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The NPCs need more to do in Elder Scolls and Fallout games

I

IcyRhythms

Member
I love these titles, but a friend of mine made a very interesting point the other day. The world doesn't seem as alive as it should at times. A lot of the NPCs(even important characters)are always standing around doing the same thing.(which is usually nothing)Some of the NPCs will eat and sleep, where others don't. You travel from town to town, location to location, just to find that those same people are doing nothing. The side quests you get in these games, at least to me, are often more fun and interesting than the main quest. Problem? The NPCs that give the quests are just standing around in these locations waiting for you to walk by. They don't appear to live any sort of real life. They don't seem to eat, sleep, take a piss, and maybe they have a family but they never bother to go and spend time with them etc

Maybe someone that understands how the programming of AI works a lot better than myself could help me. Are things like this difficult to accomplish? Am I asking too much? I'm just asking for a more living breathing world. There is one NPC in Fallout NV you can find in Goodsrpings tending to his garden day AND night with the same animation. Another thing that would make things a little bit better is give ALL NPCs a name. Instead of 100 Goblins or 200 NCR NPC's with the name trooper, give them some actual names...
 
K

Kuraudo

Banned
I thought most of them do have daily routines. A lot of the time I'm waking the quest giver up in bed to collect my reward.
 
Phawx

Phawx

Member
In Everquest 1 there was a boat that traveled in realtime. If you missed the boat but needed to travel, you'd be stuck waiting 40 minutes.
 
bengraven

bengraven

Member
They need to have more frequent things to do.

Spending 8 in game hours a day in one spot, then another is ridiculous. You need to SEE them out there, moving around. Spend 2 hours working a grinding wheel, then go to the market in Whiterun, then maybe talk to someone in the middle of the street about something , then go smelt.

Hopefully next gen will allow us to have more than 6 people on screen doing something and it doesn't tax the system as well.
 
A

Alchemy

Member
There is a balance to find between making a world feel like it is alive, and building the world to be a playground for the player. These goals do not always intersect cleanly.
 
M

Masquerader

Member
Something Oblivion actually attempted...? Let's face it, as the series gets more popular, the devs are going to spend less time on actual detail.
 
B

blakep267

Member
Idk. In theory yeah, but when I go to whiterun, I want the shop lady to always be out front leaning against the pillar. I don't want her inside or on the forge. Valuable seconds are wasted getting her to stop doing something.

Maybe if it's NPCs that don't do anything yea
 
I

IcyRhythms

Member
Kinthalis said:
I worry about this given the weaksauce CPU's on consoles :(

I sure hope it's possible.
Click to expand...

I'm less concerned with how many they offer, and more about what few they have are actually doing. I'll take 10 NPCs in an area that are actually making that environment feel alive than 50 standing around doing nothing repeating the same lines over and over again.
 
R

RedSwirl

Junior Member
We'll see what Witcher 3 does. Characters in that game are supposed to have daily routines as well. According to what some people said there are even ships that travel in real time.

What was Ultima 7 like in comparison to some of these modern games?
 
R

Ramenman

Member
Alchemy said:
There is a balance to find between making a world feel like it is alive, and building the world to be a playground for the player. These goals do not always intersect cleanly.
Click to expand...

Yes.

Like most of the "realism" pipe-dreams (being able to enter every building, being able to destroy an entire city, etc), the problem isn't so much with tech and production time as it is with actual design.

It's certainly not impossible though, but the hard part would be to be able to do that in a way that works with the game you're trying to make.
 
Fruitster

Fruitster

Member
More things to say would be nice too. Not a diss on Bethesda as there's a shit load of voicing in their games, but you can only hear 'may the god's watch over your battles friend' so many times.
 
T

Tranqueris

Banned
jb1234 said:
That doesn't bother me as much as them having nothing interesting to say.
Click to expand...

I'm playing through Skyrim again and I've noticed that some npcs do have interesting things to say, just not to you though, which still makes it sorta useless. It's just personal shit that you can't really ask em about sometimes unless it has a specific side quest attached. It doesn't really bother me that much because I'm usually sprinting past them on the way to somewhere else.

