Guild Wars 2

One of the things that was promised in the Manifesto was that those of us who enjoy the exploration style of gameplay would have plenty to do.

I feel like this aspect of the game, more than any other (including combat, which I have issues with, but is still pretty good – and loot, which is extremely boring) was the biggest let down.

I just don’t feel like Tyria was really built to be explored. It’s too “on-rails” if you know what I mean.

Yes, there are a couple easter eggs here and there – I’m not saying there aren’t.

What I’m saying is that the world, over all, is too small, and there just aren’t enough hidden corners in it.

The heart/renown system is a detriment to exploration – it encourages old school fetch/kill quest style, which they specifically said they were trying to avoid in the Manifesto.

The map completion aspect ends up feeling more like Farmville – nothing in it is particularly hard to do – PoI’s, Vistas, Skill Pts. – all of these things simply require you to walk to a point on a (rectangular) map where they are clearly marked (most of the time) and do some trivial, non-challenging thing, like click a button (on Vistas) or simply walk there (PoI’s).

Add to that the waypoint system which makes instantly teleporting around the entire world one click away.

The whole thing actually appears to be anti-exploration.

Am I crazy, or do other people see it too?

I guess Anet actually just wanted to create an e-sport, which is fine, but they told us they were going to make a massive, open world, that would cater to explorers/immersion players as well – and I don’t feel like they did, and I feel like they haven’t put any additional development into this aspect of the game since launch.

Essentially, I think they’ve ignored exploration based play, because their real aim was e-sports.

This strikes me as being counter productive, for while e-sports are certainly interesting, and I even like to participate in some WvWvW from time to time – the majority of MMO players are PvE/exploration based players. That is, exploration is why most of us come to play MMO’s to begin with. The ‘other’ players are actually a very small minority.

Anet would make more money if they added more exploration to the game.

I actually find Tyria to be fantastic for exploration. Vistas are a precursor to jumping puzzles, and there are lots of lovely little nooks to find.

The game at launch had both good and bad things for explorers.

Good:

• Lots of zones
• Nooks and crannies all over the place
• Easter eggs galore (if you think there are only a few, you haven’t looked hard enough
• Lots of eye candy
• Less “Cant’ get there from here.” than I see in most games

Bad:

• One form of exploration credit (PoI. etc.) isn’t really exploring. It would be if PoI’s etc. didn’t show on the map until you’d found them
• Exploration credit for revealing areas is too simple. Walk in and done.

Since launch, there has been little added for explorers. Exploration is a resource intensive play style to support. New zones with a lot to find in them takes time and effort. Exploration tends not to foster a lot of repeat play (once you’ve explored something, rediscovery later is not really exploring, whether on the same or a different character).

So, OP, I don’t agree that the base game had too little for explorers, but do feel that we have not gotten and are not likely to get a lot of new exploration content.

I’m the complete opposite, I feel like there’s a huge amount to explore and find in this game, more than almost any other RPG I’ve played.

But you have to be exploring to find it. If you just follow the story and do hearts and events as you come across them you’ll miss the vast majority of stuff on the map. Even if you do map completion you’re still going to miss a lot, especially if you rush around checking points off as quickly as you can.

Jumping puzzles and mini dungeons are the obvious examples. Some are obvious, some even require you to go part of the way along the path to get map completion (like Sharkmaw in Lion’s Arch), others you can pass right by the entrance and never even know it’s there unless you’re looking, or the type of person who will try to climb every likely looking pile of rocks just in case there’s something at the top.

A lot of the exploration achievements and odd hidden chests are even harder to find because they don’t take up a whole area of the map, they’re just sitting in odd corners.

But more than that there’s a lot of easter eggs, scenic spots and lore/trivia which the game not only doesn’t point you to but doesn’t tell you that you’ve found. You won’t get an achievement popping up to say you’ve found something, there is no chest or champion to give you a tangible reward, some of them may not even be intentional, but they’re there all the same and a lot of people enjoy finding them. Examples include the turkeys in Ascalon Catacombs (definitely intentional), Sally in Harathi Hinterlands who stands on a normally inaccessible balcony and then tells you off if you jump up there and the huge area on top of the cliffs above Mabon Market (probably not intentional).

ipan.4356:

The heart/renown system is a detriment to exploration – it encourages old school fetch/kill quest style, which they specifically said they were trying to avoid in the Manifesto.

