There were severe risks and bugs with radiant AI which they addressed by highly watering it down in Oblivion, however, most people agree that the level it was watered down was mildly disappointing as it wasn't even possible to poison most characters outside a few examples and a quest characters. The question is, would you like to see refinement of radiant AI, and even the addition of some overlying and more complex AI systems that makes the world behave more like a non-stop running RTS if it meant adding depth to the game, even if it had the occasional consequence to your main quest-line (Causing inconveniences, but which could be made endurable merely by making a more complex Main Quest line with more variety in methods of completion).

One example would be creating a world where you can talk to all the kingdoms and they all maintain trade and commerce with one another, and have land disputes, lords, and overlying factions. These conflicts could result in wars, assassination attempts, new lords being added to office, and even competition among random characters in the game to vie for power. It also opens numerous possibilities for you to manipulate the balance of power in the kingdom, and to take full advantage of a previously watered down radiant AI system.

Its risky and complex, but it does have promise if implemented. The question is, is that what most of the players want, or would the majority rather stick to the safe side and avoid the unnecessary complexity?

I actually would gladly embrace events which seem completely chaotic without feeling that everything is scripted. Sure, I want my character in the game to have a major impact, but I want to feel that the world is "breathing", and is "organic", even when my character is not around a particular city, or group of NPCs. I would love to see counts (or whatever the name of the nobility happens to be in Skyrim) have motives, and aspirations, and act upon those motives, etc. The problem with complexity is that there is a fine line between an organic feeling world (always feels new, nothing feels scripted) and total anarchy, and NPCs creating a major headache, etc.

I'd love that. I'd even sacrifice other aspects of game play to get this, even if it meant that my character couldn't really do anything epic and change the world.

Precisely my thoughts. There have been a lot of efforts in layered AI in many games. It would be reasonable to create TES V with radiant AI at its base, but then with an AI system for each city and leader, and then an overall AI system controlling the politics of the entire region, it would be simple, but the interactions of the three separate AI systems would make it complex and yet psychologically intuitive while still allowing for deception, surprise, hidden motives, and plot twists, without even needing to include quests, or plot devices to begin with, purely in the vanilla game.

Definitely war and intrigue. Influenced by the player directly, and sometimes indirectly. I hate this obsession with not being able to have multiple outcomes (ala having to use the Warp in the West because of the possible outcomes of DF) It's the Butterfly effect. Even if you can control so many outcomes, you cannot account for every variable. Let the Lore be the Lore, and let me play my game anyway I choose. If I want the Dragons to take over, I should have that option.

Precisely my feelings... I continuously wonder what it is that has so many game-players frightened of the concept of a game not completely in their control? Its the very nature of role-playing games to maintain that feeling of mystery at the possibilities and outcomes, and to have so many options before you. Further in every other universe I can think of immersion always lied heavily in the fact that the world doesn't rotate around you... I hate to bring any sort of real politics into this, but I sincerely think the fear of this sort of thing comes from the same closed mindedness that spawns fear of anything else that clashes with someone's beliefs, or introduces something outside their control, or understanding... Some people have to have an answer for everything, a part in everything, and some level of control over everything... Its really quite sad.

I want to feel as if the world operated and would run just fine without my character's existence.

In TESIV, NPCs basically existed to serve the player - as merchants, city filler, quest givers, quest targets. They didn't actually do anything, politicians just sat around all day doing nothing until their schedules told them to scarf food and sleep, even the dock workers just stood around doing nothing. Bandits didn't even rob anyone, they just sat in their stupid dank caves without torches, doing NOTHING.

There should be political meetings, sabotage, thieves, explorers, assassins, travelers, games, brawls, etc.

I would love it if I stood for three days and the world around me changed without me doing anything about it.
Wars, battles, elections, all that good stuff would be wonderful.

This thread reminds me of the game - The Witcher.

Politics, War, Intrigue, R@pe, Cannibalism, Treason.

Yes, it would be aesome to see it in Skyrim

This would be as fantastic as it is unrealistic. Every game that trys to simulate wars, political intriigue, regligious conflicts etc. does this on an accumulated level (like Mount & Blade, Total War, Civilization etc.) On the individual level of NPCs in a RPG I don′t see this possible with current AI development. First every NPC needs to "live" beeing driven by hunger, thirst, lust for power, striving for wealth etc. Then all of them needed to implemented in a social-economic system which would need a kind of "Meta-AI"

What we would need is not AI or Radiant AI but "A Life" ...

I had posted this in the old forum, but this applies here as well, just replace Tamriel with Skyrim.



Edit: Add to it the now feudal towns and village that like the rest of the world compete with each other, for land, power, and money, via politics and/or battles.

And if all this can be done via NPC AI, then the better, so that no two games would be exactly the same in this era, but otherwise, I'm content with pre-designed events, quests and scripts, if they can supply the right mood and undercurrent in the land.

God I'd like that kind of complexity. A living world where people mind their own business independent to what you do, a world where you can actually choose your path, without a main quest that forces you to help the good, a world where factions fight each other and you can interfere in their wars and change the course, with real diplomacy/espionage/corruption feel.

However this is dreaming with open eyes, I don't think Bethesda is ready to pull it out, I'd be content if at least the real radiant ai would make it this time, after another 4 years I'd expect they figured it out.

All I know is, I'd love to see a bunch of fat old Nords, sloppy-drunk around a pub table debating Skyrim politics. It'd bring back childhood memories, minus the Skyrim and Nord parts.

As an ASOIAF fan it's obvious i choose the first and i would love a world that shapeshift every second for this kind of events, as it would be for a medieval-like setting. Conspiracies, assassinations, underhand deals, traitors, all this things should be at the order of the day.

