What is it with some of these POIs???

[Kyoji]

If a player ignores the "Trader Quest Treadmill" the POI hand-holding "or lack thereof" becomes irrelevant.

That only removes quests. It doesn't fix the issue of them feeling repetitive for those of us who like them but also would like to see more world interaction outside of just questing or even randomly going to a POI.

Event manager, flat spot code, bandits should help with this I think.

 

[pApA^LeGBa]

It would already be a lot less repetitive if not every single POI is a dungeon style. There is a lot of different ways to build POIs that aren´t dungeon style but still aren´t super easy to clear and/or find your way trough.

TFP needs to learn what middleground means, not only for POIs. Really hope that they learn this before it´s too late for their next games.

 

[Laz Man]

It would already be a lot less repetitive if not every single POI is a dungeon style. There is a lot of different ways to build POIs that aren´t dungeon style but still aren´t super easy to clear and/or find your way trough.

TFP needs to learn what middleground means, not only for POIs. Really hope that they learn this before it´s too late for their next games.

What are these different ways you are referring to? I frequently hear people saying why they don't like questable POIs, but no one ever has a clear example what other alternative they are hoping for that doesn't require a huge amount of scope.

 

[Kalen]

What are these different ways you are referring to? I frequently hear people saying why they don't like questable POIs, but no one ever has a clear example what other alternative they are hoping for that doesn't require a huge amount of scope.

I gave a possible answer to this earlier.... randomized or even missing loot rooms.

But I think the general problem with the POIs is that there is one intended path. Obviously you don't have to follow that path, but there is clearly an intended path.

 

[bdubyah]

I kind of thought the part system was going to be used for varied loot room placement, but from what I've seen if you try and use it at that scale it can cause performance issues fairly quickly. Someone had an office type POI and they made several parts for the main room with cubicles and stuff so it would feel different almost every time, but it made the game run worse. I'd imagine if most every dungeon POI tried that it would be even worse.

 

[InfiniteWarrior]

What are these different ways you are referring to? I frequently hear people saying why they don't like questable POIs, but no one ever has a clear example what other alternative they are hoping for that doesn't require a huge amount of scope.

I know of only one: POIs that incorporate interesting worldbuilding whether "questable" or not. You can go through and piece together a story of what happened there. There's a construction site (sorry, don't know the name) that used to be pristine with a makeshift burial ground adjacent to it. It was changed in 1.0 (I think) to make it look as though the operator of the bulldozer lost control of it and destroyed surrounding structures and might have scattered the gathered construction materials otherwise neatly piled up, but...didn't for some odd reason. Maybe the operator succumbed to the virus himself? Or was overrun in the initial zombie outbreak? Who knows? It's the mystery that's compelling and allows the player to fill in the blanks with their own imagination. A few of the residential POIs successfully give off the impression of rushed mayhem during the impromptu evacuations that must've taken place in the lore. So, you're on the right track there, I think. There just could be more of them, imo, as opposed to dozens of generic structures merely filled with zombies and loot as most of the stores are despite the architectural interest they hold otherwise. No need to bake a mystery into all of them, of course, but quite a few more wouldn't hurt.

In sum: let the POI tell the tale at times. Follows the good practice of showing and not telling that's somewhat unique to video games. And, afic, there are no "questable" and "nonquestable" POIs in the game. Such "mysteries" as noted above allow you to write your own quest. Rather, it's the repetitive trader odd jobs that make you feel like a robot if pursuing them exclusively, which seems to be your only real choice right now as they're the only structured content in the game as yet. Oh, you've assigned random odd jobs to some of the POIs and linearized those -- perhaps too many? -- dungeon style, but I think there's sufficient variety for no one to get too hung up on "dungeon style" vs. "nondungeon style" POIs. As noted, it's a voxel game. Whether "questable" or not, the linear path is merely the suggested way through a POI, afic. It's other forms of unnecessary linearization that have some up in arms, imo, and you're addressing that, at least according to the "town hall" stream, as far as I can tell. There may be some that feel the "loot room" at the end of linear paths through POIs is too...Bethesdaesque, let's say. It may help to scatter loot throughout some of the upcoming POIs. That might also help alleviate many players' propensity to take shortcuts, e.g. with building blocks, just to get to the concentrated loot.

