Make Explorer areas not a terrible waste of time

[Teh_Troll]

I've never played another MMO but I'm (possibly mistaken) under the impression that much of the leveling in those MMOs takes place in zones like the DDO explorer areas. Doesn't really happen here.

Here's the thing . .. explorer areas can be awesome . . . once. One of my fondest DDO memeorys was day 2 or 3 of Motu getting lost int he Underdark with a party trying to find the Drow City. It took us like 3 hours and it was a blast.

But . . . Explorer zones offer little to no replay value. The whole schtick of DDO is REPLAY value. This is a grind game, a crazy grind game where XP is the most valued commodity by far.

Shadowfail came with a enormous explorer area . . . but no raid. All the work that went into the Stormhorns was wasted time for something people run around in once. Why put all that work into something with no replay value?

So how do you give Explorer zones more replay value?

[biggin]

I've never played another MMO but I'm (possibly mistaken) under the impression that much of the leveling in those MMOs takes place in zones like the DDO explorer areas. Doesn't really happen here.

Here's the thing . .. explorer areas can be awesome . . . once. One of my fondest DDO memeorys was day 2 or 3 of Motu getting lost int he Underdark with a party trying to find the Drow City. It took us like 3 hours and it was a blast.

But . . . Explorer zones offer little to no replay value. The whole schtick of DDO is REPLAY value. This is a grind game, a crazy grind game where XP is the most valued commodity by far.

Shadowfail came with a enormous explorer area . . . but no raid. All the work that went into the Stormhorns was wasted time for something people run around in once. Why put all that work into something with no replay value?

So how do you give Explorer zones more replay value?

Well, back in the good ol' days, while it wasn't very fun, Sands at least had a reward with the best named items in the game. Team up some decent named items (with slightly higher drop rates then Bloodstones) and put some decent XP in it and you may have something worth playing. Even quests like Weapon Shipment still get run as boring as it is because there is a low chance of a reward. Basically I see no replay value in Explorer areas because they just won't ever make the XP on par with any quest. And I'm not about to go kill 10 beavers and bring the pelts to some woodsman, which is about as exciting as explorer area quests are in other games.

[Teh_Troll]

The random encounters idea was a good start . . . but it's not enough. They do not pop often enough to ever intentionally go looking for them.

[Fedora1]

Mobs respawning while you are in the explorer area (instead of waiting until you recall and reset) might allow you to get your kills faster to help a little with the xp/min ratio.

Not much, I know. Just the first thing that came to mind.

[Wipey]

On the other hand, wilderness areas are **** gorgeous.
Kudos to the "art department".

Shame they are trivial and don't give almost any reward compared to running quests and stuff. Large portions of really beautiful awesome areas are basically never seen or run.
This applies to some quests too btw.

[Satyriasys]

So how do you give Explorer zones more replay value?

This has always puzzled and annoyed me. They go through all this hard work making these huge, beautiful zones and fail to give us any incentive to spend time there.

Here are my ideas for giving these areas more use...

-Named Treasure from certain rare encounters.
-Place new quest packs in existing explorer zones. King's Forest, Underdark and Stormhorns could easily support several more quests. There are many locations that would be perfect for quest entrances.
-Make the slayer reward curve less steep. Having to kill 1600 mobs for your next reward is very discouraging.
-Rare Bosses. The Dragons in GH are a joke. having some rare spawn bosses that were so tough as to encouraged grouping could revitalize the s/r/e scene.
-Commendation of Valor. The commendations for King's Forest are a decent incentive for newer players who may need Eveningstar items. Why not do the same with CoV for the higher level zones?

[redspecter23]

I think we need bigger, better encounters in wilderness areas. There may be system limitations, but how about a raid in an area the size of a wilderness. Perhaps the party needs to split up to accomplish multiple objectives. I originally liked the dragon encounters in EGH, but I think it's too small scale. Dragons with many more hp and multiple at once. Offer unique treasure for unique encounters.

Put more quests in explorers. Even small quests like in Threnal at least give players a reason to go to certain areas of the map.

Some explorer areas just plain need more encounters and more frequent rare encounters. I think High Road has a great balance. King's Forest is just a bit too spread out, especially if you're solo. The Stormhorns rare encounters are so few and far between that it's not worth looking for them. Back when Orchard was new, many players did S/R/E runs and you could expect 5 or more rares on a single trip in about 15 - 20 minutes. In the Stormhorns, a full trip at about 40 minutes (or much longer without a map) could have you see only a small handful of rares. I've had full circuits with no rares at all. When your best shot at rare mobs is entering a quest, recalling out and repeating until a rare spawns right outside the door, then the distribution is off. Some of the encounters aren't able to be completed on all toons or efficiently (poacher) so that lowers the number even more.

Short version. More truly epic encounters with named or unique loot and place them in positions that encourage us to explore the map fully. Right now, Coms of Valor would be great incentive. Next year, maybe some other widget. No reason not to place even a small number in any epic explorer chest.

[Gljosh]

This can easily be done.

1) Reduce the amount of needed Slaying for Slayer XP, 10,25,50, 100, 200, 400, 750 are fine but 1500, 3000 are too far of jumps, 750, 1000, 1500, 2000, 2500, 3000
2) CoVs in the Epic Explorer ares (actually they should be in all Epic chests)
3) More Monster Manuals, killing rares gives some XP killing rares to fill out Monster Manuals give a lot more XP.
4) Farshifter Waypoints for Completed Areas-Gianthold/Wheloon are easier with these ports. Complete the explorer or Journals and get to be ported "close" to the quest(s).

[redspecter23]

-Place new quest packs in existing explorer zones. King's Forest, Underdark and Stormhorns could easily support several more quests. There are many locations that would be perfect for quest entrances.


This is an amazing idea, but microtransactions ruined it as soon as they were introduced. You decrease sales of a new pack if you require an older pack to play the new one. The easiest solution is to make all explorer zones completely free to play, then you can start repopulating some older zones with appropriate quests as they are made. Double clicking a wagon just doesn't have the same feel as running through an explorer zone, even if it is faster.

[Postumus]

Mobs respawning while you are in the explorer area (instead of waiting until you recall and reset) might allow you to get your kills faster to help a little with the xp/min ratio.

Not much, I know. Just the first thing that came to mind.


That can be horrible though. Epic Wheloon is nothing but constant respawns and it feels like you're dragging half the screen from one quest entrance to other.

[Satyriasys]

This is an amazing idea, but microtransactions ruined it as soon as they were introduced. You decrease sales of a new pack if you require an older pack to play the new one. The easiest solution is to make all explorer zones completely free to play, then you can start repopulating some older zones with appropriate quests as they are made. Double clicking a wagon just doesn't have the same feel as running through an explorer zone, even if it is faster.

They could just have these new packs give access to the zone they're in.

[Irenae]

Agreed, these areas are often huge, and when you start a quest in there it does not show where the dungeon is if you have not explored the area where it is (bad idea imo). The experience given from wilderness areas is only good on a pc's first life and if you tr the xp does not increase (the xp should scale linearly). These 2 things are the bane of wilderness explorer areas.

[Teh_Troll]

That can be horrible though. Epic Wheloon is nothing but constant respawns and it feels like you're dragging half the screen from one quest entrance to other.

Go into Heroic Wheloon when trying to get to the EE versions of the quest. You're welcome.

[mobrien316]

I think they could allow difficulty levels in explorer areas, and change the XP for slayers to a moderate amount for every ten or twenty, with normal XP scaling for difficulty level.

Plus, add a guide at the zone entrance and outside every quest that will transport you to the quest for plats. The people who want to explore and kill stuff can do so, and the people who just want to get to the quest (probably to join an IP group) can do without wasting time.

[Propane]

I would like the group leader to have a "drum" appear in their inventory when they zone in-

Place it on your hotbar - activitate it - you drum up some trouble - say 2 - 3 times the spawn density in the area.

Don't use it when you are new or just trying to get somewhere -

Use it when you are after slayers - looking for encounters - named - etc...

