Troika i beg you make a random npc follower generator ToEe

[chrisbeddoes]

All different races
All different classes
2 short random dialogue for each class (2 reasons for joining you) money or revenge
10 different random names for each race sex
And a different portrait.
Everything rerolled each time you start a new game.



Please i know it won’t really take much of your time and it will significantly enhance replay ability.

 

[Spazmo]

For which game? And why?

 

[Rosh]

Re: Troika i beg you make a random npc follower generator

Please i know it won’t really take much of your time and it will significantly enhance replay ability.

Are you kidding? Random generated characters have the depth of rice paper. Also add in the possibility that you might get some too magic-heavy, or some melee heavy, and it could cause some problems with balance and setting.

This idea belongs more into Diablo 2 or Morrowind.

On a lighter note, I would like to see a canine NPC in ToEE, or something of the sort. Just call it coincidence, I just like it when every Troika game and Troika-roots game has a homicidal canine follower in it.

 

[Tank]

*cough*Dogmeat*cough*

 

[Spazmo]

Gee, thanks for clearing that mystery up, Tank. See, I thought he meant Virgil!

Lasse: Yeah, it was obvious, but you shoudl still specify the game in the subject line.

If you ask me, ToEE will no doubt come with premade parties for those who don't want to learn how to play. Just like both Fallouts and Arcanum came with premade characters.

 

[Sol Invictus]

Right on, Rosh. Random NPCs are way too expendable for my tastes.

 

[chrisbeddoes]

Re: Troika i beg you make a random npc follower generator

Please i know it won’t really take much of your time and it will significantly enhance replay ability.

Are you kidding? Random generated characters have the depth of rice paper. Also add in the possibility that you might get some too magic-heavy, or some melee heavy, and it could cause some problems with balance and setting.

This idea belongs more into Diablo 2 or Morrowind.

On a lighter note, I would like to see a canine NPC in ToEE, or something of the sort. Just call it coincidence, I just like it when every Troika game and Troika-roots game has a homicidal canine follower in it.

No I am not kidding. I stand by my idea.
Yes random characters have the depth of rice paper .

But i do not agree on the balance issue or the setting issue.
There will be only 1 or 2 such char max at party
( I should have specified that at the start)
and

a) if you dont want him her you dont have to take him.
b) What depth did the dog had in Arcanum or Fallout ?
c) It is my opinion that people care more about the abilities of a character rather than depth.
d) D&D third edition rules do not have overpowered chars like Fallout or Arcanum had ( like 10 agility 10 intelligence ) or ( harm and 100 magick char)

As for setting they can be mercenaries ( one dialog option Setting : Mercenary school) or poor villagers that their family has been killed. ( second dialog option Setting Burned village )


Finnally Tim Cain has said i believe that in every game he will ever make will have
a) A dog
and
b) (Not so sure about that) a place were "ladies" can earn money in humans most ancient profession .

 

[Dan]

Random NPC's won't add re-playabillty to the game.

If at one playthrough you get a female elven archer with great sneak skills, and a human knight character at another I don't see much difference.

A random generetor would make sure the NPC's wouldn't have any personallity.

Random NPC's means no specilized skills.
No specilized skills means NPC's that are useful only for combat.
This could only work in a pure hack n slash game.

 

[Jed]

*Sighs* I do love the dog NPCs... 'Bout the only thing that kept me going to finish NWN was my ranger's Dire Wolf companion. I loved watching him trash half my enemies before I even realized I was being attacked. That dog had the POWAH!

How about this: instead of a random NPC generator, there is implemented a tomogatchi-styled dog NPC that you have to feed, play with, keep happy, etc. Haha--St. would love the menial tasks in that! More fun than baking pies in Arx!

J

 

[chrisbeddoes]

It seems that the majority here does not like random npc.

Oh then.

Let me change my proposal a little and let me see if i can convince you.


You go into a tavern and you see 2 npc fighting.
Before you can interfere one of them dies.

If you have good alignment then the bad npc will die if you have evil alignment then the good npc will die.

Now if the good npc survives you can help him/her with a problem.
His/her village is under attack by evil mercenaries.

If the evil npc survives then you can help him/her with a problem.
The evil mercenaries that they sent to kill the good people village fail.

Now

If you do the quest you get to keep the npc as a follower if you wish.


You already have 5 people in your party that YOU made at the start of the game.

