NPC's Stop Leaving

Posted this in General, but I'll do it again here where it seems more appropriate.

Please take the schedule away from NPC's who offer stores. It's quite frustrating to not be able to have the use of a critical NPC because they are in transit from work to home, or at home (and we can now wake them up from their sleep, which does no good) or in transition from home to work. They only offer their store when they are at their store location and only then if it's during the actual day. The days are so short and NPC's move so slow they don't keep up with their own routine and then things get wonky.

The immersion part I get, the practicality isn't there. Please take away the scripting of travel to and from work away from NPC's who have stores or offer quests.

 

I just don't like how they start walking away after you start a conversation with them. It's rude and not helpful to someone with a laggy computer.

 

I've stopped playing because of this this evening. Who's silly idea was it? Immersion? Really? Annoyance.

I waited for 15 minutes to hand in a quest, then simply logged off instead.

I can guarantee most people that come to this game when it launches will not get why this is going on. This is a game where I can play for several days (in game time) without sleeping, why do NPC's go and sleep? In the real world we all sleep at the same time, so it's fine. In the game, I don't sleep...

I can just about put up with not knowing if I've completed a quest, or even not knowing who has quests for me, but not being able to check if I've completed a quest because the NPC isn't there is simply annoying and a good reason not to bother with the game.

 

That is a bit ridiculous. A possible fix could be to have another employee take over the night shift if they want to keep the immersion of the NPC schedule.

Personally, I don't think the schedule helps my own immersion, it would only be useful if the NPC had interesting interactions with others while they're in nonstandard (their purposeful) locations. But still, stores should be open and available for players.

 

Slowing the day/night cycle would sure help as well as having more than one shift for stores. Put the cycle on some odd hour rotation such that if we play at the same time every day we'll end up having the experience of both days and nights. As it stands the cycles are too quick and the shadow movement is just much too fast to enjoy.

 

The schedules are borked right now. In Soltown, Martin the general store doesn't open until noon. Plus, it doesn't help that at "dawn", the sun is over four hands high in the sky already.

 

I've posted on this elsewhere but, I think the issue isn't the schedule itself so much as it isn't working properly and there are no alternatives.
In Soltown as well as in Ardoris the NPC will be stood in their "spot" in their shop, but tell you they are asleep, or not open the shop interface.
Its especially frustrating in Soltown as a lot of us are stuck there during the land rush and its the central hub for low levels.

Observations:

• Annika is a bit antisocial and has a poor work ethic .She goes on and on about the long hours she puts in at the forge but the reality is she doesn't even leave the house every day. Some days she can't bear it, it seems.If she does go to work, she's usually out there from Morning until Dusk, but inexplicably half the time she just doens't venture out at all. However, if you have stalked her to her house and you go during appropriate times, she will (sometimes) offer to sell you fuels.
• Edwin is just an awkward guy. He comes down from bed and sits in the corner of the tailoring building in the morning but the shop window sometimes isn't available until late afternoon/dusk - if at all. He'll offer to teach you about tailoring but wont actually sell you anything, which was ironic considering that he gives you the exact amount of fuel you'd need to make what he asks you to make, and assuming you're just starting uot, you might succeed 1 out of 6, necessitating buying more fuel. Nope! Not opening shop til tomorrow. Maybe. But I'm going to sit down here anyway and stare at you mocking your inability to proceed.
• Martin is the most annoying of all. While Annika & Edwin are convenience merchants (for annika's higher buy prices, and for crafting fuels) Martin is the spell-reagent guy. And unless you want to fiddle your action bar to have a "CANT BUY REAGENTS" deck (I actually did this), you basically have to sit there and wait upon his pleasure. Half of the time he's stood there he wont sell to you and his window of opportunity is very small.

It can also be noted that if you do talk to one of the above outside normal business hours, and then stand around and wait, they will NEVER open their shop window. Most of the time. If they aren't in the mood. However, relogging fixes this. Its almost like you bothered them before the shop opened so they'll now ignore you until you leave. Hardly good customer service.

This combined with their paths getting messed up by many people interacting with them and the result is that the NPC schedules, instead of adding flavor and immersion to the game, create a frustration and a desire to 'never go back to Soltown' as soon as you are conveniently able to do so.

Suggestions for Improvement:

1. Add essential items (fuels, reagents) to the robot vendor so that player progression isn't interfered with.
2. Have vendors always open their shop window if you go track them down regardless of their schedule
3. Give schedules to quest NPCs or fluff NPCs but leave key vendors in fixed points, for everyone's sanity.

As a final thought, I can see what's trying to be achieved here, and I think its good.
A couple of years back I played a different, one-man-developer small indie game that handled this sort of npc interaction fantastically.
A few weeks into playing you knew all the npcs, where they lived and went, their love interests, their hopes and dreams, you could build favor with them and bring them gifts (though they only liked certain things) and doing so would unlock quests, deeper conversations and insight, new items to their shop, and each NPC had a progression that took sometimes months to get to where you were trusted friends with them. At that point you got better prices if they were a vendor, or they'd trust you with more critical missions, you'd unlock daily quests, that sort of thing. You really felt like you were part of the world and things evolved with them based on that. You could literally spend weeks becoming 'part of' that town. Even people of the "skip past dialogue" inclination would stop and do the 'favors' for the npcs - they were well worth doing, even if they mostly unlocked cosmetics, emotes, achievements, and things that didn't really do a great deal combat-wise. Each time you went to a new town or area in addition to all the normal things you could do in the new area you had a whole bunch of new folks to get to know. It was worth it to travel across the world to bring an item to an NPC who 'loved' it as opposed to vendortrashing it. And all of this was achieved without interfering with their core 'vendor' functionality or making them unusable half of the time. And if you didn't want to bother, well, you didn't have to, you could go about your business as normal buying and selling stuff.

Just food for thought -
The only reason why I know the NPCs names in Soltown is because I spent a lot of time waiting around for them, clicking on them, trying to get them to do what they were supposed to do, etc. Not because I feel immersed int he world.

 

That's another point, people want immersion with NPC's sleeping... but then we have a robot vendor...

 

@kaeshiva great feedback!

 

I agree with all you guys..immersion is a great thing, but it is broken if it's this bad. Making the game playable is higher priority. In a typical single player game, you can look at the clock and hit the wait button to get to the right time (which generally just teleports them where they need to go), or time passes slowly enough they can travel. But here you can just stand there forever (I've probably been standing in Soltown where Annika is supposed to be for over an hour, popping back to the game to check often, and she only ONE TIME appeared there for a few seconds, only long enough I could click her, get her to say she's not at the forge, and then she disappeared into thin air.

 

hmm I got to buy from her... what worked was: wait until day, talk to her (failed, said not at forge), then log out, then log back in and tell it to go to world map instead of soltown, then walk to her in her home, and she would sell to me.

 

Fully agree; immersion is good but for any casual player this issue is unacceptable.
If someone had only an hour or two after work/school etc. to play, and had to spend a lot of this time waiting for an NPC to arrive, I'd say they are likely to walk away from the game.

I can imagine the negative reviews on steam for this specific reason, it's just too frustrating.

Perhaps the NPCs could have longer working hours, so they are away less at least.