A few ideas

[Equinox]

Yes, but...the physical pages, unlike the markers, would have to GO somewhere...and it would only make sense to have an animation for putting pages back in the book.

[Gehn, lord of ages]

Given your enthusiastic response, how about a "circle of life" super-age that contains birth, education, wedding, old age, and burial ages? You'd have to complete them all in order to finish the final puzzle.

That would be a wild Age indeed, although I'm not sure why the D'ni would want to do all those things in one Age when they could just write other Ages (somewhat morbid in some bits) - maybe it's just such a convenient and well written Age?

I think I'd rather see the Ages separately, though, so the writers can focus on the specific purpose of each Age.

As for a superpuzzle, somebody could still work out something like that for Ahra Pahts - getting a bunch of shells to agree to add clues/parts of the puzzle (or even other Ages too). It probably wouldn't consist of every shell (but that would be insane, anyway, as the puzzle would be a little too large at that point ). Maybe even sending each developer a set of clues to place around their Age (a string of numbers, perhaps, or symbols) however they wished, with some guidelines on how to make sure people recognize the clues (and don't think they're for something else because the things are presented in such a different way) - then even the developers wouldn't know the whole puzzle solution and all, and they could place the clues either in easy access spots or behind various puzzles they made.

As for the linking book idea, it was done twice in Myst:

Yeah, but we don't really know how that was done IC (to Uru canon, I mean) - whether pages in descriptive books just sort of flash back into where they belong (and somehow get in the right order/the order doesn't matter?), or whether there was tons of arranging and careful sewing/gluing the pages carefully back together (taken out of the game because it would be boring and hard to show ).

Oh, and Gehn, there's a lot of material about weddings and families in the journals on one of the Bahro stone-accessible rooftops in Ae'gura. They mostly describe the actual process of getting married and having kids, but the writer specifically mentions "wedding ages." Some of them are public and open to everyone, sort of like Las Vegas chapels (?) but many are private, family-owned ages if I remember correctly.

Ah, I had forgotten about those journals. Of course.

And yet another idea...the linking books we have to find pages for could be a problem...we can't carry anything at present, and we can't even carry a linking book "in our pockets" so to speak (meaning that it can't be an item and we can't really have it on our person due to the restrictions of the game engine). But maybe these pages could act sort of like Relto pages? Or maybe we can stuff them in the Relto book or something until we put them in the actual linking book? I don't know how we could circumvent the "no carrying" restriction otherwise without making something so elaborate that it would defeat the purpose of finding pages.

The main problem would be keeping track of how many pages the person picked up, I think (unless we have them only able to pick up one, just like back in Myst*). We'd just need a couple animations (which, yes, might be complicated) to have the avatar pick up the pages or place the pages in the book (I think storing them somewhere around the Relto book holder [doesn't that have at least one other pocket, where the journals were stuck in CC?] would be the most logical), but we have no interface really for carrying new inventory.
Maybe we could show them in the back of the Relto book (still loose, just carefully placed their for safe keeping)? That might be complicated, though.
Or maybe just have the player keep track (and you can always check how many more you need by going to the book and seeing how many more pages you need after you put all of your pages back in), maybe with some OOC command for people to check with if they wanted?

I've actually been wondering about the viability of a multiplayer age with fiendish puzzles (I like fiendish puzzles) that change based on who's come through before you... A little like the chase for Saavedro in Exile, where he's broken things and you've got to make adjustments to get it all working, only each person or group that goes through leaves things in a different (but still needing to be solved) state.

Maybe something where people would have to shift around something (pillars to form bridges or valley pathways, perhaps) to form a path of some kind to get to a specific spot (perhaps randomized for each play through), and then from there they have to rearrange it to get to another spot (forcing them to cut off the path that anyone following them would take to get to the halfway point)...

*Which would be nostalgic, but silly.

