Intelligent NPC and single player economy

I just read an article about the upcoming RPG Kingdom Come: Deliverance. The game will feature NPCs with schedules but they won't just get up in the morning, walk to the shops, work, go the pub and then go home to bed. They will learn.
There is an example given: If an NPC gets beaten up in the pub because of some argument, he won't go there anymore and instead visit some friends for a game of dice.

Another feature of Kingdom Come is that trade routes can be disrupted. If a merchant, wanting to deliver goods to a city, is killed, then those goods won't be available in this city. Traders who still have a small amount of the goods the merchant wanted to deliver will then raise their prices.

I think that this does sound very good! I could imagine something like this for SotA, too. The possibilites would be endless and it would create a world that would feel much more alive!

Of course this would mean that NPCs would need to be very intelligent and a special single player economy would have to be created. But if a game like Kingdom Come with a budget smaller than SotA's can manage this, then SotA can manage this, too. And I really think that this is as important as the player driven economy because half of the players are here for the story and single player game, like Richard Garriott said.

 

I agree it sounds awesome...in theory.
you said upcoming so I assume they have not delivered yet, this is just me being pessimistic I would love to see more of this in SotA!

another thing I assumed is that it was player input that made the NPC not go to the pub wich is where I start to see problems

 

Sounds interesting.

For me the more 'intelligent' the NPCs are, the better. So the more realistic their schedules can be, the better. I'd like to see them doing things like going fishing in their 'off hours' and especially heading to the bar in the evenings.

There needs to be a way to handle this seamlessly for players or at least make it super obvious e.g. a 'Closed' sign on the weapons merchant's doors when he is at the pub or off fishing.

I would like to see them sleeping at night too.

BUT is this going to sit well with the MMO players who will expect 24/7 access to the poor merchants? Probably not. Although I guess they could go buy/sell from the player vendors while the NPC vendors are off duty.

 

There is not much point in making them more intelligent if they are as interesting as a sheep. I mean, it's nice to move them back and forth and have them on a schedule...but if they don't really mean anything or stand out at all why bother?

I can't honestly remember much about ANY of the NPC's.

 

Yes, but none of them have their proper 3D models done yet (I hope!) and I imagine that will make a big difference to relating to them as unique individuals.

Also I hope their background/story/expressions improve quite a bit.

I think some kind of a box with a description of the character would be good, perhaps as per The Witcher 3 you get an entry in a book with each new character you talk to (or get told about).

 

I'm doing my part to try and create memorable dialogue.

 

I'm not sure what they are doing with the models to be honest.

 

They haven't touched the male/female models in some time. I thought we were getting more facial sliders and customization in the future. For me the big problem is that every guard in the whole game is wearing the same outfit. Every peasant in the game is wearing the same peasant. There are no clothing or armor varieties.

When all the filler NPCs have unique and interesting dialogue, and they look different, you'll remember them.

 

I hope that you are right and we will get unique looking NPCs. I also hope that they are detailed enough (with facial expressions and animations) that they match the descriptions of the NPCs in the older Ultimas.

 

I don't really see the point of using expressions and the like in a game without speech. If I'm reading the text, I am NOT looking at their face. End of story. If you have a text based interaction system, then you need text based descriptions of their demeanor, actions and expressions too, because programming it into them visually is a waste of time. I cannot read and watch them at the same time.

 

Richard apparently hates text descriptions in dialogue and files a bug report if he sees it in dialogue to have it removed.

He wants the game to visually display everything, even though they don't really have the NPC animations and facial expressions necessary.

 

Hmm, do you know if this is planned? Facial expressions and complex animations for NPCs?

 

I think it is unlikely given their budget and technology. They don't have facial mo-cap studio and they don't have a lot of animators on staff.

That is why I was surprised to see Richard remove descriptions from dialogue.

 

I was aware of this from an old thread, but it won't stop me from poo-pooing it every chance I get. I love Richard and it's his game, but he's capable of making bad decisions and this is one of them. It's a TERRIBLE idea not to use text based descriptions in a game that is largely text based. I spend more time staring at that chat box, reading huge lines of dialogue than anything else. Even if they could get realistic animations in the game (I'm pretty darn certain they won't) it would be worthless, because I can't watch the guy and read his mountain of text at the same time.

This game (IMNSHO) NEEDS text descriptions of character actions.

 

I'm with you on that. Perhaps @RichardGarriott can weigh in on his reasoning.

 

He didn't the last time we tried that.

 

People are probably abusing the batsignal, contacting him over every little thing.

 

This concerns me because the game is never going to visually display such activities. It is fantasy land talk from Richard. Hence why text descriptions are necessary and can help immersion.

 

Well, I'm sure when you do it he will listen

 

Sadly that's probably not the case and I don't want to ping him more than necessary. I only tagged him in this thread because it will affect my future dialogue submissions, so it is particularly relevant for me to get an answer.