I'm actually more annoyed by the fact that some npcs (along with the more story relevant characters) have that same shitty actor with that distinct gruff voice.
 
S

SigSig

Member
Fruitster said:
More things to say would be nice too. Not a diss on Bethesda as there's a shit load of voicing in their games, but you can only hear 'may the god's watch over your battles friend' so many times.
Click to expand...

Voice acting is expensive :(
I miss Morrowind, but I guess making a dialog system like that in a modern AAA environment would let the budget skyrocket.
 
1

120v

Member
honestly i don't care so much they don't have daily routines. it'd take up a lot of memory and it'd be a hassle to track them down at certain times

also i'm usually too busy doing other things in the game to really notice. but that's just me
 
F

flaxknuckles

Member
I agree. Skyrim fell apart for me once the immersion glasses fell off my face and stopped distracting me from the rote gameplay. Gonna need 3x the immersion in the next game to compensate if the gameplay is still booty
 
joecanada

joecanada

Member
Well I agree but at least they are on the right track. You can pickpocket grenades into their pocket, they do walk around, have a simple routine and do have a wardrobe,

Lots of room for improvement but better than some games
 
A

Auctopus

Member
Going by what the majority like about Skyrim, Bethesda don't need to do much for a sequel.

Huge non-seamless world, filled with random stuff to do, don't have to worry about variety and then just make random stuff happen all the time due to bugs.

Sorry, if I'm knocking Bethesda there but Skyrim fans were incredibly forgiving to the game's shortcomings within it's genre.

They don't have to worry much about the sequel, I doubt they'll go back to in-depth, no quest markers, more detail in sub-text etc.
 
S

Steel

Banned
I think too much emphasis is put on this already in the elder scrolls games. All their attempts feel robotic and don't add much of anything to the experience. I did like how Fallout New vegas had patrols and trade caravans going back and forth, but other than that... It doesn't matter much to me.
 
F

Fisty

Member
Strangely enough, the game that actually got this right was Deadly Premonition. You could literally follow Lilly from her house in the morning where she drops off the twins at her Dad's house and then heads to the Milk Barn to work, then when she closed the store she would head back to pick up the twins and go home for the night. Each NPC had their own schedule and routine.
 
S

Squishy3

Member
It's what happens when you create a big world for the sake of creating a big world. Smaller locales with in-depth routines a la Majora's Mask works wonders. Or even Deadly Premonition where there are maybe 20-30 people that live in a town that had a severe population drop-off, so the town is too big for the amount of people that live there.
 
D

Deified Data

Banned
I agree that NPCs in Bethesda RPGs should continue to evolve and incorporate more complicated behaviors in their routines as the series continues, and they have. Bethesda is generally better about this thing than most devs, no? Not sure what the point of contention is.

Masquerader said:
Something Oblivion actually attempted...? Let's face it, as the series gets more popular, the devs are going to spend less time on actual detail.
Click to expand...

Ambient NPC routines have only become more complex as the series increases in popularity, though...
 
M

MadSexual

Member
This would cause fits for modern completionists, but the biggest thing that would improve these games for me would the ability to have an actual impact on the world. You have to go back to Morrowind to find story progressions that actually bar you from completing others.
The fighters guild and the thieves guild were feuding, so you had to choose between them at a certain point.
That was great because it meant playing a real character. Now, all characters can complete every quest (or an identical substitute in Skyrim's case). It's just meaningless and more than a little silly.
 
G

Gozer the Gozerian

Member
Bethesda talked about how during the development of Oblivion they originally had the AI more "unleashed", leading to unscripted behavior such as a shady character sneaking up to a fellow NPC to pickpocket them to get food because they were hungry. But they eventually cut some of this back because it was leading to all sorts of unexpected behavior as NPCs tried to complete their daily goals, being picked off by monsters when they were traveling between towns, getting killed by guards, etc.

