Encouraging Exploration

fishtacos

A thought occurred to me today. What if a portion of the exploration time was used to do exactly that? What if the wildlife served an additional purpose beyond eating or avoiding? If there was a mechanism to take pictures for instance, modeling slightly larger versions of nudibranchs (sea slugs) and sparsely littering them across the map would be a great way to encourage people to explore every nook and cranny, especially if they could move autonomously. I know if I was one of the map modelers, I'd definitely want people to see my work instead of leaving an area once they acquired the resource they were after. If there were only a handful of each species model created or if there was only 1 per confined zone, the player could try to locate and photograph them all for some sort of achievement and it would be a great way to scavenger hunt while just enjoying the environment.

Thoughts? Ideas?

Fireclaw

Eventually, I believe the game will actually be about cataloging and studying the various creatures of the planet, so your idea is not that far off.

SgtHydra

Something interesting needs to be in the caves.

You can't really farm them for resources, as other biomes can easily provide what you need. It's sort of a "nothing beyond this point is worth your life" situation right now.

Which really shouldn't be the case at all, since the caves are spooky as hell and ought to be worth finding and exploring.

Edit: and adding to this, there should be ways to clue in players as to what interesting is in the caves besides looking them up on the wiki. This game is about discovery and exploration, and while the wiki is very useful, it does ruin the point of the game.