[Vellrad]

The other MMOs takes places almost entirely on landsape, something similiar to wilderness areas.
But landscapes ssucks hard, as:
They're shared by everyone on server
While you're killing mobs or gathering crafting resources, someone 50 levels higher will come to ninja loot your chests (unstopped by mobs), or to kill them all before you have chance to attack once. In permanent pvp games, that lvl100 guy will be killing lvl1 rookies just for fun of weak trolling.
Mobs just stand there and wait patiently until you'll kill them. They might walk arround, but they won't react when they see you killing thier brother 50 feet away, unless you shoot them too (or come as close as 5-10 feet, depending on mob) They will just watch you slaughtering their entire family, and won't attack or run. They just stand there, in line.
BTW, that mobs are usually transparent- you can run past them, and they can run past you.
Quests found on landscapes are much more repetive than anything you find in DDO. They're: Go kill mob A, and come back or report to NPC nearby Go find item X on the ground. Bring me X pieces of item A found on mobs in area.
(sometimes that 2 objectives are combined, peak of developers' creativity is to make quest items that are dropped by mobs and found on the ground)
Go there and use object (be it piece of scenery or NPC).
Rarely, devs are combining objectives (like go there, activate magical device, and kill 10 rats that will try to destroy it, then collect 5 rat tales and 3 pieces of dirt that can be found near river or from earth elementals). Theese are extremally uncommon, as they are usually beyond possibilities of players that got used with quests consisting of other objectives.
Quests are essentially copies of other, the only difference between killing 10 orcs and bringing their weapons and killing 10 bandits and bringing their scalps is... well, there's no difference actually.


DDO's wilderness areas are far better than standard MMO landscape.
The only thing that can make landscapes bearable are texts written for quests. Some are good, and create illusion of lack of repetition between objectives, but most are idiotic.

[Qhualor]

I'll take a good dungeon crawl over getting lost in the woods any day. I think there are some great wilderness areas in the game, but slayers isn't my cup of tea. I only like them when I need a little more xp to level.

[danotmano1998]

Slayers and Rares are a one-off for me.

They aren't something I typically do, as I find questing much more enjoyable.

HOWEVER.. These are great when you are just killing time waiting for a party to form, or you're feeling a little lazy and just want to run around killing things, or you want to do something a little different than the norm, or you just need a few more xp to get the next level.


I like them as they are, for the most part completely optional. I would agree that adding the rare random spawns idea was a great one, and would love to see more of them in every explorer area, code permitting. This would make them more enjoyable for me.

[Irenae]

Exactly, the areas are huge (way bigger than any dungeon) and do not really provide anything worthwhile for doing a lot of extra work making them an inefficient way to gain experience. I like dungeon crawls better too, but sometimes people get tired of doing them all the time and want something different that adds flavor, which is a good reason for wilderness areas. Also, maybe they could make zone specific dungeons where it is a jump puzzle in the current environment of the wilderness area, again another thing that's different and adds flavor and something you could do when you have done a lot of dungeon runs and want something different.

[Seikojin]

Slayers and Rares are a one-off for me.

They aren't something I typically do, as I find questing much more enjoyable.

HOWEVER.. These are great when you are just killing time waiting for a party to form, or you're feeling a little lazy and just want to run around killing things, or you want to do something a little different than the norm, or you just need a few more xp to get the next level.


I like them as they are, for the most part completely optional. I would agree that adding the rare random spawns idea was a great one, and would love to see more of them in every explorer area, code permitting. This would make them more enjoyable for me.


^this^

Except I think that there should be some mechanic to force spawns. Either some challenge like NPC, who will force a 1x spawn of a rare, or some other way to help induce rare spawns. Nothing sucks like hunting rares in wilderness and having it not appear after 4 hours of resetting the instance.

In it's entirety, ddo wasn't supposed to be that mmo where you have to grind. I think that is starting to become the focus again, where running elite 1x on evry quest can cap you. In the longer run, it will be possible, and thus needing explorers and slayers would be more optional than they already are.

Another thing they could do to increase explorer traffic; rewards for finding the explorers in an order. This would add more boost from them (since they always have offered abysmal exp save epic), and it would make some linear progression of the DM speak and notes.

[Irenae]

I definitely agree on rare spawns, there should be a quest that causes each one to spawn that is unique to the rare spawn. For example you have to kill say 100 sahuagin before the sahuagin rare encounter will spawn as he got ticked off you killed all his children.

[ssgcmwatson]

I'd like to see at least one more explorer area that is "raid-party friendly" - somewhere to do something semi-productive when waiting for raid groups to form.

[PsychoBlonde]

This is an amazing idea, but microtransactions ruined it as soon as they were introduced. You decrease sales of a new pack if you require an older pack to play the new one. The easiest solution is to make all explorer zones completely free to play, then you can start repopulating some older zones with appropriate quests as they are made. Double clicking a wagon just doesn't have the same feel as running through an explorer zone, even if it is faster.

Making the explore zones all f2p sounds like a *great* idea to me. If you're willing to take the time you can pretty much cap a first life character JUST doing s/r/e. So this would be a great way to bring in more f2p people and keep them playing longer. Beyond The Rift ought to be made f2p also so that f2p people can at least GET to estar and access the explore zones there. I do agree that the slayer number jumps get too big too fast, though. Shorter jumps keep the xp coming and keep people playing.

I made a suggestion some time ago to make the explores selectively repeatable, also--when you enter the zone, some of them become repeatable and you get a quest notification telling you "(Optional): Visit the Vista" or similar. It'd be enough so that you COULD pick up extra xp this way but not so much that people will just farm explores for free xp. I also think it'd be nice if, once you have all the explores and the full map, any random encounters should be visible on the big map. That way you can just go straight to them instead of wandering around randomly hoping to spot one.

[madmaxhunter]

I hit all the major wilderness areas every life. I guess I learned to efficiently run them back in the days when 2xTRs had to milk the exp from every place they could. I will get at least 40k in a 30 minute run of most Eberron areas (starting with Sands). 30 minutes not waiting for a party to form, just going out and getting all the explorers and whichever rares happen to be hanging out.

Old-timers will remember the "reset my instance and yours" LFMs that were common back in the day. Good times. Now it's push button reset, permanent clearing of "fog of war" once all explorers are found, many improvements over the years. Would be nice to have a few new quests in the old explorer areas.

[Enoach]

Once you have all the explorer points/messages this part of the XP is done in an explorer area

Rare Encounters does have reduced XP after the first time - This was a change to the Original where once you killed/Solved the rare no XP was awarded

Slayers - While each tier grants increasing XP, each tier takes more kills to achieve (slayer potions makes this easier) but even then a person could meet the final amount.

At one point there was even an experiment that proved that you could level 1 to 20 using only the explorer areas (I think the experiment was done to see how little favor you actually needed to get and still level).

Personally I like explorer areas, they are great places to hang out when you have limited time, or if you may need to stop at a given moment. Sands explorer was great when it came out because it offered very nice rare gear, this was different than any other area.

Now, what if in addition to Rare encounters they added in Random Quests...
Meet an NPC that sends you on an Errand located someplace in the explorer zone - End reward list style
Hidden Dungeon - Randomly appears in some location (Cave, doorway etc.) Has chest with some rare item no end reward or favor. Quest should range in the 10 to 15 minute range - possibly couple it with the NPC Errand such as the Cave of Wonders type.