 

[InfiniteWarrior]

I gave a possible answer to this earlier.... randomized or even missing loot rooms.

But I think the general problem with the POIs is that there is one intended path. Obviously you don't have to follow that path, but there is clearly an intended path.

I honestly don't see the problem with there being "clearly an intended path" through POIs that you don't have to take except the obvious technical issue of groups of zombies not spawning if you don't follow it to the letter. I've no idea how or if that could possibly be resolved as much as the game relies on manual and proximity triggers to spawn them in, but I think you've stumbled onto something with the concentrated loot at the "end" of those linear paths. That's what makes them feel so identical and repetitive. You know what to expect.

 

[Kalen]

That's what makes them feel so identical and repetitive. You know what to expect.

Thats the problem with a clearly intended path, IMO

 

[InfiniteWarrior]

Thats the problem with a clearly intended path, IMO

I still don't see a problem when it's a linear path you're not required to follow. What is it that makes it feel required (aside from that one technical issue)? Possibly conditioning by other games with clear entrances and exits that can't be bypassed? Maybe? I mean, we're all familiar with the "Skyrim door" and you can't make your own way in Skyrim's Nordic and Dwemer ruins, for example, unless you do it through the console because the game world itself isn't destructible.

The fact that 7DTD's is destructible renders moot complaints about linear paths through dungeon style POIs to my mind. I might agree there are just too many of them. For a while there, I thought they'd all been turned into dungeon style POIs, but they haven't.

 

[Kalen]

I still don't see a problem when it's a linear path you're not required to follow. What is it that makes it feel required (aside from that one technical issue)? Possibly conditioning by other games with clear entrances and exits that can't be bypassed? Maybe? I mean, we're all familiar with the "Skyrim door" and you can't make your own way in Skyrim's Nordic and Dwemer ruins, for example, unless you do it through the console because the game world itself isn't destructible.

The fact that 7DTD's is destructible renders moot complaints about linear paths through dungeon style POIs to my mind. I might agree there are just too many of them. For a while there, I thought they'd all been turned into dungeon style POIs, but they haven't.

I just don't like that there are so many guided tours through POIs. Like I said before, you dont HAVE to follow the intended path, but there is an intended path, and I don't think that its a good thing that there are so many POIs like that. I would much rather see a combination of POIs with an intended path.... POIs with multiple paths.... and completely unguided POIs.

Look, I'm not saying that its a huge problem.... I just think it could be done better.

 

[NiteViper]

Sadly enough, I just go in wipe everything out, then do a looting run and then leave, I don't know what poi's are quest able and so on, my wife for sure doesn't care lol most of the time, she'll go into one not even caring what tier it is or anything and just go to town on that poi. But no matter what, the game to me is still fun to us. So, looking forward to the game going stable, I'm so ready to see the QQing come out of the woodworks lol

 

[Kyoji]

What are these different ways you are referring to? I frequently hear people saying why they don't like questable POIs, but no one ever has a clear example what other alternative they are hoping for that doesn't require a huge amount of scope.

I don't think the sentiment is just with POIs, but the general feel of freedom from earlier alphas. To bring some of that back without reverting I think we can look at alternative ways to spark the feel of randomness and exploration people are truly craving.

Picture this. You are picking up a quest from the trader to go clear out the zombies at a POI 353km away in the wilderness. You accept the quest and start heading to the location. While you are traveling the sky darkens. As it appears it will rain soon you stop at your base and grab some clothing for the journey ahead after deciding to tackle the quest regardless of rain.

