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What makes you explore?


Stroam

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-I want to know what gets you out to explore in video games. Nearly everyone loves exploring. Early game you explore to find basic resources. Mid to late game it's for ore and pumpkin seeds. If the game is to support master crafters then you shouldn't be able to find things better than can be crafted. Some things that make me want to explore are:

  • Interesting terrain. I like building in jungles and on mountains, cliffs, and other extreme vertical landscape. If I got to choose one biome to add to the game it would be a cloud forest because it combines my love of vertical extremes, tropics, large trees, and fog.
  • Another is underground structures. For instance, I completely explored every inch of the dwarven cities in Skyrim and caves. Speaking of which I should add mineral formations in caves as a suggestion. My favorite parts of exploring caves and underground structures were finding glowing stuff and large open areas. I mean who doesn't like glowing mushrooms, worms, jellyfish, trees, etc.
  • Unique above ground structures but at least in Minecraft, those are usually player made. Like mountaintop temples and such.
  • Useful uncultivatable herbs. I go every year into the mountains to find huckleberries, wild strawberries, and other delicious uncultivatable foodstuffs.
  • Finding animals. Lots of people like collecting every animal in Minecraft. However, that does lead to lag in some cases when people have huge herds of animals. I do wish animals couldn't survive very well outside of certain Biomes. Like camels where it snows, or tigers in the desert. I also wish animals took maintenance to limit people from making huge herds they rarely attend to. Also if fishing is ever a thing then different fish in different places. In Monster Hunter and Shadow of the Colossus(an Awesome game that just got a graphics makeover and it was beautiful to start with), it was just to hunt down big things to kill. Actually, in a lot of games, I enjoyed finding big things to kill. 
  • I'd be lying if I said I never went into a dungeon for loot. Finding fat loot to sell, collectibles, gold/bottle caps, rare materials, etc. Of course in those games limited inventory wasn't a huge deal, though I always wished some merchant would follow behind me and pick everything up, giving me a lion share of the profits. 

Well, there's a few of my things. Let me know if some of them also apply to you and if there are other reasons you explore. Thanks

Edited by Stroam
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The most exploring I did was in TFC and FTB-like modpacks, on multiplayer servers.

In TFC I explored for:

  • ores. Everything around world's spawn and big cities/roads is cleaned from ores. Have to explore. Also in the end-game have some build projects requiring more metals for tools and decorations.
  • fridge. To get to the northern edge of the world and create an outpost there, to preserve food. You can tp to your ourposts (Towny).
  • animals. Again, people clean world from them, so either trade or find yourself and transport them thousands of blocks.
    Because you need cheese for better sandwiches and maybe a horse.
    Once transported few cows for a friend, for a redsteel bucket. Was awesome.
  • rare flowers and trees. E.g. sequoya in TFC has a very rare chance to spawn a sapling, so was running in sequoya forests to get one.
    Or some nice flowers for a beauty project. Or some ordinary tree type for saplings, but this happens only once.
  • crops and fruit trees. Also for better diet.
  • pranks and jokes. Travel few days to get to a far outpost of a friend and build a giant silly sculpture near it. Or a pumpkin man. Or plant tons of trees around it. Etc.

In FTB - mostly for unique loot from various mods. I was playing with experienced players - they already had tons of resources and everything was automated instantly.
But some rare things, like a cloud pet from cloud chests, allowing you to fly - you need to explore lot of clouds to find one. Also the main dungeon was always interesting to explore.
And that Twilight Forest dimension - very scary, lot of cool structures and unique loot like uncrafting table.

So yeah, I am more of a hoarder than a builder (I really suck at building) so have no need for finding good places, because can't instantly build a nice matching house there.

Offtopic: Stroam, since you like scenery in games, have you tried Enderal mod for Skyrim? It replaces Skyrim's world and story, and the world is more hand-made, so it looks much better than Skyrim. Not in terms of graphics, but just scenery makes more sense. Some awesome underground and "dwarven" structures also present.

Edited by heptagonrus
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13 hours ago, heptagonrus said:

Offtopic: Stroam, since you like scenery in games, have you tried Enderal mod for Skyrim? It replaces Skyrim's world and story, and the world is more hand-made, so it looks much better than Skyrim. Not in terms of graphics, but just scenery makes more sense. Some awesome underground and "dwarven" structures also present.

No, I have not. I might do that next time I'm feeling nostalgic for the game. Skyrim is the only single player game I've spent over 200 hours on. In fact, on Steam it says I've spent over 300. Right now about the only game I feel like replaying is Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Which to bring us back to the subject.

Heart canisters is another reason I've explored in the past. ^^

and puzzle dungeons

Edited by Stroam
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  • 2 weeks later...

