Interview Pete Hines on Fallout 3

[Diogo Ribeiro]

But then that makes it relatively predictable.

Then make it so the thieves do their move at a random hour of a day, or simply create a considerable time gap between the heists, like once a month or twice every five months. Create various conditions which can influence the occurence of the heists - maybe the thieves will try to steal more often if the calculated selling value of the PC's stash is high enough; maybe the thieves will try to steal less often if the PC has performed some quests for local authority or is an aspiring member of such an authority; maybe the thieves will try to steal less the more the PC invests in protecting his house with magical traps, high level mercenaries, or helping members of a guild he is working for or supervising himself; and so on.

 

[HardCode]

It's easier than you think. If you can set an NPC's schedule to visit a tavern every day at 12pm, you can set up a schedule of a thief (Thief Guild's members) to try to break at random houses at 12 am (security skill check) and take some items based on their value. If the skill check is successful, you get a "Your door is open, call 911" message when you return or wake up. Those break-ins would also motivate investing in chests with tough locks. Anyway, then you pay the Thief Guild a visit and negotiate (kill, talk, buy) getting your stuff back. If you are a member of the Guild, your house is removed from the schedule.

See, VD has vision. Everyone else is missing the point that if Oblivion was a live world, and doing things for or against a certain guild would have consequences, then what VD posted above would be the consequence of pissing off the Thieves' Guild.

The problem with Oblivion's world is that it is so DEAD, that implementing one element like this wouldn't appear worthwhile, alone. However, if the world had consequences, this element would fit like a glove.

And Solik, how hard is it for a computer to generate a random number representing 7pm to 4 am? Think a little.

 

[Lumpy]

How on Earth would you handle a random NPC stealing from the PC's house? Random, that's what it's about, random burglaries, not scripted ones. A scripted one is feasible, a random one is not.
There's the matter of limited dialogue - you can't possibly have dialogue for every single situation. Also, what kind of clues would the NPCs leave? And how would find a dirty napkin at the scene of the crime help you to find the thief? Or a NPC seeing the burglars - way too hard to do.
A scripted burglary would be feasible. Emergent, solvable burglaries based on Radiant AI are not.

It's easier than you think. If you can set an NPC's schedule to visit a tavern every day at 12pm, you can set up a schedule of a thief (Thief Guild's members) to try to break at random houses at 12 am (security skill check) and take some items based on their value. If the skill check is successful, you get a "Your door is open, call 911" message when you return or wake up. Those break-ins would also motivate investing in chests with tough locks. Anyway, then you pay the Thief Guild a visit and negotiate (kill, talk, buy) getting your stuff back. If you are a member of the Guild, your house is removed from the schedule.

Of course it's easy to make the NPCs to steal from your house. The hard part is making an interesting system of catching the thief, without it it simply becomes annoying and unrealistic.
But getting your stuff back at the thieves guild could be a possible solution, although unrealistic. Plus, you still wouldn't be able to trace down the thief, which would be possible in a real situation.
So NPCs stealing from your house should not be allowed until NPCs are smart enough to turn it from annoying to interesting.

Also, how likely would it be that your house would be robbed in a realistic world? Very unlikely.

 

[HardCode]

maybe the thieves will try to steal more often if the calculated selling value of the PC's stash is high enough

In addition:

If (player.TalkTo(Merchant) && Merchant.Disposition < 60)
{
ThiefGuild.SetStealEventOnPlayer()
}

Kind of the best way to demostrate the pure simplicity of this all.

So NPCs stealing from your house should not be allowed until Bethesda is smart enough to turn it from annoying to interesting.

Fixed.

 

[Lumpy]

maybe the thieves will try to steal more often if the calculated selling value of the PC's stash is high enough

In addition:

If (player.TalkTo(Merchant) && Merchant.Disposition < 60)
{
ThiefGuild.SetStealEventOnPlayer()
}

Kind of the best way to demostrate the pure simplicity of this all.

So NPCs stealing from your house should not be allowed until Bethesda is smart enough to turn it from annoying to interesting.

Fixed.

