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It's exactly the same map except for the plaque for Scholar and the Hydra trial entrance.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Their network feels at least a little bit bigger and it dips down significantly lower, I believe.
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| Or how about a different approach? An outdoor mission somewhere out of the city with an objective of reaching a number of "outposts" in a particular order. Why not just fly/speed to them? Because you have to escort an NPC who doesn't move very fast and can't fly. Said NPC also can't die, but it serves as an anchor to keep us moving in a more conventional way - by walking. |
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| Moreover, I feel that City of Heroes lacks a certain something that many other MMOs have, and that's a sense of discovery and exploration, a sense of... Seeing the world. Travel powers are very convenient, I don't deny that. Hell, I LOVE my travel powers for when I don't feel like "exploring" and just want to get to my next mission. But sometimes, I just want to see a task of some sort which requires me to get down to the actual world, get down to the small-scale terrain and see the boulders, the street curbs, the fences, the benches and the people walking on the street. Sometimes I DO want a dungeon crawl which takes me through a maze of tunnels descending ever downwards into the unknown. |
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Somehow, we seem to have developed a very rushed culture here in this game. Teleport the mission, stealth to the end, click one thing, then hit Exit and teleport to the next one. It's good that this exist as a form of convenience, but it seems to have disconnected us from the world within which our adventures take place, to the point where a narrow bridge over a deep pit is seen as oh-so-inconvenient, as opposed to a pretty vista and a large room as a drag because it has so many enemies, as opposed to a visually impressive location. |
As I keep going through those zones, though, I expect that the time I take to look around is going to shorten considerably. I'll have seen what's to be seen before and I won't expect it to change. This right here is key to the subject you're discussing: I don't expect anything to change or be different from the last time I was there.
This is why people speed content, even new content: They believe they've seen it all before. Even if they actually haven't, they believe that it's going to be very similar to what they've seen previously. Me? Whether I'm vaulting over the fence behind the Ice Palace in St. Martial to land on a huge pile of bodies, or touching down on the sidewalk near Praetor White's PPD recruitment poles in First Ward to see they've been replaced by 'Missing' boards, I only encounter such things by luck, and that's how I expect things will be for a while.
In the absence of being awestruck by a pretty but relatively non-dynamic environment, people are just going to want to get their business done and leave to do other things they want to do...I mean, unless they're RPing or something. I think this holds for MMOs in general.
61866 - A Series of Unfortunate Kidnappings - More than a coincidence?
2260 - The Burning of Hearts - A green-eyed monster holds the match.
379248 - The Spider Without Fangs - NEW - Some lessons learned (more or less.)
Well, my point really isn't to see new things I haven't before, though that would be cool. I more mean the basic satisfaction of a good dungeon crawl, or the the fun of travelling a long distance cross country. I remember the original Need for Speed game had a mode where the races weren't circuits, but rather very long, segmented cross-country drives, and I remember having a lot of fun with that. Need for Speed: The Run promised this, but failed to deliver in a big way, which was disappointing, but that's kind of what I mean.
Usually when I get sent to the Abandoned Sewers to hunt 50 Rikti, I like to come in the Atlas Park gate, then go all the way through the lower reaches and come out of, say, the Steel Canyon gate or the Kings Row gate or some such. There quite literally isn't anything interesting on the way - it's just sewers and more sewers. But what I enjoy about them is the feeling of remoteness. I'm not in a city near a support infrastructure. If I die, I might as well quit because it'll take me right back to where I started. If I need help, that help can't really get to me.
It's actually a lot like why I like the Shadow Shard. Sure, the geysers suck (or blow, if we want to be factually accurate), sure the islands are confusing, sure the zones are too big... But when I'm three zones past the nearest inhabited place and source of support or comfort, that's a very different experience. It's the remoteness and solitude of it that really works to its favour. Even if you take people along, you're still alone, far away from civilization, and that's what I think City of Heroes really needs.
Sure, Jack Emmert thought the solution to this was to boot us off into Canada or "the desert," but that's missing the point, because even then we're within spitting distance of a base the size of a small city. More, if you count the bases that belong to the bad guys. Being set in a forest or a sewer or an alien planet or "the Moon" isn't what defines it. Being a long way away from any kind of friendly support, alone in hostile territory, that's what it's all about, and we simply don't have that. Our entire game is set in a city, where help is quite literally around every corner. There's a hospital across the street, a shop two blocks down, trainers within walking distance, we're in a safe, comforting world that provides anything we need everywhere we go. There's no opportunity to leave that behind.
That's why I bring up the concept of "traversal" missions, as a task that doesn't make you just go to a LOCATION and do something near there, it actually sends you down a PATH and preferably deep down the rabbit hole where nasty things lie. Of course, if it's JUST a sewer run, it would grow old fast. Not to me - I love that stuff and would run Atta's cave every chance I get - but for other people, for sure. But you CAN put interesting stuff along the way. A scripted boss to hold the key to the door leading to the next sewer section, an enemy camp that needs to be cleared so your escort can settle for the night, a machine that has to be destroyed so a forcefield would go down, there are possibilities.
More than anything, though, I really wish the actual act of travelling around could be incorporated more thoroughly into the game itself. Right now, it's really just a chore, to the point where many have suggested doing away with the overworld entirely. Why do we need it, they ask, if all it does is get in the way? Frankly, I know it's not a good idea, but I'm starting to run out of reasons to explain why that is. How can, say, Half-Life 2 make the act of driving a car down what feels like 50 miles of broken-up highway seem like a fun adventure, yet if you did the same in City of Heroes, most players would see it as a time sink? It's not like things don't happen along the way, but why do people want to always skip all these things and just go for the end boss when really, everything gives experience?
As with my "guns for non-quishies" musings, I really don't know why the problem exists or what might be done to address it. It just... Bugs me, I suppose. I see a mission like Atta's cave or the "Save 21 Mystics from Oranbega" and I'm excited to try them, yet everyone else sees them as a waste of time. Why? Why is it so important that the things we fight only be the ones that end the mission? What's the rush, when the next mission will bring much of the same?
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Are you sure its not just that you have lost that feeling because we've been here forever?|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Moreover, I feel that City of Heroes lacks a certain something that many other MMOs have, and that's a sense of discovery and exploration, a sense of... Seeing the world.