You may want to take another look at other games that do the fetch/kill quests.

In terms of size comparison, I noticed that my off the cuff count of zones on this WoW map is about 50 or so:

http://mapwow.com/

And the count for Tyria is around 30:

http://gw2.mmorpg-life.com/interactive-maps/

ipan.4356:

In terms of size comparison, I noticed that my off the cuff count of zones on this WoW map is about 50 or so:

http://mapwow.com/

And the count for Tyria is around 30:

http://gw2.mmorpg-life.com/interactive-maps/

I’ve never played WoW so I can’t comment on how detailed their maps are or what the exploration is like, but I don’t need to have played it to know that how many chunks the map is divided into is not a good way of judging how much stuff there is to find in them.

Daggerfall probably had one of the biggest maps of any RPG ever made, but the vast majority was randomly generated, uniform terrain with very little to explore.

From an immersion perspective, exploration fails. The map sizes are small, and the construction of the zones into artificial boxes makes exploration even worse. I understand they wanted to use every square inch of land, but they should’ve used natural boundaries instead. If you zoom out of this map until the overlay is gone, http://gw2cartographers.com/ , you can see how ridiculous the zones are constructed with mountains and water. They follow a squared pattern which funnels players into chokepoints into the next zone. Terrible layout and design. I don’t even want to get started on rewards for exploration.

I think nexxe is spot-on with the chokepoint bit, but I have to say I’ve felt very good about exploration in GW2. The maps are small? I can’t really agree there. I can say GW1 has a more “natural” exploration to it, but it was also sometimes frustrating because of that fact.

Still, I will never forget the time I stumbled on Maguuma Stade.
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Maguuma_Stade

Even the wiki mentions it as a bit of an alcove. I wouldn’t mind more Maguuma Stades, but it may just be the result of a friendlier exploration system. Perhaps the answer is to just build more dead space into the maps, that isn’t so clearly curated for player consumption.

BTW: you guys are forgetting that traits encourage exploration beyond POIs/vistas, and that was their intention in their manifesto. This fact is easy to forget, because our older characters were grandfathered into the new trait system.

Danikat.8537:

ipan.4356:

In terms of size comparison, I noticed that my off the cuff count of zones on this WoW map is about 50 or so:

http://mapwow.com/

And the count for Tyria is around 30:

http://gw2.mmorpg-life.com/interactive-maps/

I’ve never played WoW so I can’t comment on how detailed their maps are or what the exploration is like, but I don’t need to have played it to know that how many chunks the map is divided into is not a good way of judging how much stuff there is to find in them.

Daggerfall probably had one of the biggest maps of any RPG ever made, but the vast majority was randomly generated, uniform terrain with very little to explore.

I played a bit of vanilla WoW, up until right before BC came out – never played an expansion. Never got a character past Lv. 40.

Each zone in WoW is roughly the same size as a zone in GW2. They are somewhat variable though, where GW2 zones tend to be slightly more uniform in size (though there are some exceptions).

I guess it’s because the rectangular shape makes them more likely to end up being close to the same size, where in WoW they are irregularly shaped.

As far as what you can actually do there – WoW doesn’t have dynamic events (at least when I played – I have no idea what they do now, and I know they’ve added stuff that wasn’t there when I last played).

It tended to have a little bit more hidden entrances to secret tombs and whatnot – the kind of thing you find in a cemetery tucked away behind a hill that you can’t see from the main road. Not a ton, but probably more than GW2.

Zones don’t have invisible zone walls separating them, so you could mountain goat your way into new places, finding paths that were never intended – this was a major part of exploration, sneaking your way into zones you weren’t even high enough level to enter, and find ways around monsters without fighting – a fun challenge was to get to lvl. 80 areas when you were lvl 20 or so. This was possible, because you could find really sneaky ways through their zones.

But anyway, WoW is an old game, and the comparison here is not to compare WoW as a game in general, I literally JUST wanted to compare map size, because it was mentioned earlier.

Tyria really is kinda small, and the way it funnels people about, and the waypoint system, makes it feel even smaller.

I feel as if the game should have opened with at least the entire visible map (the areas on the map that are visible, but not yet zoned) available.

The next expansion should open up another 33% – that is, at least 10 more zones.

What’s getting me down is that there is so little to explore in the 30 or so zones we have – I need more to keep playing.

