I'm not sure if this has been brought up before but, to me at least, one of the underlying concepts behind fallout has been that you can "do anything" with the game world and still have a game to play. You could play as a goodie two shoes the whole time, or you could kill all the NPCs and still be able to get through the game (albeit you may have a bit less or more help from the NPCs doing so).

I was curious if this was going to be part of the MMO or if there were other plans for this. I don't know how it would work unless you run a ton of phasing.. like if you kill an NPC they're dead in your phase and won't respawn, and you now have to play the game without them, but that doesn't mean everyone else has to. I know it wouldn't really be an MMO without some form of respawns, but I don't know that people who want to go killing named NPCs would either get rewarded for it by being able to kill them repeatedly, or punish everyone by not having them respawn (the "people don't resurrect" concept).

all important NPC like vendors and quest givers will probably be unkillabe (due to a good reason...) but random people in towns could maybe be killable, but they would of course be defended by guards. But my guess is that you can't kill randomly in towns.

If there was no re-spawning, you would have ghost towns in a week and a really really dead wasteland in a month. Even the molerat would go extinct. And how would I have my mutfruit flavored molerat steak. "War. War never changes."
- Ron Perlman

I'm not saying the mole rats can't respawn... the question was more about unique NPCs, both in towns and in dungeons. Unkillable NPCs in towns I can live with, but I would still kind of have a problem with unique NPCs in dungeon instances or whatnot that you'd possibly kill repeatedly. It's definitely a staple for MMORPGs, but it doesn't seem to be canon for a Fallout game. If you kill a named thing it doesn't really respawn. They're dead for better or worse.

I'm aware that killable, non-respawning NPCs would mean the servers would be devoid of NPCs within weeks... which is why I was suggesting WoW-like phasing as a solution to this, such that if you choose to kill an NPC then they're dead to you only, but doesn't affect anyone else. The biggest problem with this is it creates a heavy load on the servers. Phasing works pretty well in WoW because they have lots of server power, but even then when server population was at it's high point after the lich king's instance was open they didn't have the capacity to support everyone's phasing instance plus dungeon instances.

A different solution for instances would be to have a randomly generated boss name each time... but that would take away from the lore a bit. I posted more about my idea for random dungeon generation in another thread.

It's a bit of a "Catch 22" issue I guess all around.

Whats great about the Fallout series is the grey areas and freedom of choice. And if I understand you correctly its this very notion that is at stake. Too little respawning and the MMO wont work and to much and it wont be a Fallout title any more.
gamesas has to consider this if they want there game to be successfull. And i'm sure they have talked extensivly about it to find the right balance.
I dont know how they will solve this but perhaps a solution would be to have different story lines depending on your choices in previous Quests, turn left and you get Quest A, turn right and you get Quest B. "War. War never changes."
- Ron Perlman

Once again, Bikkabakke nails it. While it would be fitting with the IP to have all NPCs targetable, their 'respawning' would not quite make sense. Instead, let's just hope for unlimited killing of PCs! "What would your good do if evil didn't exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared?"

Once again, Bikkabakke nails it. While it would be fitting with the IP to have all NPCs targetable, their 'respawning' would not quite make sense. Instead, let's just hope for unlimited killing of PCs!

Here's an idea: A NPC dies in one location. It doesn't respawn until another dies in another location. A same type of NPC appears (maybe with a randomized item sales, like the other FO games), but with a different name and look.

That way you get a better feel for that NPC being dead and gone...without losing the functionality of having that NPC. Basically you just killed the shopkeeper and that location has to wait for some crazy person to fill his shoes.

I was going to mention something similar to what WNxSynyster said.

On top of that if you have reputation in the game and PC go around killing everyone and every thing (especially NPC's) they get a very negative rep.

The have the game (NPC's) put a bounty on them. And there are NPC bounty hunters in the game too.

Sure players will still go around killing townees, shop keepers and such, but after a while the game will settle down because how many of those players want to face a game bounty every time they log in with the killer character.

Dave Chase

I thought of an interesting direction that this might take... and if it sounds a little convoluted then forgive me in advance... but hear me out.

In most MMOs your characters are basically immortal. Even if they die they respawn as ghosts that can reinhabit their dead bodies, or are teleported to a graveyard or whatever, but they're the same character. It's been previously stated by the developers that this is not Fallouty, and in so being, -defeat- will be handled a certain way, but what happens on the event of a player's death hasn't been mentioned. MMO gamers tend to become attatched to their high level toons because high levels are dificult to attain. Fallout, I think, has a chance to do something differently.

When defeat happens, you wind up in the hospital, lets say. But should death occur then the Fallouty thing to happen would be that the character remains dead. I had proffered previously that your character's belongings could be passed down to your next toon by an inheritance. But this doesn't solve the fact that the player will still likely be really bummed about having to re-level their toon to get back into the end game. The solution to that would be, I would think, a leveling system that works faster than the normal MMO leveling system. 1-80 in WoW can be achieved in the course of a month or so by a non-hardcoe gamer. Fallout games, however, tend to level you much faster than that. 1-20 in a weekend in Fallout 3 was pretty doable.

