How Much Quest Direction?
How much quest direction do you like being given? Do you prefer for the only indication about where to go to be within the text (“to the west…”)? Do you like being told exactly where you need to go to update the quest (X marks the spot)? Or do you prefer something somewhere in-between the two (a general area highlighted on the map)? I tend to favor the following: Show the player exactly how much information the character knows. If the character is told that there’s an orc camp about a mile east, highlight that general area. If the character knows his objective is exactly 100 paces east and 100 paces north, put a fat X on the map.
I would agree with your example, of letting the indications in the UI be indicative of the amount of info given. Another key element is that the developer make sure the text is accurate. The only thing that ever bothered me in EQ was when it was clear an NPC was moved, but his text was not adjusted. He’d say “Head west to the mountain pass” which was correct when he was located to the east of the pass, but he later got moved to the south west part of the zone, and his text should have been changed to say “Head north east to the mountain pass” but it wasn’t. Or “Go kill goblins in the West!” but all the goblin camps were moved to be South of the NPC…
Actually, I really liked the system that Age of Conan used. I like rough locations of quest objectives to be on the map, so I can look at think, “hmm..if i go SE, I can do quest 1, 3, 4, 5 and 7″.. helps my organize my travels.
In my current games, I have all manner of quest tracking add ons telling me exactly everything, which is great for the 12th time through the zone, but I like just rough areas on the map for planning the first time or 2 through, lets me discover some stuff on my own.
I’m with you.
Even as an explorer-type, if I’m given a quest from an NPC I see no reason why they can’t say “Here, let me mark the location on your map” and send me on my way. Then again, if the quest came from mere rumors or tales, it would make sense for the player to only have a general idea of where it might be – as long as it doesn’t become annoying.
I’d rather not spend a lot of time trying to figure out where I need to go, and instead be entertained and challenged by the content that I find there.
As for how to do it, I found that Warhammer’s method was mostly sufficient with the rings around the area you need to be in. Another thing that would be both engaging and intuitive is a subtle UI element choice of having the quest tracker for a specific quest fade in on the side of the screen automatically when you enter the area where the quest can be completed. This gives the player an immediate visual cue that “hey, you can do this here” without the need to constantly reference the map. You could give the player the option of putting several quests up on the tracker if they please, but otherwise it’d be hidden unless they were in the right area. I think this is a better option than only having the tracker appear when you start completing objectives, as it does in WoW.
It’s definitely been an experience in the last few years with the variety of MMOG’s that I’ve played.
I can think of a few extremes: Final Fantasy XI used the EQ system where you didn’t even know who could GIVE you a quest. While I think that there’s some immersive fun in this approach, part of the problem is that any creatively designed city can lead a player astray in even finding these quests. A lot of the time they were vague to the point of maddening in trying to find ??? points in dungeons. This was especially true with the Advanced Job quests. However, you REALLY felt accomplished when you completed these tasks. There was something grander about finishing a string of quests that took hours to complete. Truth be told, this could be eternally frustrating too. The biggest problem with this system is that it lends itself immediately to looking for outside sources. While not bad in itself (it leads to community development, sharing, asking for help in-game, etc.), when you REALLY want to accomplish something you’re NOT going to run around all four of the major cities asking every NPC in the game to start the quest. You just won’t.
On the opposing end was Warhammer Online, and to a lesser extent, World of Warcraft. The only way that quests could have been more spelled out for you was if they literally auto-walked your character to the locations. What this DID allow for, I’ll admit, was the ability to gather a larger number of quests and try to complete them at once. This system lent itself to the world design of WAR though with it’s varied camps that progressed through each zone, getting “harder” each time. From a Con perspective, this was BORING. Each quest, with the exception of the sometimes interesting dialogue OF the quest, was cookie-cutter crap. This lent itself to power gamers quite nicely of course (very WoW similar) but where’s the excitement? Furthermore, why is a level 60 NPC telling me, “Hey, go over there and kill a bunch of these things. I know EXACTLY where they are and could kill them more easily than you, but I’m absolutely enthralled by sitting in this camp and you’re a n00b so go do it for this crappy armor”
A middle ground needs to be reached. Personally, I’m not sure that I entirely LIKE the “!” or other symbols for quest starters because it really does make it difficult to feel like you’re not an errand boy for more interesting people. On the other hand, I will give WoW credit that quests in, let’s say, Ironforge could potentially take you around the world. On the flip side, mindlessly searching for random quests is a drain on time, fun, and profitabiliity.
