Renown and Popularity

I was thinking of interactions of the NPC's and wondering whether or not people will be able to be renowned throughtout the SOTA world.
For example someone goes through the whole game and solo's every boss eventually defeating everything the game ahs to offer; i think the NPC's will have heard about this person if it were reality. Gone should be the times in MMO's where you clear a boss for a guard and then on talking to him again he has nothing to say to you. The villagers also should come under scrutiny, are they so simple that they do not hear from other towns and cities the news that a hero has defeated a mighty bandit leader, or killed a powerful monster.
Just adding some sayings from villagers and guards, maybe even travellers giving the awe that we as players have deserved would be sufficient.
In hindsight i would say that this would be very difficult in an MMO, what with crowded feeding and grinding grounds around. But in some singleplayer games, for instance Skyrim, once you have completed a quest branch or become well known to villagers they comment to you as you pass. Or perhaps in Mass Effect where NPC's sometimes look in awe at Shephard as you pass.
This could even rebound onto PVP, if you kill players then travellers will be wary of your presence, or they will have heard of you as a murderer and try to keep their children away.
Perhaps in later versions, guilds should be under this scrutiny as well. Powerful guilds should be quoted from NPC's to players, and perhaps even other NPC's.
The effects of this could be great, a high level person who needs help with a quest could hear about someone who has killed the boss that they are attempting to defeat, thus giving them a lead on who to ask for directions. Or for someone looking for a guild, hey could speak to NPC's asking for the best guild for a veteran/ low level player and the NPC would answer to the best of their ability.

Please tell me if this is to difficult to code, or comment if you have any counter ideas or arguments. Any input welcome.

 

I think it would be awesome if people came to know your character. Perhaps you have forged a legendary blade and they know you as an excellent blacksmith...or you are an excellent mage and they may ask you for advice or an autograph?

This would really be cool if they could add that kind of depth to the game...just as offline gaming has awesome features we rarely see in an online game..this game could be even more epic if they were able to make things like this happen.

 

Well we know the game keeps track of most things we do including interactions with NPC to build how they respond to us. So I think it wouldn't be hard to add in, if it isn't already in that they hear about things we do in-game.

 

I think they are planning some of this but it's unclear how complex the system is. I had proposed an NPC social graph and posted an example of how a conversation using that system would look like, talking about other players and what they've done or are up to.

But it has been said that NPCs will learn your name and will set various flags about their attitude toward you. This could be based on what you've said or done to them and make them friendly or hostile to you and ties into the virtue system. Some (or all) NPCs are virtue-sensitive after all.

 

I seem to recall a similar discussion awhile back though it hasn't been a hot topic. I would agree that depending how much is tracked that this wouldn't necessarily be terribly difficult to do. The caveat here I think is that most of the dialogue along these lines would be pretty generic and adding all the possible dialogue could be very time consuming.

Someone should try to find previous posts on the subject I'm pretty sure there were some good ideas in there.

 

True. They could always crowd source these types of generic responses. I'm sure the community here could come up with a 1000 responses pretty quickly. It'll just require work on their end to copy it into the dialog trees for every NPC or depending on how their trees work, it could be simpler than that if generic dialog is reused.

 

I think a slightly more interesting aspect of the idea is how would NPCs know who to talk about. On the one hand they can talk about anyone.. but I think it'd be more interesting if say.. 70% of the time they talk about people you're more likely to meet. ie friends of friends.. locals etc.

 

Very good point. As NPCs are aware of who is around them, they can make their choice of who to talk to based on your social graph. So when they do that lookup of the people they know, they could cross reference it with someone in your social graph and pick one of those.

You could extend this idea to even the topics they talk about with knowledge graphs. They do a look up of keywords and cross reference that with your known keywords and talk about that subject. And if that subject references any players, it would reuse the same cross referencing of social graphs to pick those in their conversation.

It could even be about your quests if they know about it. They could talk about the next part of your quest and even refer to other NPCs or places that could lead you in the right direction, simply by overhearing them -- which could be achieved if you talked to them as well. And if some players have already completed it, they could even say that player did and that could be a hint to talk to that person if you needed help. Especially if that person was in your social graph as well.

 

Maybe even, to further this more, you could ask them about yourself and see if they have heard of you.

 

Makes me wonder if some people already have a little more "renown and popularity?"

 

I wouldn't be at all put off if the folks in the top tiers (Baron+ of which I am current not part of I might add) were already known.