And they could add more to the existing zones – I know they do, kind of, because wherever I go, sometimes little things change here and there.

But we need new dungeons.

How about some open world dungeons? How about some bigger dungeons (like 5-10 times bigger than current dungeons)?

How about 10 new zones every year?

It may sound like a lot, but from my point of view, they put out way too little, and way too late.

Without more content to explore, there’s nothing holding me here.

I hate farming.

Vael Victus.2654:

Still, I will never forget the time I stumbled on Maguuma Stade.
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Maguuma_Stade

Even the wiki mentions it as a bit of an alcove. I wouldn’t mind more Maguuma Stades, but it may just be the result of a friendlier exploration system. Perhaps the answer is to just build more dead space into the maps, that isn’t so clearly curated for player consumption.

I was actually disappointed when I first found Maguuma Stade. I saw the portal and thought there was going to be a whole new explorable area so a tiny outpost was a bit of a let down. But it quickly became one of my favourite places to go when sorting my inventory, partially because it was so hidden and out of the way. It was almost a surprise every time I saw someone else there.

Right, stuff like Dierdre’s Steps.

I wish Tyria had a bunch more stuff like that, and was much larger.

ipan.4356:

In terms of size comparison, I noticed that my off the cuff count of zones on this WoW map is about 50 or so:

http://mapwow.com/

And the count for Tyria is around 30:

http://gw2.mmorpg-life.com/interactive-maps/

And WoW’s been around how long to include all those areas? How many did it have when it first came out.

OP: So are you saying you’ve done not only 100% map completion but also all the mini-dungeons, all the jumping puzzles and all the achievements in the Explorer category, and you’ve now run out of things to do?

If so then I can see why you’d be frustrated, but I’d also say it’s worth remembering that this game is only 2 years old and there’s new content being added on a regular basis. Dry Top has a whole category of achievements to itself, most of which are exploration related. As I mentioned earlier there’s also a lot of things which aren’t officially recognised activities but which can still be fun, getting to the spot in the screenshot below for example (on the cliff above Mabon Market in Caledon Forest).

If not? If you’ve still got some of those things to do? Then you’ve got your answer.

Behellagh.1468:

ipan.4356:

In terms of size comparison, I noticed that my off the cuff count of zones on this WoW map is about 50 or so:

http://mapwow.com/

And the count for Tyria is around 30:

http://gw2.mmorpg-life.com/interactive-maps/

And WoW’s been around how long to include all those areas? How many did it have when it first came out.

Even so, I have two counters to that:

1) Having the experience of hindsight, Tyria should have been bigger on release, because they know they have to compete with what exists currently, not what used to exist. Tyria should have been as big as WoW was at the time GW2 was released, not as big as Azeroth was when WoW was released – GW2 isn’t competing with vanilla WoW, it’s competing with current WoW.

2) Even vanilla Azeroth was bigger than current Tyria – but maybe not by much. If you count the original two continents, you get around 35+ (give or take) zones, while the whole of current Tyria is around 30.

So yes, even vanilla WoW was slightly larger.

But Anet’s also had 2 years to expand, and hasn’t really done so. A little here and there. Southsun and Dry Top and Edge of the Mists is all they’ve added, right?

Not enough.

WoW has nowhere near the same level of detail in the terrain as far as hidden nooks go. There is NOTHING that even remotely compares to finding Coddler’s Cove, for example. There’s a lot more dead space, and the zones aren’t instanced.

I’m really not sure how you’re measuring the size of the zones to compare.

What’s with the constant comparisons to WoW? The closest game that can compare (as far as very highly detailed instanced zones go) is the Secret World, and that game world is miniscule compared to Tyria.

Chrispy.5641:

What’s with the constant comparisons to WoW? The closest game that can compare (as far as very highly detailed instanced zones go) is the Secret World, and that game world is miniscule compared to Tyria.

Again – I only meant to compare it in size – Azeroth is bigger, so there’s more to explore.

GW2 actually feels a lot more like WAR in terms of it’s maps – cordoned and small’ish.

ipan.4356:

Chrispy.5641:

What’s with the constant comparisons to WoW? The closest game that can compare (as far as very highly detailed instanced zones go) is the Secret World, and that game world is miniscule compared to Tyria.

Again – I only meant to compare it in size – Azeroth is bigger, so there’s more to explore.