But such AI layering is most definitely possible, there's no reason not to have Meta-AI's as you put it. You'd have the layer of Radiant AI (No longer leashed because the developers are afraid of their NPC's going crazy, and those AI's would be governed by a Legal AI, constantly balancing the system to prevent people from going on rampages or guards from losing their minds and slaughtering villages and each other because of a misunderstanding from an accidental friendly fire mistake. Then you have the AI of the cities, ran almost exclusively by the local ruler, but with a sub AI, encouraging mild sabotage, intrigue, and political infighting among the local royalty to change the ruler, I say mild for the same reason, the point being to always have such infighting, but rarely have consequences-such as overthrow or assassination (I say rarely, but occasionally things can happen, and particularly with a friendly nudge by the players). You then balance this out by a trade AI, that runs all the merchants and their networks, and then they interact dependent on the city states. The local rulers (Namely the most influential NPC in each AI system), will determine the qualities of each meta AI from conservative, to radical, to peaceful, to violent, from ineptitude, to skill, to gullibility, to wisdom. As such most of the AI's will remain relatively intelligent, as the most powerful AI will tend to be the most intelligence, sort of natural selection for the game.We finally extend a sort of civilizations style AI to run the whole map, making deals, bartering, technology, arrangements, marriages, projects, and alliances. The last and least important AI will be the one with influence only in one case, and it will be the combat or war AI, which only turns on when hostilities arise in the latter AI, and then it will be focused on ending conflict quickly to make these wars as uninvasive as possible, but still allowing conflict, war, battles, and the occasionally shift in power through conflict. Such layering is precisely what drive Civilizations, and it could be extended down to the individual NPC level.

It's a cool idea, and one that RPG and strategy fans have been dreaming of since the 80s, if not much earlier, but your argument illustrates the problem. Many Civ fans (and Civ 4 + BTS is one of my all-time favorite games) consider the AI to be stupid and think that it's a mostly insurmountable problem (for the foreseeable future). Despite a simple set of parameters, the diplomacy in Civ (any Civ) is a joke. The AI frequently makes bad decisions. The AI is inconsistent without a reasonable "state" or comprehension of it's history (or world history). The list of unsatisfactory issues with the AI could go on for pages. And this is for a best-of-breed game where the AI is the cornerstone of gameplay.

Also, if Skyrim or any game were to implement these ideas in a moderately complete form, you'd need much more hardware--CPU, RAM, disk space, than is available in even high-end rigs now. And you'd need millions of dollars and tens of thousands of development hours devoted solely to that single aspect of gameplay, with the final result being that just about nobody, not even gamers with $10,000 rigs, would be able to run the game in real-time.

This level of AI sophistication will probably show up in the future (> 20 years), but it's not even visible on the horizon right now. The industry isn't even close to the point where they can fake it with tricks (computational shortcuts) to make it convincing.

I'd argue within the decade, exponential times and all, but other then time-scale I actually agree with you .

it needs to be on a level that players can be interested in, every little detail is not needed

I completely disagree, player interest is drawn in not only by the big things, but the little and subtle things that attract them to a game, but every player has a vastly different combination of large details they need to see, and little subtle details to make the gaming experience amazing and immersive. Based on your logic the little details would be all but erased as the majority have no need for them, ruining the idea of giving something different to the gamer in the favor of only giving to people what everyone agrees on. This is the problem with majorities, and perhaps even democracies, mob rule, its like automatically because it doesn't appeal to the majority, screw all the minorities. Thing is people are fickle, you no doubt have things you'd like added to the game, that if ignored by other players would do nothing to ruin their game experience, and you would likely fight or even put up a post suggesting this idea that the majority don't really care about, but when an idea is suggested that will appeal to many minorities, but that the whole majority may not agree with you instead decide that its not worth putting in the game because of a personal bias.

I'd love me some different factions battling it out

If we're talking about "what would be feasible to implement as a polished feature", I'd rather they mostly keep the faction changes to scripted events. Minor random factions (goblins/bandits/miners, farmers/wolves/hunters, etc.) could have more dynamic fighting, but the main game factions should probably gain and lose territory and members and so on primarily based on the narrative you create, although not always necessarily as a direct result of your actions.

personally i think it would be a huge time vacuum, and the result would be sub par.
it would be best if they tried to make certain aspects of it work, like a state pollitical/war system, because it would be easier to implement than a whole world AI cause/effect system where every NPC was involved

This all makes me think of mount and blade where stuff like this actually does happen. War is declared, people are elected marshall, castles are besieged, towns are raided, etc. I would definiately love to see more of a living world in Skyrim but I wouldn't want it to be taken too far. Most of all I would like there to be battles and raids between generic NPCs. In Oblivion/Fallout it's always exciting to come across NPCs in a fight (even if it is two stupid imperial guardsmen fighting eachother). It would be nice to see this taken to a new level.

I would love for the first option to be an option in video games right now, but I just don't see it working outside of scripted events, unless you severely generalize and downsize the intrigue of the events.

I agree with the problems in technology to a degree, and the balancing issues, as well as the concern about how much depth could be added to the system. On a similar point I also believe that the only way to fine tune any aspect of any game is to develop and improve upon an idea, or at the very least that's the fastest way. In any case, I'm not expecting anything like what I said I'd like, merely pointing out that its not outside the realism of our technology or possibilities, merely on the extremely difficult end of the scale, and unlikely and untested, and for that reason its fine if we don't se such a system put into a game in this release. However, someday down the road, in a later release, I think unless they really are dumbing down the series, these sorts of systems and events can no longer be optional in an RPG, but with improvements in technology must become a necessity.