I need to ask you a few questions.

Does the race of the npc that you meet matters? (Unless we have evil and good races)
Does his/her sex matter?
Does his/her name or portrait matter?
Does their class matter?
Does the skill and feat that they will decide to follow matter?


Every time you can have a different follower.

Granted the quest will be the same.
To save a village or to destroy a village but the follower that you get to keep will be different every time.

And if you want depth then sure the follower can tell you the story of the evil or the story of the good village or you can help him in an additional quest that will be always the same.

And the reward in that quest can be different every time if say you perform the quest in a perfect way.

An Elven lady can give you Elven armor a human fighter can give you hid family human ancestral sword.



As for class i accept that the class must be different than the class of the main hero but other than that i see no balance problems.

Come on people what do you think?

 

[Jed]

Chris, I don't think your idea is a bad one, per se, but I will tell you why I don't like it as you've currently proposed: I think the primary problem, as I see it, is the randomness. I think the randomness would prevent the character from having any real depth, as far as NPCs go. I just can't imagine any way that a compelling character could come out of this, and as time is a fairly valuable commodity for me, I would sacrifice replay-ability for a higher quality initial pass.

A variation on what you're saying that I think could be interesting though, is to take the same "walking into the middle of fight" scenario you described, but instead of having the game roll up a completely random character, have it draw from a pool of pre-generated charcters that are actually interesting and useful. Also, the selection of which characters are picked could be based on the party's stats, alignment, choices made in previous quests, etc., to add another level of the player's choices actually mattering in the way game plays out.

Keep the ideas rolling, Chris, because I've seen all the energy you've put into past posts, and the mods you made for Arcanum; even if I don't agree, it's still good to have your enthusiasm around!
Jed

 

[chrisbeddoes]

A variation on what you're saying that I think could be interesting though, is to take the same "walking into the middle of fight" scenario you described, but instead of having the game roll up a completely random character, have it draw from a pool of pre-generated charcters that are actually interesting and useful. Also, the selection of which characters are picked could be based on the party's stats, alignment, choices made in previous quests, etc., to add another level of the player's choices actually mattering in the way game plays out.

Jed

A very nice idea indeed XJEDX .

Now let say we have a pool of 40 nicely done npc .

Let say that at various spots the game
a) Checks alignment of npc and party composition ( what misses from a party are healers or summoner’s or melee fighters or bowmen missing)
and the from say the 5 or 6 npc that are still acceptable rolls to choose the one that could actually appear.

Furthermore name, portrait and looks if applicable could be chosen from another pool .
One pool for name one pool for portrait and the appearance in random.


That could work for me .

Say no more Virgil each time.

And no matter where you found those npc they could say i was on my way from town a to town b .

A very really nice idea with the exception that more believable npc would have to be created.

But if the plan was to show 20 of those 40 npc anyway that would be no big loss.

I remember that Troika created such excellent dialogues that it would take more than 50 different games to read all dialogues.

edit

And that could even be done with Arcanum OLD engine .
Of course it would mean 40 different green people in each of varius locations for just one to appear but it could be done . Just more time was needed and the guys in Troika did not had time /edit

 

[GreenNight]

First of all hello everybody first post.

I need to ask you a few questions.

Go ahead.

Does the race of the npc that you meet matters? (Unless we have evil and good races)

Well, In the situation you just described let's imagine you played once and found a dwarf of any given class, and you wanted to make an all dwarfs group, now you couldn't if the race of this npc changed.
Or perhaps a quest could be granted only if you or any of your followers was of a given race. Then changing the race of the npc could have a major influence that can be unexpected

Does his/her sex matter?

Quests could be granted to all males/females groups (quest for the amazons), or some members could not acompany you to some locations (men's bathroom). But it's mostly a cosmetic change with some minor change in their attributes and/or skills

Does his/her name or portrait matter?

Well, if it's the same type of character you could be used to him/her with a given portrait and name, but it's mostly a cosmetic change again.

Does their class matter?

Yes, you could have created a group expecting this npc to join you at a later stage, just to find his class changed. This brings us to the last question.

Does the skill and feat that they will decide to follow matter?

Yes, for the same reasons as above.

In my opinion keeping the same npcs not only doesn't substract from replay value, but adds some. You can plan your following games acording to who you will find and how you want them to react to you.
It also makes somewhat more consistent the walkthroughs and the history.