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I certainly used to have that feeling and would explore every zone as I reached the appropriate level. I remember the first time I ventured into Kings Row and I remember trying to sneak around Founders Falls (sans stealth powers) just to see the newly added zone. Now though, I am familiar with them all, have all the explorer badges, that sense of discovery is naturally gone.
Mind you I don't think things like the horrid Team-Up-Teleport, Contact Finder and Mission Teleporter do anything to help.
This is a song about a super hero named Tony. Its called Tony's theme.
Jagged Reged: 23/01/04
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I reiterate that there would have to be a lot of cool things to do along to the way to keep people from getting bored, and none of them could be tedious or else people would be thinking about those particular tasks the entire time they were heading there.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Well, my point really isn't to see new things I haven't before, though that would be cool. I more mean the basic satisfaction of a good dungeon crawl, or the the fun of travelling a long distance cross country.
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Even then, I'm not sure that people would want to run it more than once unless it was executed very well...or, unless if gave good rewards...or unless they were RPing or something.
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| That's why I bring up the concept of "traversal" missions, as a task that doesn't make you just go to a LOCATION and do something near there, it actually sends you down a PATH and preferably deep down the rabbit hole where nasty things lie. Of course, if it's JUST a sewer run, it would grow old fast. Not to me - I love that stuff and would run Atta's cave every chance I get - but for other people, for sure. But you CAN put interesting stuff along the way. A scripted boss to hold the key to the door leading to the next sewer section, an enemy camp that needs to be cleared so your escort can settle for the night, a machine that has to be destroyed so a forcefield would go down, there are possibilities. |
Prisoners of Eden, which has been around for a very long time. It's relatively easy these days, people still try and speed it, somehow. Most teams try to clear out the crystal critters in the last room and as far as I'm aware most of them find that to be the most boring part. Despite the two Walls, required Ambrosia farming, no rez support, and fairly standard rewards, you don't hear a lot of complaints regarding 'gimmickiness' or disproportionate time investment regarding the trial, as opposed to:
The Underground Trial, which has added an escort in the form of Desdemona, has rez support, and has more difficult obstacles and more of them, which many people consider 'gimmicky' and unnecessary time sinks even after the trial rewards were increased.
Both trials send you down the proverbial rabbit hole, but incite very different reactions. However, I'm not convinced that this is what attracts people to these trials. I'm not even sure if its an attractive feature for the player base at all.
However, I'm fairly certain that ease of completion is.
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More than anything, though, I really wish the actual act of travelling around could be incorporated more thoroughly into the game itself. Right now, it's really just a chore, to the point where many have suggested doing away with the overworld entirely. Why do we need it, they ask, if all it does is get in the way? Frankly, I know it's not a good idea, but I'm starting to run out of reasons to explain why that is. How can, say, Half-Life 2 make the act of driving a car down what feels like 50 miles of broken-up highway seem like a fun adventure, yet if you did the same in City of Heroes, most players would see it as a time sink? It's not like things don't happen along the way, but why do people want to always skip all these things and just go for the end boss when really, everything gives experience? As with my "guns for non-quishies" musings, I really don't know why the problem exists or what might be done to address it. It just... Bugs me, I suppose. I see a mission like Atta's cave or the "Save 21 Mystics from Oranbega" and I'm excited to try them, yet everyone else sees them as a waste of time. Why? Why is it so important that the things we fight only be the ones that end the mission? What's the rush, when the next mission will bring much of the same? |
Gordon Freeman, even before he put on the hazmat suit back in Black Mesa, was presented as the underdog. Even when he's got the suit, and has a machine gun, homing bug gauntlet thing, or a tractor beam in his arsenal, his identifying weapon is a crowbar. In the race to get to Nova Prospect, he was lucky to have a good enough rep to get a go-cart so he wouldn't have to hoof it, and that might've only been because everyone else wanted to save Eli, too. He's still only lucky enough to find supplies on the way for when (if!) he eventually does get to Nova Prospect, and hopefully he doesn't blow it all before then. There's a lot of suspense involved; everyone cheers for the underdog because they can sometimes empathize with him, so they're willing to go the distance to help him out.
Our characters are archetypal super-powered beings; we aren't presumed to be the underdogs...at least, for not very long. This is the first problem the developers would have to deal with when making a dungeon-crawling scenario. We have very fast methods of travel, most of the time. We have all the supplies we need, most of the time. If there's any reason, any reason at all, why we should be slowed down in spite of our presumed and often collective might, it absolutely must make sense. I'm sure you've heard arguments that Incarnates etc. etc. shouldn't be destroyed by security lasers etc. etc. by now.
The story being sold has to be believable within the context of the character whose eyes we're reading it through.
On another point, consider my comparison between Eden and UGT above. Both have elements that you've given in your description of dungeon crawling, but many people are indifferent towards even while many dislike UGT. I suspect that this is because UGT is not easy. Many folks don't like saving 21 hostages or grinding through Atta's lair because they may consider it tedious and boring. If a task must be tedious and boring I imagine they would really rather have it be relatively easy and quick as well so they can go about doing the things they really want to do, which is usually along the lines of getting to the heart of a problem and quickly turning it concave.
Finally, consider for a moment that you can save your progress in Half-Life. You can't do that in CoH in the middle of a trial. Some people just don't want to sit around that long and do stuff. That's why they speed through things.
61866 - A Series of Unfortunate Kidnappings - More than a coincidence?
2260 - The Burning of Hearts - A green-eyed monster holds the match.
379248 - The Spider Without Fangs - NEW - Some lessons learned (more or less.)
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I'm positive. It's not the discovery of new things, in the sense of seeing content for the first time that I'm referring to, so much as a sense that there's something there TO be discovered, something there that's hidden deep beneath the surface or bar beyond the borders or in the faraway reaches where no-one ever goes. It's a sense of... "Location," if you will. This game can have alien graphics from the future and a city as big as New York and it would still lack that, because every place we go is exactly like every place else in one crucial, inescapable fashion - it's in an area controlled by a civilised nation. Even in the Rogue Isles, you're never more than a single jump away from a place where a regular person could receive help and support and a criminal on the run can hide out.|
Originally Posted by Jagged
Are you sure its not just that you have lost that feeling because we've been here forever?
