How patient are you with exploration?

If I can't figure out where I'm supposed to go or what item I'm supposed to use, I get bored fairly quickly.

I haven't played Psychonauts in ten days now. I was in the asylum.

Made it pretty far into RE0. Beat Centurion. Then didn't know where to go next and got bored.

Also thinking of deleting RE7 and Prey. But they're boring games to boot.

And it's been so long since I made progress in Hollow Knight, I forgot I had it installed.

Sometimes being lost can be frustrating... but I grew up playing D&D Gold Box games on my 386 so I don't mind it. Hell, if anything makes me not want to play a game its linearity that removes most exploration.

If I had to guess why I feel this way, its because I don't give a shit about story and just like exploration and discovery.

Too patient.

Very, I don't need a carrot on a sitck or a glowing icon to tell me what to do. I'm capable of working things out for myself. Divinity has been a breath of fresh air in this regard.

I actually prefer to go off the beaten path and straight up avoid the main objective for a while in games that accommodate it. If a game was a linear path, I'll almost always check for branches. In games where the critical path isn't clear, I'll take the time to wonder around and figure things out before looking up a guide.

It depends. If I feel like I'm making progress in some form I can be quite patient, but if I feel absolutely stuck or lost and all that's left is aimlessly wandering or throwing guesses at the wall my patience will dry up quick and I will look up a guide.

Adventure games are probably a good example of that. Some people will just bang their head against the wall until they finally figure out what to do on their own, even if it means not making progress for days. I'm not one of those people. I will give it an honest shot, but if I'm spending too much time with no idea how to proceed I won't hesitate to look up the answer.

It kinda depends on the game too though. Some games are just more fun to explore than others.

And then when I look up the solution it's sometimes so obvious. Of course I have to enter Fred Bonaparte's mind.

I love exploring, but that's a different topic; in the way you're talking about, I am not that patient, to be honest. I mean, if I am lost, running back and forth trying to figure out what to do for thirty minutes to an hour, I feel like I'm wasting time. I was actually playing the original Resident Evil (or, its remaster of a remake) on PS4 yesterday, and that moment definitely came up. As someone that loves Resident Evil, but wasn't personally a big fan of the original RE style, I've never personally finished the original RE. It was kind of awkward playing it, not knowing where to go and what to do in spots, thinking 'man, so many people probably know this game like the back of their hand.' It was kind of disheartening honestly. I've also never played on Chris' playthrough, only numerous attempts on Jill's. Anyways, I got stuck in some spots and I was getting to that point of being frustrated.

I didn't get far enough to where I was going to use a guide, and I am pretty sure the game is easy enough to figure it out without one, but the frustration I can see setting in and me going 'what the fuck man, what do I do?' with a sigh of frustration. The only games I honestly ever resort to a guide has been adventure games like The Longest Journey, to the point of actually going overboard with it on simple things. Also, off-topic, but it would be amazing to me if they remade every single mainline Resident Evil and made it with the same visuals and gameplay style of RE7. I also hate the ink ribbon idea, that's the pinnacle reason as to why I didn't go through the original RE's except for RE3. I have all of them, even on different systems, so I might go through them at some point perhaps having my brother tag along since he is known to have played through them a lot.

I like games that make me think, but when it comes to backtracking back and forth because I don't know what to do, then it's annoying.

I'm usually very patient with everything in games. If I really can't figure out the solution or how to progress which rarely happens, I'll just look it up and move forward, but I only do it after really trying everything I can think of.

I get annoyed pretty quickly I only enjoy exploring in games when it's not mission related.

From what I remember of Prey (2017) it had nav points everywhere once you got past the intro and a pretty detailed map. (it is quite boring though, i'll give you that) As for me I'm very patient and I get lost all the time due to having a terrible sense of direction. I love metroid style games with a map that I can fill in for this reason since they let me explore but allow me to back track with ease. If I really am stuck and have been for awhile (maybe a day or two) i'll look it up. I remember that happening with Axiom Verge.

I cant deal with old school survival horror games though. Mostly due to ridiculous inventory limits and dumb leaps of logic that require you to combine x with y in order to use z. I did enjoy RE7 though and weirdly enough all the non Japanese Silent Hill games that everybody hates.

I don't like pixel-hunting for quest objectives at all, but I can enjoy just wandering an area looking for things to do so long as it's pretty. With the former, the headbanging is way too frustrating, but with the later I can relax and can always go do something else if I get bored.

I'm with you, I'll do it, and if it's enjoyable and I'm making progress then cool, but if it gets the point of confusion and feeling lost and bored and irritated then screw that. I like to have fun while playing games and nothing is less fun to me than running around in circles because of either confusing game design, or me over looking something.

Optional exploration is always a joy though, if I know where I'm supposed to go, but there are side areas calling to me, I'll gladly explore them, because there is no pressure, I can spend all day off the main path if I know the main path is still there for me whenever I want to go back.