While Azeroth is bigger and there’s more landmass to explore, there’s less in it overall. Its like comparing the United States (of America…..not Mexico) and Russian land masses as game worlds, and we are equating game content with people. Russia is obviously the bigger country and it will take longer to fully explore it, but the United States has more people in it, and therefore more stuff to do.

Chrispy.5641:

ipan.4356:

Chrispy.5641:

What’s with the constant comparisons to WoW? The closest game that can compare (as far as very highly detailed instanced zones go) is the Secret World, and that game world is miniscule compared to Tyria.

Again – I only meant to compare it in size – Azeroth is bigger, so there’s more to explore.

While Azeroth is bigger and there’s more landmass to explore, there’s less in it overall. Its like comparing the United States (of America…..not Mexico) and Russian land masses as game worlds, and we are equating game content with people. Russia is obviously the bigger country and it will take longer to fully explore it, but the United States has more people in it, and therefore more stuff to do.

In this example/comparison – I’ll take Russia.

This “stuff to do” you talk about is mostly just renown hearts and repetitive events.

Some of the events are fun once in a while, but if you are counting those as ‘explorable content’, then I am going to have to disagree. They’re rarely more interesting than the hearts.

ipan.4356:

Chrispy.5641:

What’s with the constant comparisons to WoW? The closest game that can compare (as far as very highly detailed instanced zones go) is the Secret World, and that game world is miniscule compared to Tyria.

Again – I only meant to compare it in size – Azeroth is bigger, so there’s more to explore.

It sounds like we have very different ideas of exploration. To my mind what’s in the map is more important than the size of it. You could have the biggest map ever made but if it’s just empty terrain with nothing to find then there’s nothing to explore.

And once again if you think the only things GW2 has to offer explorers is events and hearts then the problem is you’re not looking, or have otherwise failed to find, everything else in the maps.

The big difference in WoW is that it has a seamless transition between zones, restricted to continents of course. When they introduced flying, it made it even more open and free. You can cross zones without a loading screen or going through a portal. Keep in mind, i’m talking about open-world zones, and not instances or continents which require loading.

This makes WoW’s world continuous instead of fragmented, with the exceptions i listed above.

In GW2, you cannot explore up a mountain or cross a lake into the next zone, which is very limiting to the exploration aspect of the game. Yes, you can explore pretty much everywhere, but only within the zone.

Imagine an Exploration Event that started in Kessex Hills and ended up in Snowden Drifts, crawling through dungeons underground, and then trekking across mountain tops, rivers, etc. All of this could be non-scripted too, leaving only breadcrumbs and clues directing you to the next path. That would be rewarding in itself, along with other rewards along the way and at the end.

And what’s the point of walking up a mountain if there’s nothing there of any value? That’s the problem that WoW had, way too much land with nothing to do in it. Guild Wars 2 doesn’t have that problem, anywhere you go, there is something to do. Exploration is about a lot more than just spending along time traveling across a lot of land.

Chrispy.5641:

And what’s the point of walking up a mountain if there’s nothing there of any value? That’s the problem that WoW had, way too much land with nothing to do in it. Guild Wars 2 doesn’t have that problem, anywhere you go, there is something to do. Exploration is about a lot more than just spending along time traveling across a lot of land.

Do you consider Vistas and POIs as having value? A short cutscene and a dot on the map? The only thing worth of value are the chests during exploration jumping puzzles.

Fact is, They exist, and you can keep track of the POI’s and Vistas in this game. Not only that, but POI’s and Vistas are all unique locations, and pretty much every single POI looks different and has a unique piece of architecture or something. Its the same for Jumping puzzles. JP’s offer achievement points, and Vistas offer a unique cutscene showing off the scenery. They also count towards world completion, and by extension, legendary weapon progress.

Even if we get the ability to go to the top of every mountain in shiverpeaks, and every single mountain has both a vista and POI to motivate players to go up there, there is no distinguishing feature to separate them. The first mountaintop will look the exact same as the next five mountain tops. This means that there would be no value in putting a POI or Vista at the top of any mountain.

That’s a bunch of useless, wasted, empty space that has no purpose other than just existing. And that’s the problem that WoW had, hundreds of square miles of the exact same, boring looking terrain with nothing in it.

Play through a zone without following hearts/poi/vista/WP. Just randomly moving around, following NPC, following a little trail and the game will become more interesting.

