I'd love to see the day where each npc especially in cities, could be created with real to life routines. It just adds a greater level of believability to the world for me. Like a blacksmith's son takes over for him in evening, he bids him ado and goes to the tavern for some dinner and a pint. I'd like to see shop owners head to the docks to receive shipments. I'd like to see the residents of a town go to their houses at night.
That isn't to say that key npcs just shouldn't be available, for important things there could be several npcs that work in shifts.
Do you know how ticked most players would be that the npc they expect to find somewhere is off wandering around? I would like it but heaven forbid somebody has to take an extra couple of minutes to find the guy they have to turn their quest into. Even if the fellow just needs to drop the kids off at the pool.
Do you know how ticked most players would be that the npc they expect to find somewhere is off wandering around? I would like it but heaven forbid somebody has to take an extra couple of minutes to find the guy they have to turn their quest into. Even if the fellow just needs to drop the kids off at the pool.
They can use icons on a mini map for that. It's more realistic, though not the best way to do all quests and such. ESO had vendors that travel around like this.
"This may hurt a little, but it's something you'll get used to. Relax....."
Until the day where games transport me directly into a suit of plate, have me roasted by a fireball and sent back in a steaming burnt state on my couch...there isn't enough immersion.
BDO needs to put a school in every city and town and send the obnoxious shae kids to school during the day - maybe only let them out a few minutes close to their dinner times so they'll be forced to run home.
There's actually something devs could do - every once in a while change up the flavor. There are a bunch of NPCs that serve no purpose but flavor - have them move to a new town, get sick, die, be born, get fired, get hired, etc. Doesn't have to be a frequent thing - maybe once a quarter or so. Put some gossipers in that explain what happened.
I've not played BDO but I based on this article it seems that they've at least tried to make some NPCs more alive
The fact that this is a feature article for BDO is misleading, this is a general MMORPG issue and whomever posted it knows that. Its a sneaky form of advertising.
Still a worthwhile topic though.
I don't mind static, but I'd like to see more day night or even seasonal cycles.
There are a few NPC's in BDO that have repeated dialogs that are totally annoying. Referring especially to those two annoying ones by the storage NPC in Velia. However in general the npc's in BDO add to my immersion and even more so all the player characters afking. I don't find a ton or horses or walking people or fishers annoying rather they add to the busy feel of BDO.
One thing i hate in MMOs is when you have NPCs that you cant even click on or interact with. SWTOR fails with this. Huge world and it feels empty because the npcs none interactive.
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It is my goal to fix this... one I work on every day. And really, what got me into doing game AI in the first place.
Don't give up hope! It's out there... and not as far away as you might think! ;-)
President & Lead Designer of Intrinsic Algorithm, Author of Behavioral Mathematics for Game AI, Game AI consultant, GDC AI Summit advisor, co-founder of AIGPG | IntrinsicAlgorithm.com
I was actually thinking this yesterday while chopping wood at Epheria in front of the storage dude who is making the same movements over and over. I end up turning my sound down too because they repeat the same thing over and over. I think most of the npcs in BDO do a good job at creating the illusion of a living world. They are only meant to be noticed in passing, not studied. MMO's are not meant for people watching. They create enough ambience in the world for me, until we have cpus that can handle it better I don't think we need a ton of npc's with unscripted AI.
That's spot on. Anyone who stops to consider why this NPC is simply standing there and not bartering with other people or making round through the city should be playing The Sims. NPC's are window dressing,;and BDO has some of the most amazing window dressing I've seen in an MMO. Guild Wars 2 held this banner for a while, not it belongs to BDO.
Yes its a huge neglected feature that is long overdue. I found it very annoying in SWTOR as one of the worst offenders...especially since that game had you running in corridors with a lot of empty space with nothing to do in that space. Skyrim did a great job with this and Witcher 3 isn't bad either. MMOs needs to follow those examples...but even then...they can do more :-).
