NPC reactions to Reputation and RP

Greetings,

I hope to interact with NPC's in a little more immersive way that actually offers small rewards for RP.

For instance, avatars would be judged by their reputations and what they are wearing at that moment of interaction. Naked avatars would be shunned and avoided of by NPC vendors (except for a clothing vendor who would pity them regardless), where as a craftsman avatar with fine clothes and a cloak may even get a small discount of 1%, perhaps an additional 1% for starting NPC interaction with a greeting such as "Good evening, Gwen; please show me what you have for sale". City guards reacting more positively if you have no weapon armed and dressed appropriately, etc. This would surely add immersion to the whole SotA world.

I assume all quests will affect character reputations, perhaps you will be favored by a certain town for a quest line that you have finished, and be welcomed and offered a very small discount in vendors, inns and taverns in that town. From what I understand, this is the goal; I just wanted to reiterate how cool it is.

I think such small rewards for players who pay attention to minor RP elements is a great way to encourage immersion. After all, aren't you more likely to get a little discount or a little favor in RL for those kind of small act of kindness, or appropriate behavior. Since we have intelligent textual conversation, I think it sets a great potential for such a system.

 

I would really like to see this as well. Unfortunately this stuff takes time to make sure it is in game. I hope they decide this is an important feature.

 

I'd love to see RP affect RP. Basically give a town some kind of culture score which increases by people eating food, ordering drinks, crafting, whatever else. And have this be a major factor in opening up new lots in a town for expansion.

 

I like this idea. Cool!

 

As someone who is really into the role playing aspect of the game, I find this idea very appealing. But as rune_74 pointed out, this would require a lot of extra work on the part of their small programming staff. Perhaps after combat, magic, and crafting have been fine-tuned a bit (after R 1-4), they can go back and work on this...

 

This type of thing isn't new to Ultima games really. I don't know about the clothing talk so much, but people telling you different things based on your Karma level is something most of us have experienced in Ultima's before. If you have a better reputation, people are more likely to tell you certain information when asked! Gab's right though, this would take some extra time and effort on the part of the programmers and hope its something they can include in this game; at least to some extent.

 

The sad thing is, it shouldn't be after all those things because it is a staple of single player rpgs and rpg's in general. Which this game is supposed to be as well according to the developers. And no, this shouldn't be just for the persistent world, it should also be for the storyline etc.

 

It may not take as much time as you might expect but it really depends on how such a feature is designed. Creating the dialogue could potentially take longer than the code which, for all we know may only need minor adjustments. One might expect that NPCs reacting to reputation would already be in the conversation design.

Recall also that NPCs will be able to call upon dialogue packages. Such as common dialogue shared by all NPCs in a town or region.

I would probably set up reputation something like this: Global, regional/town, & individual fame and any faction modifiers (ie town guards). Ultimately it boils down to how individuals feel about the PC.. which is influenced by how well known the PC's actions are on the regional and global scales. It basically comes down to putting numbers through a simple equation where the result is the individual's attitude toward the PC after being modified by global and regional reputation and faction modifers.

You then set up a basic conversation package for responses within a certain range of attitudes that all NPCs can access.

You could.. in theory do something similar with clothes. I was originally thinking that you could have every wearable item have a flag associated with it to indicate say what social class it belonged to.. but it would be simpler to just take the market value of the item(s) in question which may in turn be modified by the condition it's in (assuming a 'soft item' which can be damaged or worn out).

It would all be pretty generic but it's doable and would only require a couple of simple checks during conversations.

 

I agree that this should be done at the same time as everything else, but the reality is, considering the size of their programming staff, this may not exactly be high on their list of priorities...

 

Hmmm shouldn't it be though? It is a single player game as well...if the npc don't react to you at all it seems a pretty shallow single player game, which won't do well.

 

Sure, they'll react to you, but their responses might be pretty limited (as has been the case in some of the more mediocre RPGs I've played over the years). Hopefully, the developers will take note of this thread

 

^ Its really hard to tell what may end up in the single player game and the multi-player one in regards to this. I don't see them avoiding that altogether with Garriott at the helm. How could LB allow an Ultima style RPG to be released with NPC's that respond like droids from Star Wars? I just don't see it happening. Then again, I may be setting myself up for a disappointment. lol, hard to say yet.

 

Imagine ultima 7 if it didn't have interesting NPC's....geez. Housing smousing, I want interesting npcs.

 

Interesting NPCs, especially the Avatar's Companions, were what made the original Ultima series really enjoyable to me. You grew to really care about your Companions and when one of them died, you really felt the loss...

 

Hah, I know...god the memories. Even in U4 you thought about them. I stressed this a lot in the KS campaign.

 

I'm sure RG is well aware of this and will make sure we have memorable replacements for the "old gang"

 

^ Its true and part of what made the characters and story so immersive! If Iolo never talked to you as a friend, or the farmer in Britannia never liked you enough to give you the information you needed to complete your quest, we wouldn't have had the novel like quality experience in these RPG's. Quality character and NPC interaction is something LB clearly knows all about, which is why I'm confident we'll see that come to fruition somehow.

 

The conversation system as it is currently already reacts to reputation and similar flags.

I'm hoping to get NPCs the ability to react to nudity (well, skivvies, we don't do nudity) in R2, but no promises

 

Lum: Glad to hear that confirmed

 

Thank you!

Some ideas (you've probably already had) for reactions to nudity:

1) No shirt, no shoes no service! (Vendors refuse to deal with you and ask you to leave their fine establishment)
2) No quest.
3) Bad information (Oh yeah, I know where you can find magic, in the next town over. Look for so and so (someone that will be overly offended by your dress.))
4) No entrance. (You can dress that way if you want to, but you're not going through that door until you get some clothes on.)
5) Detained. (Guards say: You look suspicious and delay or even detain your character)

Likewise, I'd really love to see many of the above condition for sheathed weapons inside towns.