I remember some of this stuff still being present in Oblivion (the occasional npc sneaking around and stealing stuff) but I think they pretty much excised it from Skyrim.
 
M

Mesoian

Member
IcyRhythms said:
I love these titles, but a friend of mine made a very interesting point the other day. The world doesn't seem as alive as it should at times. A lot of the NPCs(even important characters)are always standing around doing the same thing.(which is usually nothing)Some of the NPCs will eat and sleep, where others don't. You travel from town to town, location to location, just to find that those same people are doing nothing. The side quests you get in these games, at least to me, are often more fun and interesting than the main quest. Problem? The NPCs that give the quests are just standing around in these locations waiting for you to walk by. They don't appear to live any sort of real life. They don't seem to eat, sleep, take a piss, and maybe they have a family but they never bother to go and spend time with them etc

Maybe someone that understands how the programming of AI works a lot better than myself could help me. Are things like this difficult to accomplish? Am I asking too much? I'm just asking for a more living breathing world. There is one NPC in Fallout NV you can find in Goodsrpings tending to his garden day AND night with the same animation. Another thing that would make things a little bit better is give ALL NPCs a name. Instead of 100 Goblins or 200 NCR NPC's with the name trooper, give them some actual names...
Click to expand...

Every npc should be as good as the ones found in interestingnpcs. That, however is asking a lot
 
J

jb1234

Member
BrassDragon said:
Ultima VII did all this back in 1992. Would be nice if the current generation of RPGs caught up.
Click to expand...

Man, it's so true. Instead of trying to make things bigger and more expansive (and hence struggling to fill those areas with content), developers should be going back to the classics. The NPCs in Ultima VII went about their lives, had a daily schedule and most importantly, had things to say that felt individualized.
 
N

nubbe

Member
Phawx said:
In Everquest 1 there was a boat that traveled in realtime. If you missed the boat but needed to travel, you'd be stuck waiting 40 minutes.
Click to expand...

you could also get killed on the boat by a fish or fall off and lose all your shit, good times
 
Emulated Hype

Emulated Hype

Member
It's because they're going for more of a 'stage play' approach to world presentation. NPCs are usually only locked into place when they need to be on mark for a specific step in a given quest or are exposition dumpers.

Take Solitude for example, General Tulius walks in circles around the war room in the Castle Dour and only occasionally strays away to an NPC interact-marker to sit on a chair or a bench. Elisif, like the other Jarls, attends the throne all day and only leaves it to go to bed. Shopkeepers are glued to their stalls until 8pm where they either wander home and interact with random objects (like cooking pots, chairs, crafting tables, ect.) before going to bed or they'll wander to the local tavern and hang out there for part of the night before heading home and going to sleep.

Certain aspects of simulation are fine when presented as mechanics in mods, but don't work as well cohesively when taking the core game into consideration. Having to feed, bath and sleep is cool, but menus & hotkey micromanagement make it cumbersome.

Part of the problem is scale, everything is exaggerated. Quest participants are caricatures/stereotypes to get the point across quickly, a hamlet barely occupies the space of a RL city block & actual cities/holds are rather small and empty. The timescale may be the best example as for ever minute that passes IRL, 20 will pass in-game.

The implication I'm suggesting is that each NPC you encounter is supposed to represent about 10-15 people in their to-scale world. Most of the perceived problems with their schedules get muddied when you up the volume of them, take mods like Inconsequential NPCs, Interesting NPCs and the BluePiano's Dawn of Skyrim series as examples.

It's sort of an inversion of the problem with Daggerfall's worldscale, where it addressed volume and world simulation with hundreds of cookie-cutter cities and RNG NPCs that drip-feed you randomized miscellaneous information about people, buildings and quests.

The answer to both methods of world-building is to use your imagination to fill the gaps which NPCs leave, at least for now. As far as the scripting side of things go, let's wait and see what they do at E3. Papyrus is pretty fragile, but the target consoles have significantly more memory to play with this time around.

