Npc behavior

It helps give reason to believe in our make believe world ...to make it seem real... When one happens upon an NPC that is otherwise occupied. Occupied with some chore of daily living. Miners are...mining. Guards are ...guarding. I like that. It is more than just conveenient that skels and kobolds are standing around for some reason. It is unrealistic. What are they doing there? I realize that I may have missed something in the lore of the realm. Just the ...or notwithstanding, I for one wish that they would be about their business. I agree that sometimes a creature doesn't have anything todo. Be that as it may, I look forward to the day when that is the exception. Let's talk abut bears and wolves. It would be nice if they behaved more like their namesakes. Bears eat dead things and berries. They are mostly solitary. They use scratching trees to announce thei presence to other beArs. Wolves. They hunt in packs. They hunt. In packs. They take down woodland animLs..and they eat them. They hang out in packs. They aren't just hanging around the woods evenly spaced with nothing to do but stand there and growl.

I realize that there is a lot to do. Perhaps this could be food for thought for development as time goes by.

 

Absolutely, NPCs need a purpose in the world to make the world feel alive and believable.

 

++ For Immersion , I agree

 

I don't know ....... I know tons of people in RL without a purpose in the world.

 

Many of us have been saying this from the start....others don't find it as important.

 

Im all for NPC's to have schedules to do tasks (labouring/farming, selling items, maybe even killing thing), I'd love them to disappear off to bed at night (although I'm not quite sure where they would live due to player housing........ i'd rather NPC housing being added into the world rather than making it an offline feature only). I don't think whatever they do should have a great impact on the player economy.......I believe that this would be far to complicated in the time-scales to produce something greater than a very predictable system.

 

If what NPCs do does not contribute to the economy then how does the economy work in SP offline mode?

 

Thats a great question. In the online mode (even single player) you will thousands of people interacting and being part of the economy which includes both rational and irrational behaviour over resources (how things are collected, sold, crafted etc etc). In single player offline this luxury of a real driven economy will not exist, which then begs the question can it exist? can it even be simulated? or will single player offline by more of a 'flat' two dimensional economy.

I know that the answer everyone wants is that it will be fully simulated, however how can you realistically simulate a full economy from how things are gathered, produced and sold. The NPC buying and selling part is easy (more you sell of a good the less it will be worth), but then is that a true price or just a price derived off that vendor because he has 'x' number of an item.....how many of those 'x' items actually exist, where do they come from, how do you determine and factor the irrational behaviour.......after all of that how does the economy balance itself? My personal view is that a true simulated economy in a game like this with so many items and possibilities is likely to be very difficult to achieve. This is one of the reasons why I would never ever play the offline mode.

 

I think they should have an affect on the economy.

This will allow the developers some control on facets of the economy that can get skewed by player driven demands...for instance some armor or what not being the most sought after item for pvp because it is cheap which artificially creates a demand on said items. It isn't a realistic demand in an overall game focus, and could be curtailed in with npc's trading as well.

This also allows the devs to nudge and direct to a point the economy a bit better then letting players run amok.

 

If I understood the dev's comments coreectly, basically NPCs will set a high bar for what common goods can be sold in the online economies. (Common goods would be whatever is or ally stocked by a vend or. For example an iron sword would be common, but a jewelled sword may not be. The jewelled sword can be sold to the vendor for a price determined by the dev's, and resold for a markup based on this predetermined price. But it's influence on the player marketplace because it's not something normally stocked by the vendor so it never replenishes.) so for an iron sword, the vendor may sell it for 100 gold. The player could sell it for cheaper than that. Or he could meet the high water mark set by the vendor. But if it's priced higher, it's not likely to sell. So the dev's have set what is essentially a highest price for the item.