[Lonnbeimnech]

The other MMOs takes places almost entirely on landsape, something similiar to wilderness areas.
But landscapes ssucks hard, as:
They're shared by everyone on server
While you're killing mobs or gathering crafting resources, someone 50 levels higher will come to ninja loot your chests (unstopped by mobs), or to kill them all before you have chance to attack once. In permanent pvp games, that lvl100 guy will be killing lvl1 rookies just for fun of weak trolling.
Mobs just stand there and wait patiently until you'll kill them. They might walk arround, but they won't react when they see you killing thier brother 50 feet away, unless you shoot them too (or come as close as 5-10 feet, depending on mob) They will just watch you slaughtering their entire family, and won't attack or run. They just stand there, in line.
BTW, that mobs are usually transparent- you can run past them, and they can run past you.
Quests found on landscapes are much more repetive than anything you find in DDO. They're: Go kill mob A, and come back or report to NPC nearby Go find item X on the ground. Bring me X pieces of item A found on mobs in area.
(sometimes that 2 objectives are combined, peak of developers' creativity is to make quest items that are dropped by mobs and found on the ground)
Go there and use object (be it piece of scenery or NPC).
Rarely, devs are combining objectives (like go there, activate magical device, and kill 10 rats that will try to destroy it, then collect 5 rat tales and 3 pieces of dirt that can be found near river or from earth elementals). Theese are extremally uncommon, as they are usually beyond possibilities of players that got used with quests consisting of other objectives.
Quests are essentially copies of other, the only difference between killing 10 orcs and bringing their weapons and killing 10 bandits and bringing their scalps is... well, there's no difference actually.


DDO's wilderness areas are far better than standard MMO landscape.
The only thing that can make landscapes bearable are texts written for quests. Some are good, and create illusion of lack of repetition between objectives, but most are idiotic.

^This.

But you left out camping a spawn spot. Those 10 orcs, you kill one, then wait there for a min until it respawns, and hope you can get the 10 kills in before a level 100 walks over and steals your spot.

Yup, ddo is far better than most.

[Teh_Troll]

^This.

But you left out camping a spawn spot. Those 10 orcs, you kill one, then wait there for a min until it respawns, and hope you can get the 10 kills in before a level 100 walks over and steals your spot.

Yup, ddo is far better than most.

So add the "good stuff" from what other games do but leave them instanced.

[cdbd3rd]

So add the "good stuff" from what other games do but leave them instanced.

/Agree on keeping Instances.

Lot of decent thoughts in the thread - even some from those that say they don't spend time in Explorers.

Reset button kinda negates the need for respawning rares, but I'm not opposed to that idea. Some areas can be a pretty long run to spawn points. (One of the bestest things ever added to S/R/E zones was that pretty little "Reset" button, btw.) On the down side, a respawning Rare would sorta make them 'non-rare' if they spawned every time in every instance.

However, I still like the idea that higher tiers of Slayers be leveled off somehow. Instead of doubling all the way to the top values, set a certain cap at some point (say 1000) and award appropriate XPs per each 1000 until total reaches whatever max is set at for a specific area.

Those that only spend "waiting" time there will still get small rewards occasionally.
Those of us who enjoy wandering these areas more, don't have to wait forever for that "Omg XPs!" moment.

[-Avalon-]

I like keeping the explorers and rares as extra xp, and each has its own benefits as well... find all explorers and the map is opened up, no fog of war problems... kill rares and get potentially good loot (if they add back in the Sands approach to rare loot for rare spawns)

But, I think slayers should be X amount per kill. That is one thing I have always loved in other games, and hate about DDO. If each kill in a wilderness area gave me xp, I would spend a LOT more time there. Instead, I kill maybe 200-500 enemies MAX in any one life in any one wilderness, and that is probably in the Vale... The rest get 100-200 kills at best. The xp is too little for lower tiers, and the higher tiers take too many kills to be worthwhile, so why bother killing in them at all. Just make each and every kill give XP.

[Havok.cry]

But, I think slayers should be X amount per kill. That is one thing I have always loved in other games, and hate about DDO. If each kill in a wilderness area gave me xp, I would spend a LOT more time there. Instead, I kill maybe 200-500 enemies MAX in any one life in any one wilderness, and that is probably in the Vale... The rest get 100-200 kills at best. The xp is too little for lower tiers, and the higher tiers take too many kills to be worthwhile, so why bother killing in them at all. Just make each and every kill give XP.

I agree with this, and have thought this very thing since I started playing DDO and got to the korthos wilderness for the first time.

[Irenae]

x amount per kill might be hard to implement however. But it would be easy to have the last slayer quest of a wilderness area just repeat indefinitely, and that might be almost as good.

[-Avalon-]

x amount per kill might be hard to implement however. But it would be easy to have the last slayer quest of a wilderness area just repeat indefinitely, and that might be almost as good.

Uhh, no thanks... still makes me hate wilderness areas, who in their right mind would do slayer stuff in a wilderness past around 400'ish? Let's take Vale (one of the places we see people doing S/R/E stuff a LOT)

The last slayer quest for both Lammy And Shavvy side, is the following:


Slay 5,000 natives of the Vale of Twilight: 49,500 XP = 24.75 xp/kill


Now, they are only taking into account the 2000 kills to go from 3K slayer to 5K, but really, what it amounts to is the following:


Slay 10 natives of the Vale of Twilight: 685 XP = 68.5 xp/kill
Slay 25 natives of the Vale of Twilight: 926 XP = 37.04 xp/kill
Slay 50 natives of the Vale of Twilight: 1,255 XP = 25.1 xp/kill
Slay 100 natives of the Vale of Twilight: 1,852 XP = 18.52 xp/kill
Slay 200 natives of the Vale of Twilight: 2,950 XP = 14.75 xp/kill
Slay 400 natives of the Vale of Twilight: 5,110 XP = 12.775 xp/kill
Slay 750 natives of the Vale of Twilight: 8,520 XP = 11.36 xp/kill
Slay 1,500 natives of the Vale of Twilight: 17,617 XP = 11.745 xp/kill
Slay 3,000 natives of the Vale of Twilight: 35,590 XP = 11.86 xp/kill
Slay 5,000 natives of the Vale of Twilight: 49,500 XP = 9.9 xp/kill


That is the correct way of working it out mathematically... yes, if all you look at is from the last step on the path, it looks better, but it is still diminishing returns. If you look at it from the start of the wilderness, you see that going beyond 50 kills becomes a losing proposition, past 400 you have almost hit the low point of "why am I doing this for this long?" Especially when you consider that it takes about how long to completely kill all enemies in the vale in a 6 person group AT level? How many quests could you have done during that time? And for how much XP? The wilderness areas are worthless BECAUSE it is not a constant XP gain. If they made the average XP/per kill 25 in the vale, then you could kill 100, get 2500 xp... spend 4 hours there, romping and stomping with friends, and rack up a ton of xp (no different than doing 4 hours worth of quests really)... but then, shouldn't that be what MMO's are about? Hanging with friends and having fun, not staring at your kill count of 3800 and trying to get 1200 more? Then realizing you need to go to the other side and do it AGAIN? Why not just have respawning enemies, and have them worth some amount (each) determined by the devs?

[bsquishwizzy]

I've never played another MMO but I'm (possibly mistaken) under the impression that much of the leveling in those MMOs takes place in zones like the DDO explorer areas. Doesn't really happen here.

Here's the thing . .. explorer areas can be awesome . . . once. One of my fondest DDO memeorys was day 2 or 3 of Motu getting lost int he Underdark with a party trying to find the Drow City. It took us like 3 hours and it was a blast.

But . . . Explorer zones offer little to no replay value. The whole schtick of DDO is REPLAY value. This is a grind game, a crazy grind game where XP is the most valued commodity by far.

Shadowfail came with a enormous explorer area . . . but no raid. All the work that went into the Stormhorns was wasted time for something people run around in once. Why put all that work into something with no replay value?

So how do you give Explorer zones more replay value?

1) King’s Forest-like random encounters. I’ve found that you can run King’s Forest for hours on end and not get all of the random types in there.

2) Periodically updated random encounters (they change them from quarter to quarter). Change them up. Not sure how feasible that is.

3) Treasure hunts. Maybe get seals / keys / clues from various explorer zones, which direct you to a spot in a different explorer zone where to fight a boss, and collect a treasure.

There is, of course, my random dungeon idea which is based off of an explorer zone with random objectives that spawn a random boss fight.