[Jojon]

Regarding your sound based puzzle: your description got me thinking about a possible co-op thing, where two very similar ages, or sections of a single age, have somewhow gotten "shifted", so that their visual and physical properties have been swapped (either through quantum mojo magic or holograms and forcefields, maybe, if you want to make it somewhat credible...). Two players would have to guide eachother through their respective instance. Techically it should not be difficult to add some effect that makes objects go all ghostly transparent, when you walk into them, just a region thing... Might be viable, might not - might be too simple to get through by trial and error or mapping, unless dynamically generated (maybe a bit of selective breeding between the TheMaze age and J'Kla's tnemurtsni modules). :7

As for having an inventory, I can't imagine that would be too hard to implement - if we can have a flag that says we have openend a door, why would it be any more difficult to have a flag that tells whether we have acquired a certain item? I won't be the one to implement the global inventory GUI, of course, but I'm sure certain people amongst us are going "pfft, been there, done that", right now. :)

[Equinox]

I still think that it wouldn't be too outlandish to just put pages back where they belong. We saw

Show Spoiler

Atrus put the missing page back in his Myst linking book at the exact spot in the book where the page had actually been ripped out...and it put itself back where it was supposed to be. No muss, no fuss, no glue Check out a video of the ending sequence on Youtube or something. There's clearly a white light that binds the page back to its original position in the book, and Atrus just lays his hand on the page, that's all.

Given that the D'ni can make moving images appear on the front page of a linking book, it's not unreasonable for them to give torn pages an autorepair function. I would think that the individual pages of the book, being tied to a pseudo-magical/quantum-physics description, would have to be able to be put back into a book they were removed from, since the book itself is one coherent entity. Meaning that you can't just add a new page to a completed book if one page gets ripped out...in my opinion, the book is one entity and needs all its original parts, once completed, to function properly.

We know some parts of Myst aren't canon, and I haven't played 3-5, but just because certain aspects of Myst aren't canon doesn't mean we have to be suspicious of everything in it that doesn't get addressed from that point forward in the series. If you do know about something that isn't in Myst, Riven, or URU that contradicts my theory, let me know (no spoilers please ), but it's probably more productive to treat things that haven't been addressed in detail as something that we can interpret as we will. What I mean is, it's probably easier to come up with a lot of ideas assuming we aren't restricted by canon and eventually have to change things that aren't part of the canon, than to assume we can't do any of those things at all. I just want to promote creativity here. I like your ideas so far, and appreciate your input about my concepts.

Also, about the multiplayer age...what I really wanted to go for was an age where you're completely alone and you can't get help, even if you want it. Once you enter the age, you're essentially as incapable of finding your way around as a blind person is. But the idea of two related/instanced ages would work well. There would have to be some way to really separate the two players though, so that two people couldn't just show each other the correct path by walking it. They would have to describe the features in their ages using words and wouldn't be able to SHOW the other person what's going on by miming or being there to demonstrate for them. Maybe in order to randomize the ages, you could include several dozen features in the age tied to a random number generator. Whenever two people enter the age (it would have to be done in pairs, or maybe threes or fours, but a set number you can divide the number of features by and get a whole number), half (?) of the features would be randomly generated to appear on one side, and the remainder would appear in the other. Once again, it would be the same basic layout, and even the same age, but the two players would never be able to see one another until the very end and wouldn't be able to go to the other person's side at all. You might want to include a bit of overlap for the two sides so that people aren't completely confused, but the two versions of the age would have to be radically different from one another to make it a challenge.

Concerning the "circle of life" age, you're right, maybe it would be a bit contrived to have them all accessible from the same hub. But if you're worried about having a purpose for it, then maybe we can say it's part of a philosophy age. Or maybe we can make a separate philosophy age. Consider that so far we've had

practical/need-based ages

Show Spoiler

Teledahn for food, Gahreesen for security and prison space, Er'cana for the pellets

artistic ages

Show Spoiler

Kadish Tolesa is based on art, and Ahnonay contains elements of it too

recreation/rest ages

Show Spoiler

all the Eders, and maybe Jalak Dador

quasi-religious ages

Show Spoiler

Ahnonay

and purely scientific/educational ages

Show Spoiler

the Pod Age and Minkata, and to a lesser extent Gahreesen with the Maintainer academy

...what are we missing? Philosophy. All of the ages' puzzles make us think logically about how to do things, but none of them so far are about the player character's individual thoughts. I think it's high time for a "look within, not without" age that uses external (in-game) stimuli or "food for thought" that requires the player to figure things out through personal introspection. There would be "meditation rooms" or other places to concentrate that will somehow tell you about the solution, which would not really be logical or intuitive, but requires philosophy rather than sheer logic or mechanical/scientific reasoning. I liked the poetic/philosophical hints for the first Journey that you find in the right bookshelf of your Relto, and I think that something like that would be a really good way to make an age or even a superpuzzle age. I know this sounds abstract, but this is all I can think of for now.