Radars and maps are here to stay, so I guess I would prefer a system where you get vague directions as mentioned in the question that could potentially resolve as you got closer to your target. In an interesting game world, this could still be fun and lead to exploration, additional experience/fun gains for the player, and a sense of immersion that “HERE BE QUEST” doesn’t give you. Your belief that the game could draw inferences from your “quest log” is interesting, but unless you gave multiple NPCs information for a LARGE number of quests, that might work better for large-scale quests (i.e. FFXI job quests) so that the player doesn’t lose their mind trying to find a pinpoint coordinate.
Quests are obviously a huge part of any MMOG experience. They need to be fine-tuned to the game system you’re creating, but overall, I think we’ve seen too many extremes and need to scale it back so that a player can TRULY feel accomplished for something instead of just doing what somebody else told them to do.
I think this is one of the things that I am enjoying about FreeRealms atm. Quest arrows, highlights and paths.
I don’t have to think about where I need to go, I can sit back and just follow the little green dots or open the map and see my end spot and port over that direction. Its a nice change to just explore and follow a arrow or dots for a while.
I have gotten so used to spoiler sites that I don’t even try and figure out where I have to go, who I need to talk to. Most quests in EQ don’t tell you any ways, they just give you a general direction and a vague description of who or what you need to go and do. This carries over into EQ2 for the most part. You do learn where you need to head and who you need to talk to, but often not where they are in that zone.
If not for being a ranger with tracking, and help from spoiler sites I would have thrown up my hands long ago on many a quest
I get where you’re coming from, Vahlouran, but quest direction itself was not the issue in Warhammer, it was just how boring the quests tended to be in general. Part of this was also zone design, which was extremely linear (at least as far as I played) and it literally felt like you were just moving in a line around the zone going from quest hub to quest hub. If you got to go to more interesting locations and actually felt some sense of adventure, I don’t think you’d mind their quest direction method as much.
I couldn’t agree more with the idea that quests often make the player feel like nothing more than an errand boy, as I’ve said before on my own blog. Ive tossed a few possible solutions up there, most of which revolve around making the player feel like they are in charge of the quest and are making their own objectives, even if the end result is the same.
Hmmm…I can concede that point, but I felt dumber with the red circle on my map approach from WAR. At that point, all that I ever did with quests was read the “reason” for the quest because that was all that was interesting about them. Otherwise I knew exactly where to go, what to do, and there was almost always a plethora of mobs for me to kill. Quests became grind + gear and that was it.
From a purely directional standpoint, I think that an interesting enough world could use landmarks. This would require a more in-depth approach to the game. But honestly, if I was given a quest to “Search for the valley between the two peaks where the sun shines down the blah blah blah at dawn” I would probably crap my pants.
Ah, but then you need identifiable landmarks
I’d love to see a dynamic system. Some quests which would be nasty to find without some help, the giver could ‘mark your map’ with a pinpoint (most accurate), circle an area, just point you in the right direction, describe landmarks or general area (west of the crossroads), or maybe nothing at all, depending on the ‘find’ difficulty of the quest. At a timer interval, you could return to the quest giver and see if he has any extra clues if you’re lost (and it would up the accuracy of the mapping).
Now, finding that balance of ‘find’ difficulty would be an interesting task, but it’d become pretty aparent how many times someone comes back to ask for more clues.
In today’s definition of a quest, which is not an epic adventure, but rather something to be repeated thousands of times while leveling up, I want to know everything. I want an X. I want to know exactly what I need to kill. If not, I’ll seek addons/websites to do it for me.
