Player Motivation

Making the player care about a map and progressing through it is tough. Without backstory or lots of complex npc interactions it can be hard to lay out a story in order to put something more at stake other than the players life. Never the less there are ways to give the player something else to aim for other than get to this location and kill the bad guys.

For example, the player finds a raised drawbridge. In order to lower it the player needs to find and install a missing cog and place it in the gear mechanism, then they need to find a missing handle to turn it on, finally they need to switch on the power. There, we've now given the player 3 objectives, each of which can be placed in a different action or puzzle area. The player has the satisfaction of seeing the drawbridge drop and progressing to a new area once complete.
See.. motivation!