As far as randomized names for generic NPCs go, check this mod out sometime if you have the PC version of Skyrim.
http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/61430/?
 
R

RedSwirl

Junior Member
You know what somebody needs to crack? A way to dynamically and realistically ask NPCs for directions to places and the locations of people.

I've always wanted to just walk up to a person in a town and ask "you know where this person is?" and have them answer based on where they last saw them or what that person's normal routine is. They could just point, say "I don't know," or say a location they know nearby.
 
N

Nabbis

Member
Just give modders good tools for changing NPC behavior. Fixing Bethesda's shit has been the status quo for a while now anyway.
 
R

RedSwirl

Junior Member
Emulated Hype said:
It's because they're going for more of a 'stage play' approach to world presentation. NPCs are usually only locked into place when they need to be on mark for a specific step in a given quest or are exposition dumpers.

Take Solitude for example, General Tulius walks in circles around the war room in the Castle Dour and only occasionally strays away to an NPC interact-marker to sit on a chair or a bench. Elisif, like the other Jarls, attends the throne all day and only leaves it to go to bed. Shopkeepers are glued to their stalls until 8pm where they either wander home and interact with random objects (like cooking pots, chairs, crafting tables, ect.) before going to bed or they'll wander to the local tavern and hang out there for part of the night before heading home and going to sleep.

Certain aspects of simulation are fine when presented as mechanics in mods, but don't work as well cohesively when taking the core game into consideration. Having to feed, bath and sleep is cool, but menus & hotkey micromanagement make it cumbersome.

Part of the problem is scale, everything is exaggerated. Quest participants are caricatures/stereotypes to get the point across quickly, a hamlet barely occupies the space of a RL city block & actual cities/holds are rather small and empty. The timescale may be the best example as for ever minute that passes IRL, 20 will pass in-game.

The implication I'm suggesting is that each NPC you encounter is supposed to represent about 10-15 people in their to-scale world. Most of the perceived problems with their schedules get muddied when you up the volume of them, take mods like Inconsequential NPCs, Interesting NPCs and the BluePiano's Dawn of Skyrim series as examples.

It's sort of an inversion of the problem with Daggerfall's worldscale, where it addressed volume and world simulation with hundreds of cookie-cutter cities and RNG NPCs that drip-feed you randomized miscellaneous information about people, buildings and quests.

The answer to both methods of world-building is to use your imagination to fill the gaps which NPCs leave, at least for now. As far as the scripting side of things go, let's wait and see what they do at E3. Papyrus is pretty fragile, but the target consoles have significantly more memory to play with this time around.

As far as randomized names for generic NPCs go, check this mod out sometime if you have the PC version of Skyrim.
http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/61430/?
Click to expand...

http://warhorsestudios.cz/index.php?page=blog&entry=blog_011

It will be interesting to see how Kingdom Come reconciles this. Warhorse has already confirmed the world in this game will be about the same physical size as Oblivion (maybe bigger), but instead of a whole country it will only represent a single castle and the surrounding village and forest. Even this will be smaller than real-world scale, but it will feel notably less compressed than Skyrim.

Witcher 3 is doing something similar. Each of its two areas will be slightly lager than Skyrim, but won't be as densely packed. One map basically only contains one major city and the surrounding wilderness including a few villages.
 
S

skybald

Member
Gozer the Gozerian said:
Bethesda talked about how during the development of Oblivion they originally had the AI more "unleashed", leading to unscripted behavior such as a shady character sneaking up to a fellow NPC to pickpocket them to get food because they were hungry. But they eventually cut some of this back because it was leading to all sorts of unexpected behavior as NPCs tried to complete their daily goals, being picked off by monsters when they were traveling between towns, getting killed by guards, etc.

I remember some of this stuff still being present in Oblivion (the occasional npc sneaking around and stealing stuff) but I think they pretty much excised it from Skyrim.
Click to expand...
Sounds like they just needed a little more work to get things right. If everyone, or most, have jobs then they can afford food and not have to steal. Some people could still end up in jail for a while if they are caught stealing. Caravans of people protected by guards could travel between towns and that is how NPCs would have to travel to not get killed.
 