In the old definition of quests, which were rare, challenging, and exciting, then I don’t want much information at all.
Ah, so you’re asking if the current quest system built into Vanguard is the best?
In my opinion, I like the quests where it points you right at the creatures you are looking for. I also like it when it opens it up to hunt things down in an area, like when you have to feed all the unicorns, but it’s up to you to find all 10 as they roam around. No feeding the same one twice.
So in closing, yes Ryan, I believe that the questing system you described is excellent and fun to use. For a functioning example please see Vanguard. (To be honest, I htink WOW and AoC were quite similar to this too)
I don’t think there is a single right way to do this. All of the following options could and should exist within a single game.
a) Go to the oak tree that is 1 mile North-East of the bridge, capture the troll and take it back to the bridge. Here let me mark both spots on your map. (There is a known exact point)
b) The village is under attack from orcs, there must be a camp in the mountains East of here. (Your map shows some shading in the mountains and if you have a mini-map it indicates that you are in the mountains or shows an arrow that points to the mountains. Once you have found the camp, future quests for that camp show an ‘X’ marks the spot)
c) Legends tell of a barrow beneath a flat-topped hill in the middle of a lake that holds great treasure(No indication of where in the zone this might lie, but a description of a landmark so that the player needs to read the quest. Rewards for completion of these quests could include progress towards an ‘explorer’ title)
d) The dragon is in the Foggy Fens, I am sure that inhabitants of the villages in the area could help you find him. (Players can either go search the fens or go to the fens and get a more detailed map update from NPCs in the area)
It’s 2009 and unless I’m playing something like a real life middle age simulator, just show me where I have to go and what mobs to kill FFS. If the game features something like a radar and a map, bloody use them!
If a game is going to have me go on literally thousands of quests throughout the lifetime of my character, then a quest system that gives you the general location highlighted – along with pertinent mobs indicated – on your map is the way to go. I don’t want my hand held but I really dislike “kill x number of type_y monster” quests in games, so I want to get through them as quick as possible.
What do I want as a player? It depends. If I’m having a lazy weekend day of questing, I don’t mind having to search around a bit and find locations on my own. Part of the fun is stumbling into an interesting area.
On the other hand, if I’m with my friends and we have 1 hour to do some questing before raid time, I want everything laid out in front of me. I want to bang out the quests and get my rewards as efficiently as possible.
I think LotRO does a good job with this. They added a “beta” quest guide that works a lot like Quest Helper does for WoW. You can turn it on to get your quests done efficiently (if they’re tracked), and you can turn it off to wander around a bit and enjoy the scenery.
One problem is that if you’re playing along on an alt, you probably know most of this info anyway. It’s nice to have the info so you don’t have to struggle with half-remembering where that stupid item was hidden….
As a developer, I think I agree with UFTimmy above: if it’s a quick task, no need for the info to be hidden. If the quest is a real epic quest, then there shouldn’t necessarily be mile markers along the road leading the way. Figuring it out and finishing an epic quest should be a struggle, but the finish is just that much more sweet for it.
My thoughts,
I think so far Age of Conan was the most significant extreme in the handhold direction. Even NPCs who were “lost” that you had to “find” had an X in their exact location. It ruined the context completely. Warhammer Online was close, but at least obfuscated it a bit with the pools (though if it was a single thing you needed, it was invariably int he middle of that pool).
EverQuest and other early MMOs were the opposite extreme. You didn’t know who had quests, nor where to go once you had one (you didn’t even know what quests you were on unless you kept track of the items related to the quests and wrote down what you were doing). This extreme doesn’t fly anymore, which I think is a good thing.
Like I mentioned, I’d like to see a combination of approaches–the player should know in a convenient way exactly what their character knows. If their character knows exactly where a camp is, for example, they can see it on the map. If the character knows within a 100m margin of error where something is, give it a 100m margin of error with an area highlight (and don’t make the target dead center).