--Equinox

[Jadawin12]

Just a thought on the "linking book as game save device." We have learned that at least Yeesha can put multiple linking panels in one book... if this is not a singular instance then perhaps the pages found could be pages with linking panels that would work similar to save points... What do you think? It would then modify the linking book in your Relto and you wouldn't have to worry about "carrying" the page. How bout it...?

[Equinox]

In that case, I think that the pages themselves should be torn into multiple pieces so that there's more opportunity for people to be clever in hiding them. Scraps of paper don't have to be set into rocks and walls like journey cloths do, so people could get even more creative in hiding them away. I wish some of the cloths in existing ages were harder to find instead of just being waypoints...

--Equinox

[Equinox]

Update: The Relto idea is even better than I'd originally thought, because Yeesha is magic and that means that we can make pages work however we want in that book. The Relto book could actually HAVE an autorepair option written into it! If it doesn't we could pretend it does, or just explain it away with some quantum physics gibberish.

--Equinox

[Gehn, lord of ages]

Regarding your sound based puzzle: your description got me thinking about a possible co-op thing, where two very similar ages, or sections of a single age, have somewhow gotten "shifted", so that their visual and physical properties have been swapped (either through quantum mojo magic or holograms and forcefields, maybe, if you want to make it somewhat credible...). Two players would have to guide eachother through their respective instance. Techically it should not be difficult to add some effect that makes objects go all ghostly transparent, when you walk into them, just a region thing... Might be viable, might not - might be too simple to get through by trial and error or mapping, unless dynamically generated (maybe a bit of selective breeding between the TheMaze age and J'Kla's tnemurtsni modules). :7

A two player version would be interesting (I'd vote for it being imager holograms of two places in the same Age [and even the same area]), both for the cooperative aspect (you can see only other player's environment projected from walls/floors/ceilings full of imager-tech, and they can see only your environment) and for the fun of seeing the other person run against walls you can so clearly see are there*.

*Now, it could be even more interesting if there were more things than just walls and openings. Then you have to wonder whether your partner is leading you into a pitfall or something (ooh, and what if markers only showed up in the hologram version too?), and the sounds would be another layer of the puzzle (harder to tell, but they'd fit with the circumstances (so if you're about to fall into a room filled with water, you will hear water noises** and suchlike).

**Now an observation post overlooking (or with cameras watching) the progress of both would be amusing, especially if you could affect things slightly (like, making different speakers hidden in each side play a recorded sound of things like water lapping or other distinctive noises in the place to throw people off).

As for having an inventory, I can't imagine that would be too hard to implement - if we can have a flag that says we have openend a door, why would it be any more difficult to have a flag that tells whether we have acquired a certain item? I won't be the one to implement the global inventory GUI, of course, but I'm sure certain people amongst us are going "pfft, been there, done that", right now.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure the problem wouldn't be the technical side of the inventory - it would be how to make a simple interface for it (especially with so few inventory based... anythings).

Given that the D'ni can make moving images appear on the front page of a linking book, it's not unreasonable for them to give torn pages an autorepair function. I would think that the individual pages of the book, being tied to a pseudo-magical/quantum-physics description, would have to be able to be put back into a book they were removed from, since the book itself is one coherent entity. Meaning that you can't just add a new page to a completed book if one page gets ripped out...in my opinion, the book is one entity and needs all its original parts, once completed, to function properly.

We know some parts of Myst aren't canon, and I haven't played 3-5, but just because certain aspects of Myst aren't canon doesn't mean we have to be suspicious of everything in it that doesn't get addressed from that point forward in the series. If you do know about something that isn't in Myst, Riven, or URU that contradicts my theory, let me know (no spoilers please ), but it's probably more productive to treat things that haven't been addressed in detail as something that we can interpret as we will. What I mean is, it's probably easier to come up with a lot of ideas assuming we aren't restricted by canon and eventually have to change things that aren't part of the canon, than to assume we can't do any of those things at all. I just want to promote creativity here. I like your ideas so far, and appreciate your input about my concepts.

Given that aforementioned parts of Myst that would suggest such a simple method of reinserting pages are related to the points where Myst canon (as in, original Myst canon) conflicts the most with Uru canon, and the method is one that would understandably be simplified by plot, I'm suspecting it probably isn't that magically simple.
Of course, we do know that such things had to have been done with fairly little knowledge and materials, and then there's Relto pages that we seem to fit into our books with total ease, so I definitely think such a thing is possible and not incredibly difficult... it's just I don't think we have much of a clue how to show it animated. I think we could probably be able to make the page-insertion method be discreet enough (and it would probably even be easiest to do so), that it wouldn't be a problem.

