(hey look, a new title!)

...not questing. I love the idea of wandering around randomly and finding a dungeon, cave, tower, or other site... and going in to clear it. It would then be marked as "Cleared" in-game. No quest required; just combat-themed exploration.

There's some pretty cool technology out there in MMO-land:

• Wow has "challenge mode" where your gear is scaled to a particular level; and GW2 and other new MMOs have a fairly robust Mentor mode, where your whole character is scaled in power. Oblivion had scaling of mobs; that's seemed less fun.
• Rift and GW2 have quest-like rewards that appear just for taking part in events.
• Wow's Timeless Isle has creatures who increase HP based on how many people are in combat with them.

So consider this:

I am level... 10. I see an entrance to a cave in a level 10 zone, and go into it. I have no quests there; perhaps there aren't any quests for that location at all. I spend 15 or 30 minutes clearing it out, and receive a quest-type reward of XP, gold, etc. Inside the minidungeon were traps, monsters, maybe a minor puzzle or two. With the xp from doing these little dungeons, I don't need to do all the sidequests offered in the zone.

To make minidungeons more interesting, perhaps entering as a group would increase the power of the mobs, or maybe... I dunno, maybe people here have ideas to add.

I don't know a lot about them, but the "Dark Anchors" that Molag Bal is supposed to be dropping across Nirn seem to be similar to the open large-scale group content like the rifts in RIFT, for example. You participate with whomever is nearby, and you all get rewards (presumably based on degree of participation). Not sure if the critters / events scale, but everything else they've presented suggests they do NOT, so if you see a Dark Anchor in a level 40 area, and you're level 10... better just back away quietly.

I also liked the "Cleared" notice on dungeons in Skyrim (because I often forgot if I ever went INTO that cave) but I don't think it would work in an MMO where the dungeon is designed to respawn/repopulate and be run through again at a later time.

I DO hope that you can waltz into a cave you just found and inside that cave stumble across a corpse with a note that starts a mission --- perhaps IN the cave, perhaps NOT in the cave, requiring you to go to the hometown of the now-corpse explorer, for example.

I'd like to just wander into dungeons, caves, crypts, etc with no quests involved at all, it certainly would give the game an Elder Scrolls feel. In relation to open group content I'm not sold on the whole public dungeon idea. After playing GW2's absolutely pathetic timer train zerg game I grew very bored, very quickly. "Trolls up!" Incoming zerg, auto attack it with absolutely no challenge or skill required, open chest reward. "Spiders up!", Incoming zerg, auto attack it with absolutely no challenge or skill required, open chest reward. Rinse and repeat over and over and over. Then jump on the forums after you've mindlessly done that for hours and complain about 'grinding'. You've got to be *kitten* kidding me. I seriously hope ESO open world exploration and content is as far away from GW2 as humanly possible. Not being able to port all over the place is one way to stop that garbage, but then you get kids screaming and whining that it takes too long to travel 'to the good stuff' (ie the next boss that has spawned on their zerg train for fast efficient loot) Pfft. /rant over

Good thread otherwise and nice to see your new title.

I'm not a fan of "collect 5 spider legs" quest types. I get so focused on reaching that goal that I forget about the beautiful scenery, the fun of exploration and the setting where all takes places.

Instead, I was a big fan of exploration and the feel of "freedom" it brought when playing DAoC. For those who haven't played it: DAoC didn't have that many quests (aside from the main quest line), experience was gained mainly by "grinding"... and by grinding I don't mean anything negative actually! I had the most fun in it's early days, when people would just meet by chance, while exloring the wilderness or a cave (nowadays called "public dungeons") and grouped up to slay some bandits or monsters.

DAoC had a quite nice mechanic as well called "camp bonus": When a type of mob from a "mob camp" wasn't killed for a certain time, you would get a growing experience bonus when killing it. By this, players were rewarded for exploration... going deep into that forest, where no one else would go... fighting your way deep into that cave.

Memories... it was just so much nicer NOT to be "forced" to kill those 5 spiders to make any significant progress, NOT running from quest hub to quest hub... but to enjoy the "freedom" to explore.

As a sidenote: Why did questing get the only viable way to get experience in modern MMOs? I don't get the point why a bunch of egomaniacs running around an killing those spiders for their legs should be more fun than exploring, taking some risks, meeting other players far away from "civilization", maybe group up with them to clear that bandit camp or that cave.

I actually don't understand why quests would gain you more experience over exploring, I'm not talking about just any quests I'm more so talking about small quests or fetch quests, why would a quest that asks you to pick up supplies give more xp than just exploring. Now this makes sense when large hours long quest that takes you to various locations, and multiple objectives. I would prefer if small quests didn't give any experience only coin or gear.

Im not sure what you want... you ask so many different things.. but I think dynamic is coming to the MMO games. Rift was built around it partly but sadly not fully. Not sure about ESO yet, bit I could imainge we get at least dynamic endgame. I would've not played Rift so long I did without random events and of course randomly moving enemies.

Btw, exploration is part of ESO, it was confirmed long long time ago. The main story line is linear, but over half of the quest you need to find yourself. Also Alliance Zones gets harder and harder as your character gets stornger, so monsters scales and offer better xp and reward.