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Look at something like Left 4 Dead. This is almost entirely a game of locations and traversal. The world has gone to ****, no-one is coming to save you, everything alive wants you dead, and you must fend for yourself. This once-bustling city full of people who could have helped you and facilities that you could have used is dead, and worse - more dangerous than any wilderness. No-one is left to help you. Possibly no-one in the entire world. That's not a game which revolved around skipping to the end and pressing the button, because that would be missing the point. It revolves around taking every step, opening every door, fighting through every set piece, all the while knowing that though you and your friends are all barely conscious enough to walk, let alone pull yourself up, if you can just break through that last obstacle and reach that next safe room, you will survive.
Or look at something like Sands of Time. That entire game is one giant trip, a struggle to get to a particular place. From the moment it begins, the objective is one single thing - get to the Tower of Dawn. And once you get there, it ends. And yet the final climb of the Tower of Dawn over the ruined outside is still one of my favourite moments of gaming every single time, even though I've done it so many times already. I feel as though I really am at this location, because the location matters. I can't simply turn on Fly and get to the tower, I need to find a way. I need to find a bridge across, I need to find my way up to that balcony, I need to find a way down to that switch.
Hell, look at something as simple as the original Diablo. That game had four settings, each four levels deep before you met the next one, with a boss at the bottom. And yet it always felt like I was making progress. Every level took me deeper, every level took me closer to the heart of darkness, every level took me farther and farther away from Tristram. Yes, there were town portals and the occasional shortcut unlocked from the inside, but still: When you set foot inside the catacombs, you left the city behind. You were on your own, with no support, no lifeline and only the items you brought with you
I get that we're in a city and that just means we're always within an arm's reach of a police station or a hospital. That doesn't we can't have locations or missions which take us away from this. And not a step away, not a loading screen away, but tangibly far a away from society. In fact, I wouldn't mind a Shadow Shard like zone where vendors did not exist, and we were forced to use forgotten artifact instead of people for training, purchases and resurrection. I get that we have travel powers that make terrain mostly meaningless, to the point where the city could do away with stairs entirely and few of us would notice. That doesn't mean that we can't have missions or tasks where terrain mattered, such that we couldn't just fly over everything right to the end, or otherwise become invisible and waddle to the end that way.
City of Heroes is very good in terms of story and gameplay, but it often feels like you can swap the city for anything at all and nothing in the game would change a single iota. You can host the game in a Fantasy forest or out in the desert and everything would play out exactly the the same. Convenience is one thing, but I fear it's making us loose touch with the game's actual physical world.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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I miss the feeling of discovery, but only because for most zones my duo partner and I have been there. When we first walked into First ward, I can say for myself I got that back. My favorite was walking around the asylum, looking at it with eyes that have heard the stories of Mom during my pretoria ventures, to actually seeing what was the base of all the mystery. I got a chill looking up to those dead windows and thinking about the atrocities that happened there, looking around at the ruined landscape and feeling a sadness.
It was not untill we started doing the missions there that made me sit up and remember what it felt like to be new the first time I steped into CoH back in 2005 (never started a forum account untill '06 lol so don't jump on that) I was freash I was awed, every new zone brought new thoughts and new story ideas as a writer.
Currently we are working with the medicin man and his first contact with us made me pause and smile. I am a follower of shaminism and the mythic paths and this was right up my alley. I just hope the stories and the feel that makes me want to help a contact remains as the game progresses. Since we have come back, we have been continually impressed with some of the changes.. others.. well meh, but I am enjoying the newer stories that are developing.
Its not always about the exploration, but if you take the time to look around you, it may be you are missing something great. We had said we had no need for first ward at first, now it is up there on our list along with Croata as one of our favorite places in the game. Read the stories, as I see it they are improving in leaps and bound on the newer content. (walks off muttering about the new tut zone being her only dissapointment. )
Every soldier has two famlies - The one you raise, and the one you raise hell with.
Sgt. Firewalker and Valtina Firewalker permiante Duo
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I've run the Eden Trial once, I believe, and I had to argue with people quite a bit that we SHOULDN'T just have someone stealth past all the spawns and teleport us all to the next set piece. I insisted we do it proper and walk to our destination - and we did - which made for a very entertaining Trial, even if the final fight is... Not very good. I enjoyed the terrain, I enjoyed the acid lake, I enjoyed the holes in the ground and the ceiling. It was a fun ride. Hell, I wanted to go back out the way we came in, but everyone hit Exit as fast as they could. A fellow didn't believe me that we COULD go back, thinking a long drop to be irreversible, but he was just looking up the wrong hole on the ceiling.|
Originally Posted by TheDeepBlue
Prisoners of Eden, which has been around for a very long time. It's relatively easy these days, people still try and speed it, somehow. Most teams try to clear out the crystal critters in the last room and as far as I'm aware most of them find that to be the most boring part. Despite the two Walls, required Ambrosia farming, no rez support, and fairly standard rewards, you don't hear a lot of complaints regarding 'gimmickiness' or disproportionate time investment regarding the trial.
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I'd also put the Abandoned Sewers Trial in this category, if only it were actually designed to happen at the end of a sewer run, which the original 150 Rikti were supposed to simulate but utterly failed to do so. I've run it a few times, and every time I've been teleported to the front door and we'd move back and forth between two rooms, killing the Rikti as they respawned. I would have LOVED it if we had to navigate a mile of sewers IN AN INSTANCE, always sloping downwards, always dipping lower, until eventually we came up to that huge pit where the walls of worked stone give way to bare rock where the Hydra has borrowed below where the city ends. But, of course, then people would just stealth to the head and teleport me there...
Do you know what I like? The instance with the Rikti Saucer at the end of the "Horrors of War" story arc from Dark Watcher. It starts in a cave, goes down to a sewer, then goes down into another cave, then goes down into a Rikti base, which ends up in a very impressive location right under the Shuttle. I also really like the very first mission of the Lady Grey TF, which I've run a few times. I like how it starts me off in an abandoned lab, goes down one floor, then breaks out into a cave, then goes into a Rikti base.
Actually, I've designed an Architect arc around a concept like this, even if it's a bit of a fudge. I started with an office-to-cave-to-sewer map where you find people jackhammering into the ground at the end. In another mission, you're said to return to the same building, but start off in an abandoned lab which I claim was under the sewers, which is actually the Architect version of the Lady Grey map. So, in storyline, you go from office to cave to sewer to abandoned lab to cave to Rikti base, and always going down. I really wish we had a map that did this.