• Temperature returning should provide some value and detriment to rain. Perhaps rain accelerates dew collectors by 15% but provides a "wetness" debuff while you are out unless properly clothed. If the weather is cold then you could get sick or hypothermia easier and if the temperature is hot then it could cool down the temperature making it feel more comfortable.
• Weather, temperature, etc all add some complexity to your decision making process and can add unexpected challenges. Do you take the time to gear up? What about inventory space?

Back on our journey we are 278km away when we notice an army camp POI. We choose to stay away from that location as it is infested with tougher than normal zombies, but may be something to investigate later as army camps are well known to have good loot so we mark it on the map to save it for later.

• Certain POIs should be more difficult than others of their peers but should have better rewards. Things like army camps, police stations, etc should offer some valuable weapons, ammo, armor, etc that you wouldn't normally find within your loot stage. But tackling them is far more difficult than normal.
• You can also extend this logic to larger grocery stores, hardware stores, etc where you can find loot outside of your loot stage, but more tailored to that store.
• The difficulty should generally be higher and the loot could be guaranteed tier 1 loot if you are at T0 and a 15% chance for the next tier loot at every other stage as an example. So if I JUST entered the loot stage that would give me only tier 1 then I would have a small chance to find some items from the next tier in one of the aforementioned harder POIs.
• You could denote harder POIs with different color skulls or some other graphic to warn people of the increased danger.

As we continue we notice a crashed helicopter with a few bandits nearby and few supplies crates. If we can take them out we can earn some quick loot, but the bandits won't make it easy. We are 190km away from our quest and the rain has started to drizzle, but we aren't sure if there will be an accompanying storm to make matters worse. We are close to getting to the next tier in quests so we once again mark the location and move past the bandits by going around them to our quest location.

• There can be POIs that aren't POIs in the traditional sense and act more like parts. Things like crashed helicopters, car crashes, bandit checkpoints, etc could help litter the world in both tiles and outside of tiles in the wilderness to add more diversity than just running to and from quests.
• Storms shouldn't be limited to harder zones and rain should be able to develop into thunderstorms and cause more debuffs that would hinder progressing throughout the world. This adds layers to decision making allowing players to feel more immersed in the game and diversify one day from another. I think lesser storms should be a thing eventually in every biome (debuffs, but no shelter necessarily needed) with the current storms being the more serious ones where you can take shelter.

As we get near the POI we can see a roaming horde off in the distance. If we are quiet we should be able to clear the POI and make it back without taking more time to deal with the horde. At this point the rain has turned into a proper storm and it would be challenging dealing with so many zombies in the storm. We look at the POI and notice we can go through the garage which is half open or the back door which is unlocked. We choose the back door as we can shut it in hopes of slowing down any nearby zombies should they discover us.

• Hordes are one of the things that can be very fun and scary at the same time to run into. Hopefully we can get more consistent run-ins with them without feeling like they have onboard GPS. Perhaps more of them but better diversity in numbers so that you can get smaller hordes more commonly than larger ones with the larger ones acting like the current hordes.
• Many POIs wouldn't have a loot room, instead loot is distributed throughout the POI.
• Without loot rooms you can make smaller POIs more open and feel less "on-rails" or "linear" by offering multiple approaches to tackle the POI. Larger POIs or more confusing ones whereby you can get lost easily could be more linear with loot rooms.

After clearing the POI the lightning storm has subsided into a simple rain storm so we can proceed back to turn in the quest. Due to the helicopter and bandits we take a slightly different approach to turn in the quest and diverge from our previous path slightly to stay a safe distance away so we aren't spotted by bandits. We are 243km away from the trader and notice several deer grazing nearby. We still have some time left before nightfall so we equip our bow and draw an arrow. We manage to take out 3 of the 6 deer without having to chase them too far but that is enough to last for a while.