Also, about the multiplayer age...what I really wanted to go for was an age where you're completely alone and you can't get help, even if you want it. Once you enter the age, you're essentially as incapable of finding your way around as a blind person is. But the idea of two related/instanced ages would work well. There would have to be some way to really separate the two players though, so that two people couldn't just show each other the correct path by walking it. They would have to describe the features in their ages using words and wouldn't be able to SHOW the other person what's going on by miming or being there to demonstrate for them. Maybe in order to randomize the ages, you could include several dozen features in the age tied to a random number generator. Whenever two people enter the age (it would have to be done in pairs, or maybe threes or fours, but a set number you can divide the number of features by and get a whole number), half (?) of the features would be randomly generated to appear on one side, and the remainder would appear in the other. Once again, it would be the same basic layout, and even the same age, but the two players would never be able to see one another until the very end and wouldn't be able to go to the other person's side at all. You might want to include a bit of overlap for the two sides so that people aren't completely confused, but the two versions of the age would have to be radically different from one another to make it a challenge.

Demonstrating things wouldn't be too easy - you'd still have to be somewhat near the other player, and you couldn't show that much (since the walkway you are pointing them at might be a wall or a pit for you), and you could always go alone or not cooperate (for example, a timed challenge, where you just see each other run around crazily if you happen to pass by).
Just describing it would be rather difficult, as you wouldn't be able to tell the person's progress that well, and your path might take you away from being able to see their next step.
- Maybe it could be something like the Delin/Tsogahl books, but each 'hood gets only one side's link in.

Anyway, I do like the randomization ideas, and I think it would fit the possible IC natures of the place (if it's meant as training, then they wouldn't want people to just be able to cheat or rote memorize the place - if it was meant as deception, ditto, etc.)

Concerning the "circle of life" age, you're right, maybe it would be a bit contrived to have them all accessible from the same hub. But if you're worried about having a purpose for it, then maybe we can say it's part of a philosophy age. Or maybe we can make a separate philosophy age.

I think a separate philosophy Age would be cool, but all of them rolled together - perhaps the D'ni are more philosophical than us Westerners, but I don't think many people would get over the practical and emotional concerns there simply because it was an interesting philosophical notion, if you know what I mean.

But, on the topic of a philosophical Age, what would be in it?
- Journals/poetry/etc. are definite things to include. The problem would be making the philosophical part help the journey without being hints, really - since just forming riddles or puzzles based around the concepts makes it a logical puzzle. Solutions simply lend themselves to logic or intuition (or concentration and skill).
- So it looks like the simplest ways would be either:
1) Make it a solution-less Age. Any puzzles are interesting thoughts or ideas presented by it for people to think about.
2) Make a logic/intuition Age or Ages with more philosophical sides that can be explored and which might add a little help in the puzzles (like the journal for the first Journey, or the Watcher's poetry as a whole), and with emphasis on philosophical concepts to ponder.
Art and relaxation Ages would definitely be places where such focuses would fit in well, but perhaps it would be more interesting to have a highly scientific/practical Age designed in such a way.

[Equinox]

**Now an observation post overlooking (or with cameras watching) the progress of both would be amusing, especially if you could affect things slightly (like, making different speakers hidden in each side play a recorded sound of things like water lapping or other distinctive noises in the place to throw people off).

I don't know about a cooperative multiplayer age, but this would be an excellent trick for pretty much any regular age.

Given that aforementioned parts of Myst that would suggest such a simple method of reinserting pages are related to the points where Myst canon (as in, original Myst canon) conflicts the most with Uru canon

Is there anything that happens after the original Myst that involves replacing pages in linking books?

such things had to have been done with fairly little knowledge and materials, and then there's Relto pages that we seem to fit into our books with total ease

So why not just replicate what we saw in Myst, using Relto-page magic?

it's just I don't think we have much of a clue how to show it animated

You wouldn't have to do much animation...just have one animation where the player opens a linking book, one where he/she turns a page, and one where he/she puts a page into the book. You could start with the open book animation, add a page, turn the page, add another page...

Demonstrating things wouldn't be too easy - you'd still have to be somewhat near the other player, and you couldn't show that much (since the walkway you are pointing them at might be a wall or a pit for you), and you could always go alone or not cooperate (for example, a timed challenge, where you just see each other run around crazily if you happen to pass by).