Some zones are full of places most players have never ventured into. A lot of time, with nothing really special in there aside from “huh I never knew that there was a hole in that wall that lead here”.

But some Vistas are terrible. Some do show you the way to a JP, but a lot show you nothing too special.

If you are hoping to get rewarded for exploring, give up now. But if you really want to explore, buy a lot of experimental rifles because it helps you reach so many new places.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Experimental_rifle

ipan.4356:

Behellagh.1468:

ipan.4356:

In terms of size comparison, I noticed that my off the cuff count of zones on this WoW map is about 50 or so:

http://mapwow.com/

And the count for Tyria is around 30:

http://gw2.mmorpg-life.com/interactive-maps/

And WoW’s been around how long to include all those areas? How many did it have when it first came out.

Even so, I have two counters to that:

1) Having the experience of hindsight, Tyria should have been bigger on release, because they know they have to compete with what exists currently, not what used to exist. Tyria should have been as big as WoW was at the time GW2 was released, not as big as Azeroth was when WoW was released – GW2 isn’t competing with vanilla WoW, it’s competing with current WoW.

2) Even vanilla Azeroth was bigger than current Tyria – but maybe not by much. If you count the original two continents, you get around 35+ (give or take) zones, while the whole of current Tyria is around 30.

So yes, even vanilla WoW was slightly larger.

But Anet’s also had 2 years to expand, and hasn’t really done so. A little here and there. Southsun and Dry Top and Edge of the Mists is all they’ve added, right?

Not enough.

Well now that is one of the limiting factors in creating new MMOs. “Content” creation is the slowest, most manpower intensive part of making an MMO as on gauge of an MMO is the number of hours of content. The shift from P2P to F2P means the usual methods of inserting time wasting activities to slow down consumption to squeak another month of subscription of a player gets replaced with limitations that are only surmountable, such as minuscule inventory capability, with a cash purchase.

Also the plethora of MMOs out there means for a player, running out of content in one game simply means jumping to another. That means as a game developer, you simply can’t create as much content as a popular MMO that’s been around for a decade, or even five years. Adding content once released is getting difficult due to the shift to F2P from monthly subscriptions. A game first has to pay off the 3-5 years of development costs before the game made one box sale. NCSOFT’s Blade & Soul was reported to cost roughly $50 million to develop over 7 years. ST:TOR reportedly cost $200 million. The company that is bankrolling the team does what a reasonable ROI in a reasonable time frame. Therefore the easiest way to reduce cost is to reduce the amount of initial content.

If GW2 is only a little smaller on day one than vanilla WoW and doesn’t have a monthly fee, that’s actually impressive. But if players insist that for an MMO to be truly successful that it needs to keep up with WoW’s 10 year head start, good luck in finding another MMO besides WoW. EVE may be able to because it’s a sandbox MMO is space. Adding more space isn’t a lot of work manpower wise.

Chrispy.5641:

And what’s the point of walking up a mountain if there’s nothing there of any value? That’s the problem that WoW had, way too much land with nothing to do in it. Guild Wars 2 doesn’t have that problem, anywhere you go, there is something to do. Exploration is about a lot more than just spending along time traveling across a lot of land.

You’re obviously not an explorer.

For the explorer, the reward is just getting there.

Behellagh.1468:

ipan.4356:

Behellagh.1468:

ipan.4356:

In terms of size comparison, I noticed that my off the cuff count of zones on this WoW map is about 50 or so:

http://mapwow.com/

And the count for Tyria is around 30:

http://gw2.mmorpg-life.com/interactive-maps/

And WoW’s been around how long to include all those areas? How many did it have when it first came out.

Even so, I have two counters to that:

1) Having the experience of hindsight, Tyria should have been bigger on release, because they know they have to compete with what exists currently, not what used to exist. Tyria should have been as big as WoW was at the time GW2 was released, not as big as Azeroth was when WoW was released – GW2 isn’t competing with vanilla WoW, it’s competing with current WoW.

2) Even vanilla Azeroth was bigger than current Tyria – but maybe not by much. If you count the original two continents, you get around 35+ (give or take) zones, while the whole of current Tyria is around 30.

So yes, even vanilla WoW was slightly larger.

But Anet’s also had 2 years to expand, and hasn’t really done so. A little here and there. Southsun and Dry Top and Edge of the Mists is all they’ve added, right?

