NPC's

[Thorbjorn]

This was an idea i got after seeing this thread: http://oortonline.com/forums/topic/ways-to-spend-earned-gold/

The thought was that if all the players in a city plays from 4 pm to 6 pm they will look a bit dead the other 22 hours.

So my idea is that you could get NPC’s to move into houses if you wanted. To make them move in you need to mark the house as habitable by fx. placing a special sign or block in the house.

When an NPC has moved into your house he will live their and wander a bit around sometimes going out of the house.

This way we could get a lot of life in the cities even if it only was a few players who made it.

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An expansion to this idea could be that players could “program” the NPC’s defining:

– What they say. The players could make sentence and words the NPC’s would say when you try to talk with them.

– Where they walk. The players could decide if they should be mostly inside or outside the house. This way creating more life on the streets if the players want that.

– Which room they live in. The players could link the NPC’s to certain block (maybe the ones calling them) so they would be more or less in these rooms

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Another expansion to this idea is as mentioned in: http://oortonline.com/forums/topic/ways-to-spend-earned-gold/
The NPC’s could be payed to be shopkeepers, bridge-guards (the ones taking toll from you) and farmers.

They could also be: Living quest-boards, Guards to stop invaders or your story teller (basically somewhere to store your books)

A last thing i think could be awesome would be a way to call NPC’s to your town/village/castle which could give away low-level quests which are not player made. This way if you wanted it you could make some quest givers which maybe could help the low level players. It would also help to make the game more RPG-like.

An important thing which need to be remembered about all these NPC’s is that they are player called/made which puts the decision of making giant cities into the players hands.

So what do you guys think any other ideas i am open for constructive criticism.

[Kuma]

First I don’t think the servers will ever be empty if it’ll be the hit we think^^ Especially because players from all over the planet play it already.
But nonetheless I like the idea of having npcs you can assign tasks like questmaster, story teller etc.

[Thorbjorn]

What i meant with empty was if a small guild of lets say of 6 people decided to make an EPIC town and after that when they look at it it really needs some inhabitants that doesn’t go on adventure all the time then they could get a few NPC’s to move in 🙂

[Kuma]

Ok if you say it like that I definitely agree^^

[Birne]

Hmm, when I think about the vendors for hire (which I know from Ultima Online, which was about 16 years+ ago ^^) I can not remember how they exactly worked, but they were great, cuz in Ultima Online (short UO) every guy in the world exept from post and bank workers and some guards and vendors were players … even the lumberjacks, colectors for herbs for mages and way patrols (and highwaymen 😉 ). Somehow retroversive it feels a bit like a real MMO and WoW, Guild Wars and Wildstar then just a better Diablo ;D

But I also remember the Vendors and NPCs of Terraria. Do you know them? If not: Here for short: If you build a house or new living room in Terraria, a NPC can live there. If you save a vendor from the goblins and have a free room, he lives there and offers you and your friend his services. Sometimes NPCs come out of nowere and ask to live at your place. If you have some NPCs in houses and homes you can set rooms for them in which they then move. There were many different NPCs like different venors, artificer, archemist, technican, a healer, … Somehow I wish there will be a simillar system in Oort … Not only by renting, but also by helping/saving someone you can get new people for your houses … may be they even leave you some coins at the end of a day if they are not disturbed ;D

[Azraile]

I would like to see NPCs that have a growing and developing civilization, increasing technology over time, along with wealth and the like accelerated by PC interaction.

They will build and grow cities on there own…. but if invited into a lot claimed by PC’s they will only take up residence where an area is set aside for them.

This could be done two ways:

1 – Becons that mark off an area as a home/shop/field and the like. When the NPC population has homless people wondering around, or adults living with there parents (lol). They will move into the buildings in these spots you build for them and not change them any. This way you build what ever you want.

2 – Some kinda set pice that marks out an area for a building size, so you know how much room it will use, and you can plan your city around it. It will remain an empty lot till an NPC is free to take up residence, they will then start building there with what ever resources are available to them.

These two methods would allow NPCs to integrate with PC villages and still allow PCs to set up the city how ever they like with out hampering the NPCs.