The idea is that the ages would be similar enough that you would be able to tell exactly where you are in an age, but unable to progress without knowing what's false and what's real. For this reason, I don't think that the players should be able to see each other at all and would have to communicate via KI. They could always send one another pictures of their general surroundings or suspicious objects in the environment. If they were allowed to visit the other's ages, then the puzzle would be too easy. They could just explain what's different from their own age and figure out what's different instead of working with someone else.

- Journals/poetry/etc. are definite things to include. The problem would be making the philosophical part help the journey without being hints, really - since just forming riddles or puzzles based around the concepts makes it a logical puzzle. Solutions simply lend themselves to logic or intuition (or concentration and skill).
- So it looks like the simplest ways would be either:
1) Make it a solution-less Age. Any puzzles are interesting thoughts or ideas presented by it for people to think about.
2) Make a logic/intuition Age or Ages with more philosophical sides that can be explored and which might add a little help in the puzzles (like the journal for the first Journey, or the Watcher's poetry as a whole), and with emphasis on philosophical concepts to ponder.

That's what I mean--I liked the advice from the book on the right bookshelf for the first journey, and I was disappointed that there wasn't more of it for the other ages. I think there should be an age based almost entirely on reading something prophetic/obscure that will only make sense once you've made some progress doing actual puzzles in other parts of the age. Consider, for example,

Show Spoiler

Kadish Tolesa, where the advice about looking beyond the surface and seeing the unseen is crucial for figuring out the puzzles. Even when you duplicate some of the solutions found in the Kadish Gallery, you still haven't solved the puzzle because it involves something that's literally not in the picture: the "dark path" in the room with the stained-glass light pattern on the floor, or the raised pillar puzzle where you have to determine the numbers that aren't on the wheel on the edge of the corresponding artwork in the gallery.

It should be something like that, where reading is the only way to solve the puzzles. I understand that the Watcher's books in Path of the Shell for URU CC had something similar going on, but wouldn't it be cool to base an entire age around books instead of one or two puzzles that could be solved by other means?

Another idea I like is your "solution-less" age that's more about exploring than solving puzzles. I've been playing an MMO called Guild Wars for almost 5 years, and one of the things they do very well about the environments there is that even free-roaming areas with a lot of open territory have secrets. When I was mapping areas to get an in-game title called "Cartographer," I found a lot of cool little areas that you would never have guessed were there if you stuck to the beaten path. For example, there's an iron bridge in an underground catacomb that I'd crossed over dozens of times, but one day I decided to look down below the bridge and I saw some sort of dragon or giant skeleton! In other parts of the same area, if you look up (which many people never do), you can see some amazing stained-glass images that relate to some of the lore and mythology of the game. In short, what if we could take Eder Delin/Tsogal, remove the puzzle aspect, and make it ten times larger? People wouldn't have to worry about solving puzzles, they could just discover all sorts of hidden areas off the main path and have interesting little hideouts or gathering places to visit. If it was a forest, then maybe there could be a hidden cave like the kivas in Minkata with the opening obscured by hanging vines or moss. If it was an icy environment, maybe by climbing over a "hill" you'd find that it was a vacant igloo that someone in the distant past made and that hasn't been disturbed in a long time.

--Equinox

--Equinox

[Gehn, lord of ages]

**Now an observation post overlooking (or with cameras watching) the progress of both would be amusing, especially if you could affect things slightly (like, making different speakers hidden in each side play a recorded sound of things like water lapping or other distinctive noises in the place to throw people off).

I don't know about a cooperative multiplayer age, but this would be an excellent trick for pretty much any regular age.

It would!
It would make an awesome reward for getting through an Age - being able to control random tricks like that (hidden speakers, imager illusions, fog machines...). It would work best in some kind of illusion based Age, I think, and would make sense in a training area.

Given that aforementioned parts of Myst that would suggest such a simple method of reinserting pages are related to the points where Myst canon (as in, original Myst canon) conflicts the most with Uru canon

Is there anything that happens after the original Myst that involves replacing pages in linking books?

Just Uru's Relto book, I think (and we're not sure how those pages relate to normal D'ni linking book pages [I mean, are they just pieces of the regular book, or is it made so that these individual add-ons are some different type...?]).

such things had to have been done with fairly little knowledge and materials, and then there's Relto pages that we seem to fit into our books with total ease

So why not just replicate what we saw in Myst, using Relto-page magic?

it's just I don't think we have much of a clue how to show it animated

You wouldn't have to do much animation...just have one animation where the player opens a linking book, one where he/she turns a page, and one where he/she puts a page into the book. You could start with the open book animation, add a page, turn the page, add another page...