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Originally Posted by TheDeepBlue
Our characters are archetypal super-powered beings; we aren't presumed to be the underdogs...at least, for not very long. This is the first problem the developers would have to deal with when making a dungeon-crawling scenario. We have very fast methods of travel, most of the time. We have all the supplies we need, most of the time. If there's any reason, any reason at all, why we should be slowed down in spite of our presumed and often collective might, it absolutely must make sense. I'm sure you've heard arguments that Incarnates etc. etc. shouldn't be destroyed by security lasers etc. etc. by now.
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People hate escorts because escort AI in this game is crap. It always has been. That's fine, you can "escort" people without literally escorting them. Perhaps there is a very easy way to the objective but the door is locked. It can be opened from the other side, but someone has to crawl through a cave infested with monsters. And when you do that and open the door, it turns out you need to do that for the next three doors. That's essentially the entirety of "We've got hostiles!" - a mile-long trek to get to the other side of a locked door. Or perhaps the people you're helping can move on their own if they move quickly, but they can't survive on their own, so you have to clear their path, then clear a new staging area or safe house, then call them in so they pop up next to you without you actually having to escort anyone. It becomes a simple mission - get to the next checkpoint, clear it out, click a glowie.
Convincing, good reasons aren't that hard to come buy. Most people hate missions like these because they hamstring their abilities, but it's possible to free up a person to use his or her own full arsenal of abilities and turn the "limitations" into objectives, instead. You're not hamstrung to a stupid, fragile escort, you're free to roam around, you just have to clear out a specific spot, or open a specific door, or turn on a specific lift or some such.
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Originally Posted by TheDeepBlue
Finally, consider for a moment that you can save your progress in Half-Life. You can't do that in CoH in the middle of a trial. Some people just don't want to sit around that long and do stuff. That's why they speed through things.
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Actually, we already have something which allows us to save progress based on how far we've gone and whether we've visited a forward location: The Firebase Zulu Mole Points. I know the development team forgot those existed and just plopped down the horrible cop-out teleporters, but once upon a time you were required to visit a mole point personally, become "attuned" to it, and only then could you travel to it. What this meant was that once you travelled to the Cascades and visited the Mole Point there, you "saved" your progress and could continue from there.
Hell, the DFB has this. If you die, you get sent back up near the topside access hatch, but you can teleport down to the last level you reached. Sure, it doesn't last past a single trial run, but it exists as a system.
If save points are the problem, I don't see why it can't be possible to use those techniques.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Well, alright, those are some good points.
I'd really like to go back to your original post to answer the questions you really brought up in the first place, since I must have missed them the first time, since I think it will help summarize my own views.
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Aside from badging, it was never really given a reason to exist in the first place. Furthermore, I've never been under the impression that it was important in CoH at all, aside from the aforementioned badging. Thirdly, I'm still not sure why it should be, on its own. The developers haven't focused very hard on getting anyone attached to much of the city at all.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Is exploration really dead in our game?
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"Oh look, Battle Maiden knocked over M1. I guess that's a drag."
"Ah, the mixmaster over in Skyway done got collapsed. That's gonna be a bummer for someone to clean up."
"Galaxy City, hit by meteors? What's Galaxy City?"
Rather, it seems that players have to form the attachments themselves, which has unintended consequences. Anyone remember the dissonance when the AE buildings or Wentworths' were put up?
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| Is there no way to make tasks and missions which centre around exploration without people seeing them as "annoying?" |
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| Is the only way we feel like we're progressing by seeing the "Mission complete!" text with everything in-between being just a nuisance? |
61866 - A Series of Unfortunate Kidnappings - More than a coincidence?
2260 - The Burning of Hearts - A green-eyed monster holds the match.
379248 - The Spider Without Fangs - NEW - Some lessons learned (more or less.)
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I'd probably need some examples. The mentioned existing missions don't seem so much 'exploration' as it is 'big map with same-y stuff in it'. And when I say stuff, it's mainly referring to the way mission spawning works.
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Is there no way to make tasks and missions which centre around exploration without people seeing them as "annoying?"
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On Virtue, we call these missions "Pizza Runs" ... where all you're doing is just running around to click on phone boxes. There's no rhyme or reason involved in actually DOING that, since you don't get any "additional instructions" or anything when you reach the phone box you need to click on. There's a Pizza Run mission in the middle of the Citadel TF, which most everyone here ought to be familiar with.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
Or how about a different approach? An outdoor mission somewhere out of the city with an objective of reaching a number of "outposts" in a particular order.
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It would be different if you were sent out to "click a phone box" and then received instructions to "do something" over the phone once you're there. Even if those instructions were to street sweep 10 mobs in the local area of <insert enemy group here>, you'd still be on the receiving end of a reason to *GO THERE* so as to DO SOMETHING. As matters stand, every single Pizza Run mission is simply an exercise in "Do you have a Travel Power? (Y/N)" and serving no further purpose beyond that other than the wasting of playing time.
It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...
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My question was kind of asking the reverse, though. I get that people want to complete missions - that's the point of the game, loosely speaking. But is that the ONLY thing people want, to the exclusion of anything and everything which stands between one "Mission complete!" and the next? Sometimes I get the feeling that if people could auto-complete every mission, they actually would. At least that's the impression I get when I'm ordered to sit by the door with the rest of the team while one person stealths to the boss, teleports us all there for a 15-second fight, then kicks us all out of the mission so we can do it again about five more times.|
Originally Posted by TheDeepBlue
Nobody likes loose ends. People like clearly defined goals, and not everyone likes the sandbox genre where they have to spend time coming up with goals themselves. That's human nature. Furthermore, people like have more control over what they end up doing with their time, and will often try to minimize time investment while maximizing the rewards for that investment.
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I get that we want to complete missions, but I was sort of hoping we actually liked PLAYING said missions to completion, not just skipping a step and jumping straight to the rewards and congratulations. That's kind of why I like missions with lots of objectives like the 21 mystics - I can't just jump to the end, because there is no end. There's something to do in almost every room, so there's nothing that can be skipped.
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Originally Posted by Leo_G
I'd probably need some examples. The mentioned existing missions don't seem so much 'exploration' as it is 'big map with same-y stuff in it'. And when I say stuff, it's mainly referring to the way mission spawning works.