I hope we can just explore. quests used as a barrier to enter caves/dungeons/barrows/ etc. would be really game breaking for me. the developers have talked about how they want to make the game feel like a true ES game. not being allowed to explore certain locations because of a quest chain would be absolutely devastating.

as far as gaining xp for exploration, I think gaining a small amount for discovering new locations would be ok. but, I don't think the should over incentivize exploration. people should explore and want to explore because the game world was designed in a way that makes a player want to explore it.

i personally hate scaling in any game but i do like the idea of having caves or something that you "clear" out. to me this is very much in line TES and adds an additional form of leveling. options are never a bad thing imo

Definitely dig what the OP is saying, and hoping to see a lot of this in ESO.

Multiple ways of picking up a quest, for example, is always good. IE: There is a quest-giver in a town yes, but if you don't end up talking to them before you go to the cave they were going to send you to, you can simply stumble across the quest objective (kill this bandit guy, or collect this maguffin), do it and then find the quest-giver later and complete it.

This happened in Skyrim quite a bit.

GW2 had the dynamic reward system but I really didn't like that from an immersion standpoint: who or what is giving me this reward, is it just bestowed upon me by the gods or what? Once completing a challenge I would prefer to have to talk to someone to gain my reward, don't just throw money and XP at me out of nowhere.

agreed 1000 times over. i feel its gotten out a hand how you dont even have to go back and talk to a quest giver anymore. its like all of a sudden everyone has a cell phone and can wire money into your account.

Yeah I hated that Skyrim did this. It must not have been a true ES game.

I agree - I'd much rather have a PERSON give me a reward. Even if that person did not initially SEND me on a mission --- I happen to stumble across a giant wolf, kill it, and in its loot I get a Large Wolf Tooth that starts a quest to turn it in to the local magister, who will thank me (reward me) for stopping this giant wolf that had been plaguing the town, even though I had known nothing about it ahead of time. The Large Wolf tooth by itself is useless to me --- I have to hand it in so that the magister knows I've helped him.

That said, a LOT of MMO players now-a-days grew frustrated with having to go BACK to the quest-giver and whined until they made at least SOME missions auto-complete out in the wild, or in some other way remote-complete. I've been quite pleased to see more and more people seem to want the "good old days" and willing to sacrifice some convenience.

EDIT: Extraneous comma.

Some of the devs in an interview early this year or maybe last year mentioned they don't plan to have the stale cycle of:

1. Go to village
2. Talk to NPC to get a quest to go to this tomb
3. Run through tomb
4. Return to quest giver

They want you to explore, find a place of interest and then dive into said place, and maybe you'll receive a quest of your own making with the situation you find yourself in. The key thing here is the multiple options to start a quest and not bottlenecking the start and the end of it with just one way you initiate it.

In the same interview they also mentioned about "masking" those mundane quests like "kill 10 rats" by just putting 10 rats in that tomb; you'll going to have to deal with them in one way or another, you don't need to necessarily make it a point of note in a quest. Both of these gameplay philosophies from Fallout and TES are being carried over to TESO.

When I read your topic line I think:

1. Exploring ancient tombs, getting trapped inside. Having to solve REAL puzzles (challanging physically & intellectual) to get out.
2. Getting explore xp for each new area.
3. Logic puzzles like Zork.
4. RP xp by solving a villages problems in a consular jedi type fashion - think wisdom of solomon.
5. Being able to RP as a member of a ships crew and do quests or tasks associated with members that make sense. Dont have members pop up from nowhere all the time though. Be realistic!
6. Solving how an artifact/ powerful magic item works from disparate texts and lore across vast areas and several rumors/ nps get you started. Being able to use the artifact solo or in group for conrinuing gustlines in the same series.
7. Solving transporation puzzles like the aelyid steps in Oblivion.
8. Hire the guy who made the Lost Spires questlines in Oblivion! (But I digress)
9. Making more mundane quests
10. Getting xp for living out your characters life, maybe as a trader, crafter, musician etc...
11. XP for RPing in character (this can be done by computer monitoring not requiring a DM) see many NWN2 persistant worlds.

Thats it for now.
(Excuse my typing - on phone)

If we're gonna talk about hiring modders they need to hire SureAI, the guys who made Nehrim and Arktwend. Their total conversions are bananas amazing.

You are correct sir.

Mmmm sometimes it's just marketing..I wouldn't be surprised if there are a lot of those in the game

i am positive there will be, there has to be with the amount of quests they are going to put into the game. i took that as them saying "we will have more quests than just these but of course those will be there as filler here and there"

Points 1-4 seems pretty much what this will be.

Not that the solo games don't have that overflowing.

Also watching this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhZmLtVJfi8

Makes me feel like I signed up for the wrong game - whatever game that is looks amazing. I'd like to see more of that kind of stuff.

This deserved to be quoted long ago. Sorry I missed it. QFT +1.

I only figured out MW transport near then end of the game. Walked/ran everywhere in that game. It does make the world seem larger and more engaged. Lets face it, if you fast travel, you miss things... nevermind the qouted reasons above.