I’d even like to see pertinent quest mobs highlight in some way. Maybe it’s the mini-map/radar displaying quest targets in a different color, maybe it’s some shiny sparkly effect that shows up on objects and mobs that you are questing for. If your character knows he needs to kill Orc Reavers and can see them, make it very simple for the player to scan his screen and see them (shiny things/colors can do this better than a name can).
I’m delving a bit deep into user interfaces, I think, but it’s a general belief of mine that anything your character would perceive at-a-glance, the player should be able to perceive at-a-glance as well (don’t make me click on a map to find out its relative difficulty; let me know in the game world view). This general belief applies equally well to quests for me.
My personal preference is summed up by the QuestHelper WoW mod. If I’m leveling in an MMO, I want to be more or less on autopilot the whole time. I am doing it *because* I don’t want to have to think about things.
I realize this is my own personal preference, though, and probably wouldn’t design a quest system that way – I’d probably go more like what Shwayder described. I’m fine being asked to be the proactive one who goes out and gets a mod to convert the game to the way I want to play it, since I expect the developer to break immersion as infrequently as possible.
That kind of mod is only cheating if part of the difficulty of the game is locating where to go next for your quest, and frankly if that’s part of the difficulty of the game, the designers are failing. Being opaque != being mysterious.
(I just realized I probably made a reference that many won’t get, so for clarity: QuestHelper is a mod which highlights the location of quest objectives on the map, alters tooltips so that if an NPC or object is needed for a quest, the tooltip tells you what quest its for, how many you need and what you need from them, figures out the most efficient distance-wise order to go to quest objectives and puts a dotted line on your map and a 3 dimensional arrow on your screen pointing to the next one, and replaces the WoW quest tracker with a quest tracker which dynamically sorts itself to display the quest it thinks you should be doing next at the top of the list, second quest you should do second, and so on)
I know the EQ extreme doesn’t fly anymore, and that makes me sad. I actually liked keeping track of my own quests. I also liked have no limit to the number of quests I was working on (well, bank space was always the ultimate limit). I hate games that tell me I can only be on X quests at a time, and while I realize that they do that because of data restrictions (every time you take a quest it takes storage to track it on the server – database or flat files, if they didn’t limit it, you could take so many quests that it would degrade performance of the game), that doesn’t make it alright in my book.
Every time I get into a discussion like this I say the same thing, if EQ had been left EQ I’d still be playing it. But EQ now has tried so hard to incorporate elements of later games that it has lost all the magic it once had.
” I want to know everything. I want an X. I want to know exactly what I need to kill. If not, I’ll seek addons/websites to do it for me.”
What he said.
Came over from Wall of Text. The article there gave me an idea about putting choice into the hand of the player. Remember those UHS hint systems for adventure games? Why not have those staggered options for MMO quests?
Talk to the NPC once: he tells you the story and the general area/direction, nothing more => oldschool Everquest style. Do it that way and you get slightly more gold/xp reward.
Or you could talk to the NPC again and ask for more specific directions, then he starts marking the general area on your map.
One more time, or with some kind of special unlocked item and he puts the exact X on the spot and highlights your minimap radar with a “go in this direction” arrow. Slight xp or gold penalty for being lazy, maybe he had to bribe a scout for the info or something.
Set up a default setting for players to opt into, if they don’t want to click to talk multiple times, and voila. People quest how they like, with a bit of carrot and stick to tempt them into a harder option.
It’s 2009 and unless I’m playing something like a real life middle age simulator, just show me where I have to go and what mobs to kill FFS. If the game features something like a radar and a map, bloody use them!
It depends on how quest driven the game is. If i’m going to be doing quests everyday for xp, I don’t want to read the quest, I don’t care about the story, I just want to get it done with so I can move onto the next. On the other hand, if quests are more scarce they need to make up for it with the story, adventure, and rewards that come with them. In this example I think it’s better to take the more subtle approach on quest direction.