• Storms should be able to go back to their lesser counterparts before dissipating making the stay indoors portion smaller in comparison while allowing storms to last longer without needing to shut down gameplay common with the more dangerous storms.
• Using the event manager you can spawn in not just zombies and bandits but wildlife as well such as encountering a herd of deer. Generally we want things to feel dynamic and offer some sense of randomness to the world. Small encounters such as this make the world feel alive and help alleviate the simple quest, return, quest pathing cycle that feels repetitive.

We are almost back to the trader and are entering the gateway into the city limits. As we approach the trader we notice a small blockade up the road just past the trader. Bandits have since blocked off that area of the road and are looking to rob and kill any unlucky victims. We return the quest and grab a new one. The quest is located in an opposing direction to the bandit blockade. It's almost night and we aren't sure how dark the night will be so we decide that doing another quest isn't in the cards. We can attempt to tackle the bandits or perhaps go back and raid the helicopter. Decisions, decisions...

• With the event manager scripted events such as bandits blockading a street would be nice to see. A once unoccupied area now taken over by bandits or even a larger influx of zombies, not a horde, but just some roaming zombies that have spawned in a nearby area in addition to the regular tile spawns. This all adds diversity of gameplay.
• Ideally, we could have more dynamic night cycles with full moon nights being slightly brighter than half moon nights and then quarter moon nights where it is darker than normal. This adds more complexity to the game and decisions have to be made on whether you want to tackle content during the night or whether you should keep those night vision goggles or bring torches with you.
• Decisions, decisions...at the end of the day that is the core of what we lost. Now it's just always good to quest but with some changes you can add so much depth and complexity to the game with systems currently working or in development already.

I hope this illustrates how a simple quest can lead to difficult choices that can determine the outcome of your adventure and how each run to a quest can be different than the last. Perhaps one night it's simple and you don't have a lot of options or perhaps, like in the example scenario you have a lot of options and divergent gameplay. Either way the CHOICE is yours and the rewards to tackling the side objectives are tantalizing enough to warrant pausing the main quest objective if you are up to the challenge.

Again, I think POI design is but one part of a larger issue people are having with burnout.

 

[Riamus]

I don't mind having a mix of POIs - dungeon, arena, and multi-path. But just something to keep in mind... when people do a POI that doesn't have a single clear path, we tend to see them complain about it being too hard to find everything they need to kill. That doesn't mean you can't still have those kinds of POI, but making those too common will likely cause far more complaints than what we have from people who don't like a linear path. And, yes, you can find ways to keep an arena style (all open) POI or a multi-path POI set up so that it's hard to miss enemies, but that also tends to make it boring quickly, imo.

As InfiniteWarrior mentioned, having a POI tell a story is a great thing as it can make the POI more interesting and less repetitive. But it is easier to tell a story if you have a path the player will follow. Finding the middle or end of the story before seeing the beginning kind of ruins it. Of course, a story can be a single thing that wouldn't need a path, but a path offers more story-telling opportunities.

I think that linear paths generally offer far more variety in POI than other options. An arena style open area POI that might have rooms around the edges but is mostly open can only be done so many ways. It ends up being the same idea over and over again. Whereas a linear option lets you set up that linear path in a wide variety of different ways. Sure, once you do the POI, you know it and it'll be the same every time. But that's true for an arena style as well. The difference is that an arena style ends up being basically the same for every POI that has that style, while a linear POI can have very different layouts.

As far as multi-path options, those can provide more variety for when you do the POI multiple times ... if you choose to go a different path each time. But making a multi-path POI requires a lot more time and effort than a single-path POI because you need to work out each of those different paths and make sure they connect in ways that will get the player to all the zombies without a lot of backtracking. Just for ease of visualization, picture a figure 8. You start at the bottom and have 2 paths. Those meet in the middle and you can choose 2 more paths. Those then meet at the end where the loot is. But no matter which paths you chose, you've missed zombies on the other paths and now have to backtrack to find and kill them. That's a very basic example designed for visualizing the issue, but even a more complex setup and paths has that issue and trying to get around it requires a lot more time and effort. Is it worth doing that to a lot of POI? Or would it be better to get twice as many new linear POI? Having that for a small number of POI would be nice, but I don't think doing it to a lot of POI is worth the time. Leave that for custom POI rather than vanilla POI, I think.