Don't hold your breath. Witcher 3 and Skyrim are off-line RPG's. An MMO is a completely different animal.
I can understand how some people say it breaks their immersion. You have to admit though, it makes finding essential npcs easier as compared to them roaming around the area all the time.
It is my goal to fix this... one I work on every day. And really, what got me into doing game AI in the first place.
Don't give up hope! It's out there... and not as far away as you might think! ;-)
Oh c'mon Dave. You can't throw a juicy little teaser like that around and just leave.
Oh and BTW, on a completely unrelated topic, what are you working on these days?
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
Already more than a decade ago, WoW had about half of its NPCs travelling around. Some, like shopkeepers, were only moving little bits inside their shop around. Others, like certain merchants, moved through several zones.
The reason why most modern MMORPGs don't do that is the same why they offer fewer levelling paths: greed. Creating a seemingly living world would require more time and thus money. People also buy the game if it's static and sucks compared to any good single player MMORPGs, if the marketing is right. So why should they bother?
To have NPC's in games, not just MMO's seem a bit more 'realistic' rather than just being static or heavily, if limited, scripted activities, is not an easy thing, its probably a project on a scale that dwarfs that of implementing VR gaming, and not just in terms of server resources required, that would in all probability be seperate from that of running the game itself, as the only likely solution is to have the NPC's interracting with the game in much the same way as players do, and while not impossible at the moment, in practical terms, we're still some time away from seeing it being a financially viable option.
If all NPCs are static yes. I rather some NPCs be static. Like vendors, bankers etc.
Well, it can be annoying in games like Elder scrolls when a shop is closed, that is true but it also add a bit of atmosphere to the game, when the fence only buy and sell stolen gods night time while most honest traders work daytime.
Of course if you have a too long daycycle it becomes totally useless but with a 2 hours it isn't a big problem and worth it. The banks though usually seems to be magical anyways so that can be solved lore wise, they do need to be often as well as crafting stations. It is slightly inconveniant to not be able to buy something right this moment but having stuff you need in your bankand being forced to wait an hour to get it is more than that.
Also, there is the issue about vendortrash. The real reason you always need a vendor constantly when you play is all useless stuff people need to carry or they loose a rather large sum of income. But vendortrash doesn't really add anything to the game, not at all. Some say it is realistic but you honestly wouldn't pick up half digested boots, hekken tounges or rusty daggers if you found them yourself on the street. It is not realistic, people don't carry around 50 pounds of crap while moving in the wilderness or worse, fight in it. Just drop gold, gems and stuff someone actually want for something thanks.
Remember that game that pretended it was being made, I think it was EQ next. They told everybody that all npc's in their game would have actual AI and live and react to the world around them. I think it was emergent AI they said.
Boy that sure sounded neat!
Playing: Smite, Marvel Heroes Played: Nexus:Kingdom of the Winds, Everquest, DAoC, Everquest 2, WoW, Matrix Online, Vangaurd, SWG, DDO, EVE, Fallen Earth, LoTRo, CoX, Champions Online, WAR, Darkfall, Mortal Online, Guild Wars, Rift, Tera, Aion, AoC, Gods and Heroes, DCUO, FF14, TSW, SWTOR, GW2, Wildstar, ESO, ArcheAge Waiting On: Nothing. Mmorpg's are dead.
MMO design is stuck in the 90s. Yes, it does bother me.
When EQ became available it was a big deal. My main criticism was the static spawn.
I spoke with programmers who informed me that the limitation upon MMO game design was hardware. Code can be written but the hardware can not process it in a manner needed. The hardware could not process fast enough to handle the code needed to generate dynamic NPCs. I could understand that. It would be a number of calculations to make to determine the movement and actions of an NPC and there are a lot of NPCs.
Here we are, nearly 20 years later and static NPCs is still the expected norm? What is the limitation now? I would say hardware has advanced immensely. Though the software needed is a known no one is writing it?
