Quote Originally Posted by Preypacer View Post
I meant in terms of getting players interested in doing something they probably wouldn't be interested in to begin with. It grows out of the rest of my explanations.

People who are Explorers by nature are going to do so on their own, for their own reasons and their own personal sense of reward. They won't need to be bribed into doing it.

People who have no interest in exploration otherwise would only do it for the sp. It's not like offering sp to ride/run to some remote spot on the map they otherwise couldn't care less about is suddenly going to awaken the explorer spirit within them.

I've had myriad discussions with people in other MMOs who had done their exploration and gotten all their xp if they saw any really cool areas while they were riding around. I was asking in hopes of having some cool spots to look forward to when I could safely explore those areas (I'm definitely an explorer type). The response I received was mostly along the lines of of "I wasn't really paying attention. I just rode in as far as I had to for the credit, then left".

The actual explorer types, however - those who would have gone out of their way to find these places anyway - had a short novel's worth of specific details, lore and such about those locations.

In other words, all SE would be doing by adding sp for "discovery" is giving people who wouldn't care otherwise, a relatively free/easy way to get sp by simply riding/running around to key locations (which you know would end up on a wiki with specific locations for easy reference).

If people can't ride chocobos into those areas, then it's more likely they would avoid those locations until they're high enough level to run through without having to worry about being killed first, than that they would dismount and make their way bravely into dangerous territory on foot for a moderate amount of sp.

In summary, the concept of having to bribe people to explore with SP just seems superflous at best:
1. Those who enjoy exploration for exploration's sake don't need an sp reward to do it. The reward is in the exploration itself
2. Those who wouldn't otherwise care about, much less explore, all the remote areas would only be doing it for the sp.

Give meaningful gameplay, lore or history-related reasons to explore.. and I'm all for it.
They could easily do this with the power of the Echo. Show backstory of a place through a cs, then give us a task to complete before awarding SP. I liked in FFIX, CC, and other games, when you walk into somewhere and it pans around says the name of the area on the screen.

Picture this. You walk up to a node and touch it, the Echo triggers, sending you flashing back many years ago. You see a Lalafell and Elezen peacefully fishing side-by-side. The Lalafell gets a tug on his line, and starts pulling up. After struggling for a moment, he pulls up a large carp, smiling wide. The Elezen looks at him with a smirk. He feels a tug on his line, and pulls it up quick, eager to surpass his friend and rival's catch, but is dismayed to find a guppy. The Lalafell's laughter is cut short when the animals go quiet, and the earth starts shaking from heavy machinery. Trees are pushed aside as Garlean Magitek stomps into the clearing, spewing smoke and causing the Lalafell and Elezen to drop their poles and run in fear. But it's too late - as they stumble backwards, the Magitek's laser focuses in on them, right before it fires, the screen goes black.

You have arrived in Murmur Rills.
Find Enoa's missing fishing pole, so that his wife may finally rest, knowing her husband is gone.

(Complete objective)

You have obtained 1,000 SP.

Something like that?