Not enough.

Well now that is one of the limiting factors in creating new MMOs. “Content” creation is the slowest, most manpower intensive part of making an MMO as on gauge of an MMO is the number of hours of content. The shift from P2P to F2P means the usual methods of inserting time wasting activities to slow down consumption to squeak another month of subscription of a player gets replaced with limitations that are only surmountable, such as minuscule inventory capability, with a cash purchase.

Also the plethora of MMOs out there means for a player, running out of content in one game simply means jumping to another. That means as a game developer, you simply can’t create as much content as a popular MMO that’s been around for a decade, or even five years. Adding content once released is getting difficult due to the shift to F2P from monthly subscriptions. A game first has to pay off the 3-5 years of development costs before the game made one box sale. NCSOFT’s Blade & Soul was reported to cost roughly $50 million to develop over 7 years. ST:TOR reportedly cost $200 million. The company that is bankrolling the team does what a reasonable ROI in a reasonable time frame. Therefore the easiest way to reduce cost is to reduce the amount of initial content.

If GW2 is only a little smaller on day one than vanilla WoW and doesn’t have a monthly fee, that’s actually impressive. But if players insist that for an MMO to be truly successful that it needs to keep up with WoW’s 10 year head start, good luck in finding another MMO besides WoW. EVE may be able to because it’s a sandbox MMO is space. Adding more space isn’t a lot of work manpower wise.

Yeah, but I have two things to say to that:

Procedural generation.

Star Citizen.

Star Citizen = Space. Much easier to do procedural generation in space than somewhere you walk .

ipan.4356:

Chrispy.5641:

And what’s the point of walking up a mountain if there’s nothing there of any value? That’s the problem that WoW had, way too much land with nothing to do in it. Guild Wars 2 doesn’t have that problem, anywhere you go, there is something to do. Exploration is about a lot more than just spending along time traveling across a lot of land.

You’re obviously not an explorer.

For the explorer, the reward is just getting there.

And you think you are? Exploration is a heck of a lot more than an empty journey to a predetermined destination.

RedStar.4218:

Play through a zone without following hearts/poi/vista/WP. Just randomly moving around, following NPC, following a little trail and the game will become more interesting.

Some zones are full of places most players have never ventured into. A lot of time, with nothing really special in there aside from “huh I never knew that there was a hole in that wall that lead here”.

But some Vistas are terrible. Some do show you the way to a JP, but a lot show you nothing too special.

If you are hoping to get rewarded for exploring, give up now. But if you really want to explore, buy a lot of experimental rifles because it helps you reach so many new places.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Experimental_rifle

If your idea of exploration is breaking the boundaries of the map, good for you, but that’s not really exploration.

Behellagh.1468:

Star Citizen = Space. Much easier to do procedural generation in space than somewhere you walk .

I don’t know about that. It might be harder to do procedural generation in space, at least harder to get something meaningful out of it.

It’s not just generating backgrounds and asteroid fields, you know. How do you generate something useful, in an environment where you largely just find orbiting spheres? (unless you can land on them, of course, at which point you’re no longer procedurally generating ‘space’, but a surface – a planet).

I think what you mean, is that it’s hard to generate believable terrain (no mountains balanced on top of trees, rivers flowing the wrong direction, proper flora and fauna in the right places) and populate it with more than just random mobs.

I agree – procedural generation is cutting edge, and most programmers don’t know how to do it well in a game yet – in fact, I don’t think anyone knows how to do it well.

There are two games, however, that I am aware of that are either doing it, or researching it – Limit Theory, which looks like it’s intending on creating the entire world through PG – and Star Citizen, which has created a dedicated team to researching how to use PG in certain cases (quite possibly instances).

I believe that Anet would behoove itself to do the same thing – in fact, generating new fractals with PG would be the perfect place to start.

The biggest advantage of doing this – for both Anet and us – is that if they can pull it off so that the content is at least playable, then guess what? They have a system that generates new content for the players (even if it’s not the same quality as the dev generated content) that will KEEP PEOPLE BUSY while they work on other content.

In other words, even if it’s just used as a stop-gap, a way to amuse people while they do serious work, this is a huge boon, because it keeps content starved players occupied and not kittening on the forums.

And fractals are the perfect place to do it. They should make an infinite dungeon using procedural generation.