They tried the random encounter thing in Gianthold, but I thought it was a massive fail – more of a half-measure than what I got in King’s Forest. I would have preferred a re-work of the system.

[PsychoBlonde]

XP/kill would be a really bad idea. You would wind up with this:

*find explore area with a bunch of mobs near the entrance*
*enter area, kill 5 mobs*
*exit area*
*reset area*
*enter area, kill 5 mobs*

Repeat until capped. Heck, people ALREADY do this with Rats/Caravan in Orchard and bats/spiders in Vale etc. You would not BELIEVE how quickly you can max out the kills in Orchard if you take 3 people and have each of them check the big 3 multi-spawn rares (Radnak/rats/caravan).

It'd get even weirder in the new areas where you get more mob spawns if you have more people. If you have 6 people in the Wheloon explore area you can get a STAGGERING number of kills, well, until the spawn lag eats your computer and you crash, anyway.

I'm actually kind of hoping they DO do this (mobonanza) with the eTBC stuff coming up. TBC is a very pretty explore area already (certainly compared to Wheloon, god that area is UGLY) and since it's a "pirate" area they could always have airships patrolling around and air-dropping pirates on to you at intervals. It's also already fairly well-crammed with mobs, so why not dial it up to 11? (Sans the framerate dropping.) Could be pretty fun. I hope they have a **** ton of events, too.

Thunderholme thus far has underwhelmed me, but hey, at least it's another explore area. It's hard to go wrong with MORE 'splores even if they're not the best 'splores in the history of 'sploring. Say what you like about the xp/minute, they're still the most visually awesome parts of the game. Even the ugly ones.

If I had an unlimited budget and time, I'd say "go whole hog and experiment with procedural content" for an explore type system. You could even do a challenge pack this way--it dumps you at random into a procedurally-generated quasi-random area and your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to find all locations, rares, kill x number of mobs and find the exit before time runs out. Maybe also "gather all the loot" or similar. Basically, run around like a crazy person.

That could actually make a really fun challenge pack to go along with eTBC.

[xTethx]

Well back in the day, after icy raiments got put into the subt, plenty of people farmed that named skelly for a chance to loot them. Of course they are useless now, but back then it wasn't unheard of to see an lfm farming them almost every night/other night. So I would say, make some kind of named, and make it like an actual end boss encounter, throw in loot that people will use/farm for (it doesn't have to be an end all be all item, but something like a displace clicky cl 20, or whatever). Do this, and people will run that explorer. Now they will only run it for just that, as for exploring the whole area, don't think there is any way to make it appealing to the mass of players.

[Saekee]

A lot of great ideas in this thread.
Some explorers need a boost to the count maximum. 3BC maxes at 1500. It is big, and if you are farming for some of the good lowbie named loot, you can easily wrack up a lot of kills.
I would love to see more randomized stuff occurring--more walk up mini-dungeon areas like in the Cerrulean Hills.
True, the art is very good. The Searing Heights layout references some unusual ancient past--ruins by a volcano (should sound familiar)--would be nice if some new module comes out in which quests are added to it. To encourage new players to the game, I suggest enlivening Korthos.

Maybe add special explorer options that you could click on when you first enter the wilderness area:
1) Stop the x tribe's invasion (have a random placement of a huge army of mobs, like the Droam)
2) Guide x from point A to point B
3) Spy and steal certain artifact (stealth version)
etc.
These would be optional of course, but offer extra xp and some bonus loot.

[Saekee]

Another advantage of explorer areas is that they are non-commital. I remember reading how a player would come home from work and just destress running explorers; he said he could quit the game at any moment should some RL concern come up.

Wildernesses are also one of those things that really benefit with large parties--the PUG scene would get a boost

I remember the fun of organizing a PUG to split up into three different groups--we would clear out three sections of the Sands, rinse and repeat. It was cool to see how everyone got on board and cooperated. Even gimp characters can manage wilderness mobs (at least the heroic level ones)

[Vellrad]

XP/kill would be a really bad idea. You would wind up with this:

*find explore area with a bunch of mobs near the entrance*
*enter area, kill 5 mobs*
*exit area*
*reset area*
*enter area, kill 5 mobs*

Repeat until capped. Heck, people ALREADY do this with Rats/Caravan in Orchard and bats/spiders in Vale etc. You would not BELIEVE how quickly you can max out the kills in Orchard if you take 3 people and have each of them check the big 3 multi-spawn rares (Radnak/rats/caravan).

It'd get even weirder in the new areas where you get more mob spawns if you have more people. If you have 6 people in the Wheloon explore area you can get a STAGGERING number of kills, well, until the spawn lag eats your computer and you crash, anyway.

I'm actually kind of hoping they DO do this (mobonanza) with the eTBC stuff coming up. TBC is a very pretty explore area already (certainly compared to Wheloon, god that area is UGLY) and since it's a "pirate" area they could always have airships patrolling around and air-dropping pirates on to you at intervals. It's also already fairly well-crammed with mobs, so why not dial it up to 11? (Sans the framerate dropping.) Could be pretty fun. I hope they have a **** ton of events, too.

Thunderholme thus far has underwhelmed me, but hey, at least it's another explore area. It's hard to go wrong with MORE 'splores even if they're not the best 'splores in the history of 'sploring. Say what you like about the xp/minute, they're still the most visually awesome parts of the game. Even the ugly ones.

If I had an unlimited budget and time, I'd say "go whole hog and experiment with procedural content" for an explore type system. You could even do a challenge pack this way--it dumps you at random into a procedurally-generated quasi-random area and your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to find all locations, rares, kill x number of mobs and find the exit before time runs out. Maybe also "gather all the loot" or similar. Basically, run around like a crazy person.

That could actually make a really fun challenge pack to go along with eTBC.

It would be better with XP/kill, simply because XP could be adjusted by mobs' CR.
Right now, in Orchard, you can kill CR 17 orange vampire, or CR 1 zombie, and they're both worth exactly 1 kill.
With XP per kill, 1 cultist can be worth 3 rats, 1 vampire can be worth 4 cultists. It rewards killing all instead of farming at 1 spawn and then resetting.

[-Avalon-]

*find explore area with a bunch of mobs near the entrance*
*enter area, kill 5 mobs*
*exit area*
*reset area*
*enter area, kill 5 mobs*

Let's use your thought on how things work... right now, we have people entering Vale at lvl 16, in full group, killing 150'ish enemies, recalling, resetting, enter, kill 150'ish, etc... and it would take them approximately 67 times of doing this to max out XP at 99K for doing so. Let's say they can clear the whole zone in 20 minutes in a full group that is split up to maximize the reward for time/effort. Then, they recall, reset, and re-enter, which probably takes all of 30 seconds if done perfectly, 1 minute if not so perfect. So 21 minutes, times 67, 1407 minutes (~23.5 hours) so, basically a full day's work to get 99K XP... and you think this is a worthwhile idea?

Now, remember, the last step of the Slayer is 2000 Kills each side, so, how long does it take to get the 4000 kills? 27 runs at 21 minutes each, 567 minutes (or ~9.5 hours)... You're still liking this idea? To spend about a third of your time trying to eek out the last bit of slayers? Remember, we are trying to get people to do these things, not drive them away!

Doing it the other way (XP/Kill) at, let's say 20 XP/Kill, to get to 99K, would take 4950 Kills (about half of the amount needed in the previous example, but then, if you tailor the XP to 10/Kill it evens out pretty much) BUT, with 20 per kill, at 3500 Kills, you have earned 70K xp... at 35 kills you have earned 700 xp... no arbitrary tiers of killing. Why is the number 10 so special, why 25 and 50, why 3000? Completely arbitrary and pointless, all it does it drive people away after a certain point.

