In a world of thousands, all of whom by definition, have access to the Internet, it must be a very difficult thing keeping secrets. A level or quest designer might spend hours, or days, devising a fiendishly cunning labyrinth, or complex set of traps, or confounding conundrum of riddles, all of which are designed to ensure that the Adventurer has to work to achieve the prize.
More than that, in a genre where we can't stop bitching about repetitive auto-generated kill ten rats style quests and the dull legwork of the Fed Ex, these more unusual challenges are a well-meaning attempt to mix things up a bit, to provide variety and perhaps challenge our minds as well as our basic button manipulation skills.
It is something of a shame then, that so often, instead of what must be the intended design; where each and every player of an MMO has to prove their own individual worth through these challenges, what tends to happen instead, is that in among the first fifty or so people who successfully beat the task, there will be at least one who will then immediately go away, write down complete instructions, (with maps and photos!), and then host it all up on a forum, website or wiki. After that, a great many of the remaining thousands will simply go there, print off The Correct Path/Answer/Build, and neatly side-step a lot of head-scratching.
I talked a bit (quite pompously, I'm sure) on SUWT#25 about the growing need for self-discipline in our gaming, and this is a perfect example. I'm proud to say that I haven't looked up a single TR Logos location yet, despite having seen the URL for a site with complete maps spammed out on General Chat often. Go me! Its not often a simple thing though - peer pressure, simple lack of time, and of course towering frustration, all can erode the will, and with the best intentions, spoilers can be all to easy a habit to fall into.
How then to build a puzzle that cannot be spoiled? Instancing can help somewhat, but ultimately, even separated into groups and sent to parallel worlds, the content of those worlds is often the same, and can be documented. One solution I was impressed with, was born of Immensity:
Nifty! #7: EVE Online's Exploration
While a fine and generally all-round Nifty! game in many ways, EVE Online has never quite had the richness of Small-Group and Solo PvE content that marks out a good MMO of the more traditional sort. For many its never been a problem, and for the most part, its the Players that are the content in EVE. But its nice to have options, and when the time came for a revamp of the Tech 2 Blueprint Lottery, to something more equitable, CCP decided to make the PvE Explorer type integral to the process.
Exploration, in the traditional sense of the world, was pretty much non-existent in EVE. Granted, there are thousands of star systems in EVE, but one does rather look much like another. In the words of one veteran in Help chat, upon seeing this complaint; "What did you expect? Palm trees?" It's Space. Space is Big, and Space is, on average, full of nothing at all. Going to distant places and seeing exciting new sights has never been high on the EVE playsheet.
The first go was a bit of a failure. Taking an ill-advised leaf out of the Typical MMO Designbook, they tried static dungeons. The COSMOS Constellations are still there today, several loosely linked encounter areas, with vague story, scattered about several specially designated constellations.
One such deadspace area became the sole place in the entire game, where Tech 2 Mining Barge Blueprint Copies could be looted, which in hindsight, beggars belief. The Exhumer class of ship is hugely popular, aimed at the Pro-Miner, and even I started to hear stories of shadowey player cartels, likely with massive RMT links, amassing fleets of 50+ Drakes and utterly locking down this one deadspace pcoket. It was in Empire too - a 0.5 I think, which meant it was problematic at best for real players; i.e. The ones that gave a damn about being Concordokken, as opposed to the pretend players on Trial Accounts registered, no doubt, to People Who Try To Make A Living by selling currency.
All very sordid, and a quite anticipatable state of affairs, given EVE's shardless nature; 40,000 players all looking for the same, single, loot barrel, in a very known location.
Some time later, CCP had another, and far more inspired crack at the problem; the Exploration System still in game today.
Its an elegant solution, and one which by its very nature, is impossible to 'spoil'. Every so often, (hours to days), the whole galaxy is seeded with valuable stuff. This stuff is visible to all, and out in plain sight; no instances, no player triggering. Its just there, floating in space. The clever bit is the way CCP have used the sheer immensity of space to do the hiding for them.
The typical star system in EVE Online is about 30 A.U across. The typical spaceship in EVE Online can cross that distance in about 285 years, real-time. (Do check my working - I've picked 500m/s as speed!)
Of course, ships in EVE get a warp drive to make the thing playable, but that is all real distances out there, and crucially, you can only warp to something you have coordinates for (Bookmark, Hud Object, etc).