Well, atm I’m playing Runes of Magic. They are WoW-like, but quest items and quest-npcs are indicated on the minimap and you have a built-in mob map. But they have some tricks for not always highlight the quest npc. Sometimes you shall ask them/give them something and that is scriptet in the dialog engine: you see the quest-npc-marker only after talking with them.
I did like the quest area marker in AoC, but for RoM they are not really necessary, as the zones are (mostly) compact and it is easy to pick up a row of quests for the same area.
That multi-staged hint system would be kinda nice, but it could also make quest creation take significantly longer. Building dialogue for NPCs tends to be one of the biggest tasks in quest creation (mostly due to the logic involved, not writing what the NPC will say), and adding multiple phases of hints would make it a huge pain.
Staging hints in that the player can access via their interface would reduce the effort to create them a bit, but it would still make creating every quest take a little bit longer unless it could be automated in some way (e.g. the designer makes the quest with the maximum hints, and the system makes a series of less accurate locations that the player can step through. They’d also make the end reward, and the experience earned would scale a bit each time the user grabbed a hint).
My worry, though… if you got greater reward for not taking hints, players would turn to websites/mods to get them instead of the in-game mechanic so they could always get the maximum reward. If the increased reward were removed, people would just always go to “max hint” mode, so they could rush through a quest through the path of least resistance (people can’t help themselves… give them the option, and they’ll take it).
I like that idea a lot. I also like general things, areas on the map. I really dislike the “run out to the east and grab me 15 things, now run back there and grab me 5 things, now run back there and kill the boss” type stuff. if you knew you needed this shit from the east, let me grab it all while I am out there!
Honestly, I never read quest text anymore – or rather I just skim it to see if there are any important instructions. I do not care about someone’s long story unless somehow it will be of importance later. I do not care that “Bill Boffin” had his “prized shovel” carried off by marauding chipmunks. But when I do get excited or begin to get into things is when I find the chipmunk den. There’s the shovel, right by a pile of nuts and guarded by two hulking chipmunks. Then my brain kicks into gamer mode and I begin to figure out how the best way is for me to solve this. Do I pick off the outer chipmunk guards first, and work my way to the center? Is it a “dash in dash out” thing?
As an example, last night I was building up a new alt in LOTRO, and found some of the quests absolutely pointlessly foolish. There was a sequence in The Shire where I had to run back and forth between two people passing messages for them. It was both the simplest quest ever, and the most pointless ever at the same time. You might as well give me an option that says, “do you want to run back and forth, or do you just want to go AFK for 5 minutes and give you the reward in the end?”
Here is one way to test a quest. Can you play it without any text directions, and still figure out what it’s about? In the “be a messenger between two hobbits” quest, I would have no idea what it was about. In the case of Bill Boffin and the Prized Shovel, I could figure out what was up. Here’s Bill at a farm, Bill looks upset. Here is a shovel, and it’s “Ah hah! Shovel + Farmer = Quest!”
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–> “Here is one way to test a quest. Can you play it without any text directions, and still figure out what it’s about?” <–
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“if you got greater reward for not taking hints, players would turn to websites/mods to get them instead of the in-game mechanic so they could always get the maximum reward.”
It’ll probably have to be a carefully tweaked number. Small enough loss so that the tedium of going through a third party website makes at least some players pause. Maybe another type of prestige/achievement reward like a shiny title to sweeten the deal.
You’ll never stop all players from using out-of-game help either, it’s an automatic habit by now, but the immersion-seekers would probably appreciate the in-game help. (Too bad most MMO players are achievement-oriented, or trained that way by the Diku influence. They’re used to skimming the quest text and chasing the carrot by running the errand asked of them.)
You could probably slow the rate of data gathering of an out-of-game website by randomizing quest goal locations/tasks, but with the massive numbers playing an MMO and making a metagame of data collection, it’ll ultimately be as futile as trying to hold back the tide.
