What keeps YOU playing AVWW?

[Terraziel]

This might seem like a bizarre question but, whilst considering whether to put some suggestions on to mantis the problem that they would all be very art intensive crossed my mind, and art takes time and time is limited, but further than that they all expand an area of the game that there is no guarantee others want expanding,  so without wanting to seem pretentious...

What keeps you playing AVWW? or rather what would you prefer the devs spent their time on?

Personally whilst I do enjoy the combat, I would much prefer, over and above but not to the exclusion of adding new spells and enemies, that the devs spent their time on making the world itself more interesting to explore, to compare with a couple of other games...

Minecraft: actually adventuring in Minecraft is a surprisingly good example of what i mean, construction aside some of my favourite memories of Minecraft are of interesting geography, of stumbling across chasms that lead to the bottom of the world, of exploring a cave to discover it contained a vast ruined mine.

Knytt\Knytt Stories: For those who haven't played it, it's a 2D platformer which is almost solely about exploration, "combat" as it exists is about avoiding hazards rather than anything else, but the real meat of the game is simply experiencing the world you are in, all that the various powers you acquire do is allow you to explore more freely, to find the cities on the mountain or the ghosts underground, actually finding these things gains you nothing except the joy of discovery. If you can't tell I really like these games.

To compare with AVWW, we don't even have mountains, I mean to give one of my aforementioned suggestions, I think it would be an entirely memorable moment for players, if whilst exploring a region you randomly find a mountain and upon climbing the mountain instead of it just being the normal regions backgrounds what you actually saw was the fractured world in the distance around you.

[zebramatt]

I'm of a similar mind. I'm holding out for a pre-v1.0 revision of the way terrain is generated. I'd like to see more nooks and crannies, hidden areas which are hard to get to, optional high road / low road paths each with a different set of dangers (over the acid lake, or past the swarm of espers), etc. - but still all procedurally generated so you never know quite how it's all going to fit together.

I made the point that the dozen hand-crafted tutorial chunks have the most interesting terrain features of almost the entire game. 

[x4000]

Having some unique geography inserted into the terrain is on my list for probably later next week, actually.

[zebramatt]

Having some unique geography inserted into the terrain is on my list for probably later next week, actually.

I thought you might say something like that! 

[x4000]

I plan to have it be able to mix hand-crafted and procedural elements in a cool way.

[Terraziel]

I am glad to see I'm not alone in wanting that sort of thing, I had had some doubts that such requests would be turned down with the assertion that they were against the procedural nature of the game.

[x4000]

See interiors as an example of a blend of procedural and non-procedural bits.  The outdoors actually will be a lot less hand-crafted than the interiors already are, but the effects should be even more dramatic.  I've been wanting to add this sort of thing for at least 6 months, and just haven't had the time.

[Dizzard]

I haven't played in huge amounts lately. Although I'm still playing a bit more than I did about 2-3 weeks ago. Overall I've put in a lot of time into the game.

I keep playing it because I love the idea of creating my own civilization, growing out of nothing and into something big. Surviving against the odds and all that. I like a game that isn't afraid to have interesting things happening in the background while I'm building up my settlement and powers. A game needs to have enough push and pull.

I like Terraria and I put about 80 hours into it near the start, however It eventually came to a point where it didn't grab me, I was pushing but it wasn't pushing back (I'm not really talking about difficulty)....even when the latest content update. A good way to describe it I think, was that the updates were like sprinkles on an ice cream that had already melted.

Another big part of what keeps me coming back is that I'm so interested in what AVWW could be in the future. It shows a lot of potential. Unlike Terraria that a lot of potential but didn't really run with it. (although who's to say what would have happened if it had kept going)

[x4000]

After 1.0, we want to explore some really dramatically new things like we did with AI War after its 1.0.  That's something that Dwarf Fortress also did in a major way, but my understanding of Terraria is that they stopped before they really did that.  And from what I can see with Minecraft, their attempt at doing that has been kind of halfhearted, which is a shame.

[Hunam]

I recently resumed playing AVWW and very much enjoy all the recent changes made to the game since its initial release, but it is the unrealized potential for exploration in this game is that, like others, has me most excited about its future.
 
At least for me, I believe that a core element for exploration to be enjoyable is danger. I loved playing ultima online back in the day because I would go to stupidly advanced areas for my level just to look around or tame some new creature. The terrain wasn't pretty but just being out away from my comfort level made every small discovery much more enjoyable. Star control II was also a very fun game for exploration because it gave me a strong sense of scale. When my ship was far from home I truly felt isolated (AI war also does this ). On the other hand, I have never really enjoyed exploring Skyrim or Oblivion because the game levels up as I do and thus the difficulty is spread evenly. For some reason I just like the threat of running into some brutal creature that can rip my character apart if I choose to enter a dangerous area...

In the future I would love to see some of the more unique areas sprinkled across the world with local clusters of high level monsters that must be dealt with carefully. The stealth missions already do this to some extent. For instance, having areas like mineshafts hidden in random caves (not revealed on the map) with some unique monsters lurking around that you have to sneak past to explore would greatly enhance the fun of finding new areas.  Or having a creature lair hidden on the map that is visually interesting and has good loot but with the possibility of spawning a powerful monster at certain times of the day. Of note I do not think these areas should be mission areas and should be there just for the heck of it.

Rambling aside, I already love the game and look forward to what it will become. 

[Martyn van Buren]

I mostly second that --- I'd like to see more elements that can be thrown into non-mission areas to make them various --- not just terrain but things like clusters of monsters orz special obstacles and things to find --- and I hope we'll see them post-1.0.  But I def support the consensus that we don't need any more danger of the "Oops!  You didn't see that coming and you died" variety.

[Hunam]

Sorry didn't mean to appear overzealous with the whole enjoying things ripping my character apart comment  . The increased danger I spoke of would be obvious and simply so you couldn't just fly through a unique area with no more difficulty than anywhere else in the game. I was thinking like a slightly more dangerous stealth mission feel that remained at a constant difficulty level throughout the life of the continent. I'm also not partial to 1 hitters killing me unless I did something really really foolish. For some reason I just feel like fear makes discovery more fun