   How to prevent players from low-level resource gathering without advancing?
  I'm trying to come up with a game where one hunts/gathers resources in low-danger areas.  High-danger areas have greater yields, but can only be accessed once the player acquires enough from the low-danger areas to armament themselves into going into the high-yield areas.  Now, I know there are MANY ways to go about this, but I guess I am searching for opinions on a good way to prevent boring players from simply mining away at low-yield areas forever to beat the game;  I realize the objective plays big part in this, too, but I haven't hashed out the complete superobjective yet.  It will likely involve venturing into some high-danger area to retrieve something.  Ideas:A.  Require every area to be visited eventually.  This could be story-driven.B.  Start reducing the loot yield in heavily-frequented areas.C.  No respawning loot/resources.  The trouble in my head with these, though, is that the player will never revisit old areas, which I would like to encourage.[Edited by - CyJackX on May 14, 2010 2:55:48 AM]
  Better armament requires higher quality resources which can only be obtained in high-danger areas.   ;  The easiest way to deal with this is exponential reward growth. Level 1 gives 1 gold per kill. Level 2 gives 10. Level 3 gives 100. Thus being a level behind is ok, if suboptimal, but being multiple levels behind is just ridiculous. As an added bonus, if the player gets too far ahead, they'll quickly catch up to where they should be, rather than being forever over-challenged.You mention, though, wanting to encourage the player to revisit old areas. To achieve this, both new and old areas must have something of value for the player. I'd recommend having each give different rewards. So one area might have easy enemies that give you health potions that are important in the other areas. Another area might have foes that give the best xp. A third area gives lots of gold. Another one doesn't have particularly good rewards, but you need to cross it to get to the stores with the best equipment. If you balance it so just having the best equipment, or the top level, or lots of potions insufficient for winning, the player will need to spend time in all areas to get the balanced build necessary for victory.   ;  You can make the resource requirements for new gear increase exponentially. So the player initially needs 2 iron to get the basic weapon, which he can get in the safe zone. The next weapon requires 20 iron, which would be tedius in the safe zone and fairly quick in the danger zone. But the next weapon after that requires 200 iron, which would take far too long to be worth considering doing in anything but the more dangerous zones. Or you could make safe zones gradually become more dangerous as the player isn't spending time pacifying the dangerous zones. Enemies encroach on formerly-safe locations and the player has to cut them down by venturing into more dangerous territory.   ;  Carrot:Randomly drop some items witch can only be used effectively on higher levelof danger. (and make sale price of "go foreward" items low)At some point player wishes to test his new toys, and moves foreward. Stick:If player doesn`t move, move high level danger to player. Some angry workersunion starts to complain about unfair competition, and player must move.(Some monsters start to take intrest of players actions)/Tyrian   ;  Maybe apply a cost to harvesting the resource? For example, you need a pick to mine some ore and that pick only lasts long enough to mine X amount of ore.   ;  Reward the player with a "Congratulations!" screen and celebratory sound effects each time they completely explore an area.  Optionally also reward them with loot like a recipe to craft a better gear or 50 resource of their choice.   ;  If the trouble is with "boring" players, then I think the problem calls for a "hard" solution, a mechanical requirement rather than a motivational thing. It's already been covered, but the two that immediately came to mind were 'gradually reduce resources in easy areas', and 'have unique resources in better areas'. You could also make the danger gradually increase, although that doesn't make it a choice (always choose area with highest yield/danger ratio), but then it never was a choice for the sort of player you anticipate. I'm not sure if there's much else to work with, all the existing variables have been covered, I think. If you wanted to add a variable, you could put a time limit on the game, since the rate of collection becomes a significant factor, but it would take finesse to avoid making players anxious (I hear it wasn't appreciated in Fallout).   ;  Don't bother?If Jack is content to sit in a safe meadow picking flowers then he's obviously enjoying it, or at least perceives that he's getting something out of doing so.  Given that he is content to do this and enjoying your game, why do you feel the need to force him into a dangerous woodland to collect pine-cones?Just because you, as the designer of the game, feel that it is boring to stay out of the higher danger areas doesn't mean all your players will agree.You could consider giving different extrinsic rewards (i.e. achievements, badges, high-score tables, etc.) depending on which tactic the player takes.  Example: Jack receives the "turtle" badge, for slowly but surely collecting up resources in the safe area.  Jill receives a "lion" badge, for becoming king of the jungle collecting resources in the dangerous area.  Both play styles are catered for and rewarded.  Although Jack doesn't experience a great deal of your game world, the badge he has been given hints that there is a different approach which would yield different experiences.  He is unlikely to wrongly complain about the lack of content/variation given the game's suggestion that his chosen method has left more to see.  Jill is unlikely to resent Jack's "easy path" through the game, because the game recognized her effort to do things the more difficult way.Other than that, I think the others have made some excellent suggestions for encouraging a player to move on, or for discouraging them from staying put.  Personally I'd go with a system where staying in the one safe area has diminishing returns on the rewards given, which is essentially your idea B.  To make sure players still return to older areas at a later stage, you could have the amount of loot produced gradually increase again over time if the player is absent.  You would want to make sure this happened slowly enough that players wouldn't be able to figure it out, and leave the area for some minimum amount of time before returning to their low-level grind; instead it should be set up so that something will be available for them should they happen to pass back through an older area.   ;  I agree with jbadams, don't force your players to do something they don't want to do. But, you also have to give a reason for players to want to move on too.So, what we are talking about here is encouragement, not forcing them.Solution (A) is a forcing, not an encouragemnt because the player has to visit every area.Solution (B), if the loot rate drops too far is a forcing, but it could also be an encouragement.Solution (C) is a forcing as well.So from these the onyl one that doesn't requier forcing the player is option B, but only if you still make it worthwhile and enjoyable to not move on.However, here is an option D: Have resources the player needs onyl directyl available in other areas, but they can get those resource from other sources, but they are harder/more expensive to get this way.For example: The player might need Iron Ore and Mithral Ore to make a mithral sword. But mythral does not exist in the lowlands area, but exists in the craggy mountains area. Iron, on the other hand is easily available in the lowlands area, but in the craggy mountains area it is difficult to mine (but it is available).So it is more worthwhile mining Iron form the low lands, but not from the craggy mountains. But Mythral is only available form the craggy mountains.This would make Iron more expensive in the craggy mountain area than the lowlands, but mythral would be more expensive in the lowlands than the craggy mountains.Now the player has an incentive to visit the craggy mountains area as they can get their mythral cheaper there and it also give them incentive to got to the lowlands area because they can get their iron cheaper there. However, if someone wants to stay in the lowlands (or the craggy mountains), then there is no reason why they can't (it is just more expensive to do so).This does not force the player to move around, but give them incentive to move around.   