Exploration suggestion

Madelyne

New command: AREA (location)

Example:

> AREA CYRENE

> You have explored 22 of 1734 rooms in Cyrene.

This would allow those wishing to go higher in the Fellowship of Explorers some clues about places they still need to explore.

Jonathin

No

Chryenth

Seem to have missed the point of exploration, I think.

Delphinus

Madelyne said:

This would allow those wishing to go higher in the Fellowship of Explorers some clues about places they still need to explore.

A better clue: HELP GEOGRAPHY. Just go through this list and tick off the areas you've explored thoroughly, and that should be enough!

Santar

I don't think exploration in Achaea should turn into an exact science. I'll spare you a fourth 'disagree', though.

Katzchen

Someone told me if areas change (majorly perhaps) then nearby rooms are reset for exploration purposes...? That would suck. I no longer have blackwind to explore inside cities.

But yeah, definitely no to this idea.

Nemutaur

Yeah no, you have to realise yourself which stockrooms, hidden rooms or even normal rooms you went to. Otherwise exploring is just using your mapper to walk around until the counter hits 100/100

Blujixapug

I think this would turn exploring into too much of a join-the-dots, tick-the-boxes activity.

For me the fun of exploring is doodling my own little map of an area the first time I look through it, and making sure all the circles and all the lines link up so I've been through the whole thing. Then at a high explorer rank, where it starts to get really competitive, the fun becomes finding all the little tiny tucked-away places other people haven't. Maybe trading secrets with other explorers. Trying to figure out ways into unexplorable places like stockrooms, House estates, or that forest in Twilight's temple. Quietly walking into as many out-of-subs houses as you can the one time there's that global bug where every door becomes unlocked.

If it was just about going through everything in HELP GEOGRAPHY and hitting AREA CORMORANTROCK in each one, to check them all off your list, that's kind of boring.

Nim

On a related note, I'd personally like some magical GMCP message that tells you when you move in a way that doesn't count as exploring for record-keeping purposes.

The issue I have with this idea is that finding secret rooms can be part of exploration, so having a little message tell you that you missed a spot might reduce that aspect a bit, but a message that tells you that your exploration methods aren't actually exploring would be nice, if it were hidden away so only people who want the message actually receive it.

Still, as long as the help file is accurate about which methods don't count as exploring, this feature would really just be a convenience thing.

(I might have done some amount of exploration using evade before knowing that it didn't count. >_> )

Korben

Let's modify the original idea.

AREA HASHAN
You have not explored this area.
You have visited this area.
You are familiar with this area.
You know this area well.
You know this area like the back of your hand.

AREALIST
You know Hashan like the back of your hand.
You have visited the Northern Ithmia.
You are familiar with the village of Tasur'ke.

This wouldn't turn exploring into a no-brainer but it'd still be a nice help (and incentive) for Average Achaean Not-a-Ranger.

Naisar

I considered writing a Mudlet module that does precisely this, but decided not to because I didn't care enough. If someone really wants this functionality they can do it that way, it's not a very difficult task and Mudlet's documentation is solid as always.   Although clearly it would only know about rooms that already exist in your map file.  Not being an explorer myself, I have no idea how complete the available maps are.  

Sarapis

Seriously doubt we're going to do anything to make raising your explorer rank easier. 

Santar

Sarapis said:

Seriously doubt we're going to do anything to make raising your explorer rank easier. 

But Guild Wars 2 has it...

Iocun

The whole insecurity and lack of precision is actually something I like a lot about exploration. There's nothing that tells me "I don't have to go there anymore" with any certainty, which is an incentive to continuously re-visit places I've already been to, look at them more in depth, and actually keep travelling, as an explorer should, realistically.

There are quite many rooms I cannot say for sure if I've had them "count for me" or not, but I do not see that is a problem, as the objective for becoming a greater explorer still remains the same: walk around a lot, look closely at your surroundings, keep your senses wide open, be curious.

Xith

Exploration is not for us precision people. I go where I need to go and no further.

Cardan

If you're not sure if you've gotten all the rooms in the area, go look again. We don't need a system that will automatically tell people that we've released new rooms in the area without them having needed to come look for themselves.