After you defeat Kraftwerk you find that ugly/beatiful male/female dwarf/elf fighter/mage who is the son/daughter of the king/high priestess of the moutain of doom/the forest of sprites and asks for help. Well, I have also find a human cleric and a monk orc, who just attacked you on sight for killing their brother/tribe in the first/third chapter, but that was just once in a forthnight

Hei, I don't say it could be interesting, but I rather prefer wandering npcs (roaming from city to city) than random ones.

Just my 2 cents of euro.

 

[chrisbeddoes]

Ok then . Please answer those questions.

Wandering npc instead of random npc or static npc ?

Selection of npc that will appear: Same alignment for alignment selection and complimentary fighting skills for class selection acceptable?



Random changes in sex acceptable?

Random changes in name ( from a pool of names ) acceptable ?

Random changes in appearance if applicable acceptable?

Random changes in starting equipment of npc acceptable ?

Random changes in name acceptable ?

Making the pool of wandering npc bigger say 30 , double than the maximum number of wandering npc that could be shown in a single game say 15 while reducing their dialogue options in half so instead for 4 dialogue options based on different charisma and intelligence we could have different dialogues for say charisma only , so that overall dialogue will need same amount of time and effort to be written , acceptable ?


Please people speak.

 

[evilmonkey]

I would like variations in the cannonfodder, who cares if they got as much depth as ricepaper - they are soon to die anyway.

and I could see small variations in important NPC - mostly stat and skill related - it needs to be balanced though, and just enough to make it feel some what different without destroying the character.

...now I might just play the game once due to lack of time, and then such variable generation in objects are for me - useless.

in the end I don't really mind what way Tim and crew takes -.

 

[Rosh]

Ok then . Please answer those questions.

Wandering npc instead of random npc or static npc ?

Selection of npc that will appear: Same alignment for alignment selection and complimentary fighting skills for class selection acceptable?

So there goes the interaction between the main character and the opposite-aligned NPCs. Much like if you were playing an evil character and did too many things for Sogg's liking. All that is neutered down in favor for a randomizing system with no depth and almost Diablo-style random item spawning, or something that automatically tailors itself to the character (which is even more contrived than pure randomizing).

Pardon me if I don't exactly seem too enthusiatic about this idea, because randomized is contrived, and even in a pool of 50, you'll still run into repeat/mixtures from a previous game. Nothing says contrived like that new human fighter that has the same background as someone else.

General integration of the NPCs into the storyline would be very minimal at all (which is something Troika did better with Arcanum than BGII and Fallout ever did, check out Magnus and going down into Shuyler and Sons. They would instead be something as generic as Sogg but with a changing visage/name each time around. Can we get a Ben Stein "Wow" there?

Making such a system doesn't have the benefits of helping along the story (like intended in their games), and instead belongs in a game where the NPCs don't really matter. NPCs in Arcanum have tended to be a bit helpful, rather than somewhat useless like in Fallout, or extensions of the player character like Baldur's Gate.

Random changes in sex acceptable?

Random changes in name ( from a pool of names ) acceptable ?

Random changes in appearance if applicable acceptable?

Random changes in starting equipment of npc acceptable ?

Random changes in name acceptable ?

All of which are extremely cosmetic, with very little affect upon gameplay. Also, they would be much more trouble than they are worth.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

First of all hello everybody first post.

Heya, GreenNight! Welcome aboard!

Well, In the situation you just described let's imagine you played once and found a dwarf of any given class, and you wanted to make an all dwarfs group, now you couldn't if the race of this npc changed.

More importantly, races shouln't just be humans with stat bonuses. Having it so the race really doesn't matter will give that effect. A dwarf should behave differently and give different dialogue choices than an elf or a gnome, for example. They come from different backgrounds, have different motivations, and so forth.

Now, if you're doing a dungeon crawler, which are more about how the race fights, then sure, this wouldn't be much of an issue. However, we're talking about a full blown CRPG here, aren't we?

Randomly generating statistics is easy. Randomly generating personality, racial motivations, behavior systems, and dialogue, not so easy.

Or perhaps a quest could be granted only if you or any of your followers was of a given race. Then changing the race of the npc could have a major influence that can be unexpected

But what advantage would this give over a hand crafted NPC?