The problem with a lot of these open world games is they have a tendency to become very repetitive.  Even in Skyrim you tend to get tired of seeing the same dungeon template over and over.  Of course thats probably unavoidable.  Skyrim also suffered from the fact that most dungeons didn't net you much in terms of loot.  I also poured hundreds of hours into Skyrim and Oblivion and Morrowind before it.  (Haven't done a lot with TES1 and 2) I explored all the dungeons but mostly only to say that I did.  There was the occasional unique artifact to find which helped but a quick search of the wiki would tell you where to find it and negate the need for exploring all the boring dungeons randomly.  Similarly in MC dungeons, chests really didnt offer much and most experienced players don't get to excited to see a dungeon chest these days.  

I think for vintage story to encourage exploration they really have to focus on unique and rare items and biome specific items as well.  Biomes could have biome specific plants, creatures and creature drops, furniture and architecture styles.  Thats a lot of work of course but it would help a great deal in encouraging exploration.  Many things could be obtained without traveling to a specific biome but they would be found randomly in merchant inventories for a greatly marked up price or rarely in villager chests or homes.  A collector would have to travel to the biome itself to obtain all items.

Dungeon chests should also be random and certain artifacts should only be found in those chests and only in certain biomes and maybe at certain depths.  Even better if these rare artifacts can be combined to create ultra rare artifacts.  If you are one rare artifact away from crafting that combined artifact then you will be determined to explore.  

I want to be excited to see a dungeon chest again.  Or that ultra rare painting or decorative object.  in MC you get that feeling when you find that villager who sells the Mending book or you put your dragon egg on display.  After that though, what else is there?  I hope Vintage story takes this to the next level.  But maybe my dream of MC mixed with Terraria/Starbound is one that no one else shares lol.

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...
Guest HelDM

well, stay tuned for today and next Saturday... I'll go places, see now people... and be frightened beyond belief!

(building hype lol)

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I can't speak for Vintage Story because I haven't purchased it yet (I'm just observing for the time being), but I can speak for some other games. I'm not too much of an explorer, but I do like looking around the game environment and inspecting the details and seeing which is interact-able and which isn't. It's all well and good until I start seeing the same structure again and perform the same tasks again for the umpteenth time. Guild Wars 2's world is interesting, but the Hearts system and the way it's set up makes the exploration in that game feel more like a chore than a genuinely engaging experience. Vanilla Minecraft's current world generator makes the worlds feel samey, a bit empty, and without a touch of variety to make it even feel more alive; it's why I vastly prefer TFC's world generator over the vanilla version.

I hope to see in the coming months that Vintage Story lives up to its potential. Been watching an LP series lately to get a good feel for the game and it already feels like a graphically-pleasing TFC in many aspects, which is a good thing I think. Maybe when the game's developed up to a certain point I'll purchase it for myself.

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Exploring is a means to an end anymore, (especially looking for ore or resources). 

It's hard for me to enjoy exploring, i'd rather stay in one spot and build something interesting for other people to find.

You have to have something awesome for me to care about exploring, like an ancient sea side temple ruins, or some bizarre evil tainted landscape that intrigues the mind.  Exploring strange alien landscapes fascinate me beyond end, because its alien and different. That usually leads me to want to survive there.

Basically I've played so many games that exploring loses all meaning because I've seen everything, or at least all the tropes. I won't lie and say VS doesn't have beautiful terrain, But that's about it for me. The only reason to care about it, is if the land itself has some sort of deep story, or possible calamity that might happen. And ancient ruins hold clues to said problems, and what led them to ruin. That way you can care about whats buried underground so you don't wake the demon slumbering under your front porch.

Games like that with those systems lead me to explore, because theirs just so much challenge and intrigue.

Tl:dr: I like scary stuff to explore, it makes me giddy to find it. if no scary stuff, i don't bother because its a snore fest.

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  • 1 year later...

I think that when they start to add more advanced automation and or tech to the game it should come from schematics that are found in the ruins. the Tech for thease new automation blocks and or prosseses should be some how tied to the civilisation that left them or came before. It should tie in with the drifters and the temporal gear and or translocaters and maybe even help tell the history of this ancient lost civalisation. It would be cool to also have the brief journal entries and or storys that we find somtimes referance other cords to other ruins. You could then lead a player to a series of locations telling a story and the history  and lore while rewarding them with tech advances that help with advancing the automation and ease of survival. Create a reason for the player to finaly locate the lost main city or some such location of the ancients and finaly find out what happened to them!

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  • Finding beautiful landscapes. In VS we have many since 1.9. I love that;
  • Rare loot: pumpkin seeds, cabbage seeds, rare vessels, rare paintings;
  • Stone types: after I get comfortable with food and metals, I start to look for different stone types to make custom buildings, or even to choose another place to build with a theme.
  • Trees; animals; different food (I'll be very happy when fruit trees come into the game);
  • To find translocators: that's fairly new, but it helps a lot to reach new destinations or shorten some way. Very much useful since we don't have fast transport means right now.
  • Different types of ruins;
  • Traders so we can get rare items, clothing or resources.
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