Knowing most players, they’ll probably oft for the easiest route anyway as long as it’s not too penalizing, so any extra effort to move away from the GPS-marked objective on the map will really be only to please a subset of the population and/or make a “different” marketable game feature. (I was chuckling to see how LOTRO decided to go with the flow and add the marked quest goals so late into their list of game features. DDO bent over somewhat to attempt appealing to solo playstyles too. I can only surmise such playstyles have a sizeable enough impact on the bottom line to warrant attracting them to resubscribe with such features.)
Ultimately, I think quest direction is settling quite firmly into the casual camp. “Tell me where to go, I don’t want to wander in circles.” Because traditional quests boil down to “Go here. Do this. Come back.” Lots of people are done with timesinks such as aimless wandering blocking their perceived road to progression. They like a clear goal to work towards. That’s part of the addictive nature of MMOs, the next action is spelled out for you.
What might end up making next-generation quests spicier is player choice, be it moral/roleplaying or tactical/strategic. If you end up with 2 or 3 “go heres” to choose from, whatever you’ve left out is an option you won’t see until the next play through. If there are multiple ways to reach the same goal, some lengthier, some riskier, then folks will choose according to their preference. Naturally, players are still going to read third-party websites to try and figure out the ‘best’ option for their character. I don’t understand what’s wrong with that. A player doesn’t have to live in-game 24/7. Part of the fun of an MMO is all the out-of-game or offline time you spend browsing forums, reading fansites, plotting builds or the next goal, etc. Even singleplayer games have a market for third-party guides.
What I would like to see in an MMO quest system, but haven’t yet is a tiered hint system. Most MMO’s color their quests as to if they are above your level, around your level, or under your level. My ideal set-up would be to have quests that are above your level give you very broad information (as in what zone you need to be in). Quests around your level would tune in the detail a bit, showing what camp or part of the zone the update would be in. Finally, Quests that are so far under your level that they yield little benefit would spill it out to you as detailed as possible by marking exactly where you need to go, what you need to kill, possibly a trail to lead you through hidden entrances, etc. I would rather clear quests out of my journal by completing them rather than deleting them, but when they aren’t worth any benefit, I would rather spend as little time on them as possible. However, for the hardcore on both end of the spectrum there would need to be a toggle to either put it on full details on the time or no details at all. Honestly, anytime I can not spend on walk through sites when I get stuck, the better.
Very nice idea RCW003. It keeps you from just dumping the old quests when it’s not really worth the time to figure them out at a higher level.
Yes, as another poster indicated, Age of Conan had a really good system where a big circle would highlight the quest-related area (and other quest-related areas would be highlighted in a different color, so you could visually check the map to see what areas of a zone were “useful” at any given moment).
Personally, I prefer to have an area, and possibly a path, highlighted (path to an area is not always obvious, due to intervening obstacles and changes in altitude, for example). A true explorer might want just a general direction highlighted.
One possibility is to have both options available in the quest dialogue and give slightly different rewards depending on how detailed your instructions. Of course, the reward for exploring should be something an Explorer would enjoy and the reward for the player who wants detailed instructions should be the standard (assuming that the typical “casual” player is your target audience and you want to keep the “lowest common denominator” happy). A perfect solution would be to give the Explorers some kind of lore-related reward, like a clue to some neat feature / easter egg. If you make the reward too desirable, the “power players” will consider it the mandatory reward, select the Explorer option instead of the detailed instructions, then complain about how difficult the quest is ;^)
So the key to different rewards is to make the rewards appealing only to the very specific target audience. If you want to appeal to Social players, appearance clothing with no benefits; Explorer players, clues to new places to explore; Achievers, something that enhances character progression; Killers, something that enhances combat power; etc.
IMO, EQ2 currently does the best job at this. Not perfect, by any means, but many quests have a Social reward and/or an Achiever/Killer reward and there are so many different (and different types of) quests that there’s almost always something new to do. Anecdote: I just leveled my Troubador to level 26 and built up all his harvesting skills because I decided I wanted to start making progress toward his epic Provisioner quest. Had the game required me to level him to level 80 Troubador, I probably wouldn’t have done it. Had it not included any “adventuring” component at all, I might never have played a Troubador. There’s a certain synergy there that only EQ2 seems to capture well. I’d just love to see that kind of quest design applied to a different intellectual property or genre….