If you give people constant xp per kill, then people will stick around as long as it takes... with no cap on the xp except when you out-level it, people will stay in groups doing it as well. The problem is, Turbine doesn't want to do it, why? Because people will actually forget about quests in the heroic tiers. The loot is not good enough, no special rewards like CoV's, you get ok guild renown by killing as well... and quests require that you commit yourself to the task, doing slayers is free, liberating, and easy. If they did XP/Kill in wilderness, you'd have 'grind groups' setting up to just kill in wilderness areas for hours and hours... which, I don't mind personally, but... then I am an old school EQ player =)

[Enoach]

Uhh, no thanks... still makes me hate wilderness areas, who in their right mind would do slayer stuff in a wilderness past around 400'ish? Let's take Vale (one of the places we see people doing S/R/E stuff a LOT)

The last slayer quest for both Lammy And Shavvy side, is the following:


Slay 5,000 natives of the Vale of Twilight: 49,500 XP = 24.75 xp/kill


Now, they are only taking into account the 2000 kills to go from 3K slayer to 5K, but really, what it amounts to is the following:


Slay 10 natives of the Vale of Twilight: 685 XP = 68.5 xp/kill
Slay 25 natives of the Vale of Twilight: 926 XP = 37.04 xp/kill
Slay 50 natives of the Vale of Twilight: 1,255 XP = 25.1 xp/kill
Slay 100 natives of the Vale of Twilight: 1,852 XP = 18.52 xp/kill
Slay 200 natives of the Vale of Twilight: 2,950 XP = 14.75 xp/kill
Slay 400 natives of the Vale of Twilight: 5,110 XP = 12.775 xp/kill
Slay 750 natives of the Vale of Twilight: 8,520 XP = 11.36 xp/kill
Slay 1,500 natives of the Vale of Twilight: 17,617 XP = 11.745 xp/kill
Slay 3,000 natives of the Vale of Twilight: 35,590 XP = 11.86 xp/kill
Slay 5,000 natives of the Vale of Twilight: 49,500 XP = 9.9 xp/kill


That is the correct way of working it out mathematically... yes, if all you look at is from the last step on the path, it looks better, but it is still diminishing returns. If you look at it from the start of the wilderness, you see that going beyond 50 kills becomes a losing proposition, past 400 you have almost hit the low point of "why am I doing this for this long?" Especially when you consider that it takes about how long to completely kill all enemies in the vale in a 6 person group AT level? How many quests could you have done during that time? And for how much XP? The wilderness areas are worthless BECAUSE it is not a constant XP gain. If they made the average XP/per kill 25 in the vale, then you could kill 100, get 2500 xp... spend 4 hours there, romping and stomping with friends, and rack up a ton of xp (no different than doing 4 hours worth of quests really)... but then, shouldn't that be what MMO's are about? Hanging with friends and having fun, not staring at your kill count of 3800 and trying to get 1200 more? Then realizing you need to go to the other side and do it AGAIN? Why not just have respawning enemies, and have them worth some amount (each) determined by the devs?

While I understand your point, I disagree with your math. The reason why is that you don't get a total of 49,500 XP for Killing 5,000 from each side, but you get a total of 124,005 when you reach the 5,000 Kill mark as you benefited from each Tier during the progression.

The numbers look more like this


Slay 10 natives of the Vale of Twilight: 685 XP = 68.5 xp/kill
Slay 25 natives of the Vale of Twilight: 926 XP / Total XP 1,611 = 64.44 xp/kill
Slay 50 natives of the Vale of Twilight: 1,255 XP / Total XP 2,866 = 57.32 xp/kill
Slay 100 natives of the Vale of Twilight: 1,852 XP / Total XP 4,718 = 47.18 xp/kill
Slay 200 natives of the Vale of Twilight: 2,950 XP / Total XP 7,668 = 38.34 xp/kill
Slay 400 natives of the Vale of Twilight: 5,110 XP /Total XP 12,778 = 31.95 xp/kill
Slay 750 natives of the Vale of Twilight: 8,520 XP / Total XP 21,298 = 28.40 xp/kill
Slay 1,500 natives of the Vale of Twilight: 17,617 XP / Total XP 38,915 = 25.94 xp/kill
Slay 3,000 natives of the Vale of Twilight: 35,590 XP / Total XP 74,505 = 24.84 xp/kill
Slay 5,000 natives of the Vale of Twilight: 49,500 XP / Total XP 124,005 = 24.80 xp/kill


As for comparing Explorer area XP vs Quest XP comes down to the speed at which you can get the kills. Running in a Group that splits up will usually cover more kills in a smaller amount of time. I've actually run 3 consecutive runs in a 30 minute time period - again the speed is very group dependent.

Also as a note, I do a once through each life to get all the explorer areas map opened. Each explorer is different but most times a single first run through nets either the 100 or 200 slayer marks.

One of the best aspects of the Slayer area is the fact that it has a wider level range that can participate together without penalty. Vale is 12 to 21 for example.

Now one of the aspects that I like about the proposal of making a set # of kills equal a set XP amount is that it means an explorer area will not have a maximum Slayer count. This will benefit the Epic Reincarnation characters as it will allow them to continue to earn XP outside of diminished Rares as they progress through lives. It will also reduce the grind feel that can currently happen when you are working on the 1,500 gate +. The first 200 slayers in any area always seem the easiest because they come so quickly.

[Sgt_Hart]

I've never played another MMO but I'm (possibly mistaken) under the impression that much of the leveling in those MMOs takes place in zones like the DDO explorer areas. Doesn't really happen here.

...

So how do you give Explorer zones more replay value?

You ramp the XP up, so its worth hitting them to level.

Fast and dirty: "Kill it in an explore area: It gives you XP equal to its challenge rating." Suddenly, every kill in there matters, and pushes up XP/min significantly. I'd also suggest doing this ONLY for epic area, but that's because DDO has had an acceptable pre-epic XP model for a good long while now.

[xXbikergirlXx]

One area I do spend a lot of time in is the High Road, with no XP penalty on repeat rares, respawning mobs(ok they're not really 'mobs') and five quests which have reasonable xp, I find a couple of hours running around always refills my coffers quite nicely. :p

And often the rares pop up continuously.....

I also seem to get a lot of Greater Essences in rares' chests! :D

[Vellrad]

One area I do spend a lot of time in is the High Road, with no XP penalty on repeat rares, respawning mobs(ok they're not really 'mobs') and five quests which have reasonable xp, I find a couple of hours running around always refills my coffers quite nicely. :p

And often the rares pop up continuously.....

I also seem to get a lot of Greater Essences in rares' chests! :D

Problem with HR/KF rares XP is the fact that they're 3-4 times lower than old rare bosses. Even repeat of shindryn. boss (-66%) is still more XP than most of HR rares.

[xXbikergirlXx]

Problem with HR/KF rares XP is the fact that they're 3-4 times lower than old rare bosses. Even repeat of shindryn. boss (-66%) is still more XP than most of HR rares.

Although I agree the xp IS lower for High Road rares(I'm not talking about KF) the fact that they keep respawning without the need to enter a quest makes the area unusual and imo less boring. The other day Traders Travels respawned so often I got a chest ransack on it and that was without leaving the area or entering a quest and I was running a jewel of fortune so the monetary returns were good as well. :D

[Noctus]

I would like the group leader to have a "drum" appear in their inventory when they zone in-

Place it on your hotbar - activitate it - you drum up some trouble - say 2 - 3 times the spawn density in the area.

Don't use it when you are new or just trying to get somewhere -

Use it when you are after slayers - looking for encounters - named - etc...



Hahahaha!