Yep. Beth sucks. Good thing we have all those other great developers who have real intelligent NPCs.
And no, HardCode, it's not purely simple. Did you even read anything that Ghan wrote? Heck, did you even think about it? It's not only a matter of NPCs stealing from the player, that was possible, and was forbidden to NPCs. It's a matter of what happens after that. How do you catch the thief, when NPCs are, to quote Chefe, not radiant enough to think who they saw around the scene of the crime, and guards are not radiant enough to investigate crimes. It's not feasible. Radiant AI isn't magic. Beth doesn't suck because they didn't do what noone has done before.

 

[Vault Dweller]

How on Earth would you handle a random NPC stealing from the PC's house? Random, that's what it's about, random burglaries, not scripted ones. A scripted one is feasible, a random one is not.
There's the matter of limited dialogue - you can't possibly have dialogue for every single situation. Also, what kind of clues would the NPCs leave? And how would find a dirty napkin at the scene of the crime help you to find the thief? Or a NPC seeing the burglars - way too hard to do.
A scripted burglary would be feasible. Emergent, solvable burglaries based on Radiant AI are not.

It's easier than you think. If you can set an NPC's schedule to visit a tavern every day at 12pm, you can set up a schedule of a thief (Thief Guild's members) to try to break at random houses at 12 am (security skill check) and take some items based on their value. If the skill check is successful, you get a "Your door is open, call 911" message when you return or wake up. Those break-ins would also motivate investing in chests with tough locks. Anyway, then you pay the Thief Guild a visit and negotiate (kill, talk, buy) getting your stuff back. If you are a member of the Guild, your house is removed from the schedule.

Of course it's easy to make the NPCs to steal from your house. The hard part is making an interesting system of catching the thief, without it it simply becomes annoying and unrealistic.
But getting your stuff back at the thieves guild could be a possible solution, although unrealistic. Plus, you still wouldn't be able to trace down the thief, which would be possible in a real situation.
So NPCs stealing from your house should not be allowed until NPCs are smart enough to turn it from annoying to interesting.

Also, how likely would it be that your house would be robbed in a realistic world? Very unlikely.

I agree. Not implementing it all will work much better.

 

[kingcomrade]

Also, how likely would it be that your house would be robbed in a realistic world? Very unlikely.

I still shoot at black passers-by just in case.

 

[Lumpy]

I agree. Not implementing it all will work much better.

I know that was sarcastic, but that's my opinion. I'd rather have no feature rather than a half-assed feature that simply can't be implemented properly. And no, horses don't count, because horses without mounted combat don't hurt gameplay, while NPCs stealing from your house without any means of catching them does.
I would, however, like a scripted burglary or two. Similar to what DarkUnderlord suggested. Only scripted, not emergent.

 

[Fresh]

A scripted quest would suffice to make the world come alive - just have it triggered when you piss off the thiefs guild. Then youll have to track down your loot = cool quest. Get it back by sucking up to the thiefes, or attack them or whatever.

 

[obediah]

I know that was sarcastic, but that's my opinion. I'd rather have no feature rather than a half-assed feature that simply can't be implemented properly. And no, horses don't count, because horses without mounted combat don't hurt gameplay,

Depends on your definition of hurt, but I think they're definitely going to catch slack on that from the ccc (casual console crowd). They're going to buy a big horse deck it out in armor and then charge the nearest monster for a great WTF? moment. And answering the question why they can't attack from horseback will take as much effort as it would have to figure out why their shit is missing.

Bethesda made a lot of judgement calls in this game - anyone that agrees or disagrees with all of them is obviously not analyzing them rationaly. The one clear thing is that many of the justfications for these decisions have been either complete BS or have been heavily tainted by PR-BS. The horse combat thing should have been - "we tried, a lot, but we couldn't get it to work. Man I wish we had the mount&blade team, they did a great job. We're leaving horses in sans combat, because it is still neat, and we want something to show for our work"

Pete's excuse for not having stealing is equally weak. Much better and more plausible reasons have been put forth in this forum. "It would have been a lot of work to make it work in a way that wouldn't be annoying to most of our customers. In the end we decided other things were more important." He'd still get a few "like er0sun and patrik steward!" responses, but by and large it would have spawned a more interesting discussion on how to handle the situation.