There are quite a few hidden or hard-to-get-to things to explore, this cat cave in WvW being one of them. I’m sure you haven’t discovered all of them yet.

Come on, you can do better than that!

Played a lot of mmos and I have to disagree. The game world is far more detailed and interesting than most mmos, which generally end up being flat maps with some trees scattered around them.

Ha ha. I found a hole in the Thaumanova Reactor today I had never seen before. Got stuck in it with another player, as well. Lol.

Even though I finished World Map Completion (today! yay!), and had the Explorer Achievement finished, today (later) I opened a new part of the map in Fireheart Rise.

Seems there are often places one might have never come across before. =)

When I go exploring in GW2, I find:

• Hearts, Points of Interest, Waypoints, Vistas
• Jumping Puzzles
• Dynamic Events
• Mini-dungeons
• World Bosses
• Obscure NPC conversations
• Out-of-the-way caves with a champion enemy and maybe a chest
• Reward for completing 100% of the map

When I go exploring in other MMORPGs I find:

• An NPC that wants me to kill 10 boars
• Boars

RedStar.4218:

Play through a zone without following hearts/poi/vista/WP. Just randomly moving around, following NPC, following a little trail and the game will become more interesting.

My favourite way of playing this game is exploring by harvesting… I’ll set a marker at my destination and will go in that direction as long as there is no node or event in sight. I can cross a map a few times before I finally reach my marker….

About one of the remarks above: I’d love if they removed all borders round a map and make it all one huge map without those chokepoints…

WoW is bigger and WoW even has mounts, GW 2 didn’t include mounts so the maps feel bigger. What feels like a larger city? One you drive through or one you’re forced to walk through? The problem with exploration in this game is that it’s not natural. There are POI which if you miss by a foot don’t give any credit, POIs should have been small areas you find by walking around or getting to a place by trying to do a heart, you can do one heart and miss the like 3 POI’s around it easily because it all can be done right at the heart. There should have been less POIs and more hidden treasures for people to find, caves, old homes, lore books etc which would be hidden in zones and not part of some crummy map check list.

What’s there to explore after you get 100% world?
There’s not much to see after you’ve explored the world once or twice, after that, it just gets boring and you’ve already seen everything and you can’t find something unique.

The exploration is good, but nearly 100% of it was in place at launch with the singular exception of Dry Top.

I don’t know about you all but I want to:
Climb every mountain
Ford every stream
Follow every rainbow

O and I am tired of it taking so long to revisit all the places my great grandparents visited….

My problem is when new maps are released, there are never any hearts added and they don’t count for map completion. Why? Also in regards to hearts, weren’t they added to at least give players some kind of quests to do while exploring/leveling? I like the hearts. Not too many of them are truly tedious to the point of annoyance.

Two big problems I have with the map though.

1) By the time you get to your 4th character and above, completing the map just gets tedious. It starts feeling like a job and eventually gets boring. I’m at 82% on my 4th character and am struggling to find the desire to finish, to say nothing about the 5th I just created. It would be nice if, after getting 100% on one character, if subsequent characters could have the option to start with a completed map, at the price of receiving no rewards (SPs, money from hearts, Gifts of Exploration, etc).

2) The Waypoints are both a blessing and a curse. It’s VERY nice not to have to waste so much time on travel. Sometimes in WoW getting somewhere could take 15-20 minutes of play time, especially before flying mounts. At the same time, it takes away from exploration and seeing the map during travel. The mount debate will rage forever, but in the end it would be nice to have a mount to ride around maps.

Woljnir.7810:

My problem is when new maps are released, there are never any hearts added and they don’t count for map completion. Why? Also in regards to hearts, weren’t they added to at least give players some kind of quests to do while exploring/leveling? I like the hearts. Not too many of them are truly tedious to the point of annoyance.

Two big problems I have with the map though.

1) By the time you get to your 4th character and above, completing the map just gets tedious. It starts feeling like a job and eventually gets boring. I’m at 82% on my 4th character and am struggling to find the desire to finish, to say nothing about the 5th I just created. It would be nice if, after getting 100% on one character, if subsequent characters could have the option to start with a completed map, at the price of receiving no rewards (SPs, money from hearts, Gifts of Exploration, etc).

