I had this thought the other day about how cool it would be if every few months, the devs go in and take one of the vacant buildings in a city and add a new shop, and/or close one that PCs don't seem to visit often, or even move a shop from one unused location to a better high traffic area.
This wouldn't be changing the town layout, but giving it a sense of life.
Even more, giving the NPC more randomness. Like the shop keepers, have a family of shop keepers, that work the shop at different times of day. Guards that patrol different routes at different times, and maybe less patrols at certain times.
One thing that always gets stale about cities is that you know who and where you are going and what they have, because the NPCs seem to have an endless omount of stamina and energy to never rest, leave or take breaks. :) The guards are always the same, in the same spots.
Have random NPC customers in the Inns, like every room inthe inn is always empty, and there is never anyone in the dining halls.
It would be great to see the landscape and towns change periodically. Id really love to see it change due to natural events, player events, game lore plots, etc...
Would also provide an avenue to add shops, NPC's, town/hub features, etc in expansions. To help keep player hubs alive and people coming back to them. Instead of putting new stuff in new expansion lands only.
Not to shill for another game, but this is pretty much the premise of Ashes of Creation, which is the only other MMO I'm interested in at the moment. Of course it's too late for VR to implement anything on that level into Pantheon, but a truly dynamic world and cities are something I think has sorely not been explored in the genre.
In theory it sounds good. In practice I doubt if it is worth spending limited time and resources on. So I will reluctantly take the minority view on this one.
One thing ideas like this often entail is a day/night cycle where some things and people are there only during certain times. But it can be enormously frustrating looking to find some badly needed store or NPC on your first visit to a town and deciding the town just doesn't have it - because you happened to arrive at the wrong time of day. It can be even more frustrating badly needing some service or questgiver and facing the choice of either killing 3 hours of time until he, she or it cycles back into existance or moving on to a different location which may also be a significant waste of time.
Just been playing Horizon Zero Dawn and, though I'm usually not too bothered by spending a lot of development time on things like this, I have to say it was impressive how they made it feel like a 'living city' (the main city in HZD, Meridian).
There were things going on in the streets that, even though the quest system is totally "go to this next waypoint" and "look for an exclamation mark", I was still stopping to look at crowds of people or arguments in the streets just because I was curious what was going on, as you would be in a real city.
While I like the idea in principle, given the far too small team developing this game and that they are already nearing 7 years of development with no release in sight, putting in the effort in creating 'living' cities just isn't feasible. Sure, maybe a few years after release when VR has actual FTEs doing development could something like this be brought up, but until then there are far better things the limited staff count should be doing.
I'm all for things that make the world feel like a living place be that simple NPC pathing options in towns so they don't remain static, complex and dynamic NPC algorithms and dialogs, or complete revamps of existing towns or zones. However, given VRs limited resources I think that the more complex options are probably going to need to wait until post-launch and maybe even a couple of expansions down the road depending on how things go.
As someone else mentioned this sounds like something Ashes of Creation is planning to do but their team size vastly oversizes VR and allows them to set ambitious goals for their launch. Honestly, that game is nothing but intense pure ambition and nothing they plan to do is simple in any sense of the word.
FatedEmperor said:I'm all for things that make the world feel like a living place be that simple NPC pathing options in towns so they don't remain static, complex and dynamic NPC algorithms and dialogs, or complete revamps of existing towns or zones.
You can create the illusion of a living city just by putting in a whole lot of NPCs that just walk around, going to shops, pausing there and there, basically just milling about. You don't interact with them, they might just say 'hello' if you hail them, but they are just visual filler. That market place that you normaly see with just merchants standing in their stalls, static, staring straight ahead is boring. But take that same market place and just have hundreds of NPCs just milling about would give you that sense of existing in a thriving marketplace.
Honestly, don't care about cities. EQ2 did a decent job with Freeport and Qeynos and having the NPCs always walking around and engaging in a live marketplace concept. It was cool, but in the end, it didn't matter at all. I think EQ1's cities stand out far more in my memory and they were as static as it gets. If you have the resources to burn, sure, great. But it strikes me as a very small return on investment for game impact. We'll all be out camping rare loot, exploring perception pings, or raiding anyway. I think if they make their cities have the unique identity and usefulness that WoW did, its good enough. Regardless, this is one aspect I just dont care about....unless they have player housing....then I'm more interested.
Vandraad said:FatedEmperor said:I'm all for things that make the world feel like a living place be that simple NPC pathing options in towns so they don't remain static, complex and dynamic NPC algorithms and dialogs, or complete revamps of existing towns or zones.
You can create the illusion of a living city just by putting in a whole lot of NPCs that just walk around, going to shops, pausing there and there, basically just milling about. You don't interact with them, they might just say 'hello' if you hail them, but they are just visual filler. That market place that you normaly see with just merchants standing in their stalls, static, staring straight ahead is boring. But take that same market place and just have hundreds of NPCs just milling about would give you that sense of existing in a thriving marketplace.
