Suggestion To Make Exploration More Appealing To Us All.

[SoanoS]

I have been playing this game from since 7.3 or so, and I have slowly become weary of the game. While leveling guns and frames and whatnot is always fun and finding some nice loot is always a bonus, there is never really any incentive to go out of your way and stray from the shortest route to the way-point marker on the mini-map. There is absolutely no benefit spending 15 minutes longer on a level exploring the map and looking for secret stuff, because at best you might find a few credits, a pile of common materials and some health and energy orbs. That is simply a colossal waste of time. That will cause most of the work developers have put into making the varied tilesets to end up being wasted as they will be rarely seen.

 

But how could we get the player more interested in looking around? Well, here is my idea.

 

Give all mission types except Defense a small chance to spawn a Grineer Cache like the ones seen in the Operation Gate Crash.

Spawn chance, number of caches and loot quality would depend on mission type and tier, maybe using a simple formula of "mission level/2" for the spawn chance.

 

For example, a normal, level 10 Exterminate (Tier 1) mission could have a 5% chance to spawn a Grineer Cache somewhere on the map, and the reward could be a credit cache, an Uncommon Fusion Core some uncommon material and maybe a rare Forma BP(very rare).

 

A harder, level 35 exterminate (tier 3) could have a 17,5% chance to spawn up to 3 Grineer caches (17,5% chance each, all containers calculated separately). Reward could be a Rare Fusion Core, Uncommon or Rare materials or a Rare mod, and possibly even a (rare) Forma BP or a Forma (even rarer), or if DE is feeling generous, maybe even *GASP* an occasional ultra-rare Catalyst or Reactor BP or a couple of platinum (I know the last bit sounds like much, but I think it would make them very sought after).

 

In an alert the chance (with the exception of Defense alerts) would be a fixed and the reward should be appropriate for its tier, and the reward found would have a better chance for a rare reward.

 

Of course, these are just examples, if this was implemented DE should determine the actual rewards, values and chances to make it balanced and fun for everyone.

 

This sort of addition would result in players who like exploring getting rewarded for their efforts and reduce rushing trough the maps for just the mission reward. Also, this would give the level artists the recognition they deserve.

Edited October 16, 2014 by SoanoS

[--Q--JoeTheBanshee]

Not a bad suggestion at all, and only the start of what could be a full-on exploration update.

[Pseudo-Nym]

These maps do look very pretty, for the most part, but it is as you say. There's no point in even looking around in them. I think maybe one of the best, yet also worst aspects about this is the fact that we have a tile set system in play. Instead of an actual map, we have random chunks and pieces of maps, which results in very awkward attempts at sneaking around, or a desire to simply follow the waypoint, since the map changes every time. I'd like to see, eventually... very far into the future (realistically, I wish it were soon) some areas that actually had solid maps. Maybe assassinations, or rescue missions. That is my greatest issue with exploration

 

Bottom line: Agreed, some incentive to explore would be nice.

[Pham.Nuwen]

This is a very good idea. At the very least I would like to see the harder to get, or "secret" area lockers and containers have a higher chance to drop a rare mod or resource. 

[Naftal]

If there's only a chance for them to spawn, and the rewards are that bad. I wouldn't waste time exploring to see if there are caches or not.

[rechot]

this would be great if the tripled the size of levels for some new game mode.

i give upvote

Edited October 16, 2014 by rechot

[BoneBreakerx]

the problem i see with that is that there are easyer ways to get the stuff your mentioning...

 

forma BP -> T2surv

credits -> DS

resourses -> boss farming

 

and i dont think DE would make plat/tatoes farmable...

so alltho i like the idea of having a reason to go look in the secret rooms what your proposing wont make me do it since there are easyer ways of getting that stuff...

[Naftal]

Since the spawn and rewards are random, the rewards should be something like 100k credits, 10x rare 5 cores, T# key set, etc. to make it worth it to explore.

[xethier]

consider that most rare mods (not the classification rare, but legitimately difficult to acquire mods) are generally worth 5 platinum on trade.

 

to that end, the idea of allowing these caches to drop the occasional paltry amount of platinum is actually plausible.

 

i can absolutely guarantee that you'd see a rash of players exploring the living crap out of maps at that point.

[SoanoS]

Well, my suggestion was just an idea, I am sure if this got implemented DE would easily find a good balance between the reward and effort required to find the caches.

 

The rewards could easily be tuned to make them appealing to players to go out and actively seek for them if they were made good enough. For a starting player these would also be a great addition to their experience and would encourage them to learn to do those tricky wallruns and climbs, which will be good skills to learn early.

 

The caches could be something like 10k credits, and maybe the number of cores rewarded could be more than just one. But generally I was thinking of similar to what is usually in the Survival reward pool, with the added rare Forma, Catalyst and Reactor and small Platinum reward chance. I think the multiple Void Keys are a good idea too, as they can sometimes be a major pain to get from normal missions.

 

The basic idea is to make the reward for the Cache greater than just the mission reward alone.