2) The Waypoints are both a blessing and a curse. It’s VERY nice not to have to waste so much time on travel. Sometimes in WoW getting somewhere could take 15-20 minutes of play time, especially before flying mounts. At the same time, it takes away from exploration and seeing the map during travel. The mount debate will rage forever, but in the end it would be nice to have a mount to ride around maps.

I don’t have a link but I read somewhere that hearts were added because during early (closed) betas players who were used to other games struggled to understand the events system and find where to go and what to do. So they added hearts to mimic quests from other games. That’s why starter zones have a lot and then they’re gradually phased out, while higher level zones have more events and more long/branching chains. But the idea is that by the time you get to level 80 (or even level 60 or so) you’ve gotten the hang of events and exploring on your own and don’t need hearts any more.

Also the easy solution to your waypoint issue is to only use them when you need to. I very rarely use waypoints, most of the time I’ll walk to my destination (with help from asura gates if it’s a long way). I only use waypoints if I’m in a hurry (usually because I told a friend I’d come and help them) or if it’s a part of the map I’ve been over a lot recently. Like the run between Divinity’s Reach and Dry Top.

Chrispy.5641:

Come on, you can do better than that!

Then you write something constructive at 4 am when your eyes are half closed. xD

As I’ve said, there’s still plenty of secret areas and easter eggs and so on. However, I do think that a lot of the maps could use an overhaul, something that would bring players who barely touch them anymore back and prompt them to revisit them and ’’explore’’ some more. The DR Pt.1 was a small step towards that, but not nearly enough.

I can’t compare GW2 to WoW because I’ve never played it, I can only compare it to two other MMOs I played – TERA and Dragon Nest, the latter not even having an open world and being focused on mobs/dungeons rather than exploration. I must say that despite TERAs astounding graphics, I enjoyed traversing GW2 world more. Simply because TERA, despite beautiful scenery and all, felt kind of empty. Sure, there’s an open worl, pretty much no loading screens, but most of the times when travelling around on a mount there wasn’t anything around. No mobs, no players, just plain grass and rocks. Or just spooky trees and the night sky. Or plain desert with a few bushes every here and there.

That’s why I like GW2’s maps more, because I feel more immersed here. There are always some events going on, you always run across other players, there are always some mobs walking around nearby … But, we could use less WPs, the vistas and PoIs could be invisible until you walked up to them, something like hearts. We could also have some more areas like Aurora’s Glade, Coddler’s Cove and Anya’s Secret Garden (I really like this last one) along with some of the JPs.

Eh, both versions of Tyria (the landmass not the whole game) had an issue with exploration. In the first one, boxy maps were requiring scraping along the edges to get the shiny title of “You Just Wasted 6 Hours Scraping For The Last Lousy Point”. It also had those lovely Z axis issues where something could get “obstructed” near a bridge side or stairs.

GW2 has a ton of stuff and no reason short of “let’s go find it” to go there, really. But if you want to talk about fond remembrances? The first time I chanced into Aurora’s Remains. I’ll spoil nothing for those who haven’t found it in Brisban.

Woljnir.7810:

My problem is when new maps are released, there are never any hearts added and they don’t count for map completion. Why? Also in regards to hearts, weren’t they added to at least give players some kind of quests to do while exploring/leveling? I like the hearts. Not too many of them are truly tedious to the point of annoyance.

Two big problems I have with the map though.

1) By the time you get to your 4th character and above, completing the map just gets tedious. It starts feeling like a job and eventually gets boring. I’m at 82% on my 4th character and am struggling to find the desire to finish, to say nothing about the 5th I just created. It would be nice if, after getting 100% on one character, if subsequent characters could have the option to start with a completed map, at the price of receiving no rewards (SPs, money from hearts, Gifts of Exploration, etc).

2) The Waypoints are both a blessing and a curse. It’s VERY nice not to have to waste so much time on travel. Sometimes in WoW getting somewhere could take 15-20 minutes of play time, especially before flying mounts. At the same time, it takes away from exploration and seeing the map during travel. The mount debate will rage forever, but in the end it would be nice to have a mount to ride around maps.

Hearts are the worst thing when you replay maps and they cripple exploration. They take some time and don’t add much storywise. It feels better to just travel in an area ignoring all hearts and doing events as you go. Especially these small eventchains where you follow a npcs story are much better. They add lore and character to areas while hearts feel like anchors.

Issue I have with exploration, it is very flat. Yes there is a few caves here are there but they really aren’t big systems.