» Sun Dec 05, 2010 12:43 am
Late-Night Mood... Or How I Learned to Appreciate The Seedy Underbelly of Society:
This is one of the chunks from my old Ideas and Improvements regarding Large Cities doc. I doubt much of it should be expected in the game, but it's what I'd want to see, and what doesn't make it in will prove to be a good target for a personal mod.
5. CRIMINALITY
5a. Walking the city at night should be a dicey proposition. There might be pickpockets, outright robbers, con-artists, even potentially murderers. The night-time should be a time when the law-abiding citizenry shrinks into their little quarters of safety, and the darker underside of the city peeks out its head. This means that RadiantAI will actually have to be improved upon a bit, to rationally allow for this kind of stuff. So say you’re walking around in a less-than-appealing neighborhood. Some Wood-Elf, whose fingers have more of a mind of their own than what’s good for them, starts sneaking up behind you. [Not sure how an NPC actually sneaking undetected might be pulled off; the generic sneak animation obviously isn’t going to work to hide them from you if their stealth-check is passed. Perhaps they could (cringe) do it like WoW does it, by just becoming invisible until the stealth-check is failed] He attempts to pick your pocket and, depending on his skill or need, pulls free as many items as he thinks he can get away with, starting with the most valuable. At this point, the game calculates whether he succeeds without being detected or fails. If he fails, a top-screen message alerts the player, who can then lawfully attack the thief. Or if he succeeds, the player won’t be any the wiser until he discovers that the item happens to be missing. Quest-items and equipped items would be exempt, of course.
5b. The night-guard cannot be in the same condition and the same caliber as the day-guard. Whereas in the day, the guard rotation guarantees there will be a guard in any area no matter what, there should be significant holes in the rotation during the night due to understaffing and the less-desirous conditions of night-work. This way, criminal activities will have brief yet logical windows to operate. While I’m not fond of having something like a permanent location of a Black Market in the game, some form of illicit trade should exist that’s different than the “fence” system of Oblivion. Say, during these holes in the night-guard rotation, a sort of secretive criminal co-op is hastily undergone. And depending on the night of the week, it’s held at different locations and different times throughout the city, to lessen the chance of someone catching on. Discovering the locations and times of these black markets should be a matter of your reputation with the criminal element of that city, and perhaps your reputation and rank in the Thieves’ Guild (if there’s not rivalry between the guild and freelancers in cities).
5c. The Thieves’ Guild should be difficult to find in such cities. If they are fairly neutral or even cooperative with the freelancers in their area, then finding them should only be possible via winning over the trust of these late-night criminal elements. And winning trust from people who are said to have no trust should be a rather hard thing to do. Or, if the Thieves’ Guild and these freelancers do not get along well, then finding a recruiter to the guild should be counter-intuitive i.e. you’d expect to find the guild around such freelancers, but they’re not there, and those guys aren’t going to help you in discovering how to get in contact with them.
5d. Night-time is also when a different element of shadiness should come forth. Occasionally, a suspicious-looking (and never-before-seen) NPC should be discovered in the area (perhaps like a Fallout-3-esque random event). He should look and feel sinister, in both his physical appearance and his choice of attire. Attempted conversation should result in brutishly nasty and short words along the line of “Get away from me” or “I don’t want to talk to you.” If the player manages to follow this individual undetected, the NPC will lead the player to some location (such as a house or back-alley, or perhaps even outside the city), where that NPC will engage in an assassination of another NPC (naturally, the victim NPC will have to be a freshly-spawned, nameless background NPC). If the player remains undetected through the assassination, then nothing happens. If the assassin detects the player after completing the assassination, then they will attack the player.
5e. Certain clubs or taverns should only be open during the late hours of the night, and getting into them should be a matter of having a good disposition with the right people or faction. Inside, the player will find commonplace use (and ability to purchase) both moon sugar and the more refined skooma, along with the more acceptable alcoholic beverages. The patrons of these late-night establishments should have high aggression levels, so that if something about the player rubs them the wrong direction, they’ll get up (perhaps in two’s or three’s) and begin to pummel the player. Perhaps scripting should be enabled so that they’ll leave the player alone after the player’s health has dropped to a certain percentage, and they’ll yield w/ dialogue if their own health has dropped to a certain percentage. Highly illicit work/quests could be found here, ranging from smuggling materials to extralegal mercenary work to theft and perhaps piracy. Further, these late-night clubs or taverns could also act as a supplier of equipment and general merchandise to characters that’ve lost the trust of the legitimate day-time merchants [see 2e.]
5f. In these late-night taverns, gambling should be a constant presence, something the player should be able to engage in. While I’m not a fan of mini-games, the ability to gamble seems a worthy inclusion. When it comes down to it, betting in the arena did nothing for me, and the “game of shells” in the Winged Guar in Tribunal was similarly limited. I’m looking for two or three different games, and they should be along the level of complexity of pazaak in KotOR. It should be something the player could honestly invest money in, something that requires a bit of skill, as well as a bit of luck (which, by the way, could add whole new elements behind the Luck attribute). It should also be something by which the player could win or lose quite a bit of money in. It should also have economy-friendly limits, so that the player could not bottomlessly milk gambling to amass an immediate fortune. Opponent NPCs should be able to gamble only they money that they possess. Overall, there could be one or two serious games, as well as a few chance games (i.e. shells). Furthermore, it might be possible that a dealer/NPC might be cheating, adding a whole new complexity to things.
5g. Late-night player excursions may also be the perfect opportunity for factions hostile enough toward the player to send agents to attempt to end the player’s life. For example, if you’ve irritated the Order of the Hour enough, they may decide to send someone to quietly finish you off during the dead hours between dusk and dawn. It should also be part of the AI to detect the radius of guards. And since guard patrols should be heavily limited at night, it’ll prevent those laughable assassination attempts where the NPC draws and rushes the player in broad daylight and right in front of a troupe of soldiers.
2. COMMERCE
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2e. Merchants and thieves do not mix. If the merchant has any reason to suspect the player promotes, is involved with, or is engaged in thievery, then the merchant should be able to judge the amount of his suspicion against the desire to make a profit on the player. If the suspicion outweighs the profit, then the merchant should refuse service to the player and demand the player leave. A lot of people dislike this kind of thing, usually saying, “How is anyone going to know I’m a thief?!” Well, they’re not going to know (unless you’re a terrible thief). However, they are going to be able to infer. And that inference can be made by the following: the people you associate with, the places you associate with, and the number of times things have gone notoriously missing with you in the area at the time (in other words, your reputation/disposition with thievery organizations and thieves, as well as relevant faction reputation modifications upon completion of thievery quests. Note this is vastly different than a blanket fame/infamy system). If your illicit reputation gets too high, and you’re dealing with a merchant with a high enough responsibility value, they should refuse you until their disposition is high enough to override that refusal. Also, if you steal from a merchant and attempt to sell back the stolen item to that merchant, the same should apply. If the player gets too much of a bad reputation, they will have to seek out less reputable merchants to meet their needs [see 5e].
