Close to giving up on this game.

[gibbousmoon100]

Every single run, for the past five or so, I've had the mid-zone crossing mission marked for me on my map, but I can't get to it. I'm surrounded by zones with "no stable exits." So I get into a zone and pick up an anchor and warp back home. Then I do it again. And again.

This is BORING. I've unlocked every single stable energy upgrade in the fabrication station, and I'm getting more and more of a surplus of it, as I continue to do these runs to try and reset the map.

Am I running into bad RNG, or is it really supposed to be this annoying to find your way to certain zones? Or am I doing something wrong?

Here is the map this time. This is typical:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3225769715

[Unknown Zombie]

You need to plot a route to the junction just south of the quest area, and drive through Highway G1 to get there. You will be able to drive through it by following roads to an exit. "No Stable Exits" only means you cannot warp out with a gateway, but you may still drive through. Junctions marked as dead ends are the ones you want to avoid because there is no gateway or road exit.

Once you arrive at the plotted junction, you may warp home from there, and a new path to the quest junction should appear so that you may plot a route there.

[thefollowingcharacters]

Go to the one marked 2 on the left of your map just under the marker, then return to base. Afterward you'll be able to set directly to the wall.

[ant_sh]

Unknown Zombie above is right about "no stable exits" thing. Once you unlock the junction to the left of G1 you'll be able to traverse through it to the destination.

[CowboyKing06]

You can drive through the zones in red or the "instability", it actually has very good loot in the beginning but it's risky, as long as you just get to the exit you should be fine.

[gibbousmoon100]

Originally posted by Unknown Zombie:

You need to plot a route to the junction just south of the quest area, and drive through Highway G1 to get there. You will be able to drive through it by following roads to an exit. "No Stable Exits" only means you cannot warp out with a gateway, but you may still drive through. Junctions marked as dead ends are the ones you want to avoid because there is no gateway or road exit.

Once you arrive at the plotted junction, you may warp home from there, and a new path to the quest junction should appear so that you may plot a route there.

Thanks, this is what I needed to know!

Why can't the game do a better job of explaining these things? I can't select those brown areas in the map planner, which is kinda like telling the player the area is inaccessible. (Bad affordance design.)

[maeharaprojekt]

Originally posted by gibbousmoon100:

Originally posted by Unknown Zombie:

You need to plot a route to the junction just south of the quest area, and drive through Highway G1 to get there. You will be able to drive through it by following roads to an exit. "No Stable Exits" only means you cannot warp out with a gateway, but you may still drive through. Junctions marked as dead ends are the ones you want to avoid because there is no gateway or road exit.

Once you arrive at the plotted junction, you may warp home from there, and a new path to the quest junction should appear so that you may plot a route there.

Thanks, this is what I needed to know!

Why can't the game do a better job of explaining these things? I can't select those brown areas in the map planner, which is kinda like telling the player the area is inaccessible. (Bad affordance design.)

The dev's did well enough, from my perspective - there is a lot in Pacific Drive that we have to discover on our own (or run to the Internet if our imagination and curiosity are consistently rolling 1 on a 1D20 for "Perception").

Myself and others who I've watched had no problem with the map in Oppy's Garage and found that throwing caution to the wind, taking chances with our nebulous time-limit before a mega-storm dropped on our heads, opened up routes or netted discoveries we would not have found by following an established set of rules.

If I were to criticize Ironwood for anything about the game design, it's that they did not add *enough* Quirks and other weird stuff that we must go into the Junctions to figure out.

[gibbousmoon100]

So you think it's good that places you can actually access are not selectable on the map?

Is there a reason for that that I just haven't noticed? (It's entirely possible.)

[BlackWater]

Ive looted quite a bit from dead ends, just abandon the run and have keep all items selected, course, once one realizes that loot can be had anywhere and its not required to explore every micron of the game's environment, one need not bother with deads.

