do you know the name of every stranger you meet in town? if were being very strict about realism, we wouldnt know anybody's name unless we've been introduced to them somehow. i personally think that it would be a great idea if every npc had a name. it would def bump up the immersion for me.

If you seek to help everyone that suffers in the world you will only weaken yourself and weaken that person. It is the internal struggles, when fought and conquered on their own, that yield the greatest rewards.If you helped someone and not be entirely selfish, you stole that struggle from them, cheapened it. If you care for others, then dispense with pity, sacrifice and care and recognize the value in letting people fight their own battles. And when they emerge victorious, they will be even stronger for their triumph. Inflicting pain on people for pleasure is sick and never acceptable. But if it means your own survival or your own nescessity at the expense of others, then more power to you. And that is what it comes down to at the end; power. Whether political, or self improvement or otherwise.

My two cents on it. I believe evil is a point of view. A matter of pespective that defines a person and/or society through "morality".

: Anyways, on topic. If anynone got moral problems, go ahead PM me, but this is for bandits. I agree that bandits need their own personality. In Oblivion, if the player has a very high bounty and infamy score, you can speak to bandits and they won't attack you(Unless you unsheath your weapon and attack them). So, they weren't always "bad" or agressive.

Wasn't that because they were scared of you, not out of the kindness of their hearts?

Perhaps that's the case. But if they were scared, they would flee at the sight, not greet you.

When I play Oblivion I always think it would be great if I save a bandit from a bear or other foe who is trying to kill them, they would then have a change of heart towards me.

But alas, it is not so...

I think it would be a pretty cool feature if it were to be in Skyrim.

They're bandits hiding in a cave. Aren't many places to run to.

The ones in camps and in roads have all places to flee. But I get your point.

Yes, that sounds like fun. Cuz that would also add dynamics to the game. You could sneak past them when they are meeting, maybe even start fights between them, or wait till one is alone to kill him. Def would equal endless hours of fun
would also add immersion because you would have to make sure none of them followed you when they left a meeting, or anything like that.

Evil, as well as good, are completely subjective ideas. By an impossibly neutral viewpoint, they would not exist.

I like this :goodjob:
I like any addition that makes the world feel more alive when I'm not around (or better said not actively involved, I want to be able to witness all kinds of random events and just stand there and watch), less dependant on my actions.

Using the term "bandit" or "marauder" to define all of these people is part of the problem I think. In making it so you have an endlessly spawning pool of enemies to fight, the specific nature of the NPCs and why they are living where they are become lost. In MW, there were lots of places that were dangerous and scary, which would qualify as dungeons, that were inhabited by people who were not necessarily aggressive towards your character. In fact, there were a good deal of people in dungeon settings who you were "supposed to" talk to.

Many "bandits" had some back story and reason for hiding out in a dungeon. You may or may not have known about that story when you went in there and killed them, but there was likely as not some text, whether in a note or "spoken" by an NPC somewhere else that defined the nature of the NPCs in that cave.

I would love for the people you meet in all these caves to have specific reasons and personalities, but this would come at the cost of respawn if done well enough to make a difference. I suppose you could then have the specific NPCs be replaced later by non-specific ones, but... eh.

Also, adding enough realism to the denizens of dungeons lives and their story for why they are there should yield just as many doing so without being "evil". You'd end up murdering perfectly innocent folk all the time if you just explored without a quest objective into a cave and started sneak attacking folk. Necromancy, for example, was really flattened out in OB... it was not illegal, and necromancers shouldn't have been just all part of the evil cult under Manimarco... I mean, even the Mages who were good and the PC (often) would summon the undead :facepalm: . So, knowing who really deserves an arrow to the base of the skull or a throat slit is a bit trickier if you make the characters more believable. If they were truly believable, they wouldn't all be "evil" in the first place.

There is such a thing as evil.

Look at me, I can make open-ended statements too! Explaining on a forum is overrated, just say something and then leave. That's my motto. :thumbsup: /sarcasm

Yeah, I don't get this whole "there is no evil" thing. There are some things that, even if the "society" you're in condones it, are still evil. (Especially in game & fantasy worlds, where things that aren't known in "real life" are taken as fact - for example, black soul gems. Destroying the soul of a sentient being is evil. Torturing the helpless & non-consenting - like, say, children - is another.)


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Meanwhile, on the main topic - alot of these things depend on the genre, style, and setting of a game. Yeah, in "Tenchu Stealth Assassin", I'd expect all the things you'd need to be a stealth assassin - like guards having patrol schedules/etc. In a grey-morality game about choices, I'd expect situations that make you ponder the morality of your decisions.

In a Good Versus Evil, Destined Hero game? I expect the world to be mostly full of nice, neat "evil" targets for the Destined Hero to slaughter without worrying about the "why".

:shrug:


(Given that Skyrim apparently has a civil war going on, I'd expect a few "choose sides!" style grey-morality bits. But bandits & other "acceptable targets"? Mow 'em down! )

Good point. But possibly a bit premature. I usually find that a "throw around all the crazy ideas" phase is a good tool to figure out "how I would like things to work". And from there settle on a compromize between available time and functionality. Thinking implementation to early has an annoying habit of stiffling progress. One could also hope that the new engine would include an improved and more stable implementation of schedule management.