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Don't get me wrong, I'm not asking for missions to be more linear, I just want more to be done with terrain interactivity. The "mixed" tilesets are a big soft spot of mine. If we had a map that traversed between all the terrains we had, it would probably be my favourite.
Generally, when talking about moving through locations, I enjoy the sense that I'm making physical progress along the map. I like to look back and see how far I've gone, I like to look at my depth gauge and see how deep I've descended, I like to look at my map and see how large an area I've cleared of enemies and so forth. I suppose that what bugs me so much is how... "One-off" and unconnected our missions are. I will always pick a larger mission with more objectives over several small ones.
*note*
While I like seeing my name in people's sigs, I think my quote in yours may have fallen out of date. Titan Weapons is awesome!
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Originally Posted by Redlynne
On Virtue, we call these missions "Pizza Runs" ... where all you're doing is just running around to click on phone boxes. There's no rhyme or reason involved in actually DOING that, since you don't get any "additional instructions" or anything when you reach the phone box you need to click on. There's a Pizza Run mission in the middle of the Citadel TF, which most everyone here ought to be familiar with.
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You are out in the middle of the countryside in an open, hilly area. At your starting point is a science team protected by deployable cannons so you can leave them alone for a while. However, they can't move over terrain easily because they're transporting a VERY volatile mcguffin which can't be shaken up or it will explode. What you need to do is fine a suitable location within, say, a mile, and then set up a teleporter beacon there so that the expedition can teleport to a forward location. The beacon is fragile, so you have to clear up all the enemies in the area before you set it up. The thing has a limited range and the map has a selection of applicable locations, so you essentially have to go from location to location to location until you reach your goal. Every location is somehow unique. One could be an old abandoned hut, another an empty cave, another an elevated rock formation, another an old camp site, another still just a place with relatively flat ground and so forth.
Granted, what I'm describing is fairly complex, but I do believe the mechanics to create it already exist.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Right. Well I can't say I much care for that myself. Not saying I'm against adding such things or that they'd be boring for me, just answering the question in the title. 'Traversal' missions? Meh...I'd play them. Can't say I'd want them or that it'd matter more than what we've got.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
As I said, I use the term "exploration" loosely, which is why I used the term "traversal" in the title. I, personally, happen to enjoy traversing terrain and marvelling at beautiful vistas even when rendered in mediocre graphics. I enjoy traversing underground caverns and wondering how deep I've descended, or climbing on the outside of buildings and looking down to see how high I've climbed. I enjoy missions where terrain matters in some way, and let's be honest here - most City of Heroes missions could take place in a giant white cube and not much of the gameplay would change.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not asking for missions to be more linear, I just want more to be done with terrain interactivity. The "mixed" tilesets are a big soft spot of mine. If we had a map that traversed between all the terrains we had, it would probably be my favourite. Generally, when talking about moving through locations, I enjoy the sense that I'm making physical progress along the map. I like to look back and see how far I've gone, I like to look at my depth gauge and see how deep I've descended, I like to look at my map and see how large an area I've cleared of enemies and so forth. I suppose that what bugs me so much is how... "One-off" and unconnected our missions are. I will always pick a larger mission with more objectives over several small ones. |
I, personally, like map interaction too but more in a personal/intimate sense. That is, I like exploring around and finding things that aren't essential and can be skipped but if you are (or more likely, your character) is perceptive/knowledgeable/lucky enough to find these things, it will enrich your character or the story in certain ways.
Like, for example, the AE arc I made (lol I don't think anyone's played it yet since I made it way back when AE was introduced...probably broken now), you can go through the missions, fight the boss, fight the other boss, kill the clones, break the seal and turn the tables on the little brat...but you can also search for clues which will fill in non-essential information but can progress the story sideways along with forward.
But that's just an example. If it also affected other things like spawn points, mission text and the end-content souvenir, that'd make adding not so much incentive, but reason to explore (or not) every nook and cranny of a map...but the devs would need to actually *use* those nooks and crannies, not just the typical 'object spawn point A,B,C,X and Y'...
But that's only my personal want. Not everyone desires or even cares what I may seek extra out of the game and I can respect that. But funny that, I actually don't mind repeated uses of a map *IF* it is intentional and shows progression/change. Going into an office map on one mission where it's filled with Automatons that you smash then return to the same map several missions later but now the real human office staff is running around for their lives when a Nemesis invasion is going down makes me feel like things are happening vs city/globe hopping from place to place with little rhyme or reason.
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*note* While I like seeing my name in people's sigs, I think my quote in yours may have fallen out of date. Titan Weapons is awesome!
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Jerkhole...
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That's not what I meant. I don't mean phone boxes to click in the overworld. I mean an outdoor instance with important locations on it, like the bunkers in Bloody Bay, essentially. Let's go with an example, actually. You are out in the middle of the countryside in an open, hilly area. At your starting point is a science team protected by deployable cannons so you can leave them alone for a while. However, they can't move over terrain easily because they're transporting a VERY volatile mcguffin which can't be shaken up or it will explode. What you need to do is fine a suitable location within, say, a mile, and then set up a teleporter beacon there so that the expedition can teleport to a forward location. The beacon is fragile, so you have to clear up all the enemies in the area before you set it up. The thing has a limited range and the map has a selection of applicable locations, so you essentially have to go from location to location to location until you reach your goal. Every location is somehow unique. One could be an old abandoned hut, another an empty cave, another an elevated rock formation, another an old camp site, another still just a place with relatively flat ground and so forth. Granted, what I'm describing is fairly complex, but I do believe the mechanics to create it already exist. |
Meh, it can work.
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If that's what your team is doing, then most of them would really rather be doing something else but feel that they're forced to go through whatever particular task they're doing at that moment. That's really all it comes down to, regardless of whether they actually like everything in between the start of the task and the end reward or not.|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
My question was kind of asking the reverse, though. I get that people want to complete missions - that's the point of the game, loosely speaking. But is that the ONLY thing people want, to the exclusion of anything and everything which stands between one "Mission complete!" and the next? Sometimes I get the feeling that if people could auto-complete every mission, they actually would. At least that's the impression I get when I'm ordered to sit by the door with the rest of the team while one person stealths to the boss, teleports us all there for a 15-second fight, then kicks us all out of the mission so we can do it again about five more times.