That is exactly what a Pen&Paper D&D group i DMed for did when they were exploring Undermountain. The Barbarian got himself a big-ass drum and alerted everything to their presence. it worked great until the few survivors got word out. After that in the top 2 levels: Drum starts beating --> Get out of Dodge asap!

http://dungeonsmaster.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/yawning-portal-02.jpg


The times......


http://blog.cleveland.com/sun/intermission_impact/2009/01/large_Clint_Eastwood_Gran_Torino.jpg

[Noctus]

The other MMOs takes places almost entirely on landsape, something similiar to wilderness areas.
But landscapes ssucks hard, as:

They're shared by everyone on server
While you're killing mobs or gathering crafting resources, someone 50 levels higher will come to ninja loot your chests (unstopped by mobs), or to kill them all before you have chance to attack once. In permanent pvp games, that lvl100 guy will be killing lvl1 rookies just for fun of weak trolling.
Mobs just stand there and wait patiently until you'll kill them. They might walk arround, but they won't react when they see you killing thier brother 50 feet away, unless you shoot them too (or come as close as 5-10 feet, depending on mob) They will just watch you slaughtering their entire family, and won't attack or run. They just stand there, in line.
BTW, that mobs are usually transparent- you can run past them, and they can run past you.
Quests found on landscapes are much more repetive than anything you find in DDO. They're:

Go kill mob A, and come back or report to NPC nearby
Go find item X on the ground.
Bring me X pieces of item A found on mobs in area.
(sometimes that 2 objectives are combined, peak of developers' creativity is to make quest items that are dropped by mobs and found on the ground)
Go there and use object (be it piece of scenery or NPC).
Rarely, devs are combining objectives (like go there, activate magical device, and kill 10 rats that will try to destroy it, then collect 5 rat tales and 3 pieces of dirt that can be found near river or from earth elementals). Theese are extremally uncommon, as they are usually beyond possibilities of players that got used with quests consisting of other objectives.


Quests are essentially copies of other, the only difference between killing 10 orcs and bringing their weapons and killing 10 bandits and bringing their scalps is... well, there's no difference actually.


DDO's wilderness areas are far better than standard MMO landscape.
The only thing that can make landscapes bearable are texts written for quests. Some are good, and create illusion of lack of repetition between objectives, but most are idiotic.


Tested out other MMOs over the years, and this Landscape XPing is about as immersive, heroic and fun as watching paint dry on your free day.

Thank God DDO is much better than this braindead boregrind.

[PsychoBlonde]

If you give people constant xp per kill, then people will stick around as long as it takes... with no cap on the xp except when you out-level it, people will stay in groups doing it as well. The problem is, Turbine doesn't want to do it, why? Because people will actually forget about quests in the heroic tiers. The loot is not good enough, no special rewards like CoV's, you get ok guild renown by killing as well... and quests require that you commit yourself to the task, doing slayers is free, liberating, and easy. If they did XP/Kill in wilderness, you'd have 'grind groups' setting up to just kill in wilderness areas for hours and hours... which, I don't mind personally, but... then I am an old school EQ player =)

Yeah, because DDO has always wanted to be Everquest, they never had any different design philosophy at all. Also, this is not the way it would work. People would NOT run the ENTIRE area to get 150 kills. They would get 10 kills--the closest, lowest-hanging fruit, then RESET THE AREA. Runs would take 30 seconds to a minute. They'd get 3-6000 kills in an HOUR. Xp/kill would radically change and bore-ify the game. People already farm the crucible optionals for tens of millions of XP. No need to ADD more spectacularly boring, stupid grind-athons to the game. There's no profit in it.

An explore area is a lot more than just "kill mobs for XP". The exploration/rares aspect is actually the biggest part of the XP and fun so once you've done that, you're basically done with the area. They've improved the rares somewhat by turning them into little events, but that's not quite enough to allow for repeated returns to the area.

There are a bunch of good suggestions in this thread--make the explore areas f2p is my favorite and probably the easiest to implement. Some revision to the high-tier scaling to make the tiers closer together would also be nice.

They could also make the *total* kill counter smaller and have it reset to 0 every time you leave the area. This would encourage fuller runs because if you only hop in and grab the lowest tier you're getting some ridiculously low xp value, but if you run around for a bit you can get up into the 200-400 kills range and get a solid chunk of xp for your time, particularly if there are other opportunities to grab xp like events and even making some of the explores repeatable. THAT would actually be FUN.

[OverlordOfRats]

One area I do spend a lot of time in is the High Road, with no XP penalty on repeat rares, respawning mobs(ok they're not really 'mobs') and five quests which have reasonable xp, I find a couple of hours running around always refills my coffers quite nicely. :p

And often the rares pop up continuously.....

I also seem to get a lot of Greater Essences in rares' chests! :D

I am in the camp of I like explorer areas.


The High Road i think is just about right.

Not to big so you are saying do I really want to run all the way out there again to get to the quest?
Journals did not have an huge number and were not too annoying to find to clear off the fog from the map(I did have to use the wiki for the one on the roof. I just wasn't thinking "look up".)
Rares respawn at a decent rate.
Mobs respawning is just about right. You run a circuit and the ones at the beginning are back. They do not respawn so fast that you have them chasing you all the time.
Shrines are well placed. They are spread out enough you should be able to make it back to one if you need to when running S/R/Es. Also they are close enough to the dungeons entrances you can clear a path, shrine, then enter.


The one thing I would suggest to make all the areas better is get rid of the gated levels of slayers.

Change it to 100 kills = X xp with no upper limit except out leveling the area.

So for epic The High Road 100 kills would be 10000xp. If you do it 75 times you are about equal the current rate of 7500 kills = 755016xp without the giant jumps in kills.

It removes the giant jumps in slayers which I and, from reading this thread, others do not like.
It keeps the reward the same for the same amount of kills, just smaller rewards more frequent.
It keeps Slayer Count Boost viable, which each kill = xp does not do.
It would provide another way to level off destinies because you can keep making some progress and there would be no maximum cap on slayers except out leveling them.
I would think it would be fairly easy for the developers to implement as the X kills = X xp already exists, just change first tier to 100 kills allow repeat.(disclaimer: I am not now nor have I ever been a professional programer).

Note: I do not dislike the idea of each kill = xp. It would remove a revenue stream (Slayer Count Boost) and I would think it would be more time consuming to develop (see disclaimer above).

[Vanquishedfo]

simple fix, stop being a stupid stubborn niche mmo in this regaurd and just give us XP for killing each and ever foe. Reduce quest XP by huge margins, and divvy it up in the form of killing. Make it so those optional fights are only optional if you dont care about XP.

[-Avalon-]

Yeah, because DDO has always wanted to be Everquest, they never had any different design philosophy at all. Also, this is not the way it would work. People would NOT run the ENTIRE area to get 150 kills. They would get 10 kills--the closest, lowest-hanging fruit, then RESET THE AREA. Runs would take 30 seconds to a minute. They'd get 3-6000 kills in an HOUR. Xp/kill would radically change and bore-ify the game. People already farm the crucible optionals for tens of millions of XP. No need to ADD more spectacularly boring, stupid grind-athons to the game. There's no profit in it.

I am not sure how you get this concept... Why would anyone ever leave the zone to reset it, unless they were looking for rares? Slayer wouldn't have a cap, or tiers, or anything... it would be pure XP/Kill. And the devs could set it to whatever they wanted. If they set it to 20 XP/Kill in Vale, then for killing 5000 enemies you'd have made 100K XP, which is less than it currently is for killing 5000, but with this method, you could kill 4950 and still get XP for it, or kill 10000 and still be getting XP... up to you when you decide to leave (or when you out level the zone). I don't think they should change quest XP, because bang for buck, questing is faster imo, and you get favor, and loot, etc... so, there are reasons to do quests as well. But I don't see why someone would enter, kill 5 enemies, leave, reset, etc, unless they really wanted to waste a bunch of time (no TIERS for killing, no CAP, just kill, get XP)... unless you mean they would enter, find a group of enemies, kill that group (whatever size group it is), then leave and reset... I guess if you are into mind-numbingly horrible boring ways to do stuff, you could do that... but I get bored just thinking of doing that over and over.

Once I get killing, and buffed, etc... I like to roll with it, there are usually enough enemies nearby to the group I just killed to make it faster to just move on and kill more than to recall and reset...


An explore area is a lot more than just "kill mobs for XP". The exploration/rares aspect is actually the biggest part of the XP and fun so once you've done that, you're basically done with the area. They've improved the rares somewhat by turning them into little events, but that's not quite enough to allow for repeated returns to the area.