Okay, I think we're agreeing on this. One more thing, though - would we be able to see these pages up close (to see how many pages were missing, to pick up the pages, etc.)? If so, what would be on the pages?

Demonstrating things wouldn't be too easy - you'd still have to be somewhat near the other player, and you couldn't show that much (since the walkway you are pointing them at might be a wall or a pit for you), and you could always go alone or not cooperate (for example, a timed challenge, where you just see each other run around crazily if you happen to pass by).

The idea is that the ages would be similar enough that you would be able to tell exactly where you are in an age, but unable to progress without knowing what's false and what's real. For this reason, I don't think that the players should be able to see each other at all and would have to communicate via KI. They could always send one another pictures of their general surroundings or suspicious objects in the environment. If they were allowed to visit the other's ages, then the puzzle would be too easy. They could just explain what's different from their own age and figure out what's different instead of working with someone else.

Being able to visit the other side wouldn't be a problem if there was randomization. I still don't think being able to see the other person would be a problem, because
A) It would still be difficult, with the physical limitations of both sides (and text communication is not the simplest for giving exact directions), to stay within sight of each other and to just instruct the other through.
B) If you want it to be more difficult, you could go without the other person, or while ignoring the other person, or with each of you making riddles or hiding from each other - so there would be many different ways to play through the Age - it would be flexible.

-
That's what I mean--I liked the advice from the book on the right bookshelf for the first journey, and I was disappointed that there wasn't more of it for the other ages. I think there should be an age based almost entirely on reading something prophetic/obscure that will only make sense once you've made some progress doing actual puzzles in other parts of the age. Consider, for example,

Show Spoiler

Kadish Tolesa, where the advice about looking beyond the surface and seeing the unseen is crucial for figuring out the puzzles. Even when you duplicate some of the solutions found in the Kadish Gallery, you still haven't solved the puzzle because it involves something that's literally not in the picture: the "dark path" in the room with the stained-glass light pattern on the floor, or the raised pillar puzzle where you have to determine the numbers that aren't on the wheel on the edge of the corresponding artwork in the gallery.

It should be something like that, where reading is the only way to solve the puzzles. I understand that the Watcher's books in Path of the Shell for URU CC had something similar going on, but wouldn't it be cool to base an entire age around books instead of one or two puzzles that could be solved by other means?

Eh, yes and no. I would definitely like to see more book based puzzle advice (like the First Journey, or the PotS clues), but I wouldn't want to constrain it simply to a book. A book, a couple logical steps, maybe some artwork based clues - that would be better, I think, so it's not always just "go back to the book again for the next step".

Another idea I like is your "solution-less" age that's more about exploring than solving puzzles. I've been playing an MMO called Guild Wars for almost 5 years, and one of the things they do very well about the environments there is that even free-roaming areas with a lot of open territory have secrets. When I was mapping areas to get an in-game title called "Cartographer," I found a lot of cool little areas that you would never have guessed were there if you stuck to the beaten path. For example, there's an iron bridge in an underground catacomb that I'd crossed over dozens of times, but one day I decided to look down below the bridge and I saw some sort of dragon or giant skeleton! In other parts of the same area, if you look up (which many people never do), you can see some amazing stained-glass images that relate to some of the lore and mythology of the game. In short, what if we could take Eder Delin/Tsogal, remove the puzzle aspect, and make it ten times larger? People wouldn't have to worry about solving puzzles, they could just discover all sorts of hidden areas off the main path and have interesting little hideouts or gathering places to visit. If it was a forest, then maybe there could be a hidden cave like the kivas in Minkata with the opening obscured by hanging vines or moss. If it was an icy environment, maybe by climbing over a "hill" you'd find that it was a vacant igloo that someone in the distant past made and that hasn't been disturbed in a long time.

Yeah, some Eder like Age, but expanded more would be nice (something like a cross between Eder Kemo and Minkata (and also how Ae'gura was in To D'ni) - no major puzzles in the Age itself, lots of area to explore with many little details, and a nice place to relax - adding in lore/random stuff to read or look at/maybe some simple interactive things would help to).

Maybe some kind of Art Gallery/Garden Age, with various D'ni or explorer artworks and poetry scattered around, along with some explanatory texts, in a meandering gardenlike path with wide open spaces...