Just a little sidenote: I’ve been fiddling around with Warhammer Online and wanted to mention that the way that game handles quest locations is also pretty good. The map has issues and the minimap doesn’t zoom out far enough to make the “mission objectives” areas as useful as they could be, but other than that it works similarly to Age of Conan.
All these responses indicate playing-style which is pretty interesting across the board. I definitely understand the desire to “get in, get out” for certain quests and the direction given by the NPC should be straightforward. I guess I see a lot of inter-connectivity though involved in quest direction. Between what the NPC tells me and how the game is set-up with maps, radar, etc., I feel that a lot of time is often wasted on world development and creating interesting scenery.
For the Achievers, the most direct quest direction is always going to be preferred. These are almost always a means to gain XP, loot, or even to complete all the quests in a given zone. I’m thinking specifically to WAR though when I say that for the most part, entire sections of zones went unexplored because there was no reason whatsoever to go there. The quest direction was so straightforward that the best style as an Achiever was to gather all the quests you could because inevitably you would take out 3-5 of them in the same place. Sven hit the root of the problem with his comment that most quests are poorly designed and/or created specifically to relive grind (however, in my opinion, this BECOMES the grind because it’s often the most efficient way to Min/Max)
For the Explorers above, the fun is in the finding. I think this comes down to development and the man-hours required to produce fun quests that require player involvement, certainly. While I can’t profess to know the difficulty involved in the writing, coding, etc. for this type of quest, it at least creates a reason to develop compelling level designs.
I find myself becoming a Min/Max player these days in MMOs because I honestly don’t feel I’m given a reason not to be. Proliferation of junk quests is just as much a grind as EQ/FFXI style mob slaughtering. Why bother creating stories for the quests if nobody will read them?
There will always be “the grind” as long as games are built around building up your character. There will always be a most efficient way, and many, many players will always just do that, and then label it the grind. That said, there are still profound differences between a “grind” that takes you through varied, interesting environments with well-designed content that gets the story across even if you don’t read a word of it (which *can* be done) and a grind where you are just killing things as they spawn in a single location, or camping an item. For another example, if the most efficient means of advancement was meaningful social interaction, the Achiever types would put their heads down and grind out meaningful social interaction after meaningful social interaction. Whatever your criterion is, they’ll just do it. That doesn’t mean it’s not different, it just means THEY’RE not different.
Support for explorer types is an interesting notion and one that I think stuff can be done with; you just have to remember what the proportions in the marketplace are. Right now, any MMO launching is going to launch into an Achiever-heavy marketplace; the existing playerbase for MMOs is largely Achiever-oriented. A lot of writers on the subject have tended to assume that this is the result of games pushing players towards being achievers. I think it goes the other way – I think the achiever mentality really is more deeply set into either humanity in general or at least our cultural context specifically than the explorer one is, and that the facts of the marketplace have driven games in that direction. There’s no practical difference for a new game, of course; you’re still facing the fact that the majority of your potential customers are rather pure achievers.
That said, Explorer content is just a matter of return on investment. You can make areas with interesting stuff which players are expected to find on their own, and some players will, and they’ll love it. But if it takes you the same length of time as making areas where you lead the player through an achiever-oriented quest “grind” as it does to make areas that you spice up and make interesting and then let the player explore (by the way, it doesn’t get to count as Explorer content just because you didn’t put quests or story there; Explorer content should have quests, interesting locations, interesting characters, and so on), and you expect most potential customers to be Achievers, then how much Explorer content are you realistically going to make? Enough to say you did it and maybe keep some explorers engaged, but not more than that unless you as a developer happen to have some affection and are willing to take lower ROI to fulfill that, because it’s frankly a relatively bad use of your time from an economic standpoint.