I never really thought of it before, but now that you said it.... you are so right. The POI respawn really does hurt exploration. Without it, you would reach a point of diminishing returns with questing, since you would have to go further and further away to quest as you would be using up the closer POIs.
100% respawn, It hurts exploration. Without it, you’d eventually use up the close-by POIs, forcing you to venture further, take risks, and really
explore. But as it stands, I can just go to a POI, loot it, reset it, loot it again, and cash in my quest reward. It’s fast, it’s efficient, and it’s totally predictable.
And in the Pine Forest, where’s the sense of wonder? There are no interesting buildings that make me say, “Wow, I want to check that out.” It’s just the same T1 houses, post office, saloon, gun shop—over and over. Everything blurs together. So I grind quests just to unlock the next trader, or out of boredom. Even if I walk or cycle across the map, even though I know the biomes are locked down to keep me on the set path.
Why does endgame loot and the big cities
have to be gated behind the wasteland? Why not have cities and towns of all sizes, scattered everywhere?
Why can’t a Dishong Tower pop up in the forest, daring me to try it at level 5? Let me bleed, let me fail, let me suffer and die and—eventually when I win ragged bleeding with no bandages or medkits, infected, broken bones, Standing on the roof. The sun coming up, wind in my blood soak hair, the fun the joy is immense and liberating.
But that’s not the design anymore. Now, it’s “play our way, or else.”
Even if I turn off biome progression, cities and loot are still tied to specific biomes, so real agency is gone.
It all feels like gatekeeping, since we dont have anything else to really do in the game.
Give us some real choice. Some real risk. The freedom to write our own stories, not just follow the script you laid out.
And honestly? The way it plays now actually makes me depressed that I’ve become like this—someone who looks at a world that used to feel wild, dangerous, and full of possibility, and now just sees locked doors, checklists, and missed opportunities.
If you were going to keep redoing lower tier quests, sure. But with only 10 quests each tier, you should have enough different POI nearby for that. At least for the first few tiers. The first already had minimal high tier POI in RWG and the quests can send you even 4km away for one even if there was one closer that you have done before. So I don't really see that as a problem. Now, if you wanted to keep doing a specific tier over and over, you could start getting duplicates and a change to resets could give you reason to go to a different trader. But how many people do that? At least until tier 6. And at that point, you are probably getting sent to every tier 5 POI within 4km anyhow
But even going to a different trader isn't the same as exploring. The game doesn't offer any reason to explore because loot can be found anywhere. There aren't hidden chests that contain stuff you can't find anywhere else. There aren't unique map features that you won't see other places. Other than location, it is really the same anywhere on the map. Whether or not quests reset POI, that wouldn't change people actually exploring.
Also what happens in a group of friends each person get a quest, say 5 of you and all help each each complete the quests.
In the small T1 towns you end running into buildings that you have just cleared and have to wait or loot the same building like 4 times in two days. Since all of you want to get the next trader unlocked you have to do 50 Quests in a T1 town and this has happened to us on multi times, now that dont even play anymore at all.
Which is sad.
It quickly becomes a bigger problem and in 2.0 with the locked progression and badges you cant even run to the next biome to branch out without dying.