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| I get that we want to complete missions, but I was sort of hoping we actually liked PLAYING said missions to completion, not just skipping a step and jumping straight to the rewards and congratulations. That's kind of why I like missions with lots of objectives like the 21 mystics - I can't just jump to the end, because there is no end. There's something to do in almost every room, so there's nothing that can be skipped. |
Some folks on Justice finished an ITF in less than ten minutes some months back. Stellar stuff.
61866 - A Series of Unfortunate Kidnappings - More than a coincidence?
2260 - The Burning of Hearts - A green-eyed monster holds the match.
379248 - The Spider Without Fangs - NEW - Some lessons learned (more or less.)
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That's not a bad idea, actually, and it's pretty much the most we can do with the tools we're given. I think the problem with City of Heroes is it's designed to use random maps every time, so we're never really "connected" to the location where an event is taking place... But our maps aren't actually random. It's been my experience that each tileset has at most 30 or 40 maps hand-made for it, and when you run missions from the same tileset for seven years, you simply begin to learn the maps by heart.|
Originally Posted by Leo_G
I, personally, like map interaction too but more in a personal/intimate sense. That is, I like exploring around and finding things that aren't essential and can be skipped but if you are (or more likely, your character) is perceptive/knowledgeable/lucky enough to find these things, it will enrich your character or the story in certain ways.
Like, for example, the AE arc I made (lol I don't think anyone's played it yet since I made it way back when AE was introduced...probably broken now), you can go through the missions, fight the boss, fight the other boss, kill the clones, break the seal and turn the tables on the little brat...but you can also search for clues which will fill in non-essential information but can progress the story sideways along with forward. |
I think back to the original Diablo and how much stupid fun its random maps were. A lot of the time they were bizarre and inexplicable, like two feet of disembodied wall in the middle of a large chamber, with a door through it, or a very long, straight corridor that led to absolutely nothing at all (though sometimes it had a chest at the end). It's kind of like that old Wrestlemania Arcade/PC which was so bugged as to be almost unpredictable, and that made it funny. It's that sense of "I wonder what's coming next?" That City of Heroes is built to invoke, but completely fails to do so because none of it is ever random.
And also, it just bugs me that in every map and every location, terrain simply doesn't matter. If there's a high ledge, we can fly to it. If there's a building in the way, we can jump over it. If there's a deep pit, we can teleport across it. It's to the point where people who take Super Speed for concept transform into prima donnas who feel hurt that the city should bend to their will and grant them ramps to everywhere they want to go. Sometimes I wish we were forced to take the stairs or the bridge or the long way around, just so it feels like terrain matters. Because for all the game cares, the whole thing might as well be taking place in Aperture Labs.
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Originally Posted by Leo_G
Fine!...
Jerkhole... |
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Originally Posted by TheDeepBlue
If that's what your team is doing, then most of them would really rather be doing something else but feel that they're forced to go through whatever particular task they're doing at that moment. That's really all it comes down to, regardless of whether they actually like everything in between the start of the task and the end reward or not.
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Originally Posted by TheDeepBlue
Well, that's your version of fun, and I'm sure you're not alone. I usually try to clear every indoor map when I'm soloing, but that's more for drops and strategy refinement. However, if folks really aren't interested in grinding through every map on a TF, they may tend to entertain themselves by trying to be as efficient as possible. That's how they have fun. I've found it fun, too.
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I like the sense of physical progression through a location, is what I mean. "The goal" is less a direct objective and more an end point for me, where the actual goal is to actually get to that end point, and in the most entertaining way possible, as opposed to the quickest. Maybe that's not as popular in this game, I honestly don't know... I don't think it's popular. But I do wish we had more missions that rewarded us for actually going through them, rather than teleporting to the end.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Hmm. I kinda want a mythical zone with a labyrinth now. I guess Roman would make more sense than Greek given Cimerora.
I do think the Shadow Shard was probably set up with this in mind. Rather than making travel incidental, it was part of the challenge of the set of zones. You had to get across it rather than starting in one place, clicking a tram/portal, and winding up in another. I like that idea as an alternative but found the Shard frustrating (I hated trying to use a gravity well only to jump wrong, fall, and have to start over again).
Suggestions:
Super Packs Done Right
Influence Sink: IO Level Mod/Recrafting
Random Merit Rolls: Scale cost by Toon Level
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I feel the Shadow Shard is by FAR the game's biggest wasted opportunity. It has an amazing storyline in there that's been begging to be explored for the last seven years, and while that might happen in the future, I don't see it being any time soon. Beyond that, the place is simply breathtaking. It just goes to show that you don't need DX11 graphics to make something beautiful when you have artists who have skill and vision. It's also the game's ONLY place that ever feels truly remote, both because it's so bizarre in its appearance and because you can go four zones in and four zones away from habitation.|
Originally Posted by gec72
I do think the Shadow Shard was probably set up with this in mind. Rather than making travel incidental, it was part of the challenge of the set of zones. You had to get across it rather than starting in one place, clicking a tram/portal, and winding up in another. I like that idea as an alternative but found the Shard frustrating (I hated trying to use a gravity well only to jump wrong, fall, and have to start over again).
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I feel that the cop-out teleporters were essentially the tombstone atop the grave that that place had become at the time. We wanted something more made of the Shard and complained it was too hard to move around in, so they slapped there teleporters to take us to the various zones and called it a day, when that was never the intent. The Mole Points are one of the game's best ideas - you need to move forward and away from your comfort zone to reach them BEFORE you can use them, and at best they're a cave of huddled survivors amid a world that's too dangerous for them to get out into.
I really want to see something happen to the Shadow Shard, and I hope that something ISN'T meteorites falling on it and destroying three of the four zones while putting the Chantry and the Storm Palace next to each other.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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While I was playing Skyrim I ran across an area labeled "Labyrinth" and explored a little mini-maze that required using magic wands to activate runes, which led to a bossfight and some cool treasure.
It was completely secondary to the game's main goals, and if I had wanted to I could have skipped it entirely and just grabbed the dragon word on the wall behind the labyrinth.
I found it to be loads of fun though. Partly because it was completely voluntary.
