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Elder Scrolls More games should have NPC schedules

Xeon

Augur
Joined
Apr 9, 2013
Messages
1,858
I kinda think if a game just half ass it then I prefer they don't add NPC schedules or day and night cycle. A lot of time it only affects shops closing and opening and those are just a hassle to wait for.
 

Chunkyman

Augur
Joined
Dec 8, 2013
Messages
159
There was also a drug ring of orcs in Cheydinhal who would travel to the Imperial City and back to meet with one of their connections IIRC.

I thought the detailed schedules for NPCs like travelling to other cities to meet friends and the fact that they had those goofy "I saw a mudcrab today! Horrible!" randomly generated conversations made the world feel like it was alive and that the world didn't revolve exclusively around you. I don't care if the dialogue was really cheesy and stilted, or that the NPC schedules didn't directly add anything to the gameplay. They were good additions for world building and trying to establish a believable setting. Even being crude, it made the NPCs in the game feel like actual villagers instead of just human-shaped posts standing in place and waiting for the player to interact with them.

By comparison, in Skyrim one of the memes that people made was about the Redguard who went "Have you been to the Cloud District yet?". I think the reason that developed was precisely because the above features were removed from Skyrim and the NPCs now stand around in place and spout their canned lines at you. You don't even have the dynamic conversations in Skyrim as nearly 100% of NPC dialogue is pre-scripted and triggered by the player, which makes the entire world feel completely wooden and "fake", like you're in a children's theme park where the NPCs are staffers waiting around for you to walk past them so they can give off their line.
 

IHaveHugeNick

Arcane
Joined
Apr 5, 2015
Messages
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Theory: NPC schedules make the world more realistic and immersive

Reality: I'm just gonna stand here and press T until morning comes and NPCs come back to open the shops. So immersive.
 
Joined
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Messages
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Codex Year of the Donut
Theory: NPC schedules make the world more realistic and immersive

Reality: I'm just gonna stand here and press T until morning comes and NPCs come back to open the shops. So immersive.
That's the exact opposite of what this thread is about.
Schedules that are nothing but wake up/open store/go to bed aren't interesting in the least, and are just an annoyance.
 

Neanderthal

Arcane
Joined
Jul 7, 2015
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Granbretan
I know this is daring and kind of out there but you could maybe have a world where you could do other things at night, socialise, go on rob, be a vigilante, gamble, drink, dine, scout out enemy lairs, listen to famous bards recite epics, meet nefarious contacts, follow npc's (Mayor Patterson) and discover their foibles, visit bawdy house and get your rnd away, visit a renowned sage or private library, practise your magic, consult higher powers and conduct arcane rituals, spar with weapon masters, enter an underground pit fighting contest, attend or hold religious ceremonies, attend or hold lectures on subjects that are of interest, act as a bodyguard, or just sleep as most do at night.

Nah I'm talking crazy, sorry I don't know what got hold of me, back to grinding xp and collecting trash in corridors.
 

HarveyBirdman

Arbiter
Joined
Jan 5, 2019
Messages
1,044
We must gather together and storm reddit to save the spirit of Daggerfall.

https://www.reddit.com/r/CouncilOfWisdom/

One of you brave souls can start a NPC schedules thread and explain how it ought to be done.

Schedules are cool. This is better:
>give NPCs goals, give them tools to achieve those goals, iterate through machine learning until their actions appear lifelike --> viola!
Oblivion does have this to some limited degree though.
e.g., NPCs have to find food to eat, and NPCs with low responsibility have no problem stealing it.
Yes, to a very limited degree. I'm crossing my fingers and sacrificing virgins in hopes the new Daggerfall successor project will figure it out.
They already know. LeFay has commented to that point in other forums.
 
Self-Ejected

unfairlight

Self-Ejected
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Aug 20, 2017
Messages
4,092
In Gothics it's done the exact right amount, but the NPCs don't do that much.
But that little bit of something helps immensely. If it was pushed further, it would be way more than that. I played 30 minutes of Kingdom Come a few days ago. I remember walking through a few villages. I remember some women carrying water. I saw someone working on the farm. Then I walked into a forest and I got my ass beaten by bandits. That was an immersive experience. If all of these were static, what you would have would be a MMORPG and I wouldn't even have that memory and I would only remember walking through a village.
I said it multiple times that the best influence KCD took was from Oblivion and the feeling of the world being alive was one of those influences.

People talk trash about the random chatter Oblivion NPCs have, but really beyond being a bit poorly written, having a limited pool of voice actors and a low amount of possible dialogue and occasional bugs it was really an amazing feature and gave a little bit of sense of these characters being actual people and being more than just a robot doing their job. The radiant AI allowed for essentially any character to have a chat with another while simply walking around and they had differing dialogue depending on their standing with those characters, instead of just being scripted to talk to maybe one other character max.
 