[gibbousmoon100]

Originally posted by BlackWater:

Ive looted quite a bit from dead ends, just abandon the run and have keep all items selected, course, once one realizes that loot can be had anywhere and its not required to explore every micron of the game's environment, one need not bother with deads.

Yeah, I know you can do that; it feels like cheating.

Note that I have no problem with cheating: Not everyone agrees with the devs' idea of "fun." And kudos to Ironwood Studios for anticipating this and giving so many different options to enable/disable certain features. I don't think I've ever seen a game be so feature-rich in this way. (I personally disabled car quirks, because I feel like they add nothing to the game but annoyance. But I'm sure some people find them fun.)

However, I strongly believe that a game should be designed around the default settings (which include penalties on death), and I expect the devs do as well. For that reason, I expect that you are supposed to recognize dead ends for what they are and avoid them as part of the game's design.

For that reason, I also think that the difference between "dead end: this means you cannot turn around and go home, and that you lose the run"* and "no stable exits: this means you cannot warp home but it does not mean there are no exits from the level"** should be made clear by the game as part of its design, without making you learn it the hard way. I've seen some other posters complaining about the former (my problem was with the latter). They too are complaining about affordance design.

*"You cannot go back the way you came" is not what "dead end" means in ordinary English. Therefore the game should make it clear what its in-game definition is. "No exits" or "No way home" might be a more intuitive label (it is more accurate, at least).

**The fact that you can exit the level makes a label such as "no stable exits" misleading, imo.

[CowboyKing06]

I enjoy going in blind and figuring these things out for myself but I check every junction very carefully because I'm terrified of loosing my 50+ streak. In short, to quote Vass Montenegro "Once is funny but twice if f***ing annoying."
If a junction could both loose and gain exits that would really add some real sense of instability and everything has gone loony to the game but would probably tick a lot of people off so would work far better as another optional setting.

[ShockedHearts]

you must finish a junction to move onto the next junction.

then return in next run to get 1 junction further to unlock the next one. then return. rinse wash repeat. each junction needs an extraction sequence to unlock it to drive further.

this is explained in the tutorial and you have done it several times as seen by the map.

[gibbousmoon100]

Originally posted by ShockedHearts:

you must finish a junction to move onto the next junction.

then return in next run to get 1 junction further to unlock the next one. then return. rinse wash repeat. each junction needs an extraction sequence to unlock it to drive further.

this is explained in the tutorial and you have done it several times as seen by the map.

What exactly are you responding to here?

My comment about the browned-out (unclickable) areas?

[ShockedHearts]

Originally posted by gibbousmoon100:

Originally posted by ShockedHearts:

you must finish a junction to move onto the next junction.

then return in next run to get 1 junction further to unlock the next one. then return. rinse wash repeat. each junction needs an extraction sequence to unlock it to drive further.

this is explained in the tutorial and you have done it several times as seen by the map.

What exactly are you responding to here?

My comment about the browned-out (unclickable) areas?

to your initial post...

[gibbousmoon100]

Originally posted by ShockedHearts:

Originally posted by gibbousmoon100:

What exactly are you responding to here?

My comment about the browned-out (unclickable) areas?

to your initial post...

Then I don't see how your advice is relevant, sorry.

Perhaps you misunderstood my initial post. Unknown Zombie (the first reply) understood it and responded accordingly.

[ShockedHearts]

Originally posted by gibbousmoon100:

Originally posted by ShockedHearts:

to your initial post...

Then I don't see how your advice is relevant, sorry.

Perhaps you misunderstood my initial post. Unknown Zombie (the first reply) understood it and responded accordingly.

you can select the question mark route behind the blacked out bit, which is a dead end meaning you cant select it as a destination due to there being no exits at the moment.

the place behind it you can select and play still. this is relevant and what my post explains.

you can go to any junction at ANY time. BUT you need a valid exit to choose as a destination. of which you have many and are not prevented from going anywhere in your pic.