A while back, Richard Bartle described four player 'types'. They are: killer, explorer, achiever and socializer. The explorer is described as follows in Bartle's article "HEARTS, CLUBS, DIAMONDS, SPADES: PLAYERS WHO SUIT MUDS":
"Players try to find out as much as they can about the virtual world. Although initially this means mapping its topology (ie. exploring the MUD's breadth), later it advances to experimentation with its physics (ie. exploring the MUD's depth)."
That may have served as a good starting point, but it really doesn't do the 'type' justice. More broadly, the explorer is someone who simply wants to experience something new. Wandering around to see what's out there is a good way of experiencing something new. But to experience the same content in a new way also satisfies the explorer. Because it's new. Finding the way from one town to another is only going to be entertaining to an explorer if the process of discovery is different from prior discoveries. If every town is the same, and getting between the towns is fundamentally the same, then without any sense of discovery of something new, even the specific act of exploration isn't going to cut the mustard for the explorer.
An explorer is a killer as long as what's being killed is new and different. An explorer is a socializer so long as the interactions are new and changing. An explorer quickly gets bored by a lack of new things to talk about. An explorer is an achiever as long as the achievements are varied. The level grind is particularly heinous to the explorer because of the constancy. The explorer stays with the grind in hopes of getting to that new content that is unlocked at the next level. A new spell. A new item. A new hunting ground. Newness. Novelty.
One reason that World of Warcraft has done so well is because Blizzard understands this style of play perhaps better than any other publisher out there. World of Warcraft has quick leveling and many areas in which to experience the game content. Combat is not particularly engaging and so it designed to be relatively quick while the characters are still leveling. This avoids the sense of the grind. Frequent changes of venue and frequent completion of tasks aid the explorer in experiencing something slightly different throughout the course of even the shortest play sessions.
Strangely, the well runs dry as the characters achieve levels where players can go on raids. Raids must be carefully structured and deployed in order to defeat the opponents. The straight jacket of efficiency arrives to ensure that players must play the game well, else the raid will fall into ruin. In other words, it'll wipe. Raiding is the realm of the achiever. Raids are repetitious, requiring attention to detail. If there is any newness it usually means that the raid is indeed going to wipe because something didn't go according to the script.
As an explorer, I've run out of material. I started playing Ultima Online back in 1998 and have played many of the massively multiplayer titles since then. For me, World of Warcraft was the best of the lot, but that was really just a refined EverQuest; a game released in 1999. The newness that I require as an explorer is simply not in the games. It's nice to have new venues. It's nice to have new opponents and new items. But for all the new things introduced into the game worlds, the systems and the structures remain the same. Classes, attrition PvE combat, zerg and gank PvP combat, the same magic systems, and that most terrible of perils - levels.
Take out levels. Take out classes. Give me some building blocks that I can use in different ways. Let me drop rocks to knock monsters unconscious. Let me dig pits to trap them. Let me negotiate with monsters to get a prisoner returned. Let me negotiate with trapped monsters to have them knock OTHER monsters unconscious. But let me experiment and play. Stop working on procedural textures, 20 kilometer horizons and volumetric clouds. I can't play with those. Instead, learn how to give characters adaptive behaviors, to introduce physics into combat, and rediscover game mechanics found in countless card and board games. And for pity's sake, stop making levels the cornerstone of your game systems. It's been done. It's not new.