What I think really should be looked at isn't the pathing. I think they need to work on the use of parts to make rooms look significantly different each reset. bdubyah said that can cause performance problems, though I'm not sure why it would. But if so, then that's something TFP should look into. If they can fix whatever performance problems there are that are related to using parts that way and then made POI that made use of parts like that, they could make POI that are FAR less repetitive.

 

[Kalen]

I don't mind having a mix of POIs - dungeon, arena, and multi-path. But just something to keep in mind... when people do a POI that doesn't have a single clear path, we tend to see them complain about it being too hard to find everything they need to kill. That doesn't mean you can't still have those kinds of POI, but making those too common will likely cause far more complaints than what we have from people who don't like a linear path. And, yes, you can find ways to keep an arena style (all open) POI or a multi-path POI set up so that it's hard to miss enemies, but that also tends to make it boring quickly, imo.

I don't disagree at all. If there are more open POIs, then there will have to be a change with zombie spawning also, because trying to find that last elusive spawn group would be hugely annoying. Even if the change is only for those type of POIs.

 

[InfiniteWarrior]

I don't disagree at all. If there are more open POIs, then there will have to be a change with zombie spawning also, because trying to find that last elusive spawn group would be hugely annoying. Even if the change is only for those type of POIs.

It's those manual and proximity spawn triggers that are causing the elusive group of zombies problem and not the POIs themselves. This is only applicable to odd jobs that contain a "clear" objective in my experience.

I've heard from a reliable source that Unity relies on scripting to do things other engines rely on hard coding to do, so I'm not sure much can be done about the missed trigger issue. Perhaps some nice game developer can fill us in on the difficulties encountered there.

 

[Kalen]

It's those manual and proximity spawn triggers that are causing the elusive group of zombies problem and not the POIs themselves. This is only applicable to odd jobs that contain a "clear" objective in my experience.

I'm aware of that.... which is why I said that spawning would have to change in order to avoid that problem in a non-linear POI. Whether that's possible or not, I have no idea.

 

[pApA^LeGBa]

What are these different ways you are referring to? I frequently hear people saying why they don't like questable POIs, but no one ever has a clear example what other alternative they are hoping for that doesn't require a huge amount of scope.

Literally anything that isn´t a dungeon style POI with only one way trough it. From POI´s like they used to be before dungeon stlye, just not that rudimentary, up to Castles that are hard to clear simply due to their size.

Is this really so hard to imagine? Are you guys stuck that much on dungeon style that you can´t even think of anything else anymore?

I am not saying they shouldn´t be questable. Maybe no fetch quests in those POI´s, clear is fine.

 

[meganoth]

I don't think the sentiment is just with POIs, but the general feel of freedom from earlier alphas. To bring some of that back without reverting I think we can look at alternative ways to spark the feel of randomness and exploration people are truly craving.

Picture this. You are picking up a quest from the trader to go clear out the zombies at a POI 353km away in the wilderness. You accept the quest and start heading to the location. While you are traveling the sky darkens. As it appears it will rain soon you stop at your base and grab some clothing for the journey ahead after deciding to tackle the quest regardless of rain.

• Temperature returning should provide some value and detriment to rain. Perhaps rain accelerates dew collectors by 15% but provides a "wetness" debuff while you are out unless properly clothed. If the weather is cold then you could get sick or hypothermia easier and if the temperature is hot then it could cool down the temperature making it feel more comfortable.
• Weather, temperature, etc all add some complexity to your decision making process and can add unexpected challenges. Do you take the time to gear up? What about inventory space?