This is very true and this is a fairly simple solution that shouldn't be that hard to implement from a very early stage. It's also a solution that should come naturally during the creative development and design implementation process (or at least one would assume this to be the case).
I would like to take the concept of living cities a bit further though (and this isn't directed at you but the concept in general). In a solo base game, NPC interaction and art design are the core fundamentals of making a place (or the world in general) feel alive. This is also true for an MMO to a degree, however, the real illusion of living cities in an MMO also boils down to the presence of other players (and the more the better). You could have all the NPC interactions in the world. but the minute that area becomes void of players is the minute that living city loses its illusion of being alive and becomes a husk. I'm sure that we have all experienced this feeling to some degree especially when a game ages and adds expansions under its belt.
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I think it would be interesting if players could somehow occupy buildings to fill out a city. Let the players hire NPCs that staff the business or move around to different buildings to give some semblance of life. At the least having NPCs that act like normal people would be amazing. Swapping out buildings and changing around the city might take too much time for QOL stuff when things like balance and bugs will have far more impact.
I kind of picture a player that likes smithing being able to occupy a shop in the city. Maybe for a fee, maybe for a specified limited time, not sure the best mechanism to rotate people through the shop or costs. The shop has a forge and all the necessary items to make gear. The player then pulls up an interface and hires an NPC to staff the front of the shop to actually sell things. Then maybe an apprentice who mans the bellows and make ingots or other work. It might make sense to have someone push a wheelbarrow across town to the docks to pick up ore, maybe a cart that comes to the general smithing area and distributes to all shops.
This is a script that gets set up once and then provides background to the whole city. It can be done for any shops and should be easy to expand or contract if there is a need to add more shops or if the players move on to a different city and remove some shops. NPCs could occupy the shops when players aren't around. Maybe have NPCs stay in the shops and the players just buy in as partners or journeymen instead of full on owners.
If you're crafting, you want easy, quick access to the things you need. These shops should be close to crafting areas, and reliable, because people will use them often.
If you're going to sell something that's rarer, by it's nature people will not shop there often. Who is going to know that the city has changed, except for the guy who now has to hunt around for what he needs?
This seems to me like a negative quality of life experience. If that what's you want, go for it, I suppose. Otherwise, consider a wandering merchant perhaps?
Reiver said:If you're crafting, you want easy, quick access to the things you need. These shops should be close to crafting areas, and reliable, because people will use them often.
If you're going to sell something that's rarer, by it's nature people will not shop there often. Who is going to know that the city has changed, except for the guy who now has to hunt around for what he needs?
This seems to me like a negative quality of life experience. If that what's you want, go for it, I suppose. Otherwise, consider a wandering merchant perhaps?
I think You misunderstood my original post.
The concept was, with the aide of tracking, that the devs see a vendor doesn't get much traffic, so move that vendor to a new area that might put them in a better area. Not just move vendors at random for no reason.
On another side, don't always have Hans be the vendor, change it to Hans' wife or children running the shop at different times. No effect on PC ability to buy sell, but give it more flavor as Hans is not the only one standing in one spot behind the same counter 24/7.
There are always unused shops and buildings in cities, it would be neat to occasionally see something move into there, either a shop that moved from elsewhere because of lack of traffic elsewhere (see above), or a new vendor.
As well as the idea that guards walk a little more random patrol pattern as well as patrols on timers, even if random. No reason Guard Colin should walk the same path 24/7. He needs to take a break sometime.
All these are little things that have little to no effect on the ability of players to perform their duties in town, but at the same time, make the town feel a little more alive.
Not that anything needs to be done, or needs to be at launch, but the static and stale cities of past MMOs gets old. It wouldn't take much to grab your attention when you're running through town and suddenly notice a new merchant sign were there was a vacant building, then you drop in and have a look.
Iksar said:Why stop at cities, why not a living world? Stale/underused areas or entire zones should be changed completely and the lore of Terminus allows this easily enough.
Agree completely. If an area is under-utilized by the players, find out why, and then make adaptations within the lore to bring them to life.
If you are going to do a living city then having it or similar content as "Living" zone(s) might be best for Pantheon, especially since the game will have zones already. It means eventually the devs could hook in areas that are player neighborhoods, cities, or procedurally generated adventure areas. These areas could change with time depending on what the developer's goals were for a given zone.
The downside is that managing theses areas could take up extra developer resources at the expense of other content unless you completely automate them or implement a form of player management. (Interesting idea but would require a lot of system building, maybe my next prototype project.)
It is nice to have static adventure areas separated from more dynamic/living content so that way you can tell a cohesive story but still give the players something that is evergreen content to interact with. I am also always a fan of any system the promotes more player agency and community building.