But how does this tie into NPC deaths? Imagine that each toon keeps track of what storyline NPCs that they've killed, what merchants in town no longer exist because they killed them. Not server-wide NPC death, but a tick on the box of the character's data that tells the player weather or not they have access to that NPC on that toon. Then, expand that same idea to cover instanced dungeons. Faster leveling means that you won't likely need to do the same dungeons repeatedly, so you could do each one once on a toon for some major experience and fairly unique loot. Loot drops wouldn't have to have a large table of things that could possibly drop... they could have a set, say, 5 things that drop every time off the boss, and the 5 players get to divvy things up themselves. The dungeons could respawn with new baddies that decided to take over the old compound you cleared out, but they probably don't have quite the resources of that last crew you cleared out. Didn't get what you want? Try purchasing something from another character or just making another toon to play through the game a different way. Fallout's normally "classless" system leaves a lot of room for experimentation. That means lots of character builds to try out, and lots of characters to make.

The trick, and the problem, of it is that this all is kept track of by each character. Which could mean larger data files, and with the many characters that will likely pop up that could be a lot of server space burnt up quickly... but hey, there's a price to pay for being unique I guess. The other price is that your high level character wouldn't be quite so valuable, perhaps. And keeping a consistent high level raiding gang/guild together would be difficult without a fair bit of non-raid time maintenance play happening to grow up a new level 20 (or whatever max level will be) character.

I hope we can do jst about anything, kill anyone (just about), a steal anything, but with consequences, like if you kill too many people of a certain faction they won't talk to you, give you quests, then eventually try to kill you, even to a point where they will sent assassins to kill you... Give me an axe and point me towards the caribou, dinners on me.

I think that the consequences of your reputation (good or bad) should follow you through the game... just not to the point of getting attacked in town. Assassins should try to get you somewhat often once you're one rank from maximum karma (good or bad), and once you reach the cap it should be almost a plague of assassins, seeing as like every good or evil faction in the game would want you dead at that point.

Hmmm, to much WoW spice around.
This will be a MMO so, the part with stealing, looting traders and so on aren't a MMO brand and I don't see how can you make it.
And now, why would someone want to kill everything and everyone? Again, I don't see how you can blend the part with NPC killing (except "monster" ones like raiders, mutants and already hostile NPCs) with a MMO.
Last thing, maybe there won't be a leveling part; gain A XP for next level and be able to PICK you skills and so one. Why not be a do-receive leveling of skills; use a handgun, get hg skills, use a blade, get melee skills, etc. (use a toothpick, gain toothpick skills. ).

How about killing a NPC instantly makes you persona non gratis in that town. You CAN kill who ever you want when ever. And in the fallut games create a ghost town. But for the MMO's intents and purpose you just no long gain access. Become shoot on sight for the guards outside the town and or guard towers. All the NPCs respawn and you just lose access to them(as if they didnt exist)

Permanently. So even late game if stuff gets added to that zone. you have to "sneak" in fight in or its just plain not available to you. Put a reputation guage on each town. One kill isnt eviction. maybe three is. However one kill makes you red to the entire town so you would have to escape without killing anyone else and have a 24hour cooldown or some such.



rather then being plagued by assassins sent from npcs. make these encounters hireable from a guild. Order of paladins if you are a goody, assassins if you are naughty. some one pisses you off. send assassins after them.

If FOOL ends up being as sandboxy as the previous games in the series, some very interesting situations could erupt. For example, consider what may happen when some players group up to do some content. A friend logs on to help you with a quest, but when you goto town both of you get shot at... because he forgot to mention he was there just yesterday robbing the place.

If player consequences are implemented, they will not just affect them but also anyone they associate with in theory. Personally I think this would be rather awesome.

One thing that I learned early on playing Fallout was that anything could die. I can't say that I have played a game where I cleared out an entire town... mostly because I'm not big into RPing evil. But it can be done, and you can still continue on your merry way as it were. It's part of idea of realism in the game. You could make the "good" choice of shopping at a store, or the "evil" choice of killing the store owner and taking all his wares. The evil choice is profitable but has huge long term ramifications because then his services are no longer available.

Blending this "kill anything" concept with an MMO was the basis of my question for this thread to start out with. I was curious as to how or if they were going to do it.



This is a lot like the Everquest 1 model of reputations. You can kill anything or anyone in town, but if you do then you get a major reputation hit against that town or possibly even that region. Getting into town then becomes a very tricky thing to do, and when you do get into town you're only really welcome in the shady district of town, and only then if you've done some more reputation building with the shady characters therein.

But even then, if a special NPC dies I would assume since it's Fallout then there is no resurrection shrine or whatever. Players don't come back to life, so why do NPCs? Which is why I started thinking of other options, like "if you kill or are involved in killing a unique NPC, then they're dead to you specifically but not the rest of the server." It's a decent solution to a hard problem but brings problems of its' own. Killing important NPCs may be profitable but definitely should have consequences on your character.



I agree that it would make things very interesting. It doesn't even necessarily have to be party based. Your friend the shoplifter could find himself in trouble when the two of you go somewhere, so he gets into a scuffle with the guards... but he's your friend, so you help him. In doing so, you then become his accomplice and share some of his bad reputation and karma. This type of thing is pretty easy to do in MMOs, just think of any critter that has hatred / threat / whatever you want to call it. If you wind up on the critter's threat list then upon it's death you share in the reputation gain / loss. In EQ this was universal (which is how I liked it) but other more recent games tend to handle it only in terms of your party. Outsiders that throw their hat in the ring don't usually get the benefits or consequences from the kill.