By simply making the players work to find the bookmark in the first place, a whole new gameplay is born, and since these pockets of Stuff are randomly placed, the method can be spoiled, but never the answer.
This work is carried out using the ship's Scanner Window, along with various consumable Probe satellites, and a section of skills from the Science category. I shan't go into too much detail of the process involved here, but instead offer this little guide I cobbled together. Only click if you are an EVE Player and really want to know the specifics of how it's done, as it's quite long and involved to explain:
Van Hemlock's Much Neglected 'Articles' Section: Eve Online Exploration Guide
(Hopefully that'll help those who searched for that in Google and got here too!)
Regular readers who don't play EVE will probably find all that rather tedious and confusing, so I'll summarise here as well.
Using a special piece of equipment, Explorer-Type obsessives like me, can drop special consumable scan probes. When used in concert with each other, they can scan in a very literal sense, for the hidden stuff. They have ranges, overlap, and actual triangulation becomes very important, along with a basic understanding of geometry. Character skills come into play also, in the grand tradition of EVE, meaning that those who have specialised are better at it than the new player, but ultimately, all players can end up with the top skills if they want.
The scanning requires several passes to zero-in on the hidden stuff, and eventually (a quite time consuming exercise, not for the faint-heated or easily bored), the surveyor will arrive at a floating site, much like those found in missions. There are several types of site, and these have become the new mechanism for the introduction of the rare and extremely valuable Tech 2 Invention materials into the game.
The system strikes me as especially clever, being almost impossible to 'farm' in the conventional sense, and yet not having to rely on Instancing, or player quotas or rationing, or any other artificial mechanic to ensure everyone gets a 'fair go'. EVE isn't especially about 'fair goes' on the whole, but the system here ensures that everyone, be it farmer or serious player, still has to put exactly the same work into finding the goodies. Meritocracy at its finest! And while you will probably find many, and better, guides like mine, on how to do this work, you'll never find a flat list of 'Here are the treasure chests; X, Y, Z' on a wiki some place, simply because they're always moving about, and such answers would become meaningless within hours.
It's a knotty problem, and I think one that many games simply ignore; spoilers are par for the course; might as well just get on with it all, and hope the players have enough self-discipline not to ruin it all for themselves, (and that the basic design isn't excessively frustrating in the first place).
One intriguing attempt I remember, was the Candles, from Asheron's Call. Spells in there were cast by using a kind of combination puzzle, with various ingredients, which when put in specific order, would become a spell. Obviously, all the common spells sequences became common website knowledge within weeks, but to counter this, spells of a certain level and up, needed extra 'digits' in the lock, in the form of coloured wax tapers, and these were player-specific, tied, in some fashion to the player's account-name. One player, having worked out the combination to a spell, could tell another what it was, but for that second player, it would be wrong anyway.
In theory, this ought to have been enough to make all the players do their own, intended, arcane research. Where there is a will, there is a way around, and after a while, some bright spark reverse engineered the client, and invented a third party applet called Split-Pea, which simply told you what candles to use based on the account name you told it. A shame, and the whole candles thing, now being nothing more than an irritating obstacle that meant you had to use an add-on to play, was scrapped not long after.
I suspect that the peculiar and seemingly successful method CCP have used to keep some things safe from spoilers, is unique to the sheer immensity of its game universe. In a smaller, more traditional kind of playfield, such as Azeroth, or Norrath, this kind of continually shifting and perpetually altering 'dousing rod' gameplay might be harder to to make work, without resorting to hidden trickery. You plonk down a box of treasure in The Barrens, and someone is bound to stumble across it sooner or later, by accident, which simply won't happen in EVE Online...
So, for having the nerve to hide the good stuff in plain sight, and for setting puzzles that can be solved, but never copied; EVE Online's Exploration: Nifty!
EVE Online is on the sidebar to the right, and does 14-day free trials out the wazoo.
The relevant skill training necessary to stand a decent chance of finding these Space Needles in Galactic Haystacks, takes about two days (for the Comb Probes), or 12 days (for the Sift probes, which are much more useful), and all the basic skills needed to have a go, can be trained on Trial Accounts. Aim to start high in your race's Frigate, Science, and Astrometrics, if they offer it.
Existing players who want to try it would be better off reading through the above linked and more comprehensive guide, and setting up a new Skill Regimen accordingly. Start off in High-Sec until you get the hang of it!