 

[Lumpy]

Not a lot of work, but a fucking lot of work. For a thing that wouldn't even happen at all in most games.
A scripted burglary would be much more appropriate, since it wouldn't happen more than once in a game anyway. Plus, a scripted one would be much more interesting than a non-scripted one.

 

[obediah]

Not a lot of work, but a fucking lot of work. For a thing that wouldn't even happen at all in most games.

Well how much work depends on what they implemented and how well they planned for it. If in Dec 2005, they were playing and someone stole their stash and they decided to implement a huge gameplay mechanic resolving around moving stolen lewt and providing witnesses and investigations, etc - that would be a fucking lot of fucking work. If they had just added a "You've been pwned. Lock yer d0or FaG!" popup it wouldn't be much work at all. If they made a design decision to have some slimmed down version of retrieving your stuff from the beginning it probably would have fallen well below "a fucking lot of work". Considering the amount of shit they cut after starting to work on it, their poor design work cost them a lot mor time than this would have.

A scripted burglary would be much more appropriate, since it wouldn't happen more than once in a game anyway.

Why not?

Plus, a scripted one would be much more interesting than a non-scripted one.

Wow, your knack of mixing the obvious with the oblivious is amazing. Everything in the game should be much more interesting scripted/designed rather than non-scripted/generated. I say should, because scripting/design can be bad.

 

[elander_]

Whats the point of having an house in Oblivion anyway. Having an horse is cool (acording to TH) because you can walk him around and it's just cool and stuff. Having an house is also cool because it's yours and you can go inside and go out and decorate it with stuff then look at it. It's cool and stuff TH said. So wasting planing time and resources having a feature in the game that could add to gameplay and make your house feel more real than a decorator mini-game is bad but wasting resources in horses and houses that have no gameplay value is good. Looks like a contradiction.

 

[HardCode]

Not a lot of work, but a fucking lot of work.

You seem to forget that they probably plan on grossing $60 million. Well, here's news for you, apologist, grossing $60 million takes work, a fucking lot of work.

 

[4too]

NIMBY - Not In My Back Yard

NIMBY - Not In My Back Yard


elander_ :

... Having an house is also cool because it's yours and you can go inside and go out and decorate it with stuff then look at it. It's cool and stuff TH said. So wasting planing time and resources having a feature in the game that could add to gameplay and make your house feel more real than a decorator mini-game ...

This SIMS tie in will really enhance the market share.

The product placement fees might defray the dev costs!

A real estate corporation and builders' supply franchise to be named later.

Beth lines of foo foo and gee gaws will be promoted as Walmarts answer to K Mart's Martha Stewart!

LUCRATIVE doesn't begin to describe the avalanche of lewt!

That 'once and future' FO 3 shall be ---- SIM VAULT !


Am 'damp' with anticipation ....




4too

 

[elander_]

Re: NIMBY - Not In My Back Yard

That 'once and future' FO 3 shall be ---- SIM VAULT !

Now don't start giving them any ideas.

 

[Section8]

Lumpy, I don't think it's as much work as you want to believe.

* NPC Steals form player. They already know how to, and Radiant AI governs this behaviour.
* Flag the items as "Stolen from Player," just like the items the player steals are magically flagged.
* Allow the player to attack anyone carrying their stolen goods without attracting guard attention, to cover the possibility of the player witnessing the theft.
* Bump up the NPC's desire to pawn off the item to assure that they will fence it swiftly if the player didn't catch them in the act.
* When the player next enters/wakes up in their home cell, spam a message "Something isn't quite right. You can't help but think something is... missing."
* Update the journal. "It appears somebody has broken into my house and taken some of my belongings. I should check around the local traders. List of Missing Items: etc."
* Add a "Stolen Goods" "dialogue" "option" to NPC shopkeepers who have received the goods. With a high enough persuasion the player can get them back free of charge. Otherwise, you have to buy them back. Unlucky. Toughen up princess, that's thievery for you.

...and that's a simple implementation. It's not as half-arsed as the fucking horses, and it can be easily built upon.