If you wanted to make it work in City of Heroes, I'd start by introducing it as a rare possibility in newspaper missions. something like:
Hidden within the mystical Maze of Ka-Ahh lies a secret Circle of Thorns artifact, a small figurine of a rabbit. Venture into the forbidden Maze, locate the rabbit, then leave. your "reveal" power cannot be used here, and powers such as fly, teleport, superjump, and super speed can be used to help you get through the maze faster, but there are no enemies, just the rabbit figurine and the exits.
you could have it all
My empire of dirt
I will let you down
I will make you <3
Heck, you could "kinda sorta" fudge your way to Traversal Missions through the Sewers/Abandoned Sewers by setting up a Mission that requires you to Enter the Sewers from a specific Zone Door, and then exit from that Sewer Map through a different specific Zone Door ... without leaving the Zone/Map. That means no shortcuts (by any other name) since you have to literally traverse the map to complete the objective. The "excuse" that you'd need to use for this need be nothing more than a "surprise attack" from within the Sewers on a location just outside them.
Speaking of which ... could you imagine how much more "traffic" the Sewers and Abandoned Sewers would get if there were Newspaper Missions, Tip Missions and Morality Missions that sent you down there to get to a Mission Door? Of course, the same could be said for the Shadow Shard on Blueside.
Speaking of which ... I wonder if it's possible to even GET Tip Missions and Morality Missions to drop (and spawn their Mission Doors) out in the Shadow Shard ...
It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...
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Tips drop in the shard, but missions don't. (you get the "Get thee to Paragon" message)
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Originally Posted by Redlynne
Heck, you could "kinda sorta" fudge your way to Traversal Missions through the Sewers/Abandoned Sewers by setting up a Mission that requires you to Enter the Sewers from a specific Zone Door, and then exit from that Sewer Map through a different specific Zone Door ... without leaving the Zone/Map. That means no shortcuts (by any other name) since you have to literally traverse the map to complete the objective. The "excuse" that you'd need to use for this need be nothing more than a "surprise attack" from within the Sewers on a location just outside them.
Speaking of which ... could you imagine how much more "traffic" the Sewers and Abandoned Sewers would get if there were Newspaper Missions, Tip Missions and Morality Missions that sent you down there to get to a Mission Door? Of course, the same could be said for the Shadow Shard on Blueside. Speaking of which ... I wonder if it's possible to even GET Tip Missions and Morality Missions to drop (and spawn their Mission Doors) out in the Shadow Shard ... |
"Men strunt �r strunt och snus �r snus
om ock i gyllne dosor.
Och rosor i ett sprucket krus
�r st�ndigt alltid rosor."
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I have and I do, actually. A mention of it should be buried somewhere in my walls of text |
Originally Posted by Redlynne
Heck, you could "kinda sorta" fudge your way to Traversal Missions through the Sewers/Abandoned Sewers by setting up a Mission that requires you to Enter the Sewers from a specific Zone Door, and then exit from that Sewer Map through a different specific Zone Door ... without leaving the Zone/Map. That means no shortcuts (by any other name) since you have to literally traverse the map to complete the objective. The "excuse" that you'd need to use for this need be nothing more than a "surprise attack" from within the Sewers on a location just outside them.
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For the sake of specificity, though, I want to address a particular anecdote.Quite a while ago, Zamuel recruited me for an Abandoned Sewer Trial. We formed a team of 8, won the Trial with plenty of time to spare and everyone Ouro-ported back to the city. Everyone, except for myself and Zamuel. I posed a suggestion along the lines of "Hey, do you want to actually walk out? Say out of the Boomtown gate?" Zam agreed, so we spent I think the next hour fighting our way through an incalculable number of Circle of Thorns and Rikti, slowly tracking back up to the surface. We both levelled up and we had a blast. I personally enjoyed the trek up more so than the Trial itself. We came damn close to losing it quite a few times, since we did die from time to time, and at times ran out of Awaken inspirations (that was before Return to Battle), but we did manage to make it all the way to Boomtown under our own steam.
I forget what level we were at the time, but I want to say 38 or 39, at least to start with, and the sewers spawn stuff from 36 all the way to 41 or 42, so it was a hectic experience where one fight might be a walk in the park and a chance to restock on inspirations while the next one might toss four purple-con Death Mages at us at the same time. Because it's outdoors, enemies respawn and their levels are unpredictable, which really did a lot to try and ruin the experience, but we had fun even despite that. I'd like to do it again some time, but you try suggesting that some time and see how it goes
Basically, yes - a sewer trek is more or less what I mean. However, I want something that's at least a tad more controlled in terms of spawn difficulty and something that goes through more environments. Yes, we had fun going from the Hydra chamber to the Boomtown gate, but I think both of us were sick of sewers by that point. Going through the odd cave or underground base or some such would have improved the experience significantly. Making this an actually supported activity would be an improvement, as well.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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heres an idea on how we could do something more superhero-y. In another single player super hero game, you were awarded exp only after a mission was completed, and you lost xp for things like buildings collapsing, or civilians dyeing. Moreover, your powers could very well collapse buildings and hurt civilians. So part of the gameplay was deciding when an aoe was safe to use, and when it wasnt worth the risk. Maybe have some new missions like mayhem/safeguard, but change it to only award the xp at the end, and have lots of stuff that can get blown up by accident? maybe add some bonus xp for everything we save from destruction in safeguard missions?
Jay Doherty: Yes, there was this one night that I was ready to go home but had to drop the browns off at the super bowl before I left for home. While on the throne it hit me. I stayed for a few more hours and that why we have the pain pads in the game.
I loved loved the Abandoned Sewers back in the days when we did Street Hunting. I so wish we could get something you suggested so those zones aren't wasted.
When I started with this game when it launched I came from Everquest... so I did the usual explore approach and checked all the zones and contacts. But then again we did not even know that there were stores, so we actually HAD to explore, since they did not show up on the map.
Originally Posted by Megajoule
We're being invaded. Again. This time, instead of aliens, zombies, or eyeballs with teeth, it's the marching band.
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Oh I remember that, when we tried to dodge the snipers just to get to the Vendor that sold the tech enhancers. I actually also ran all over the maps so the FoW would go away.
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Originally Posted by Jagged
Are you sure its not just that you have lost that feeling because we've been here forever?
I certainly used to have that feeling and would explore every zone as I reached the appropriate level. I remember the first time I ventured into Kings Row and I remember trying to sneak around Founders Falls (sans stealth powers) just to see the newly added zone. |
Originally Posted by Megajoule
We're being invaded. Again. This time, instead of aliens, zombies, or eyeballs with teeth, it's the marching band.