B

Brian Griffin

Member
IcyRhythms said:
I love these titles, but a friend of mine made a very interesting point the other day. The world doesn't seem as alive as it should at times. A lot of the NPCs(even important characters)are always standing around doing the same thing.(which is usually nothing)Some of the NPCs will eat and sleep, where others don't. You travel from town to town, location to location, just to find that those same people are doing nothing. The side quests you get in these games, at least to me, are often more fun and interesting than the main quest. Problem? The NPCs that give the quests are just standing around in these locations waiting for you to walk by. They don't appear to live any sort of real life. They don't seem to eat, sleep, take a piss, and maybe they have a family but they never bother to go and spend time with them etc

Maybe someone that understands how the programming of AI works a lot better than myself could help me. Are things like this difficult to accomplish? Am I asking too much? I'm just asking for a more living breathing world. There is one NPC in Fallout NV you can find in Goodsrpings tending to his garden day AND night with the same animation. Another thing that would make things a little bit better is give ALL NPCs a name. Instead of 100 Goblins or 200 NCR NPC's with the name trooper, give them some actual names...
Click to expand...
Game dev here. Difficult? No. Time and resource consuming? Hoooly fuck yes. And it's not a problem of programming either, it's a problem of animation, voice work, and hardware memory to store it all. Writing code to model basic needs/wants and executing actions based on that could be very simple and you do actually see the NPCs in the games doing these things. They chop wood, they eat, they sleep, they walk around, they say things from time to time, etc.

What you are asking for is a massive increase in scope and variation of the existing systems and that means a massive increase in the animations they play and the sounds they make. Making all these animations and sounds takes development time and storage space, both of which are premium concerns when making games. I'm sure the devs would love to make a game with enough variation to feel like a living world but they have to make the actual game first and getting that done is already a huge undertaking.
 
G

GPsych

Member
jb1234 said:
Man, it's so true. Instead of trying to make things bigger and more expansive (and hence struggling to fill those areas with content), developers should be going back to the classics. The NPCs in Ultima VII went about their lives, had a daily schedule and most importantly, had things to say that felt individualized.
Click to expand...

Not only that, they also responded to the weather. They would open up windows and say things, "Too nice of a day to keep these closed" and stuff like that. It really felt like a realized world.
 
S

Skelter

Banned
BrassDragon said:
Ultima VII did all this back in 1992. Would be nice if the current generation of RPGs caught up.
Click to expand...

Can someone answer this, how is Divinity: Original Sin in regards to the OP's question? I know during the kickstarter Larian wanted to have a day and night cycle, routines, and all that other stuff. Did they pull it off?
 
J

jb1234

Member
GPsych said:
Not only that, they also responded to the weather. They would open up windows and say things, "Too nice of a day to keep these closed" and stuff like that. It really felt like a realized world.
Click to expand...

OH YEAH! Shit, I need to replay Ultima VII now. Game was ahead of its time.
 
TheRedSnifit

TheRedSnifit

Member
One of the reasons the second and third Paper Mario games are so great is that every NPC has a name, a backstory, and their own dialogue that changes after very world. Granted, they still stand around in the same place all day every day, but it's better than a bazillion faceless NPCs rattling out the same five lines of dialogue.
 
T

TheGrue

Member
Phawx said:
In Everquest 1 there was a boat that traveled in realtime. If you missed the boat but needed to travel, you'd be stuck waiting 40 minutes.
Click to expand...

Oddly enough, this is one of my favorite memories about EQ. One time I had just missed the boat in Butcherblock. So, had to wait all that time. Then, when I went to get on the boat, it used to not be quite aligned right. I fell off the dock. Couldn't get back around before the boat took off. I waited again. Then I got on the next boat. It was a huge waste of time, but I was young and had plenty of it.
 
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