Given that they are supposed to be people, there should be some glimmers of intelligence and (at least) self preservation. Charging into battle against someone who is obviously superior to you is either due to desperation or stupidity. Indeed, a bandit does not have to attack everyone at any time. If they have enough loot for now, why should they attack someone? And giving them names stops them from being easily "labelled" by the player. It could even spark a bounty hunter quest line, where the player had to seek out known bandits and stop them.


Is that really that much of a problem? I seldom go back to the same dungeon in Oblivion.


Heh, yeah, that really did raise my eyebrow. Mages get expelled from the guild for necromancy, but happily teach you how to summon your own undead? "Obviously" necromancy is not about manipulating or researching dead bodies, it is only about capturing the souls of humanoids. Or something. And why they would attack you for entering their caves instead of just asking you to leave surprised me. On the other hand, it also surprised me that they would move their work into a damp cave in the middle of nowhere when it was perfectly legal to do it in the city (or at a nice house just outside a city).

I don't have THAT much of a problem with it, but would said NPCs then take up the exact same schedule as the named NPC with a back story? its a little weird, and revisiting caves does happen, even if you don't so so.

To the other point, yes, I don't know why just because the Mages Guild doesn't support necromancy that they would need to move to caves. Its legal by Imperial law. It begs the question, just because someone is in a cave they must therefore be "evil" and ok to kill? But if they are in a nice house its not the case? So let's get this straight... someone is wandering around in a cave which is their home, and their only backstory is that their guild kicked them out for doing nothing illegal... kill em! But someone is in their nice mansion but is a murderer and a thief and you know it... not ok to kill them. So basically its just class warfare

As some others apparently did as well, when I first saw this thread title, I thought of human motivations for bandits rather than just schedules and such.

I catch myself in Oblivion from time to time - one of my characters will be jogging down the road and a bandit will attack and, of course, end up dying. I'll strip the bandit of anything it's got of value, then sometimes suddenly think something like, "I wonder if she has a child somewhere, and she was just out trying to eke out a living to provide food for her child. And now, here she is, lying in the middle of the road, dead. And naked. How sad..."

But then I just go on 'cuz, you know, it's just a game. But still....

To the point - I'd like to see a lot more definition to the bandits. For instance, I've always thought that the bandits who hang out by the roads should come from somewhere and go somewhere. There are bandits in Vilverin, for instance. There are even a couple in the camp outside of Vilverin. So why aren't they ever up on the road just east of Vilverin? Isn't that what bandits are supposed to do? That's what they do in lots of other places - they hang out by the roads and waylay travelers. So why are there all those bandits in and around Vilverin, but none of them ever come up to the road? I think it should be set up so that one or two of the bandits in a place like Vilverin should leave, on some sort of schedule, and go up to the road and hang around and do the bandit thing for a while, then turn around and go back to Vilverin to drop off their loot, eat, drink, sleep, what-have-you.... And conversely, the bandits that hang out by the roads already shouldn't just spawn right there by the road - they should come from somewhere, go to the road, be there for a while, then leave. Give them paths and schedules, just like other NPCs (well - they already have schedules, but they're pretty rudimentary).

And briefly, even though it's off-topic, just because I can't pass it up - arguing that there's no evil simply because the perception of evil is necessarily subjective is ultimately no different than arguing that there's no universe just because the perception of the universe is necessarily subjective. The fact that a thing can only be defined subjectively has no bearing at all on its possible existence or lack thereof - it's just a function of the necessarily subjective nature of human perception.

Nihilism isn't a valid position - it's just a part of the scenery.

"Bandits are people too"

Not when they're trying to kill me. :dry:

My thoughts on this, it will be very interesting if bandits idle routines and schedules are implemented as they were done in Fallout 3, and be even more improved.Gameplay design wise, the whole ethical view on
this is prefixed in the sense that their-bandits-point of life view is, they chose the criminal life:they do not wish to socialize, mingle or befriend anybody, they are just in it for the survival part.

Also, it would require endless extra programming, bug testing and fine tuning to implement more complex and diverse AI routines.It's not meaningless, not a bad idea role-play wise, but it serves the current state of cprpgs just sufficiently for now, and devs were smart enough to take some advantage of the mentioned possibilities, by showing you fragments of their daily life routines and thoughts in Fallout 3 through their diaries and computer logs.They did have names-actually, more often nicknames-and sometimes they would allow the player a very small insight of their point of view in things.But,realistically enough,as criminals and outcasts, having made their life choices,did not have any reason or interest to approach you other than to kill you and loot you.

I don't think this just applies to bandits though, for example if you are part of a guild the other members should be seeking out advancements, doing quest's and getting killed just like you are. Obviously there are going to be many peasants/commoners in the game that have daily schedules an aren't going to be particularly relevant or interesting, but there should be many other wannabee adventures trying to make a name for themselves in skyrim, just like you are.