Quests could be granted to all males/females groups (quest for the amazons), or some members could not acompany you to some locations (men's bathroom). But it's mostly a cosmetic change with some minor change in their attributes and/or skills

Actually, I'd rather see more gender differences in CRPGs at both the statistics level and at the interaction level. Men are much different psysiologically and mentally than women. The problem is, most role playing systems don't account for this, and thus we have the gender difference only being cosmetic.

I think it'd be a lot better if women had bonuses to their stats, as well as penalties. Men, for example, tend to be much, much stronger. Look at the male bodybuilders versus the female ones. Men are designed to be stronger, so the attribute system should reflect this. Women tend to have more of a focus on their communication skills than men do, and they tend to be more flexible, so you could give them a penality to strength, but bonuses to charisma and dexterity.

Then there's the matter of doing the quests and dialogues for gender, to make it more fleshed out.

 

[Spazmo]

I'd rather see hand-crafted party members that have an interesting background that can lead to some fun adventure seeds, hopefully not limited to "I lost my father's amulet and, oh! Here it is behind this bush for no reason" like in NWN.

And Saint, is it just me, or are you being nice today because it's Christmas?

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I'd rather see hand-crafted party members that have an interesting background that can lead to some fun adventure seeds, hopefully not limited to "I lost my father's amulet and, oh! Here it is behind this bush for no reason" like in NWN.

I agree. Rosh pointing out Magnus in Arcanum as a good example of an NPC is right on the money. NWN's followers were pretty pathetic, especially when you stop in the middle of the dungeon to have a chat about their history. They'll give you a few lines on it, then say they're tired of talking about it. Basically, in order to draw out what you know about the character, they make you wait for completion of a few quests before they cough up anything else.

Honestly, I quit caring about asking them about their backgrounds after the middle of Act 2. They became nothing more than, "You, pick lock." people to me.

And Saint, is it just me, or are you being nice today because it's Christmas?

I'm always nice.. BITCH!

 

[Rosh]

Well, damn. Let's look at more:

Vollinger: How many have gone through his background? I've not, but I know there's more to him than just picking him up as cannon fodder.
Virgil: Most know this one.
Torian Kel: No way in hell this guy could be done in random. Try taking him to Kree.
Gar: Another one crafted into the setting.
Magnus: Dwarven areas are another area in which he may comment on or have background info on.

None of these could be really done randomly, and if they had random backgrounds or whatever, it would make them really contrived.

 

[MF]

They're much deeper than that, Rosh.

SPOILER ALERT














Vollinger is a member of the Molochean hand, he reveals himself in Qintarra or Tsen'ang, can't remember. He can opt to join you or you can kill him, it's quite a bunch of dialogue an it's a rather deep twist.

Virgil is the past criminal, but he's kind of forced upon the player. A good NPC and well fleshed out but I never took him after my first game.

Gar..can you help Gar with his family or something? never figured it out. He's just an orc that looks cool in plate armor although his story about being an esthetical outcast is wonderful..

Magnus is part of the Iron Clan, the home of which is northeast of Caladon. You can get the key from the Wheel Clan historian. It's also rather nice as you can put him there as a ruler. He doesn't just comment on dwarven things.


Then there is the romance with Raven (there are more right?). I know Saint doesn't like them, but my first game as a Half-Elf bowman was rather nice. She jsut gets about 110 reaction : love and says nice things at romantic places like Caladon's docks or Ashbury.
The deal here is that you can get rid of her, kill her or do whatever you want if you don't like the stuff.

All this can't be written randomly. Even with a vast and huge pool to pull from, they're still going to be thin as rice paper. I'd rather have a couple of well fleshed out NPC's than a bunch of random fighters/jacks. You could theoretically add depth to a random character, but the depth itself would not be random. If you take the time to flesh out an NPC like some of Arcanum's are, you might as well make sure they're in the game to pick up everytime. Perhaps their location could be somewhat random, but even that would impede upon the developer's efforts to make the character come alive.

 

[Dan]

The NPCs in Arcanum also react to one another.

I remember taking Virgil's advice about Vollinger on my first playthrough.
Inter-party releations can add a lot of depth, but cannot be implemented with a random NPCs generator.

 

[Rosh]

Very true, both of you.

As I was trying to get across, it should be Non-Player CHARACTER, not Non-Player CLUTTER.

 

[Killzig]

why not include both?

Surely you could have 3-4 well written permanent NPCs and then have the same amount of generated random NPCs scattered throughout the world.