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I think what we (at least me) actually miss is a Dungeon, like back in the days Everquest Dungeons were. You had to plan ahead because it took a while to get there and then you had to fight your way down there maybe to a specific spot or enemy. You even had to do corpse runs when you died (not sure I want that though).|
Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
I'm positive. It's not the discovery of new things, in the sense of seeing content for the first time that I'm referring to, so much as a sense that there's something there TO be discovered, something there that's hidden deep beneath the surface or bar beyond the borders or in the faraway reaches where no-one ever goes. It's a sense of... "Location," if you will. This game can have alien graphics from the future and a city as big as New York and it would still lack that, because every place we go is exactly like every place else in one crucial, inescapable fashion - it's in an area controlled by a civilised nation. Even in the Rogue Isles, you're never more than a single jump away from a place where a regular person could receive help and support and a criminal on the run can hide out.
Look at something like Left 4 Dead. This is almost entirely a game of locations and traversal. The world has gone to ****, no-one is coming to save you, everything alive wants you dead, and you must fend for yourself. This once-bustling city full of people who could have helped you and facilities that you could have used is dead, and worse - more dangerous than any wilderness. No-one is left to help you. Possibly no-one in the entire world. That's not a game which revolved around skipping to the end and pressing the button, because that would be missing the point. It revolves around taking every step, opening every door, fighting through every set piece, all the while knowing that though you and your friends are all barely conscious enough to walk, let alone pull yourself up, if you can just break through that last obstacle and reach that next safe room, you will survive. Or look at something like Sands of Time. That entire game is one giant trip, a struggle to get to a particular place. From the moment it begins, the objective is one single thing - get to the Tower of Dawn. And once you get there, it ends. And yet the final climb of the Tower of Dawn over the ruined outside is still one of my favourite moments of gaming every single time, even though I've done it so many times already. I feel as though I really am at this location, because the location matters. I can't simply turn on Fly and get to the tower, I need to find a way. I need to find a bridge across, I need to find my way up to that balcony, I need to find a way down to that switch. Hell, look at something as simple as the original Diablo. That game had four settings, each four levels deep before you met the next one, with a boss at the bottom. And yet it always felt like I was making progress. Every level took me deeper, every level took me closer to the heart of darkness, every level took me farther and farther away from Tristram. Yes, there were town portals and the occasional shortcut unlocked from the inside, but still: When you set foot inside the catacombs, you left the city behind. You were on your own, with no support, no lifeline and only the items you brought with you I get that we're in a city and that just means we're always within an arm's reach of a police station or a hospital. That doesn't we can't have locations or missions which take us away from this. And not a step away, not a loading screen away, but tangibly far a away from society. In fact, I wouldn't mind a Shadow Shard like zone where vendors did not exist, and we were forced to use forgotten artifact instead of people for training, purchases and resurrection. I get that we have travel powers that make terrain mostly meaningless, to the point where the city could do away with stairs entirely and few of us would notice. That doesn't mean that we can't have missions or tasks where terrain mattered, such that we couldn't just fly over everything right to the end, or otherwise become invisible and waddle to the end that way. City of Heroes is very good in terms of story and gameplay, but it often feels like you can swap the city for anything at all and nothing in the game would change a single iota. You can host the game in a Fantasy forest or out in the desert and everything would play out exactly the the same. Convenience is one thing, but I fear it's making us loose touch with the game's actual physical world. |
Since the very first day I saw the Ziggurat I always wanted that to be a giant dungeon. Could be totally optional but if you wanted you could enter it and fight your way through it. In the dungeon crawl sense.
Originally Posted by Megajoule
We're being invaded. Again. This time, instead of aliens, zombies, or eyeballs with teeth, it's the marching band.
Have you ever tried to make a run from one gate in the Abandoned Sewer Network (not Trial) to the other by yourself? I know many people did this with a team on the old "sewer teams," but have you tried it in the Abandoned sewers? Their network feels at least a little bit bigger and it dips down significantly lower, I believe.
Why bring this up? Well, for a long time now, I've wanted to see a mission the objective of which wasn't to "do something" but rather to "get somewhere." In the overworld, this isn't much of an objective, since you can just fire up Fly, fly to the zone ceiling and just auto-pilot to right above your location. However, after running through the Atta instance for the second time in as many days, something occurred to me - if this were done like the Abandoned Sewers, then JUST getting from place to place might be a very cool objective. Sure, you could still stealth or even run past enemies, but then the Frostfire mission has an answer to that - some doors are locked until you press a button or find a key.
Or how about a different approach? An outdoor mission somewhere out of the city with an objective of reaching a number of "outposts" in a particular order. Why not just fly/speed to them? Because you have to escort an NPC who doesn't move very fast and can't fly. Said NPC also can't die, but it serves as an anchor to keep us moving in a more conventional way - by walking.
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Moreover, I feel that City of Heroes lacks a certain something that many other MMOs have, and that's a sense of discovery and exploration, a sense of... Seeing the world. Travel powers are very convenient, I don't deny that. Hell, I LOVE my travel powers for when I don't feel like "exploring" and just want to get to my next mission. But sometimes, I just want to see a task of some sort which requires me to get down to the actual world, get down to the small-scale terrain and see the boulders, the street curbs, the fences, the benches and the people walking on the street. Sometimes I DO want a dungeon crawl which takes me through a maze of tunnels descending ever downwards into the unknown.
Somehow, we seem to have developed a very rushed culture here in this game. Teleport the mission, stealth to the end, click one thing, then hit Exit and teleport to the next one. It's good that this exist as a form of convenience, but it seems to have disconnected us from the world within which our adventures take place, to the point where a narrow bridge over a deep pit is seen as oh-so-inconvenient, as opposed to a pretty vista and a large room as a drag because it has so many enemies, as opposed to a visually impressive location.
So, what do you think? Is exploration really dead in our game? Is there no way to make tasks and missions which centre around exploration without people seeing them as "annoying?" Is the only way we feel like we're progressing by seeing the "Mission complete!" text with everything in-between being just a nuisance? Because, honestly, some days it feels like players at large regard the game and the world as little more than an obstacle to the next ding, the next drop or the next milestone.