[Patfor333]

I really hope there are no NPCs in the game as described. For me it would ruin the immersion, and I find player to player interaction much more valuable than this sort of interaction. I think it would be great if every time you needed to buy something, you had to go to another human being, or if you needed a guard, you’d need a real player. This would make the community stronger, and while towns would be less populated, it would bring people closer. There would be trade between towns rather than a mindless tool, there would be a growing player economy and all money spent would go to humans rather than thrown away to a robot, and this would lead to greater things like huge establishments of cities, trade, and jobs. You couldn’t hide out in a lonely town filled with empty people whose only use is to sell an item, guard a house, or give a “quest”. How would questing work in this game? You wouldn’t be able to generate quests other than “bring me this” or “kill this”. “Quests” in this game without these kind of NPCs would be quests other people gave you like, “Guard me on my way to town, the pay is good.” However, tamable animals could fulfill some of your desires as NPCs, unable to trade but willing to defend you, carry your items, and just be a welcomed member of your home.

Make these sort of NPCs and someday you’ll be sitting around shouting, “They took our jobs!”

[breacher-pete]

well stated patfor!

[Havok40k]

Npc’s simply suppliment player population and interactions, they dont replace them. If you dont like them, dont use them. A well balanced npc set only offers only items that players either cant do or dont want to do. Jobs like sell the most basic services or stand guard at a position all day, or even just wander around in a village interacting with other npc all day and nothing else. We do not want npc that play the game for you. I think that is where many people are getting confused here.

As for summoning an npc to fill a habitat or a role, i have an idea using the crafting system the devs have discussed briefly.
My idea is to summon npc by building and placing hearths. A basic hearth summons a basic villager (jobless). Adding an item to the modify slot when building the hearth both equips and employs the npc. Ex, add a wooden hoe to summon a farmer with a wooden hoe, and add an iron sword to summon a guard. The room you place the hearth in acts as that npc home, the modify slot determins role, and by clicking an npc you may give basic commands based on that role. Ex, guard here.

Tl;dr npc only suppliment, not replace players.

[Patfor333]

It’s not necessarily true that they don’t replace players. To some degree it would be bad for the player interaction side of the game (and it could be very detrimental). If these NPCs truly did very basic tasks, I don’t see the point in creating them when you already have tamable animal NPCs that could fulfill the role of say guarding and assist in farming.

You also have to consider the price of making these NPCs and how to set limitations to them. If you could just spawn them in with a fireplace, people would end up making lots to over-guard their town. From a lore standpoint, the ideas don’t fit into the game.

The point of making this an MMO of connected worlds is to create and allow for an unlimited amount of unique player interaction. If they wanted you to talk to fake players they could have just made this a single player game.

[Havok40k]

Know what, fine, if you want your guards to be animals instead of humanoid npc, go for it. Still, it’s an NPC filling a roll so your point is moot.

Secondly, there IS no lore defining npc’s or even animals for that matter, so your point of it being counter to lore is unfounded.

Thirdly, you repeatedly assume that no limits or caps would be implemented in the creation of something like this and it’s incredibly short sighted. Every entity that a player can make would have to be caped or limited to prevent server lag from spammed entities, be it dropped blocks, npc, beacons, what ever. I keep saying “well balanced” and you nit pick super fine points that are either moot or insignificant or just needing to be fleshed out.

Imagine if say, World of Warcraft had no neutral npc to fill out cities or villages, how lively would that world be? even with 8-10 MILLION players, there are still tens of thousands of aimless npc that only fill one purpose; to give the game life in sparsely visited locations. Perhaps, you would suggest they make WoW single player as well?

[Patfor333]

I’ve specifically said I wouldn’t want these kinds of NPCs filling the rolls, not that no NPCs should, as animals too are NPCs. You can’t buy things from an animal, gain quests from them, or talk to them. You’d need to find a human for these things, which is something I’d want.

By it not being a part of the lore or fitting in I meant that it wouldn’t make sense for you to create or spawn people. What would you imagine, them to say “The fireplace people are very interesting indeed. All you need to do is place a fireplace and out they come. They reside in the buildings you create, and can perform several tasks, even generating the occasional quest for your character.”

First, I don’t appreciate you attacking me personally, it is uncalled for and has no place in a debate or on these forums. I don’t think it’s short sighted to embrace an idea for a moment, study it, and find its pros and cons. I was trying to show you that there would be limitations needed if there were spawned NPCs like this. I think that is a valid reason of concern. I do my best to address any points you’ve made in counter argument, and if I agreed with those points I would still address them, saying so.