Whoever decides it is about time, and it is about time, to write the code will make a breakthrough in game design which will attract huge numbers to MMO games. Dynamic NPCs will offer much immersion, story, new challenges, and new things to discover.
Kissing static NPCs goodbye will be a delight. It will be fun.
It is my goal to fix this... one I work on every day. And really, what got me into doing game AI in the first place.
Don't give up hope! It's out there... and not as far away as you might think! ;-)
Well what storybricks promised for EQN was fantastic - I definitely had dreams of NPCs having their own virtual lives and tasks - but with death of EQN and death of storybricks - that's sort of gone for me.
I don't suppose you read this from a month or so back?
(Also, I wish the site would remove that "EQN AI Dev" tag on my account... )
President & Lead Designer of Intrinsic Algorithm, Author of Behavioral Mathematics for Game AI, Game AI consultant, GDC AI Summit advisor, co-founder of AIGPG | IntrinsicAlgorithm.com
President & Lead Designer of Intrinsic Algorithm, Author of Behavioral Mathematics for Game AI, Game AI consultant, GDC AI Summit advisor, co-founder of AIGPG | IntrinsicAlgorithm.com
Remember that game that pretended it was being made, I think it was EQ next. They told everybody that all npc's in their game would have actual AI and live and react to the world around them. I think it was emergent AI they said.
Boy that sure sounded neat!
Oh, I agree. Thankfully, it wasn't the AI that was the problem... it was the rest of the development.
President & Lead Designer of Intrinsic Algorithm, Author of Behavioral Mathematics for Game AI, Game AI consultant, GDC AI Summit advisor, co-founder of AIGPG | IntrinsicAlgorithm.com
Thanks for that link. I actually searched around for your post-mortem on EQN before but not well enough evidently.
I've been a big fan of your concepts on friendly and non-friendly NPC emergent behaviour for a long time. It was the part of EQN I was always most interested in playing with.
I've often thought of it as building an MMO with no players that has its own dynamic and interesting conflicts. Something that would be fun to just watch evolve... and then we put the players in to participate and influence it.
"Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots”
― Umberto Eco
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?” ― CD PROJEKT RED
Comments
That isn't to say that key npcs just shouldn't be available, for important things there could be several npcs that work in shifts.
"This may hurt a little, but it's something you'll get used to. Relax....."
NPC's would actually have lives and routines as you would see in games like Skyrim. I don't see that in MMO's, I just see static quest mannequins.
There's actually something devs could do - every once in a while change up the flavor. There are a bunch of NPCs that serve no purpose but flavor - have them move to a new town, get sick, die, be born, get fired, get hired, etc. Doesn't have to be a frequent thing - maybe once a quarter or so. Put some gossipers in that explain what happened.
The fact that this is a feature article for BDO is misleading, this is a general MMORPG issue and whomever posted it knows that. Its a sneaky form of advertising.
Still a worthwhile topic though.
I don't mind static, but I'd like to see more day night or even seasonal cycles.
Don't give up hope! It's out there... and not as far away as you might think! ;-)
President & Lead Designer of Intrinsic Algorithm,
Author of Behavioral Mathematics for Game AI,
Game AI consultant, GDC AI Summit advisor, co-founder of AIGPG | IntrinsicAlgorithm.com
That's spot on. Anyone who stops to consider why this NPC is simply standing there and not bartering with other people or making round through the city should be playing The Sims. NPC's are window dressing,;and BDO has some of the most amazing window dressing I've seen in an MMO. Guild Wars 2 held this banner for a while, not it belongs to BDO.
Don't hold your breath. Witcher 3 and Skyrim are off-line RPG's. An MMO is a completely different animal.
You have to admit though, it makes finding essential npcs easier as compared to them roaming
around the area all the time.
Oh and BTW, on a completely unrelated topic, what are you working on these days?