Another thing to keep in mind, is that if Bethesda had actually made a concerted effort toward dynamically generating quest content from the outset, it would be even simpler, and I think that's what a lot of people are getting at. Not so much what can be done with Oblivion, but what should have been done.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Also, how likely would it be that your house would be robbed in a realistic world? Very unlikely.

Depends on the neighbourhood. Poor neighbourhoods fairly commonly experience theft. Buying a house in a more upmarket neghbourhood would reduce the risk but does open up the opportunity of professional thieves who target big houses with fat loot, "in the real world". A similar concept could be implemented in-game if you really wanted to.

You are a true marvel of intellectual power! Well maybe not. What you describe is a wonderful but unfortunately completely scripted scenario. Which has no bearing on the situation we talk about, because that NPC who just burglarized you is just a random RAI driven NPC.

As was mentioned, not every random RAI NPC is a thief. Only those that are members of the thieves guild and therefore "have the tattoo" or other identifying mark. If RAI is so good that NPCs could walk into houses and take stuff, it wouldn't be a great leap to "take stuff and put it on the floor" as part of the "ransacking" function. If there are hired maids or servants in the house, they would see the RAI NPC wandering around taking stuff and would use their own RAI to either attack the thief or run and get help. Given the quest compass currently magically marks the location of any NPC, regardless of whether they're out shopping or not, I don't think it'd be too hard to abuse that in this situation as well. The servant flees outside and the thief eventually leaves. The PC arives home, talks to the servant, gets the quest, gets told who it is (or more broadly that she reckons it was a member of the thieves guild) and the thief / guild gets marked on the compass...

Better though, would be to have the thief then "deal with stolen goods". Presumably there are only some places that buy stolen goods so it wouldn't be too hard for the NPC to RAI into those stores and offload the loot for a pretty penny. The PC finds out about the locations of those stores from talking to various people who "wink, wink, nudge, nudge, it's over there". PC goes there, finds his stuff, buys it back. He may never catch the thief but it'll make the player invest in locks and guards.

Guards would use their own RAI that if a thief came into a house because his RAI determined he should, he'd enocunter the guards and end up dead. The guards would then tell the PC what happened. "Just protecting the house from this scum. He broke in but we got him" and that's the end of that. You don't need seven hundred different versions of the same story.

In the event that there are no servants, the player is notified by the stuff all over the floor (part of the thieving process, akin to the guards in F.E.A.R. screaming "Flashlight!" solely for the purpose of letting the player know that the guards react to seeing that and that it might be beter to turn it off if you want to be sneaky). He can also, as has been mentioned, examine the door to be notified that "The lock appears to have been forced open". That would be enough for any player to tell that he's been robbed. He can then head to the black market and look for his stuff and invest in security as mentioned above.

Catching the thief in the second scenario boils down to asking the shop clerk (after getting him to like you through the magic wedge game) to tell you the name of the NPC that he bought the goods from as he protests that he "didn't know they were stolen". Even better the player gets told he doesn't know but he's sure it was a member of the thieves guild that did it. PC heads to the thieves guild to confront them about who broke into his house. That then can open up thieve guild quests such as joining them or wiping them out (and thus never being robbed again).

So, Einstein, can you get it into your big head that this is a pretty complex undertaking?

Of course it is. That hasn't been my point though. My argument is that, with a bit of thought, one can relatively easily overcome the "when you come back to your house and there are items missing, it feels like the game's broken" problem. Once again Bethesda think "Gosh, it's too hard!" and give-up, rather than under-taking any kind of solution process and coming up with something which would be really, really neat given it's actually a unique feature that's never been done before.

To re-cap, If you want to make this into a gameplay component, you have to:
- Make the stealing NPC leave traces of his activity. Done with "ransacking" and clues from the door being forced.
- You have to program mechanics that allow you to play detective and find the thief. Done though not necessarily as the player is more after their loot rather than the thief but in either case, possible. If all thieves work for the thieves guild, it'd be even easier to trace them and "solve the problem".
- It would be a complex subgame, but not something you can just brush over. Yup. Just like that wedge playing persuasion game, except this would be much more fun.