Yes WOW and Oort are both (or will be) MMOs. However, they are very different. WOW has a storyline, one that is presented to you through their NPCs. I like WOW, and their NPCs fit perfectly into their game; WOW wouldn’t be what it is without them. Oort too has a storyline, one that we will create with each other. This isn’t something NPCs the way you describe can do or help us do, they can only hinder us. Our storyline would be tainted if they replaced things only other players would have been able to do, like trading. WOW isn’t similar to Oort in that it is based around player interaction.

[Thorbjorn]

My original idea did not say anything about generating quests…

Here is the original idea : (With some of the things i forgot to write last time)

– The Npc’s would move in coming from somewhere unknown after you placed a item in your house (The hearth sound like a good thing to use)

– The Npc’s could be used as living quest-boards meaning that players could put up quests that the Npc’s would ask people to do. The player would be the one paying the costs of course.

– The Npc’s could be paid to do simple duties like standing guard and being shopkeeper (Yes it would be awesome if the would be the ones doing it, but a lot of people play maybe 1 hour a day and that would basically crush their business)

– Most Npc’s would just live in the houses to make the city more alive.

– The amount of Npc’s could easily be regulated by defining an amount of food they would need every day.

– The Npc’s would not be able to do tasks like Farming or mining because that would be a player job.

[Patfor333]

No, but some people mentioned it, and that isn’t a bad thing that more ideas are talked about.

It’s true, they definitely have their usefulness. They benefit the individual, but you must remember they hurt the community (and I say this as a solo player).

These are some reasons I wouldn’t want them:
-if they could buy or sell things. When you trade with a vendor, the items you sell to him are deleted from the game, and the gold you spend is deleted too. It is better to trade with a player, the items go to another person, and the gold supports the economy while going to another player. Trade is a great thing and in a game where there is no auction house or vendors, many things are possible. There could be giant traveling caravans, enormous trade cities, or even a large network of trade routes.

-if they give quests. If they give quests, they have to give rewards. If they give rewards like items then that would be items that you didn’t get, or maybe even couldn’t get, from interacting with others. If they gave experience people could/would grind quests and not explore or do things out in the world as much.

-if they can perform actions such as crafting, building, mining etc. They all have their usefulness but this hurts the business of other players who could do this, and might make you not learn to craft/build/mine yourself.

-if they offer services that require gold. Basically reasons mentioned before, the gold disappears into a dark abyss when you give it to an NPC, hurting the economy and taking away from players who could offer their services.

-if they spawn from something craftable. Players could make several NPCs from their hands and it doesn’t make sense lore-wise.

I’m not saying these are your views, but this is my reasoning against these kind of NPCs.

It would be better if they focused on the diversity and abilities of animal NPCs instead of making and balancing the kinds like that. You could have a lot of cool possibilities with animals, taming them could be very rewarding.

In a way you either sacrifice short term rewards like being able to sell anytime and ease of access or you sacrifice long term rewards like a strong player driven community with large growing cities and new bonds being made all around.

[Thorbjorn]

I think that most of the problems could be solved if the Npc’s only worked through the player economy:

– Buying or selling stuff would only be as an administrator for the shop all items and gold given or taken for gold and items would come from a player.

– Quests should be made by and paid by players the Npc’ would only act as the person giving them out. (This would basically be a quest board but it would be an Npc instead)

– I am fully against the Npc’s collecting resources because that would break the economy

– The team is talking about ores re spawning which would make gold a renewable resource if it couldn’t disappear somewhere the economy would fall apart.

– The item shouldn’t spawn the Npc’s (By my opinion) just mark the house as a place Npc’s could live, this could be a sold sign or something else. The Npc shouldn’t directly spawn but wander in. By my opinion Npc’s should be feed something even if they are not paid to have a job, this should effectively restrict the amount of Npc’s you can have.

I don’t feel you let go of the social part when you let Npc’s take care of the basic things which is normally really boring to do like standing guard and trading. (Trading can be fun but that requires people who wants to buy stuff)

• This reply was modified 10 years ago by Thorbjorn.