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
The reason why most modern MMORPGs don't do that is the same why they offer fewer levelling paths: greed. Creating a seemingly living world would require more time and thus money. People also buy the game if it's static and sucks compared to any good single player MMORPGs, if the marketing is right. So why should they bother?
Let's play Fallen Earth (blind, 300 episodes)
Let's play Guild Wars 2 (blind, 45 episodes)
Of course if you have a too long daycycle it becomes totally useless but with a 2 hours it isn't a big problem and worth it. The banks though usually seems to be magical anyways so that can be solved lore wise, they do need to be often as well as crafting stations. It is slightly inconveniant to not be able to buy something right this moment but having stuff you need in your bankand being forced to wait an hour to get it is more than that.
Also, there is the issue about vendortrash. The real reason you always need a vendor constantly when you play is all useless stuff people need to carry or they loose a rather large sum of income. But vendortrash doesn't really add anything to the game, not at all. Some say it is realistic but you honestly wouldn't pick up half digested boots, hekken tounges or rusty daggers if you found them yourself on the street. It is not realistic, people don't carry around 50 pounds of crap while moving in the wilderness or worse, fight in it. Just drop gold, gems and stuff someone actually want for something thanks.
Boy that sure sounded neat!
Playing: Smite, Marvel Heroes
Played: Nexus:Kingdom of the Winds, Everquest, DAoC, Everquest 2, WoW, Matrix Online, Vangaurd, SWG, DDO, EVE, Fallen Earth, LoTRo, CoX, Champions Online, WAR, Darkfall, Mortal Online, Guild Wars, Rift, Tera, Aion, AoC, Gods and Heroes, DCUO, FF14, TSW, SWTOR, GW2, Wildstar, ESO, ArcheAge
Waiting On: Nothing. Mmorpg's are dead.
MMO design is stuck in the 90s. Yes, it does bother me.
When EQ became available it was a big deal. My main criticism was the static spawn.
I spoke with programmers who informed me that the limitation upon MMO game design was hardware. Code can be written but the hardware can not process it in a manner needed. The hardware could not process fast enough to handle the code needed to generate dynamic NPCs. I could understand that. It would be a number of calculations to make to determine the movement and actions of an NPC and there are a lot of NPCs.
Here we are, nearly 20 years later and static NPCs is still the expected norm? What is the limitation now? I would say hardware has advanced immensely. Though the software needed is a known no one is writing it?
Whoever decides it is about time, and it is about time, to write the code will make a breakthrough in game design which will attract huge numbers to MMO games. Dynamic NPCs will offer much immersion, story, new challenges, and new things to discover.
Kissing static NPCs goodbye will be a delight. It will be fun.
http://intrinsicalgorithm.com/IAonAI/2016/03/on-everquest-next-and-ai-driven-mmos/
(Also, I wish the site would remove that "EQN AI Dev" tag on my account... )
President & Lead Designer of Intrinsic Algorithm,
Author of Behavioral Mathematics for Game AI,
Game AI consultant, GDC AI Summit advisor, co-founder of AIGPG | IntrinsicAlgorithm.com
President & Lead Designer of Intrinsic Algorithm,
Author of Behavioral Mathematics for Game AI,
Game AI consultant, GDC AI Summit advisor, co-founder of AIGPG | IntrinsicAlgorithm.com
http://intrinsicalgorithm.com/IAonAI/2016/03/on-everquest-next-and-ai-driven-mmos/
President & Lead Designer of Intrinsic Algorithm,
Author of Behavioral Mathematics for Game AI,
Game AI consultant, GDC AI Summit advisor, co-founder of AIGPG | IntrinsicAlgorithm.com
I've been a big fan of your concepts on friendly and non-friendly NPC emergent behaviour for a long time. It was the part of EQN I was always most interested in playing with.
I've often thought of it as building an MMO with no players that has its own dynamic and interesting conflicts. Something that would be fun to just watch evolve... and then we put the players in to participate and influence it.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED