That's the exact opposite of what this thread is about.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.
They already know. LeFay has commented to that point in other forums.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.
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.Oblivion does have this to some limited degree though.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!
e.g., NPCs have to find food to eat, and NPCs with low responsibility have no problem stealing it.
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.In Gothics it's done the exact right amount, but the NPCs don't do that much.
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.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.
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: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.
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.
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
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.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.
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.(most notable being that I can't tell an Imperial from a Nord, or a Dunmer from an Altmer)
You think? Im 100% sure they are better.I think even the Witcher 1 migth have better faces.
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.For something that's a relatively small feature of Oblivion and was probably overlooked, some of these are pretty detailed.
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.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.For something that's a relatively small feature of Oblivion and was probably overlooked, some of these are pretty detailed.
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.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.
If you can't tell dunmer or altmer apart then I'm sorry to hear that you are blind.
Gothic had amazing world that felt alive while Morrowind felt like some bad movie set with lifeless mannequins playing the role of npcs.