Simulations are not games, so integrating a simulation in a game is always a nice idea, but it brings a very heavy burden with it. You can compare it to hollywood movies, you don't need to simulate an whole ancient city with a million population to make 3 scene shoots in it.

The problem is, that the player would not recognise it as simulated world, there's even the danger of missinterpreting emerging behaviour as bug. L4D is a great example of a virtual populated world which is only simulated close to the players.

[quote name='Ashaman73' timestamp='1341983638' post='4957893']
Simulations are not games, so integrating a simulation in a game is always a nice idea, but it brings a very heavy burden with it. You can compare it to hollywood movies, you don't need to simulate an whole ancient city with a million population to make 3 scene shoots in it.

The problem is, that the player would not recognise it as simulated world, there's even the danger of missinterpreting emerging behaviour as bug. L4D is a great example of a virtual populated world which is only simulated close to the players.

I think the real question is not how to make wilderness interesting (because it is trivial, just make a lot mini secret locations with secrets and quests and hidden treasures) but how to make it interesting in a cheap way (because you want to focus your development effort on the locations, not the wilderness).

The biggest thrill of wilderness travelling is discovery of secret locations, so I guess there is no way artound it, you need to make at least a few unique handmade mini locations without telling the player the coordinates of these). Everything else should be generated randomly.

There could be:
- 10 old bunkers (shape "generated" cheap way by putting together 3x3 sections made of 6 predefined sections), each holds a standard random treasure and 1 old electronic chip (3 of these bunkers will have broken chips), when ypou collect all working chips you can build something out of it. The exact coordinates of these bunkers changes every game and are totally random
- many hidden caches with random resources, come in 3 versions: small, medium, large.
- there are 20 parts of machine X, generated randomly among the bunkers and caches above as a rare treasure (and very rarely could be found just plain on the ground), when you collect 5 you can build something awesome
- rare plants that can be processed into something (so plain "found something" thing)

I also recommend checking "Barbarian Prince" and "Tales of the Arabian Nights" boardgames, these had a lot of randomly generated things with auto generated secrets and storyline.

Consider the pacing of the gameplay as well. Pretend you are the player moving through that wilderness the first time, is it important that the player relax after a hard fought battle, build tension towards an intense encounter, experience something new (because the games been pretty quiet), learn something useful for the area they are headed to, etc? These factors will help decide what the reason for the gap between locations is an how big it should be. Now pretend you are the player who's been grinding for 4 hours in that god forsaken wilderness. The sections between player way-points can be very useful. Be the player, test it in your mind before you start filling it with assets. I don't know if I agree with removing it because travel and discovery are important aspects in an RPG they help the player prioritize objectives, number crunch, let the game and the OMG moments sink-in.

Explore the weather and the seasons. All wilderness experiences incredible things worth showing off from climate changing. So many RPG's have a static world. Plants move and change,animate them, they deserve it! And animate them for a reason. Have encounters with bad guys that blend in with the forest in fall, or grow hardier during winter, etc.

Hope this helps.