[Kuma]

A small addition: If we’ll get money or items from monsters that respawn (aswell as ores that respawn) then there will be the need for a money sink. If you didn’t do it with the NPCs you’d have to be very clever to balance the economy. (I can’t imagine a way at the moment)

[Thorbjorn]

This discussion talks a lot about it if people should be interested:
http://oortonline.com/forums/topic/ways-to-spend-earned-gold/

Spending the gold is important as Kuma says if we don’t spend it way to much of it will start circulating and everything will either become insanely expensive or people would just stop using money and go back to trade items between them.

[Patfor333]

Haha I don’t understand the economy well enough to know about that stuff. Just speculating, do you think if an amount of gold (possibly all, possibly a percentage of) was dropped on death, this could work as a gold sink if that dropped money wasn’t recollected in time? I’m sure there are several ways to prevent inflation, do you guys have any ideas?

[Thorbjorn]

To prevent derailing the thread i will continue the discussion on the other thread.

[Grey]

I was thinking having NPC’s start as a nomadic, caravan, or tribe groups. It would be an interesting way to introducing new NPC races they could come from other worlds or underground or so forth they could also have some details on what happen which could be decided with players and the developers on the back story which would add to the game and having 100s of people come up with backstories and have in the game sounds slightly terrible and would probably hurt the game some way a nice story would be nice and if player want to do that then maybe there could be some way to have players work it out in forums or with the developers or something but have some type of limitations and rules to making them so that immature people don’t or extremely racist or offensive people have free rein of course thats only thinking of the back stories.

Also, having the NPC’s as nomadic starting players could start out with certain nomads or tribes and also having this area or world/ worlds could be a safe place for new players to earn some levels, gold and the experience of the game before getting killed by higher level players or monsters. It could also have NPC’s give out tasks or quests which, of course, could be made by real players. Because I doubt real players want to take turns in like groups of 15 or 20 to chill and give quests and make it a good first impression for every new player every second of every day. NPC’s would be great at that. You could be with NPC’s as the same race as the player having there own back story they learn about as well as special skills etcetera etcetera…

Plus, it would be a great reason not to whip the game because we would already be working on the next era of oort and continuing to build on the history and past and all that just add on to it and be like well races of the old era (NPC’s) started showing up from here and there and we have ideas of things that happen in those eras and how the new towns got here and over there and how blah blah blah Therefore as pre- alpha, alpha, beta,and by release it should be all down solid backstory.

When these NPC’s come to town, there can be some zoning so that they stay and make it their home. Some NPC’s can stay, and depending on how different buildings are zoned, they take the role of that building like a guard tower or a bunker. They would become guards or an open shop. They can have the caravan NPC open shop and maybe just settle in homes and all that. Like a way for players who built to set up areas for NPC’s to take over and if they were closed then they could walk around town or go home and they also could complain to players, like if there were jobs, but no homes or to much crime. Also, having the ability to upgrade or improve the NPC trade or tasks would also add a lot. having ways that the players could help improve the town like “Oh, this shop doesn’t have so and so items.” or “has low supplies”, then have them ask players to build roads from town to town or craft and set up cameras and security stuff to help guards catch more people or just add more homes to have more guards. for jobs for them maybe NPC’s could have random stats that could be improved these stats would be like resumes i guess and you could hire them as guards or whatever you want them to be to helprotect your towns or cities or just make it more lively and prosperous say to hire a guard it cost 500 or 5000 or some amount of gold and that filters to the shops of NPC’s that sell and buy goods from players so they wouldn’t have gold the players would give that to them and used to buy goods or pay for service of players like if they keep getting raided by players or bandits they could pay a bounty to go hunt that player or bandit maybe its just bears that keep killing cattle and you could sell them broken items which they pay bad prices just like if you sold used items at any store you wouldn’t get brand new pricing then they fix it and sell it as new thus they get gear also to have them get more say you drop an item that you don’t want after a while it goes to npcs to sell and if you die they take a fine to heal you if you’re broke have it free or they just bring you back at like 10% health this would give a way for NPC’s to get gold and gear by recycling items and gold real players make.

Well, as for sky cities, underwater cities etc, I don’t really have a concrete idea. Maybe an elevator or something. Skyships if possible or even not have them in that city if it becomes an issue to have them there. I’m sure that the devs could make some cool or nifty way for players to help them get them there. Maybe have a portal that is in the in the floating city that actually would probably be the easiest way to do so. They already want us to take things back and forth via portal and state that we will be able to make our own. Mostly, I Think, if the people that use that town the most want them they could figure it out.

