Incentivising Exploration

[Prancelot]

(or incentivising leaving your base )

This suggestion aims to add an equally appealing option of gathering resources like grass, twigs, & berries without transplanting them all into big clusters near your camp, which will in turn add more incentive to explore 'far away lands'.

Right now each of the three plants have two states, 1) fully grown, 2) exhausted of resources.

My idea was to add a third state, a state of 'wild growth' that would occur if the plant was left un-touched in it's fully grown state for a random period of 4-8 days, the overgrown version of a plant would have a 75% chance to yield 2 of it's resource, and a 25% chance to yield 3 of it's resource.

Now instead of gathering resources near your base every time they regrow, you would instead want to travel to far away places that you haven't been to in a while that would be rich with plants in the 'wild growth' state.

(transplanted plants would not be able to reach the third state of growth)

Edited December 9, 2012 by Prancelot

[RadekBonk4ever]

Would incitate players to have different outposts around their map depending on available ressources...

T-up

[xenpt]

i like the idea

[chrisso]

Why not make plants different trees/plants and crops native to certain biomes, meaning they are very hard to grow in other biomes. (grow slowly, if at all/require a constant supply of fertiliser etc)

Since your camp can only be around 2 maybe 3 biomes, It would be very hard to transplant and plant everything you need in one spot.

so you would be forced to travel and gather the items you need

[Prancelot]

That's a great idea, it would make you think twice about where you set up camp, depending on which resources you need most.. then needing to travel to get the rest.

It would also give each biome more personality, or 'unique-ness' allowing people to make informed choices of where to travel to for their needed resource, for example: "i need grass, so i'll travel to the Plains biome".

[SatireV]

I think the farming aspect is one that should be open to all people and I feel that it's reasonable to have grass, saplings and trees grow in virtually any biome anyway. The fact of the matter is that people will be bored with building a base and that will be incentive enough to move forward from the idea of "merely" basing. I think that as far as more incentive goes I feel that there should be rare items like... broken wheels in gravesites which people could use to build a bicycle or maybe other things that could provide the game with more unique items and make such items like tentacle spikes more rare and further away from the spawn point. I feel that being limited to one biome may take the element of building a fort out of the equation and that's something I personally find very fun. To bring back a collection of all the things that you've encountered and make life nicer is one of the elements that's so rewarding in survival games in my opinion.

[Prancelot]

I see what you mean, and i agree that you should be able to have a place to call home, but theres always the risk of you beginning to feel too safe, which kind of ruins the survival feel of the game. This is why i want there to be more reason to go out on adventures/expeditions.

[chrisso]

@SatireV

I think you can still build a fort/safe place, it just means that it will not be entirely self sufficient. It will of course lack certain things depending on what area you choose to settle in (which I think adds unique character to your "base", and a different feel to every playthrough). I don't see it as stopping people making safe havens, rather it forces the player to leave them once in a while.

I like your suggestion of rare objects that you must venture out to get. I would go one step further and make this certain object/resource non-renewable/produceable at your base and essential to your survival or progress. To me, this achieves the same purpose. ie. forcing the player to venture out and explore.

I can understand the fun in building and optimizing a powerful fort and sitting back and basking in your creation, I do find this fun too. You did mention that one would get bored of that and would then go out and explore. I think it's important in forcing players out of their "bases" before it get's to that point. I think it makes for a more challenging and rewarding experience with less chance of becoming stale.