filled with mini atractions is so facepalm-worthy as to give blisters to your own face. 

Wht would be an exploration based mmo in your opinion?  A vast desert filled with nothing , so it doesnt distracts you from pressing the W key for a few hours till you reach the end of the zone? 

"exploration is if you can walk off-path a discover something that was not on your map before"  Imho, GW2 revolves around that concept. Heart quest and vistas are last min additions thought to ease the introduction to the game, not core systems. The game itself revolves around the idea of exploring the map, not knowing wht you are going to find. Many of the DE are mobile to enhance that sensation 

GW2 is way too structured to offer anything I would personally call exploration.

Whole maps are marked with things like 'points of interest' and you get various points for going to those pre-marked points.  Besides game is zoned and those zones are cramped and tightly packed with various mark, points and mobs.  No wilds, no real discovering.

It is more like completing pre-defined 'achievement' by going to all pre-marked points on map.

So sorry way too structured for me to get enjoyment from this activity in this game.

Want to what I mean by exploration?  Only recent game that had real exploration is Dark Souls.

It is not mmo, but well no decently-funded mmorpg offered any exploration in many years already.

Originally posted by fenistil

GW2 is way too structured to offer anything I would personally call exploration.

 

Whole maps are marked with things like 'points of interest' and you get various points for going to those pre-marked points.  Besides game is zoned and those zones are cramped and tightly packed with various mark, points and mobs.  No wilds, no real discovering.

 

It is more like completing pre-defined 'achievement' by going to all pre-marked points on map. Simialr to some solutions found in some single player games.

 

So sorry way too structured for me to get enjoyment from this activity in this game.

Like others answered and described before me, there are huge amounts of stuff to discover outside those markers. While the markers are achievements you still haven't seen everything the map has to offer, not even close. So many hidden goodies.. :)

Originally posted by vee41

Originally posted by Thillian

GW2 hardly offers any reasonable exploration.

It is not exploration if you follow a mark on your map for the next Vista or Heart Quest. 

Exploration is if you can walk off-path and discover something that was not already marked on your map before.

The world is too small and too much filled up with mini-attractions and lacks any opportunities for real exploration.

Promoting exploration in games doesn't neccessarily mean that you give a small treasure chest behind every three.

 

While there are markers, there are loads of stuff that is not marked in anyway. Found some good things just by wandering to some place that on map had absolutely nothing interesting going on.

Like?

Not trolling I'm genuine interested. All I found so far whicch were not marked on the map are events. Then again I rush through areas and go to other areas once it's visible on my map.

Originally posted by vee41

Originally posted by fenistil

GW2 is way too structured to offer anything I would personally call exploration.

 

Whole maps are marked with things like 'points of interest' and you get various points for going to those pre-marked points.  Besides game is zoned and those zones are cramped and tightly packed with various mark, points and mobs.  No wilds, no real discovering.

 

It is more like completing pre-defined 'achievement' by going to all pre-marked points on map. Simialr to some solutions found in some single player games.

 

So sorry way too structured for me to get enjoyment from this activity in this game.

Like others answered and described before me, there are huge amounts of stuff to discover outside those markers. While the markers are achievements you still haven't seen everything the map has to offer, not even close. So many hidden goodies.. :)

 

I found some of them.  Like some puzzles. I found 3 of them in just Lion'sArch.

Still having some miniority % of things non-marked when most is marked is not good enough.

I am not hating on GW2.  I know that for you and seriously alot of people this kind of exploration is very nice and enjoyable thing.  Good for you ! No irony here.

I am just generally way too tired with games being too structured and too hand-holding. Like having markers for majrority of things, arrows pointing you diretion, various highlights in-game so you don't miss it.

Like for me it was huge letdown in GW2 that Dynamic Events are marked on the map and mini-map.  I was naively hoping that only way to find DE's would be either stuble on them accidently or talk / being asked to help from players.

Well I was hoping that DE's would be rarer occurence but that they would be more complex, bigger and that they would impact world for far longer (think days) rather than being very frequent and in huge majority simple, fast fights on short timer (occuring every 10-60 minutes).

So GW2 is nice game, but way too structured and hand holding and implemetning it's features in very diffrent way that I hoped it will.

Well I was way too naive though - since GW2 is huge costly project made to attract very big mainstream playerbase and fight for millions of users.

Originally posted by thekid1

Originally posted by vee41

Originally posted by Thillian

GW2 hardly offers any reasonable exploration.

It is not exploration if you follow a mark on your map for the next Vista or Heart Quest. 

Exploration is if you can walk off-path and discover something that was not already marked on your map before.

The world is too small and too much filled up with mini-attractions and lacks any opportunities for real exploration.

Promoting exploration in games doesn't neccessarily mean that you give a small treasure chest behind every three.

 

While there are markers, there are loads of stuff that is not marked in anyway. Found some good things just by wandering to some place that on map had absolutely nothing interesting going on.

Like?

Not trolling I'm genuine interested. All I found so far whicch were not marked on the map are events. Then again I rush through areas and go to other areas once it's visible on my map.

 

Well actually events are marked on both map and mini-map with orange circles and mark that 'show' what type of event is happening.