It depends on the game. If progression is tied directly to getting from point A to point B, then I usually get frustrated and will look up where to go next. On the other hand, if it's an open world game or if it's designed with exploration in mind, such as The Witcher 3, or more recently for myself, Prey, then I absolutely love just wandering around and organically arriving at the next objective. I lose hours to wanderlust in games that encourage progressing at your own speed in a rich world.

Depends entirely on the game. For example, a dungeon in a JRPG with random encounters that also has puzzle solving or backtracking is always a miserable experience, especially since JRPGs tend to have low enemy variety per-area. There are a lot of points in SMTIV where they give you the name of a place and you have to run all over the world map looking for it, but the world map has unavoidable encounters everywhere and isn't anything special to look at so I almost always had to look up a guide to see where I was meant to go next.

Horizon: Zero Dawn is a beautiful world I want to explore, but there's tough enemies everywhere and I suck at the combat enough that I've just been sprinting through as much of the game as I can, leading to the world feeling less like something I want to explore and more like space between objectives. There are invisible walls everywhere (I just want to jump off the side of this stupidly high city, game just let me have my fun), and the world is scattered with generic open world activities that I'm just never going to want to do in any game again let alone this one. I just got to a point in the story where I was exploring a ruin, and instead of doing any great environmental storytelling, a character literally radios in and says "here's a bunch of text entries for you to read if you want the backstory". Fuck that.

Breath of the Wild is sparse enough with the enemies, and they were all simple to avoid, that peeking into every corner of that world was usually a joy. The fact that you were rewarded with so much area/design variety (outside of the same 3 enemies being everywhere) as opposed to an "old mug" collectible helped too. Not to say the more structural reward system of orbs and breakable weapons was nearly as good (at the very least, I stopped playing when I'd run across the entire map, not when I'd got 100% of the orbs etc).

Basically, forcing you to do too much of something when your main objective is "get from point A to B" is a chore, and overpopulation of a big area with the same stuff quickly becomes boring.

If it's fun or interesting, then very. Finding my way around Skyrim, Fallout 3+, etc were all great times. Breath of the Wild was fantastic. More recently, even roaming around Destiny 2 was good, especially finding the Lost Sectors.

Very. The only reason I liked Fallout 4 was because I loved exploring the map.

Generally... Maximum patience! *voice from Crysis*

Have I mentioned recently that I thought Shenmue's "dig-through-the-cupboards" mechanic is one of my favourites of all time?

I'm the type who likes to turn off all the markers/paths/etc and just walk my ass across game maps looking for stuff. If the game is too linear dot-by-dot I don't even want to play it. Get this type of "what's the point" feeling, you know? Just play the game for me, show me the video. I had to drop Skyrim when I first bought it until someone made a mod to remove all the markers from your compass. Like... you can't find fucking anything in that game. It's the weirdest design. I think Fallout 3 was the same way, but I thought that had better compass options internally. Anyways the point is I like to struggle to find stuff, not be told where something is then walk up to it.

I'll always go out of my way to go where I'm not suppose to if I enter a big area and stumble across the right way I'll get annoyed backtrack and see what I missed.

Not much.

I like exploration, but only if I feel like the designers put something interesting to find. The maps not only have to be big, but also dense. If I climb over a mountain only to find... more mountains in the distance, I get bored quickly.

If you mean as a way to solve a puzzle in a reduced space, I am not above checking a video walkthrough if I am stuck on the same place for too long.

As long as there is some vaguely interesting thread I can explore for a pretty long time before getting bored.

Example: I only played at most 5-10 hours of No Man's Sky when it came out. After the most recent string of updates, I have around 90 hours in the game.

Same, i need at least some direction as to what i'm supposed to do. Also bounced off hollow knight really hard even though i initially liked it a lot.

I can abandon games very quickly. I stopped playing Enslaved because I got lost within the first twenty minutes and never picked it up again. My first and so far only play through of Final Fantasy VI ended because I forgot where I was supposed to go and when I started making my way over there, the random encounters kept beating me down to the point where my party died to enemies I could have in theory taken on.

I'm ok with some wandering around stuff, but if I'm lost and I don't know what to do, that is one of the quicker ways for me to lose interest and stop playing a game.

If the game is fun to play, then I love exploring. If there are good things to find, then I love exploring. Really it depends on the game.

Breath of the Wild had a lot of interesting thing to discover, but towards the end I found the enemies were a pain in the ass, and ultimately tarnished the game as a whole for me. Horizon Zero Dawn is gorgeous, but there is next to no reason to explore, and I really wasn't a fan of the play mechanics. All of the Souls games I loved exploring in, and the open world Bethesda games too.

I prefer being a slow poke when it comes to exploring an environment, but there are so many games I want to play, I'm starting to be more selective.

My two best friends growing up were the complete opposite of each other. One would check every nook and cranny, and the other blazed his way through everything as quickly as he could.

Unlimited patients.

I am definitely less patient than I was at say 13, if I feel something is wasting my time or I feel I'm stuck and progress isn't obvious, I will look for a guide pretty quickly.

A younger me would butt my head against the problem till success or abandon it till I found the solution elsewhere (a pre internet access world is a lot to do with this).