I would limit any such renown for players to active accounts though. If someone hasn't logged in in several weeks (or more) then there isn't much point in NPCs talking about them. Or perhaps the NPC would add something like 'but nobody's seen them around for a very long time' or something likewise appropriate.

That brings up an interesting thought.. of the world retaining its history by remembering those characters who made a name for themselves. The hard part I should think would be distinguishing that character from others. Why are they memorable? Ooooo.. having a thought pertaining rankings.

So let's say there's a ranking for total value of collectable antiques.. a character could be remembered as a famous antique collector. Basically anything players can compete in is something they could be remembered for by NPCs even after they've stopped playing or stopped competing in a particular area.

 

I do believe the highest tiers will be weaved into the story, according to what was last said about that here.
RG:
Let me mention something there about cities and towns and villages. One of the other things that Tracy and I are getting excited about is that for the people that are at our Duke levels, our highest levels of participation. First of all, I'm getting to know some of these people personally other than just an email address. I'm actually really, we have some really cool people that you'll all get to know, if some of you aren't might even be on right now actually already that are with us at that Duke level.
But one of the things we're trying to do is, trying to weave a lot of those characters into the story. And so since we're going to have on that main map 20-40 cities and towns, depending on what you call a city, town, or village, the, that gives us the opportunity to really showcase some of you as key players.

I like the idea about players who have amassed large collections of antiques and rares. I think Richard would be very big on that, being a collector himself.

I also think that it would be really neat if NPCs did in fact ask about players who have been absent in the game. Imagine if you've hit up a good relationship with an NPC and he knows about you and has flagged you internally as a friend. Perhaps he could ask you about your friends so he can learn about them, or he could just casually ask about a friend from your social graph if he's met them at any time before, or his NPC friends have mentioned him and shared whatever knowledge about him. That would make conversations so much more immersive and personal.

I think your renown / popularity idea could fit very well with the social graph idea.

 

Oooo of they could pull that off that's be pretty interesting.. NPCs asking about mutual friends & aquaintences or guilds. That would be something. I would only worry about how they would process your response to those questions. I'm not sure the conversation system as is could handle that very well. I don't think it's intended as a full fledged AI.. but that sure would be neat.

 

I like the ideas coming from this thread. Having NPC's have access to our social connections could be interesting.

 

Hmmm, on reading these i have had another idea:
what if they were watching us walk around and converse. Maybe not all of us, perhaps only the people who were deemed as "renowned or famous". But if they see you talking or trading to someone then they may say "ah yes, i saw *username* talking to *username* in the town centre two days ago" this would give an image of where they are, for instance if you were trying to find someone famoous and an NPC said they were in the town not long ago, you might find it worthwhile to track down more people.
Perhaps talking to the guards at the gate to see if he's seen anyone entering or leaving, either they know or they direct you to another guard who was on duty earlier.
However i think that they should keep strict control of this, so that the stories from one end of the land moves with NPC's and not quicker than humanly possible. If someone defeats a boss in the far South, the far North are not going to realise until quite a log time afterwards.
Keep the ideas going guys, this is awesome

 

The idea reminds me a lot of Fable. The more bosses you killed, the more people knew who you are and depending on your reputation of being good or evil was the deciding factor of how exactly they responded to you.

The only problem I see in multiplayer is that it would get really annoying to have NPCs responding to people constantly or congratulating them on defeating the same boss you just defeated yourself.

 

That is the beauty of ealry alpha's: they could, if they choose to, carefully balance it over the course of a few patches until you get the right amount of celebration over other stuff.
Anyway it would most likely only come up if you choose to ask about it: perhaps say to the NPC "heard any big news" or "hear of any adventurers lately"

 

Hmm if we had some scales that somehow described the char

• honesty ----*------ dishonest
• Crafting skill ----*-----
• Violent ---*------

And then for each town a grade how well-known you are, and another how well-know you is in the world.

(World+Local)*(your grade in something ) = a number that tells the npc what he knows about you. (-100 to +100 or so)

Duke+ could have a large bonus in World rating, meaning they would be more famous and infamous

And if you wear a disguise your rating is halved at least (-50 to +50 or so)

 

Well we know some (or even all) NPCs might be virtue-sensitive so that could play into it. And with maker's mark on crafted items and the way player crafted items are put into the loot tables and sold by NPC vendors, they could gauge how popular you are as a crafter. Violence could tie to virtues or some other metric for how many kills or murders you've committed.

Plus, with my NPC social and knowledge graphs idea, NPCs could spread knowledge about you to other NPCs and players.

 

Kent McConaughey! The feared PK of Lake Superior!!!!