Please expand the map before Summer begins

[ven]

It doesn't follow that only advanced factions would be able to survive further out. It also doesn't follow that advanced factions would even want to live there.
Besides, there is a limit to human sanity and making a base in an area where it takes you 8 minutes to chop a tree or where a badger can kill you is out of the question for most people. Those regions weren't suggested so much as places to stay but rather as regions developed characters could go to to collect resources, hunt rare or hq animals, or simply explore. It's a continuous source of challenge.

1: roads could be disabled there, or they could require an amount of charisma proportional to the distance-difficulty value of the region.
2: so?
3: it wouldn't really be any different from our current experience, and it definitely wouldn't be worse than the result of w8's spawn system. The central map could simply be of the same size as the one we have today, the scaled region being additions placed where its borders would be.
4: for whom? I think the only reason people stopped making caravan threads is because now the map is too small for that. Exploration is quite fun for a lot of players.

I think this idea not only fits the current mechanics but also provides more content for a variety of playstyes and more opportunities for competition, with the boon of making people leave their walls. This suggestion came up in a thread where loftar was saying he wanted to make exploration more challenging and fun, and that his ultimate goal was to make the map theoretically infinite without allowing players to scatter too far from each other.

The scaled difficulty suggestion was the response to that, since it 1) makes exploration challenging regardless of how developed one is (and maybe also fun, depending on how its implemented), and 2) prevents people from hiding or staying too far out.

[Sevenless]

I don't see how this is "fun exploration" when the only areas that will be fresh will be out in areas that only the most developed factions can reach. Everywhere closer will either be not worth exploring or alternatively it'll be already explored by the factions that can field fighters able to deal with the annoyance of murder badgers. It's an elitist proposal, I'm not sure you realize that. Most of the playerbase won't get to interact with it meaningfully if everyone has to walk from the liveable area of the world outwards. That's why I'd rather see an "infinite exploration" mechanic incorporated into pocket dimensions instead. It's more scalable, there's always fresh areas to explore because they're newly generated. And we don't have to worry about the mechanic messing with population density which we've seen as a problem in the past of overly large worlds. Also gives a handy explanation of why people can't build inside them.

But beyond all that, exploration might be fun but it's a short term activity. Procedurally generated exploration gets really bland really quick. I don't feel it's going to extend the lifespan of the game play meaningfully, and I don't feel enough players will enjoy it in the long term to justify such a significant rebalancing of the world around it. As for resources, pretty much everything other than bones and stones relies on some form of quality spiral. Throwing in new super powered resources into that quality spiral is going to make a mess of the balance the system has. To the point that quality spiralling itself might have to be dismantled entirely in favour of exploration based quality boosting.

I'm very wary of such a massive change when we know the quality spiral system works well enough.

[ven]

Why does one grind? Right now, what incentives do people have to keep farming, cooking and eating one cupboard of food to raise a single number in their character sheet? How is foraging going for endgame characters? And hunting? From what I hear it's crap and either a necessary chore or a waste of time.

A scaled difficulty map would allow players to have some fun again in activities that become pointless very early in the game. It would also give grinding a purpose other than pvp or screenshots for the forum. It's indeed elitist: it's designed to make the life of endgame characters less boring and offer them, if they want, the option of engaging in challenges of their own stat level, or above it with a group of friends - an option they don't have if they have been playing for a while. Improving the experience of the underdeveloped playerbase is not the goal here.

To the point that quality spiralling itself might have to be dismantled entirely in favour of exploration based quality boosting.

How would one be able to explore a harsh region of the map without spiraled gear and food in the first place?

[ricky]

Valid points on both sides, but i'd like to state that my suggestion was merely to add some variety to a (somewhat) stale world through map expansion and perhaps some crazy environment to freshen things up.

[MrPunchers]

Make the extended map like some sort of badlands or some shit where shit wants to kill you and the other stuff in posts like this.