Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Living NPC
nerovergil
Member UncommonPosts: 680
Most MMOs that coming up has a beautiful world. Even the world is not bad. Look at Black desert online, witcher 3, etc.
However the NPC is very dull. With limited customization of face, all npc looks the same, it kills immersion.
NPC also has no life. in BDO, NPC will perform same animation over and over again. In the witcher 3, u cant have deep relationship with most of the npc (only selected few that u can romance.)
We want a living breathing world in an mmorpg, not just the world, but the people inhabit there. NPC should act more intelligently (like skyrim where npc walking around and has text option to futher the relation)
However the NPC is very dull. With limited customization of face, all npc looks the same, it kills immersion.
NPC also has no life. in BDO, NPC will perform same animation over and over again. In the witcher 3, u cant have deep relationship with most of the npc (only selected few that u can romance.)
We want a living breathing world in an mmorpg, not just the world, but the people inhabit there. NPC should act more intelligently (like skyrim where npc walking around and has text option to futher the relation)
Comments
But yeah, i get my mmo living npc fix from Guild Wars 2.
Skyrim is also single player game *shakes fist*
While i like too see move living NPC in RPG , i don't like to see more living NPC in MMORPG.
In my opinion , MMORPG should have less to no NPC . We should have GMs role as officers to support player instead of living NPC .
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
it was kinda good. but gw2 has a little face customization. making all the npc looks kinda the same.
i remember i was in the cemetery when a female asking my help. she was a ghost, but before i know it was fun
as for dynamic NPCs and similar. I can't imagine the pain that the devs would have to hear if players needed to wait for a day/night cycle for an NPC to wake up and unlock their house to turn in a quest/favor.
Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent.
"At one point technology meant making tech that could get to the moon, now it means making tech that could get you a taxi."
Npc's are there so you dont have to interact with players, have less features/gameplay because with just a few clicks a npc provides you what you need, and force a "you are the hero/saviour" story line on you.
Instead of NPC reputation we should have meaningfull reasons why we like and dislike a cetrain group of players, we want to trade our goods with 1 player but from another we wont even accept/trust his stuff if he would give it for free, and by meaningfull I dont mean "choose a faction" before creating your character, that is again easying it up and taking away from gameplay. Even lore in current games is used not to have a cool story but to make shallow game mechanics have some sort of reason in the world to justify trash content.
NPC's should mostly if not completely dissapear and players should be able to take over their job and than put their focus on creature/monster AI, the best AI I have seen so far from mobs was in Darkfall which is not that spectacular at all the mobs just run away from you at low health while trying to run into other mobs so you aggro them aswell and sidestep to avoid your skillshots but most games even "tripple a" games cannot even pull that off yet.
Some of you people have no clue what a mmorpg is or should be.
I see nonsense about don't want any npc's to no mobs ,they want all GM's???lmao seriously?
How can you expect to FILL out a living world with all real players,you want real players to play the mobs,real players to sit there at some store front 24/7?You want real players to give quests and rewards?
Ok yeah sure,i'll duo box,give myself a quest and the reward is .....10 gazillion gold,the best most shiny armor and sword,well nm you get the drift.
I am with the OP,the games most certainly are half assed,we need more AI,more scripts and more so a living world.Yes living for a npc is just scripts but we can do MUCH better.We could actually see the npc perhaps go home at night and come back to the store in the day time.We could see npc's go out in the wilderness and just like us ,hunt down some animals perhaps for furs/tusks or whatever.Then they wander back to town and start crafting themselves.
However for nominal npc's,just those we usually see doing simple repeated scripts,they should disappear,only real players carry out the filler.If some girl is playing with her dog as filler,then i want her to actually have a meaningful role/script within the game,otherwise forget it.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Geesh i still remember and still see to this day ,developers trying to remove auction houses and still MANY games do not have housing systems...cough ahem Wow.
Developers are selling us half ass crap,that was ok 15-20 years ago because the industry was still learning and growing,now devs have all the tools and knowledge they need but trying to sell us aged old crap.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Cause by "living" it mean impossible for "enemies" too . Do you expect few thousands of NPC to be "living" ?
"all GM's???lmao seriously" .