Joined
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Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
People talk trash about the random chatter Oblivion NPCs have, but really beyond being a bit poorly written, having a limited pool of voice actors and a low amount of possible dialogue and occasional bugs it was really an amazing feature and gave a little bit of sense of these characters being actual people and being more than just a robot doing their job. The radiant AI allowed for essentially any character to have a chat with another while simply walking around and they had differing dialogue depending on their standing with those characters, instead of just being scripted to talk to maybe one other character max.
It does a pretty good job for how simplistic it is. NPCs just choose from a collection of dialogues depending on a few variables, and the NPC they're interacting with choose from a few responses to that specific dialogue.
Is it cheesy? Yeah, but it still makes the world feel a lot better. Skyrim feels completely sterile in comparison.
 

AW8

Arcane
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Mar 1, 2013
Messages
1,852
Location
North of Poland
Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
By comparison, in Skyrim one of the memes that people made was about the Redguard who went "Have you been to the Cloud District yet?". I think the reason that developed was precisely because the above features were removed from Skyrim and the NPCs now stand around in place and spout their canned lines at you. You don't even have the dynamic conversations in Skyrim as nearly 100% of NPC dialogue is pre-scripted and triggered by the player, which makes the entire world feel completely wooden and "fake", like you're in a children's theme park where the NPCs are staffers waiting around for you to walk past them so they can give off their line.
One problem with Skyrim that Oblivion didn't have is indeed that it feels like a movie set where actors are waiting for the player to arrive so they can say their lines and walk away. This design is often necessary inside of quests, but when used in the gameworld outside of quests it's just lazy and goes against the whole concept of a living world:

  • In Karthwasten, the miners and the mercenaries stand outside in a ring forever until the player gets close enough to hear their argument.
  • In Windhelm, the guards are standing around a corpse in the graveyard forever until the player responds to their initiated conversation. There's also always a Dunmer getting harassed by Nords on your first visit (no matter the time of day).
  • In Riften the guard always shakes you down on your first visit, but that can be handwaved as there being different guards and all of them being corrupt. When you enter the city though, you're always approached by Maul who essentially shouts "join the Thieves Guild in this city".
  • In Solitude most of the population is present at an execution on the player's first visit.
  • In Markarth the first thing that happens when you enter is the guards killing someone and you getting a conspiracy note pushed into your hands.
  • In Whiterun the guards have shut the gates because of the dragon (even though pretty much no one else in the gameworld acknowledges the dragon), and only let you past after you've told them about something (I forget what).

In Oblivion the only scripted and unavoidable encounter in the cities that I can remember is Glarthir approaching the player to inform them about the conspiracy on their first visit to Skingrad. The player can visit the cities at the start of the game and people will just live their lives, which unlike the horrible level scaling don't revolve around the player. (Kvatch doesn't count as it's essentially a dungeon and totally disconnected from the part of the gameworld where NPC's live, which is a different problem on its own.)

It really does feel goofy to approach the capital of Skyrim and instead of being met with the expected bustling port city, large areas are completely dead because everyone has gathered for a scripted execution scene.
Forcing these scripted scenes on the first visit does make for a more powerful first impression for game journalists/first time players, though. By frontloading this content it makes the world feel "alive" (even though it's actually the opposite) because NPC's play out complex scenes in front of the player, before reverting to the normal schedules which they'll use for the rest of the game.
 

Chunkyman

Augur
Joined
Dec 8, 2013
Messages
159
In Oblivion the only scripted and unavoidable encounter in the cities that I can remember is Glarthir approaching the player to inform them about the conspiracy on their first visit to Skingrad.

Actually, Glarthir is an actual example of the NPC schedules and random dialogues actually serving a gameplay purpose. When he tells you about the people spying on him, I actually spent an hour or two following all of them around throughout the day and hiding behind barrels hoping to catch them in an act of espionage or having a secret conversation about Glarthir with someone else. Now there's some irony to this if you already know the quest, but the point is that by making NPCs fairly dynamic you get an interesting task with tracking people through the town throughout the day. The quest wouldn't even be interesting in Skyrim or Morrowind where people stand in their designated spot all day staring at the walls.
 

Twiglard

Poland Stronk
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Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut
One problem with Skyrim that Oblivion didn't have is indeed that it feels like a movie set where actors are waiting for the player to arrive so they can say their lines and walk away

FWIW, there's a mod that disables the theme park lines.
 

DJOGamer PT

Arcane
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Messages
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Location
Lusitânia
Those faces are what put me off the most.
Some head just such weird fucking porpotions, coupled with the other problems (most notable being that I can't tell an Imperial from a Nord, or a Dunmer from an Altmer) and the result is both facinating and hideous.
I don't remenber then being that bad, and I guess they'll get worse with each passing year. I think even the Witcher 1 migth have better faces.
 
