Have more purpose for explorable areas#41

I find a lot of the areas in the game (the forest, the mine shaft extensions, etc) seem like I’m meant to be exploring them, but there’s very little point to it. I’d prefer to have less, smaller areas with content you can discover, rather than large areas that are ultimately pointless to explore.

for example: I built the mine shaft A building and went to look around, and it had literally nothing in the area that wasn’t already in the main mine. No new resources or discoverable items. It felt pointless to explore and like a disappointing waste of my time. I’d rather there not be more mine shafts until they have a purpose (new resource, lore, items, whatever) that make them interesting.

similarly, the forest is huge and while it does have some explorable moments (spoilers!) like the chess labyrinth and the pillbug, it also feels 90% empty and it seems like it’s like that for the sake of it. I really don’t know what the point of the forest is really, it feels like it’s there just for the sake of it?

in summary: explorable spaces are cool, but have it be rewarding for the player. It’s better to be smaller and more interesting than large and empty.

Just a quick clarifying note here - extra zones are designed so you can find new items, so recommend you go fishing in places like the forest and see what you can find! But we hear the feedback about deepening their purpose :)

I found it annoying/pointless that I couldn’t put a Trainline (yellow for example) in the new zones to get there quicker. Otherwise it’s long to get there & for almost no reward. Love this game

More of a storyline with quests that involve these areas and others would be amazing and make it more immersive. I played few hours to start and have been following along with updates hoping something like this would be implemented. Beautiful game, just missing a real story.