Yes! seriously , you only need few GM (less than 10 and no full time) to run some key parts , not for all . Do you though about hire few hundreds GMs full time?
We talk about MMORPG ?
We have 2 world, real world and fantasy world (mmorpg). I want a healthy mmorpg that can go well with real world. We earn money (work) in real world and have fun in mmorpg.
In terms of taking that to a next level i'm not really aware of a MMO doing that. Star Citizen for example is putting a lot of effort into stuff like subsumption, that is having this NPC's having their own routines, walk around, talk to each other and all of that. So making that way allows you to not having to script X npc to have X route or behavior, and with that, the NPC's can feel rather legit; interested to see what comes out of that.
CoH was nice in this department too, and Cryptic brought some of that over to CO (though the scripting towards players can easily fooled, I have a low-level hero just for banking, they always talk to him about the Academy, since that's the only thing that character finished
Anyways, for living NPCs I only can repeat myself: TSW. Follow them on twitter, you can even talk with them... anwers are fairly rare, because they're busy - at least lore-wise. In practice, answers are rare, they can't simply just babble all along, since their posts and tweets are part of the official lore (Josh is handling all of them, and even after he resigned as lead writer of the game, he's still the writer of the twitterverse).
I.e. some NPC walked down to the docks, picked up wodden crates and carried them up the street and stacked them infront of his house. When all the crates were carried over he went on to do something else.
Eventually in the evening he went into his house, went to bed and slept. It was very curious to watch what all the people were doing.
I totally loved that and something like this was new to me back then.
_______________________________
One thing that I'd really like to address in this game is the idea of how MMO spawns work.
In general you go to an area with a predictable spawn. It spawns the same enemies into the same area over and over and over.
You go in to fight them and they have a predictable "aggro range" you know that if you stand a certain distance from them that you will only provoke ones within a certain range when you attack.
Because of the predictable spawns that replenish at about the same rate you kill them and the predictable aggro distances it is possible to "farm" monsters. In other words go to an area with the kind of NPCs you want to kill and pull manageable amounts then run through your rotations to kill them. Overconfidence or NPCs spawning on top of you aside, you should never really have to worry about being challenged or unpredictability.
Addressing Aggro Range
When playing a game such a Skyrim the aggro range is quite large. If you come in as a warrior cleaving your way through opponents or a mage blasting your way through them, you'll not only tick off everything in the room, but everything a room or two over as soon as they hear the sound of combat. In other words aggro range is similar to the range at which sound travels, and any loud noise will provoke it, or at least cause the enemies to begin searching for the hidden opponent that just shot their friend.
So major NPC spawns will need to be approached with caution, and possibly a group. If you go charging into the goblin fortress you will be taking on all the goblins in earshot of the commotion you are causing. Not just the ones within 20 feet of you.
Spawns Work Differently
Escalations: As described in another topic, NPC spawns will not be constant but will move into an area and escalate over time, with negative impacts for the surrounding areas. So the goblin spawn plaguing your village to the west one day may be cleared out the next day. And the clear field to the east may see a dragon or a coven of vampires take up residence. Beyond these spawns that are tied to specific areas there will be a few other kinds of NPC spawns.
Dungeons: Every once in awhile you may find a portal to an extraplanar holdout of some various threat. The portal will allow a limited number of players to enter and face the challenges within. The dungeon will have a randomized layout filled with unknown defenders and various puzzles, monsters, and a main challenge. The main challenge is what most MMO's would call the main-boss, and sometimes it will come in the form of some boss level creature such as a dragon. Other times you may be able to bypass the boss if you have players with the proper skills such as lock-picking, diplomacy, or climbing.
Roaming-NPCS: The most common roaming NPCs will be low-threat or even harmless creatures. A pack of deer, a herd of Bison, your occasional wolf-pack etc. These creatures will move throughout the world avoiding most humanoid creatures. There will however be some hostile roaming-spawns such as nomadic raiders, wargs, or goblin raiders. These will only be deterred by large fortifications and will actually be drawn to small farms, work camps, or players. So it will be important to get defenders to protect your assets and to be alert when out exploring the world. Most roaming NPCs will offer good solo-friendly content but you'll need to pay attention if you don't want to end up in over your head.