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
Those faces are what put me off the most.
Some head just such weird fucking porpotions, coupled with the other problems (most notable being that I can't tell an Imperial from a Nord, or a Dunmer from an Altmer) and the result is both facinating and hideous.
I don't remenber then being that bad, and I guess they'll get worse with each passing year. I think even the Witcher 1 migth have better faces.
There's a decent-ish head overhaul mod that fixes it. Some heads become a bit repetitive but it's still far better than the base game.
https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/44676
 
Self-Ejected

unfairlight

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Aug 20, 2017
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(most notable being that I can't tell an Imperial from a Nord, or a Dunmer from an Altmer)
Nords have bigger heads, blonde hair, paler skin and use another voice actor than imperials. If you can't tell dunmer or altmer apart then I'm sorry to hear that you are blind.
 

Danikas

Arcane
Joined
Jun 15, 2017
Messages
1,605
I think even the Witcher 1 migth have better faces.
You think? Im 100% sure they are better.
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witcher_2014_07_15_00_55_47_053.png
 

Junmarko

† Cristo è Re †
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For something that's a relatively small feature of Oblivion and was probably overlooked, some of these are pretty detailed.
This feature was definetely not overlooked. Just that Ultima VII had them beat by 13 years and Bethesda still tried to play it off like they were the first.
 

Danikas

Arcane
Joined
Jun 15, 2017
Messages
1,605
For something that's a relatively small feature of Oblivion and was probably overlooked, some of these are pretty detailed.
This feature was definetely not overlooked. Just that Ultima VII had them beat by 13 years and Bethesda still tried to play it off like they were the first.
I played Gothic 1 and Morrowind at the same time in 2003, the difference was like night and day. Gothic had amazing world that felt alive while Morrowind felt like some bad movie set with lifeless mannequins playing the role of npcs. I never finished Morrowind while I still have both Gothic 1 and 2 installed on my pc.
 

adrix89

Arbiter
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Dec 27, 2014
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Why are there so many of my country here?
What I like to see more than routines is some Princess Maker style skills and growth.

They are still doing their routine job but now it has a skill component to it as well as some business management aspect.
Once you reach a certain skill threshold that might serve as a trigger to an event to advance their class and role. Like a soldier being promoted from guard duty at a gate to the bodyguard of a nobel.

Also have some NPCs with more freeform Role/Job, like a hunter going into the wild(and you can join him) or a trader going around with the caravan trading.
 

Ranarama

Learned
Joined
Dec 7, 2016
Messages
604
If I'm going to track when people are where, the game better have some outlook style calendars for tracking and making appointments.

Oh, wait, no, even if the UI supports it, it sounds horrible.
 
Joined
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Messages
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Codex Year of the Donut
If I'm going to track when people are where, the game better have some outlook style calendars for tracking and making appointments.

Oh, wait, no, even if the UI supports it, it sounds horrible.
Yeah you might have to actually go around asking if anyone has seen them or know where they were headed instead of them just being quest dispensers and text billboards.
Sounds awful.
 

Xeon

Augur
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Apr 9, 2013
Messages
1,858
That probably will be fun if you play in VR or something to immerse your self further but for regular gameplay, it does kinda feel like hassle tbh.
 

Cael

Arcane
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Nov 1, 2017
Messages
20,287
NPC schedules were a thing all the way back in Ultima 5. Not impressed. Next!
 

DJOGamer PT

Arcane
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If you can't tell dunmer or altmer apart then I'm sorry to hear that you are blind.

Aside from the skin colour there's no difference whatsoever between the elven races in Oblvion. Even between the races of men there's few differences.
This is something Morrowind does exceedingly well, not just in physical characteristics but also in the way they dressed and behaved.

Gothic had amazing world that felt alive while Morrowind felt like some bad movie set with lifeless mannequins playing the role of npcs.

Both games had very well realised worlds in different ways.

Like you said, in Gothic NPC's seem more lifeike because they have tasks and routines that they perform - even beasts behave in a natural way. This all because Gothic's AI is beyond Morrowind's.
In contrast while Morrowind NPC's and creatures lack "life", it's world is much better realised and more detailed than Gothic's. The different regions of Vvanderfell have different climates, geography, architectural styles, laws and customs. A single historical event is told differently depending on the background of the source (be it a book's author or directelty from one of the inhabitants). The main quest (and even alot of the side quests) has the player learning and interpreting the various customs and ideas (be they historical, philosophical or religious) that make up the island's culture and applying that knowledge to your dealing with the various factions.

So while the details of Morrowind's game world aren't as apperent as Gothic's, they are however far more intricate as such the splendor of Morrowind's world is much more enticing than Gothic's.
 
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