Back on our journey we are 278km away when we notice an army camp POI. We choose to stay away from that location as it is infested with tougher than normal zombies, but may be something to investigate later as army camps are well known to have good loot so we mark it on the map to save it for later.

• Certain POIs should be more difficult than others of their peers but should have better rewards. Things like army camps, police stations, etc should offer some valuable weapons, ammo, armor, etc that you wouldn't normally find within your loot stage. But tackling them is far more difficult than normal.
• You can also extend this logic to larger grocery stores, hardware stores, etc where you can find loot outside of your loot stage, but more tailored to that store.
• The difficulty should generally be higher and the loot could be guaranteed tier 1 loot if you are at T0 and a 15% chance for the next tier loot at every other stage as an example. So if I JUST entered the loot stage that would give me only tier 1 then I would have a small chance to find some items from the next tier in one of the aforementioned harder POIs.
• You could denote harder POIs with different color skulls or some other graphic to warn people of the increased danger.

As we continue we notice a crashed helicopter with a few bandits nearby and few supplies crates. If we can take them out we can earn some quick loot, but the bandits won't make it easy. We are 190km away from our quest and the rain has started to drizzle, but we aren't sure if there will be an accompanying storm to make matters worse. We are close to getting to the next tier in quests so we once again mark the location and move past the bandits by going around them to our quest location.

• There can be POIs that aren't POIs in the traditional sense and act more like parts. Things like crashed helicopters, car crashes, bandit checkpoints, etc could help litter the world in both tiles and outside of tiles in the wilderness to add more diversity than just running to and from quests.
• Storms shouldn't be limited to harder zones and rain should be able to develop into thunderstorms and cause more debuffs that would hinder progressing throughout the world. This adds layers to decision making allowing players to feel more immersed in the game and diversify one day from another. I think lesser storms should be a thing eventually in every biome (debuffs, but no shelter necessarily needed) with the current storms being the more serious ones where you can take shelter.

As we get near the POI we can see a roaming horde off in the distance. If we are quiet we should be able to clear the POI and make it back without taking more time to deal with the horde. At this point the rain has turned into a proper storm and it would be challenging dealing with so many zombies in the storm. We look at the POI and notice we can go through the garage which is half open or the back door which is unlocked. We choose the back door as we can shut it in hopes of slowing down any nearby zombies should they discover us.

• Hordes are one of the things that can be very fun and scary at the same time to run into. Hopefully we can get more consistent run-ins with them without feeling like they have onboard GPS. Perhaps more of them but better diversity in numbers so that you can get smaller hordes more commonly than larger ones with the larger ones acting like the current hordes.
• Many POIs wouldn't have a loot room, instead loot is distributed throughout the POI.
• Without loot rooms you can make smaller POIs more open and feel less "on-rails" or "linear" by offering multiple approaches to tackle the POI. Larger POIs or more confusing ones whereby you can get lost easily could be more linear with loot rooms.

After clearing the POI the lightning storm has subsided into a simple rain storm so we can proceed back to turn in the quest. Due to the helicopter and bandits we take a slightly different approach to turn in the quest and diverge from our previous path slightly to stay a safe distance away so we aren't spotted by bandits. We are 243km away from the trader and notice several deer grazing nearby. We still have some time left before nightfall so we equip our bow and draw an arrow. We manage to take out 3 of the 6 deer without having to chase them too far but that is enough to last for a while.

• Storms should be able to go back to their lesser counterparts before dissipating making the stay indoors portion smaller in comparison while allowing storms to last longer without needing to shut down gameplay common with the more dangerous storms.
• Using the event manager you can spawn in not just zombies and bandits but wildlife as well such as encountering a herd of deer. Generally we want things to feel dynamic and offer some sense of randomness to the world. Small encounters such as this make the world feel alive and help alleviate the simple quest, return, quest pathing cycle that feels repetitive.