Depends on the game. But I tend to really enjoy games based around heavy exploration like Metroidvania and Souls. I've also had stints with point and click adventure games that have been fun, but those can get obtuse to the point of trial and error tedium where my patience will wear thin much faster. As a non-native speaker (and a child) the monkey wrench pun had me stuck in Monkey Island 2 for days.....

All that said, those are games made with exploring in mind, and they are well designed for it. When I feel like the exploration is an afterthought or it's just generally drab or boring, then I will not have much patience for it.

I think I’m pretty patient unless I’m playing something like Silent Hill. Then I would rather the doors that are never going to open be non-interactable items so I don’t have to click on 100’s to find the 1 that actually opens.

If this happens to me when I'm playing a game out of "duty" (like I'm not really into it yet but everyone said it was great, or I've been meaning to play it for ages and started it even though I'm not in the mood for it, or have some other game on the shelf siren-calling me throughout) I will often just give up, even though I really try to play games one at a time and beat them before moving on to the next.

This happened in Fallout 4. I was doing alright with it but getting annoyed by the base building and radiant missions and honestly thought the writing and story were dreadful. Then I had a main scenario mission where I got stuck on the route to the objective marker and couldn't figure out how to escape for some reason.

But Xenoblade X was just coming out, and its pull was just too strong. It seemed new, interesting and exciting in a way that Fallout just wasn't. That fully ripped me away so I never went back to F4. Now if I had nothing else on my plate, I'd have persevered, at least finished up the main story in Fallout.

It depends on the game. Sometimes I just want the next part of the story and if I'm lost, I'll use a guide. Sometimes, if a world is interesting enough I'll just wander until I find my way. I prefer games that encourage and reward the wandering approach.

Usually i go from incredibly patient and willing to explore in the first half of the game, to rushing towards the end by the second half.

If the game doesn't hold my interest well enough I just stop playing, prime recent example of this is Prey. Totally lost the will to play once I got to the cargo bay section after fooling around with some hard drives.

It depends on the game. I love exploring in games like Fallout and Breath of the Wild. If a game has an interesting world I will explore it.

Not very patient at all. If I get lost it doesn't take long for me to google where I'm supposed to go.

I am patent within naturalistic environments, I can search or roam around for days in an open RPG. In an abstract structure or mazes I get bored quickly.

Very. I walk around towns in Witcher 3. I might be insane.

Yeah I love it, been playing BOTW as of late, and holy crap that game is good, to me Nintendo took a lot of the classic open world devs to school as far as exploration goes.

I mean, just give me a damn map and let me fill it up instead of filling the damn thing with a freaking billion icons from the get go dammit!!

It's so much better in that department, I love just picking a direction and going hoping to find something (and they made sure to fill it up to the brim with stuff to find)

If it's a game that encourages exploring and there are rewards for doing I'm really patient. Yeah f it's mostly linear with some exploration thrown in for no reason and I don't know where to go for a while I usually put it down.

@ntm: I have that problem with the older Resident Evil games sometimes too, and I'm a pretty big fan.

It depends on the game. In a CRPG I am happy to explore pretty much every corner of the map that I can. In a Third Person adventure or FPS game where the environment is a bit 'enclosed' I will typically explore most of the side paths etc.

If it gets to a platformer or more open world style game, my focus on exploration is wavering. The entire concept of No Man's Sky held zero interest for me as it sounds like the opposite of what I'd enjoy. I don't really like Metroid-vanias for the same reason. Breath of the Wild I am up and down on. The whole game is kind of really exploration based, so while I am kind of enjoying the game, I don't love it - I tend to like a little bit more direction

Just depends on the game. The word of The Witcher 3 really drew me in so I explored the heck out of that environment

I think exploration is among the most fun aspects of games, and I really like doing it.

I made this same thread somewhere else, and someone mentioned BotW, to which I responded, "But is Breath of the Wild ever confusing? Do you ever run into a wall, where you don't know what you must do to progress the story. My impression is that it's too open and nonlinear for that."

Some of you misunderstood the topic. Probably my fault.

@ezekiel: that indeed cannot possibly happen in BOTW, since the main objective is clear cut and they give you a basic direction to go towards, you still have to explore for sure, they don't tell you specifically what to do most of the time, but you'd never actually hit a wall as you say.

But that is more on the game design than anything else, games in which you have to do a very specific thing in order to progress and this thing is absolutely obscure is just terrible design, I wouldn't even call it exploration really(specially if it's a more linear thing), at that point it's basically guess work.

Whenever I'm stuck in a game, I delete it off the disk and tell myself I completed it or the game save was corrupted. I hate minesweeper.

My favourite games all involve significant exploration, it might be the most important thing for me. I like looking into nooks and crannies, eventually ill fine the right way.

Linear games that don't communicate their objectives clearly i tend to just refund/uninstall, but games like fallout 4 and breath of the wild, the fact that they dont advertise everything the world has to offer from the get-go is precisly why i've put over 100 hours into each.