The Current State of NPC's

Discussion in 'Avatars & NPCs' started by Metlore, Aug 31, 2016.

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  1. Metlore

    Metlore Avatar

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    Wall of text incoming. Hope the formatting works out.

    Hey everyone. I've been trying to take a more active stance and not just lurk to help out the game more. I know things are in a very rough and unfinished state. The purpose of my post is more to voice my concerns as things are NOW, as well as possibly create some discussion for ideas. I completely understand that things will not always be as they are now. I would love to hear some feedback from @Lord British2 and @DarkStarr. My apologies if this has been covered already because I did not dig back through the forums.

    So, lets discuss some points about NPC's:

    1. Schedules. I love this. Is it a pain in my butt when I want to talk to them at night? Absolutely! I think it's worth it to make the game world feel more alive. I do have some problems with it though:
    a)Why does every NPC in most of the towns run to the inn to sleep? I love that some NPC's have houses above their shops, but everyone else apparently is fine living their life in a "hotel".
    b) When it is time for their schedule to change, they run like they're being fast forwarded to their next destination.
    c) We need more schedule activities. I'm sure this is coming later. Top of my list would be eating, arguing, going for walks, mourning (at towns with cemetaries), flirting, and celebrating New Britannian holidays. These few would go a long way to making the world feel more dynamic.
    d) Sleeping NPC's. Most of them should just groan or shrug and not wake up when I click on them. They should not go into their normal speech or constantly get in and out of bed as every player in the world clicks them.
    e) Assigned beds. Sometimes I will go into the guardhouse of Soltown (for example) and the beds will be occupied by children/blacksmith/town crier. The off duty guard will be asleep in the inn. Hmmmm....

    2. Speech. I love the idea of talking/typing to NPC's. We need to remember that the masses are used to Siri and Cortana. While SotA's voice recognition will never be on par with them (without a huge server backend), we can polish it out more. My problems with speech include:
    a) Quests and Responses: I'm sure this will continually get better but right now it is pretty rough to get them to talk about something they just mentioned to me without phrasing it 5 different ways.
    b) If I ask a guard or the town drunk where the bar is, I would expect them to give me rough direction. I would love for guards to be able to give rough directions to places in the city.
    c) I love that they don't sell to me at night but I hate that they say "here are my wares" but the window never pops up. Can we change their night speech.
    d) Voice acting for critical figures. I think voice acting for at least some of the major players would help immersion tremendously. It would also sure beat the oracle's metal mouth just clang clang'ing the whole time I'm talking to it.

    3. The friendly crosshair. The camera is already zoomed in on them while they make talking gestures at me. I don't think I need a giant crosshair on their chest so I know they have my focus. This drives me crazy. Crosshairs on enemies at least makes sense.

    4. Not fully NPC related but where are the Queen and King beds? It seems like everyone in the game, including couples, is completely satisfied with their single bed. Larger beds may be in the game, but I never see them. My wife and I will be playing this game together and it would be great to have some more bed options.

    These are just the things off the top of my head. I would really love for others to chime in with their complaints or ideas if only to maybe give the Dev's ideas. I am very excited to see the Q4 roadmap from Darkstarr for this reason.

    Thanks for reading!
     
    Last edited: Aug 31, 2016
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  2. Hornpipe

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    I second most of this.
     
  3. Andrew Silverston

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    I want to see NPCs hide from the rain...
     
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  4. Fazz

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    Well for 4. i can say there is a bed called a 'Fancy Bed' that has room for 2, but have not tested it with 2 players. But scale wise it is a 2 person bed.
     
  5. Lord_Darkmoon

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    I agree.

    NPCs definitely need a lot of love.
     
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