We are almost back to the trader and are entering the gateway into the city limits. As we approach the trader we notice a small blockade up the road just past the trader. Bandits have since blocked off that area of the road and are looking to rob and kill any unlucky victims. We return the quest and grab a new one. The quest is located in an opposing direction to the bandit blockade. It's almost night and we aren't sure how dark the night will be so we decide that doing another quest isn't in the cards. We can attempt to tackle the bandits or perhaps go back and raid the helicopter. Decisions, decisions...

• With the event manager scripted events such as bandits blockading a street would be nice to see. A once unoccupied area now taken over by bandits or even a larger influx of zombies, not a horde, but just some roaming zombies that have spawned in a nearby area in addition to the regular tile spawns. This all adds diversity of gameplay.
• Ideally, we could have more dynamic night cycles with full moon nights being slightly brighter than half moon nights and then quarter moon nights where it is darker than normal. This adds more complexity to the game and decisions have to be made on whether you want to tackle content during the night or whether you should keep those night vision goggles or bring torches with you.
• Decisions, decisions...at the end of the day that is the core of what we lost. Now it's just always good to quest but with some changes you can add so much depth and complexity to the game with systems currently working or in development already.

I hope this illustrates how a simple quest can lead to difficult choices that can determine the outcome of your adventure and how each run to a quest can be different than the last. Perhaps one night it's simple and you don't have a lot of options or perhaps, like in the example scenario you have a lot of options and divergent gameplay. Either way the CHOICE is yours and the rewards to tackling the side objectives are tantalizing enough to warrant pausing the main quest objective if you are up to the challenge.

Again, I think POI design is but one part of a larger issue people are having with burnout.

Maybe try to solve one problem at a time

 

[Kyoji]

Maybe try to solve one problem at a time

1. Most of what I suggested exists or is being worked on
2. The point of the post is about offering decisions, randomness and exploration

So the idea isn't to implement every idea I posted, but rather to suggest the issue is something that could be rectified with various approaches and offered several examples. Rather than accept a quest and simply run back and forth turning them in give players some more avenues of variability.

But yes, generally I wouldn't expect all or even any idea of mine to make the cut. But, maybe it will give them some ideas on why that story sounds fun.

 

[zztong]

What are these different ways you are referring to? I frequently hear people saying why they don't like questable POIs, but no one ever has a clear example what other alternative they are hoping for that doesn't require a huge amount of scope.

I think this...

Literally anything that isn´t a dungeon style POI with only one way trough it.

I'm not sure why "dungeon style" became the label. I'd say "Bethesda Style", where the Fallout POIs only had one path and locked you into that path with indestructible elements.

I would say an alternative is a "POI where many of the interior doors aren't locked and paths through the building aren't walled off to create a single path." Players would feel they could play it more "free form" because there were few obstructions to the normal ways a person might move through the structure. Something between a full-on effort of your team that wants to tell a visual story and a remnant. An intersection between the clutter of life and a needed mission. It could be just a representation of the state of the building after a series of unconnected events. In a sense, a less interesting POI.

The awkward part, to me, is the final loot. In terms of story, unless there are survivors involved, it rarely make sense, but players expect it. I have to just accept that there's loot there, kind of like how I just accept that zombies can want to hide in the ceiling and that ceiling tiles hold their weight, or that the infected have a strange compulsion to hide in an armoire before they succumb. Thus, since I'm rarely making an intended path for my POIs, I tend to just scatter the loot about the place so there isn't a final loot room.

A reality of the game is nothing really stops the player from ignoring the single path (specially if they've got mining skills and tools), but some players (1) like the convenience of the path or (2) worry they won't be able to finish a quest because they missed one or more volumes. I, on the other hand, go off the path all of the time. I feel I have to if I want to take advantage of my investment in stealth skills. The path is predictably full of ambushes and blocked lines of sight.