Pay attention to what you said there... THIS is the problem: the exploration/rares aspect is actually the biggest part of the xp and fun so once you've done that, you're basically done with the area.

So, Exploration/Rares... no slayer, who cares about slayer? People do exploration and rares for good loot and fill out the map, plus really good XP. And once you are done with that (if you decided to do that at all) then the zone ceases to be worth anything to you. Hence the reason for this thread I imagine, what can they do to make wilderness zones worth being in? I suggested to make Slayer actually something worth doing as well, so that it could join Exploration/Rares in importance and all... yet you are saying NOOOOOOO!!!!! lol... The difference would be that slayers are NEVER done, unlike exploration/rares who have a finite amount, slayers would have an unlimited supply (but worth less to even it out). Right now, slayers are worthless overall, because of the tiered system.


There are a bunch of good suggestions in this thread--make the explore areas f2p is my favorite and probably the easiest to implement. Some revision to the high-tier scaling to make the tiers closer together would also be nice.

They could also make the *total* kill counter smaller and have it reset to 0 every time you leave the area. This would encourage fuller runs because if you only hop in and grab the lowest tier you're getting some ridiculously low xp value, but if you run around for a bit you can get up into the 200-400 kills range and get a solid chunk of xp for your time, particularly if there are other opportunities to grab xp like events and even making some of the explores repeatable. THAT would actually be FUN.

I agree that there are some good suggestions in this thread, however, the resetting the slayer count but keeping the tiers? Even smaller tiers?? Really? You just argued that, "They would get 10 kills--the closest, lowest-hanging fruit, then RESET THE AREA. Runs would take 30 seconds to a minute. They'd get 3-6000 kills in an HOUR. Xp/kill would radically change and bore-ify the game."

And now, are saying that they should decrease the numbers required for tiers, and make the slayer counters reset on leaving... you are trying to play both sides here lol... saying NO to the very thing you suggest right after? You don't get that if they made the tiers into 5/10/20/40/80/160/320 or something like that (lower numbers) and reset the slayer counters, that people would INDEED enter, kill 10 enemies (that low hanging fruit) recall, and reset the zone, then come back in and kill the exact same 10 again because it is a new slayer counter?

[PsychoBlonde]

I am not sure how you get this concept... Why would anyone ever leave the zone to reset it, unless they were looking for rares?

Because it's faster to kill the mobs at the entrance and reset endlessly than to hunt down mobs spread all over the area. People do what's fastest and most efficient. Killing 150 mobs takes forever if you go hunt them down one at a time. It takes *far* less time to raise your kill count by resetting and killing a known group of mobs over and over. This is how (and why) people farm rats/caravan.

Resetting the entire kill count would not wholly avoid this problem, sure, hence why I suggested it *in conjunction* with more events and repeatable explores. The slayer should be an adjunct to the more fun and more interesting activities available in the area.

[-Avalon-]

Because it's faster to kill the mobs at the entrance and reset endlessly than to hunt down mobs spread all over the area. People do what's fastest and most efficient. Killing 150 mobs takes forever if you go hunt them down one at a time. It takes *far* less time to raise your kill count by resetting and killing a known group of mobs over and over. This is how (and why) people farm rats/caravan.

Resetting the entire kill count would not wholly avoid this problem, sure, hence why I suggested it *in conjunction* with more events and repeatable explores. The slayer should be an adjunct to the more fun and more interesting activities available in the area.

(You're) Still not getting it...Let's make rare's more exciting and in conjunction make slayers the way you propose... It ends up being a "Hey, let's go check this rare" or "Hey, let's go get our explorers done"... and when you finish doing those things, people make a quick check on where they are with slayers, and say, "Hey, I need 5 more kills to finish up this tier for slayers, I'm at 195 of 200" they kill 5 more to push them over the top, then EVERYONE leaves... because screw that, not sticking around for another 200 kills... even if you drop it to 100 more kills, not sticking around for 100 more kills. And (pick your deity) forbid you are over 3000, we sure as HECK are not gonna stick around for 2000 more.

Your proposal still leaves Slayers as the red-headed step-child of a disliked neighbor. Sure, she's fun while you visit, but you aren't gonna stick around and be serious about it. Rare's are pretty much good as they are currently, add back in the unique loot like it was in Sands (and maybe bump the commonality of the items up a tad), explorers have their own reasonings (walk-up quests, clear the fog of war, use that horrible low level navigator, etc)... slayers have only ONE purpose, to give you a little xp on the way to rare's and explorers... if these were hirelings and you were an evil boss, you are telling one of them their purpose is to guard your treasure hoard, telling another to guard you and your family, and then telling the other one his job is to stand at the front door and die... a LOT, because his purpose is to just be something done on the way to getting to everything else. How would you like to be that guy? Basically the red-shirt of DDO.

We need to buff Slayers up some so that people actually DO them on purpose, and not just do them a little, but stick around and stay in wilderness zones having a blast. To do that, we need rares that drop cool worthwhile stuff, explorer's with scenic views and perhaps other benefits, and slayers that are worth doing at ALL times (this means getting rid of tiers, XP/Kill at all times for every enemy, based on tier of the enemy: Common gets X 0.5, Uncommon X 2, Rare X5; CR = XP, so 20 CR common would give 10 XP, uncommon gives 40, rare would give 100 XP, or something like that)

And above all, everything respawns over time... walk into a wilderness area that can have 16 rares, the game spawns 4 at random in the locations they could potentially be (I would suggest they be zone wide potential spawns), when you kill one a timer starts (perhaps 3 minutes?) and the game spawns another of the 16 (but not including those already spawned) and spawns that rare somewhere. That way, potentially, you have 4 rares up, and over time you COULD get all of them, or you could just romp and stomp around slaughtering and eventually move on... but between getting explorers and running around killing rares and gaining xp while doing it, wilderness areas could be a lot of fun to just hang around in while doing your clothes, or that 20 minutes before you need to leave to pick up your kids, or whatever... giving us quests that require full attention for 20-60 minutes (or *gasp* the new update bringing us a quest they say could take 3-5 hours...) is really awesome, but we need stuff to do when you just wanna play for 20 or 30 minutes and may very well be distracted during that time. Wilderness zones COULD be that.

[Lanhelin]

* Set the rewarded slayer steps closer past 750. Say every 250 kills. 1000, 1250, 1500, 1750, 2000, …

* Respawn in every Wilderness Area

* Exclude rare Encounters' chests from chest ransack or simply make ransacked encounters stop spawning until the waiting time is over, without the need for players to not enter the whole Wilderness waiting for it. Eg. when I was in High Road I had to kill the Fire Reaver until its chest was empty. I had no influence on whether he spawned or not. Later he still kept spawning, sometimes there were even two Fire Reaver Encounters on the map, with empty chests. Or let there be something guaranteed in the chest like guild renown, despite ransack.

[Fedora1]

Make the XP award for every 100 slayers, period.

100, 200, 300, 400 etc. Make a nice XP bonus every 500 slayers. Award TP every 1000 slayers for up to 5000 max.

[Panzermeyer]

I enjoy the explorer areas. I think they actually tend to give more of a sense of adventuring personally.

However I do agree with the lack of replay value. Though I think it would be fairly simple to add existing functionality to the explorer areas to create more replay value.

Some thoughts on my part



Primary is a respawning map. That you can run around a map and it decreases in possible kills as the map gets cleared an nothing else comes back. No good.
Next most important is worthy loot. Like that has been mentioned in old years with Desert. There was some excellent loot that at one time people farmed for.
Random encounters at randoms spots.
Increase the xp for getting ALL explorers. This encourages that milestone.
Increase significantly the XP for getting ALL rares/random encounters. This encourages that milestone.
Potentially in some add more quests. Move many quests from the various houses and put in explorer areas. The fact that you have areas like Searing Heights, and hands down one of the best, Underdark with only one quest in them, makes them worthless explorer areas. The Underdark was easily from a design perspective one of the best explorer areas. Just like I thought the underdark would be. However with only one quest in there, I never really run it.
Mob Scaling with party size. Definitely like the the King's Forest the dramatic increase in mob sizes with full party's as compared to solo.
If an explorer has an epic quest, it should have an epic explorer area. The fact that the desert or searing heights or the red fens explorers don't go epic with epic quests, is pretty unfortunate.