Oh, BTW, the kill message is no longer in, get your facts straight. Suxxors to be you.

I know. My point was that if it's good enough for an immersion breaking message to pop-up like that in Morrowind, it'll be good enough to do it here as well. As has been said though, Fallout had a very nice text area for descriptions and "more information". Oblivion could implement a similar concept easily enough.

 

[Lumpy]

Lumpy, I don't think it's as much work as you want to believe.

* NPC Steals form player. They already know how to, and Radiant AI governs this behaviour.
* Flag the items as "Stolen from Player," just like the items the player steals are magically flagged.
* Allow the player to attack anyone carrying their stolen goods without attracting guard attention, to cover the possibility of the player witnessing the theft.
* Bump up the NPC's desire to pawn off the item to assure that they will fence it swiftly if the player didn't catch them in the act.
* When the player next enters/wakes up in their home cell, spam a message "Something isn't quite right. You can't help but think something is... missing."
* Update the journal. "It appears somebody has broken into my house and taken some of my belongings. I should check around the local traders. List of Missing Items: etc."
* Add a "Stolen Goods" "dialogue" "option" to NPC shopkeepers who have received the goods. With a high enough persuasion the player can get them back free of charge. Otherwise, you have to buy them back. Unlucky. Toughen up princess, that's thievery for you.

...and that's a simple implementation. It's not as half-arsed as the fucking horses, and it can be easily built upon.

Another thing to keep in mind, is that if Bethesda had actually made a concerted effort toward dynamically generating quest content from the outset, it would be even simpler, and I think that's what a lot of people are getting at. Not so much what can be done with Oblivion, but what should have been done.

Yes, I agree, it would be possible this way. You'd still not have the ability to trace down the thief, but it might be interesting.

 

[Briosafreak]

A portuguese mag has a preview of Oblivion after they played a recent version, they are big Bethesda fans so they were full of compliments to the game, but complained that the IA doesn't work. You would enter a house and the owners would wake up, and nothing would happen, they would just stand there or at the most say hello and watched while you trashed the place... The radiant IA thing seems still not to be tuned up.

 

[Twinfalls]

You would enter a house and the owners would wake up, and nothing would happen, they would just stand there or at the most say hello and watched while you trashed the place... The radiant IA thing seems still not to be tuned up.

Sounds like it's working fine. Don't want to alienate those FF fans....

 

[LlamaGod]

A portuguese mag has a preview of Oblivion after they played a recent version, they are big Bethesda fans so they were full of compliments to the game, but complained that the IA doesn't work. You would enter a house and the owners would wake up, and nothing would happen, they would just stand there or at the most say hello and watched while you trashed the place... The radiant IA thing seems still not to be tuned up.

ITS BAD IMAGE QUALITY, err... IT WASNT USEFUL IN MORROWIND, errr...


SHUT UP OBLIVION ROOLZ

 

[kris]

A portuguese mag has a preview of Oblivion after they played a recent version, they are big Bethesda fans so they were full of compliments to the game, but complained that the IA doesn't work. You would enter a house and the owners would wake up, and nothing would happen, they would just stand there or at the most say hello and watched while you trashed the place... The radiant IA thing seems still not to be tuned up.

That just goes hand in hand with what I said in another thread. RAI doesn't react to actions of the player (with possible exception of city guard and direct attacks). They may only react upon changes to their enviroment that effects their normal behaviour, that would be eating, working and sleeping.

 

[Micmu]

RAI or not, NPCs not reacting to trespassing and/or drawn weapons (again), like it's done very well in Gothic, is silly. Even for FF fans - after all, they noticed that. How far can simplification go?

 

[hiciacit]

Oh, BTW, the kill message is no longer in, get your facts straight. Suxxors to be you.

I know. My point was that if it's good enough for an immersion breaking message to pop-up like that in Morrowind, it'll be good enough to do it here as well.

I believe they said there would be a pop-up like: "You've reached the Cyrodiil border. You may not pass this border, although you can still see off into the distance."

Pete: " We generated that terrain because even if you don't get to visit it, we don't want you to hit an invisible wall."
Funny comment. Bit of a contradictio in terminis.