NPC’s could also travel from town to town so they might need to be protected or maybe they look good to attack. You could go many different ways with these ideas adding lots of quests, jobs, and ways to improve the love for the game. Stuff for the players to do and get money after dieing and boost your town like if a guild built a town and they were the only guild member on they would still have guild stuff to do like help improve the town

It could also find positive and interesting ways to deal with PvP and griefing like for those players that love those types of games and bring those behaviors over to Oort. I’m sure there’s a lot of people that do it for fun or Call of Duty vs. and Payday wouldn’t do so well or why even give the ability to sneak and steal in Skyrim, probably because people love having that option and for people who are against it- give them beacons or terrants for cities, capitals, towns, and all that. Have the players who build upgrade and improve towns to deal with these issues and if a town is neglected then have the NPC’s riot, commit crime, and, if left in that state for a long time, the NPC’s spread and find another place to cause trouble, possibly becoming bandits or giving a wandering builder a fun interesting and challenging project to work on to try and bring peace protect that group of NPC’s. and also a way to measure the population, crime rate etc…. for guilds would be interesting really any positive fun way to deal with griefers or PVP would probably help the game and give more reason to play oort

And for NPCs, I was thinking they would be more of peons. They would do work and give out requests, filter items and so forth between cities maybe backstory and a few other things. and give set players/guilds power to push NPC’s in the direction that they want. If a player wants to go questing, the NPC could tend their farms. and for personal tasks the player or guild could pay them to do it for a week or month. A player has some blocks they don’t want or an item they don’t want they could sell that item to the NPC’s which could transport it and sell it the items getting gold and pump it through the worlds of oort. I was just thinking of ways that they could be there and help the game without taking away from it so it would be the players that do everything, just NPC’s would be the little ants. So, things the players don’t want like sit in front of a shop all day hoping for people to come by or guard their town sometimes players will want the freedom to go do other stuff build more, hunt more, quest more, and PvP more. I was just hoping to find an interesting way to allow all of it to flow better so the NPC’s wouldn’t add resources. Really, they could get this all from the players that loved that town or city that wanted to improve the their home base such as if a guild built a home tower or tavern and built around it they could use the NPC’s to make it more lively and all that.

As for development of Oort history that isn’t backstory maybe the devs can add some sort of tally system that helps the game go in certain directions like if players of town A kill NPC’s that come there then they can have npcs become hostile and try to attack that town or avoid it completely something big happens XD would be a good way to set up conflict for the story and also players could be the ones that make this happen and it would make it more actions as well as other stuff could decide which way the game goes like if a new player that comes in beta or release of years later asks a older play why is they ram race almost extinct cept for player that are that race “ Well you see me and some buddies were drinking and were like HEY LETS PLAY SOME OORT ONLINE. thous certain events happened not that we’re proud of them but they happend.

[Thorbjorn]

YES you decided to come any way 🙂

[Patfor333]

The only problem would be how to implement something like this. I like this idea a lot, I could enjoy playing with NPCs like this. We need to get the devs in here and hear if it’s possible.

[Kuma]

Everything is possible for the Oort devs^^

[Grey]

Is there any way to get them in to this post?

[Grey]

Hey, an idea to get the devs to see this post and see what they think is if we have one of us that is a good writer take all what we have and clean it up nice and net with explanations and all that then put it in another post. We could have a bunch of people agree on what we come up with and if they feel like adding something then have the url to this post and tell them to do it here so we can keep the new one clean and then we could bug the devs till they get back to us on what they think and if its possible and yea.

Also if you guys are up to try that then we could use it on other topics. XD

One important topic that I think should be discussed which a lot of people won’t like is a real money shop to help fund the game. Mostly because it would speed things up a little. I think the goal for characters is $67,275 till its unlocked and a real currency shop would speed this up and allow us to get other parts of the game faster like crafting II and other stuff. So I think we should talk that out and find something we like then see about having the devs look at what we got.

• This reply was modified 10 years ago by Grey.

[Thorbjorn]

To talk about use of real money go to : http://oortonline.com/forums/topic/real-money-auctions/

And just wait the team is are passing by the forums from time to time so they will see the ideas eventually.

[Author]

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