[Talon_Moonshadow]

My ideas: (not very original)

Named loot.
Better loot.
Those Commendations everyone values.

Cool rare encounters.

More secrets.

Maybe additional quests in old areas.


An icon to tell you what direction the quest entrance is in.
Can keep fog of war, but give the guy who joins IP a clue which way to go.

[Hafeal]

This is a nice summary for what I have read in this thread:






Primary is a respawning map. That you can run around a map and it decreases in possible kills as the map gets cleared an nothing else comes back. No good.
Next most important is worthy loot. Like that has been mentioned in old years with Desert. There was some excellent loot that at one time people farmed for.
Random encounters at randoms spots.
Increase the xp for getting ALL explorers. This encourages that milestone.
Increase significantly the XP for getting ALL rares/random encounters. This encourages that milestone.
Potentially in some add more quests. Move many quests from the various houses and put in explorer areas. The fact that you have areas like Searing Heights, and hands down one of the best, Underdark with only one quest in them, makes them worthless explorer areas. The Underdark was easily from a design perspective one of the best explorer areas. Just like I thought the underdark would be. However with only one quest in there, I never really run it.
Mob Scaling with party size. Definitely like the the King's Forest the dramatic increase in mob sizes with full party's as compared to solo.
If an explorer has an epic quest, it should have an epic explorer area. The fact that the desert or searing heights or the red fens explorers don't go epic with epic quests, is pretty unfortunate.



I like all these, with the added:



Named loot.
Better loot.


It would be nice if EVERY explorer area had an Orchard like system where you collect something and can make items from uncommon collectables like the tomes, shield pieces, or taps. I would like a "copy and paste" approach to take that system and apply it to the other explorer areas with appropriate level range items.

I would also throw in that things like common collectables, or specific common collectables from a pack for the explorer in that pack, should drop and be found in large numbers. For example, in Cerulean hills you should be able to find a 100, 50 or 25 stack of sweet whitecap, deadly feverblanch or pale creeper mushrooms. Most collectables like this are associated with the certain level ranges or area and should be found in the appropriate explorer.

[smkalinowski]

Primary is a respawning map. That you can run around a map and it decreases in possible kills as the map gets cleared an nothing else comes back. No good.
Next most important is worthy loot. Like that has been mentioned in old years with Desert. There was some excellent loot that at one time people farmed for.
Random encounters at randoms spots.
Increase the xp for getting ALL explorers. This encourages that milestone.
Increase significantly the XP for getting ALL rares/random encounters. This encourages that milestone.
Potentially in some add more quests. Move many quests from the various houses and put in explorer areas. The fact that you have areas like Searing Heights, and hands down one of the best, Underdark with only one quest in them, makes them worthless explorer areas. The Underdark was easily from a design perspective one of the best explorer areas. Just like I thought the underdark would be. However with only one quest in there, I never really run it.
Mob Scaling with party size. Definitely like the the King's Forest the dramatic increase in mob sizes with full party's as compared to solo.
If an explorer has an epic quest, it should have an epic explorer area. The fact that the desert or searing heights or the red fens explorers don't go epic with epic quests, is pretty unfortunate.





It would be nice if EVERY explorer area had an Orchard like system where you collect something and can make items from uncommon collectables like the tomes, shield pieces, or taps. I would like a "copy and paste" approach to take that system and apply it to the other explorer areas with appropriate level range items.



I'm one of those rare birds that actually really likes doing explorer areas. I hit just about all of them on a TR. I usually go to at least 200 on the early levels and 1500-3000 on mid-levels and last life I completed the Orchard slayers entirely. That being said, I wholeheartedly agree with these suggestions. Especially the respawn because I hate having to wait for the area to reset, and the Orchard-like system because even though I have everything I want from shreds and tomes and such, I sell them and can buy some other stuff I want instead; this would be great at other levels.

[zwiebelring]

So how do you give Explorer zones more replay value?
You know when those areas had replay value? Exactly, right when people knew lvl. 27 chests dropped tomes like candy. They removed that easy loot and so removed replay value of explorer areas.

I am still amazed of The Underdark, I like running around in the Stormhorns. It looks fantastic. But without tome drops like I used to farm in High Road I simply won't run them except for explorers.

Give us back tome farm options in there and more people will run explorers.

But then.... why should explorer areas have replay value?

[Postumus]

Some thoughts on my part



Primary is a respawning map. That you can run around a map and it decreases in possible kills as the map gets cleared an nothing else comes back. No good.
Random encounters at randoms spots.



All the evening star explorers areas constantly respawn now. Doesn't EGH respawn too? So it appears DDO has already implemented these changes. It will be interesting to see how they handle epic 3barrel.

If you mean go back and retro old areas, I don't think that would be a good use of resources if it delays or impacts new content.



2. Next most important is worthy loot. Like that has been mentioned in old years with Desert. There was some excellent loot that at one time people farmed for.


Yes. It doesn't even have to be named loot like the bloodstone. Adding some high level or rare augments to random encounters would be good.







Increase the xp for getting ALL explorers. This encourages that milestone.
Increase significantly the XP for getting ALL rares/random encounters. This encourages that milestone.


Yes.

[9rileystep]

I think it would be cool if they borrowed the mechanic from crystal cove - where random enemy's would drop treasure maps - Inside random treasure chests have level appropriate random augments drop - This would encourage grouping (as you get access to other peoples maps) and provides the players a way to farm free augments. If they did this they could even stop dropping them randomly in quests.....

I personally have a lot of empty slots especially in my lower level equipment.

[Jasparion]

So how do you give Explorer zones more replay value?

More XP, named items which cant be found elsewhere and are BTA, and at the Epic level, Comms dropping in chests.

[Thrudh]

I love the wilderness areas, and I find them highly repeatable... (Well, highly repeatable for me is like about 20 times so far - I've got 6 characters that have TRed 2-5 times each)...

There's nothing I like better than stepping into a fresh new explorer area with all the explorers and slayers at 0.

Of course, if all you do is epic TR, you lose out on that... So far, I've interspaced my epic TRs with heroic TRs, so I've reset the explorer areas.

I like the idea of making the slayers at 1000,1500,2000,2500, etc... 750,1500,3000 is too far apart.

[bsquishwizzy]

I think the idea of simply adjusting slayer counts is moronic. All you are doing is shifting numbers as opposed to actually addressing the problem. It is also myopic in that is serves only one purpose, and that is grinding XP.

Most people play games to be entertained, not grind for stuff. Your standard explorers give you lots of options to a) keep people entertained, and b) give the myopic grinders something that feeds their obsessions. It is a large open area. It can handle respawning stuff. It leaves lots of options open.

I like the idea of CC /SR type stuff for team play (dropping map pieces) in conjunction with random, altering spawns. I think what the person pointed out what makes Orchard cool is something to consider (Tapestry shards…how many people have been out their farming their Minos legens?).

I personally like the King’s Forest model for rares. The only problem with High Road’s implementation is variety.

Plus, it would be nice to make the rare encounters have two or three possible outcomes. Hunter’s Feast in King’s forest has a couple I think. One, they turn into werewolves, another you get a buff. More stuff like that, which keeps you guessing, also keeps you engaged.

And why should wilderness areas have replay value? If you make wilderness areas on par with quests, it provides a lot of variety that retains players of all types. Cripes, I’ll run most wilderness areas solo if my group is not available, or there are no PUGs. King’s Forest, for example, is a good place to farm stuff for Cider potions for my wizzy. It gives me an incentive to do SOMETHING other than grind for XP or flag.