I want to start a discussion about the reasons we have to visit any location in an open-world game like UR. I will be looking at it from the perspective of a veteran player who already knows where everything is. My goal here is to brainstorm on how any location can be made as enticing as possible to a veteran player, and maybe come up with ideas on what additions would achieve this effect for UR or Styg's next effort.
So, here are my motivations for visiting locations in UR.
- Oddities (or XP, I guess)
- Loot (unique/expensive/needed)
- Money (currency/sellable loot)
- Important Quest sends you there.
- Challenge (I bet I can get them this time with THIS build!) and Lack of Challenge (this location does not offer much, but it offers something, and it is easy and quick to do)
- Atmosphere (I just like going there!)
- Unique Gameplay (UR actually does this to an extend that I have never seen before. Anyone want to pilot a dreadnought? Anyone want to control a robot from afar?)
- Random events (if you are into that kind of sh... er, things. i meant things)
Hopefully I am not forgetting anything important, but add yours below.
So what can we add to UR so that we can make any location more enticing? A well-balanced game can only have so many Oddities, loot and money thrown at you. I guess we could put more quests in a game, but that's the slow and expensive way to do this, not to mention that quest quality will suffer if we are just adding them just to make use of space.
A solution we have seen in other open-world games is to add subsystems/resources or quests that depend on visiting as many locations as possible (or specifically the locations that do not have much else going for them). Eg, the star bottle caps or the skillbooks in New Vegas. The star bottle cap style solution is a beat too cheap afaic. I do enjoy going after the skill books (that's a HUGE motivation), but I am worried that in a carefully balanced game like UR skillbooks may not be the best idea.
However, my personal conclusion is the same regardless: An open-world game like UR benefits greatly from having a big variety of must-have resources, like skillbooks, that can then be distributed to various locations and increase their importance.
And here is my question to you: What new subsystems or resources could we add to UR, that would allow us to make more locations must-visit?
