Not really. I keep saying this, and it keeps being overlooked, but the hope upon which this thread was built was that the game would acknowledge major obvious differences, like the decision to allow Umbacanno to remain King in Nenalata.

What one of the earlier posters said (sorry not to mention you by name, but you with the pic of the gentleman whose hair is in constant wind tossed motion) hits the mark for me. In some of these instances, once you start the quest, the scripter has pretty much decided on how he/she wants it to go, and even in instances where the game allows you to deviate in a big way (i.e. to do the exact opposite of the intended quest goal) the scripter has decided to only acknowledge one of the two most probable outcomes.

I don't expect players in the game to run up and comment on the specific technique I used to kill my last opponent, nor for towns people to tell me how nice it was that I bought a meal for Ned the Wino. But if, instead of vanquishing the out of control Dremora who was longtermed summoned by an inept hedge mage whom he subsequently killed, I essentially tell said Dremora its nice to see him, give him a powerful Aegis ring, shake his hand and walk away. . . well, I don't expect the game to make much of my shaking his hand or giving him the ring, but it might at least notice that he is still on the loose and gaining ground. Maybe he goes and makes a lair for himself in the nearest abandoned fort.

And that is well and good. The problem I encountered too often was that there was nothing scripted for B, C or D, only for scenario A. If you killed the guy, the script responded. If you killed the other guy, both, or neither, it often didn't.

There were even glaring instances where your character FOLLOWED the scripted path and the game seemed not to recognize it. The best example is how NPCs in Oblivion often responded in conversation with masters of The Mages and Fighters guild. That people would not react to the Gray Prince or The Listener is understandable. Those are very covert positions of secret authority. But the way characters from The High Chancellor to in guild Mages to guild hall leaders responded to the likes of The Archmage of Cyrodil? Ridiculous. Half of them didn't know Hannibal Traven was dead, months after you had assumed the office. Apprentices spoke to the archmage as though he were the cleaning man come to rinse out their chamber pots. It was absurd.

Frankly, I hope to see improvements for both easily anticipated alternate quest choices (i.e., sparing the potential target versus killing him/her etc.) AND for even more obvious consequences of seeing the intended path through to full fruition.

sounds rather complex for a game, but what I taught was that just simply doing certain quests the game recognizes you

I don't know how to put this... going by your earlier "game incarnation" comment, the issue here is that you have this world in your head you want to live in and you want the devs to go inside your head and make it so. There are more glaring "absurd" and "ridiculous" aspects to the game, like the king's bodyguard walking on you with the King's dead body at your feet, you holding on to the very expensive ruby amulet, and the bodyguard calmly asking you what happened: "oh, he gave me the amulet', yeah, right... ; or an assassin walking around in daylight among the people wearing a uniform, or the player being able to become guild master of 6-7 guilds at the same "within a few months": so you just waltz into the mages' guild, and even with obviously more accomplished mages than you, it is you who saves the day, and you who become the archmage just because you killed a dude and one other dude basically says "here, I have been a mage and aspired to be archmage all my life, but you killed this dude, so you are the new archmage"... I can go on and on...

A lot of games already present different outcomes or game play based on decisions made by the player, but it is unrealistic to expect a video game is going to give multiple options every step of the way. It is not a life simulator, it is a video game.

Or to boil it all down, it is beyond Bethesda to manually code enough alternate outcomes to satisfy those who wanted them, especially consider the number of quests already exists. And there is yet no true Artificial Intelligence that is able to build up a result procedurally.

As an example, there was already an alternate path in the Umbacanno quest, which depends on which crown you gave him. That was already a major choice you could make that Bethesda offered you. The only question is how many other alternate paths you want on top of that. And each extra piece of detail is more time they had to spend on this non-essential quest.

I dont think what you desire is managable at this time. This would be too complex, but a little bit of a "lighter" version can be expected, regarding the main quests and the bigger battles of the game, where major decisions are noticed.

Well, some gamers can't see the differences between scripted events and AI, or just don't care, or especially prefer choices&consequences type games or think it is too much work or too hard to achieve at this time or a mix of those...

Anything I offered immediately compared to "conscious AI", "human intelligence", "SKYNET" etc... 13 years since Thief, still waiting to see something more complex...

Oblivion has the AI needed for wonderful things, it is just not interconnected. Radiant AI constantly lobotomizes NPCs on their daily schedules. It is unbelievable seeing AI being slaved to schedules(scripting streamlined).

Someday it will change from (6-8 eat) to (hunger>x eat). Someday every town will be responsible of the threats around their zones. Someday bandits will be able to move in the open world freely and randomly. It will still be a game but a better game. It is too much work maybe but for incredible gain in gameplay.

The lobotomy was needed because otherwise the AI get themselves arrested, start killing everyone, or otherwise do things entirely unexpected.
Bethesda can't do what Robot programmers will billions of dollars funding find difficult to do. Unbridled Radiant AI create insane NPCs. One day it might stop happening, but until then Bethesda had to start slow.

double post

I'm just curious where you found the official definition of "RPG." That seems to me to be a matter of perspective. Not only that, but games that you might call an RPG like chrono cross or final fantasy all react to the things you've done in the same way that the TES games react to the quests you do. If you do the quest, things happen, if you don't, they don't.

The only difference is that in a game like FF, or LoD, or Chrono, you don't have a choice but to finish the quest.

Those should happen. Unexpectedness is the goal of AI. It isn't AI otherwise. There is a responsibility level which should prevent those from happening all the time. Arresting exists, I didn't know? NPCs yield mod solves all the unexpected murdering but it is only working on NPC-player.

Lobotomy turns an insane person into an idiot. It is contrary to the principles of humanity.

This is really amusing now.
Repeat after me: there is no AI. It is a concept. It doesn't exist. Whatever you call "AI" , it is scripted, or coded, to do what it does. Thief, Stalker, etc etc etc... all coded to do what they do.

"Someday"...
This is what you don't understand, that no computer/program known to man has a concept of things like "hunger", or "responsibility", or "threats"... no computer knows what a "bandit" is, or what "roaming" is... it is all 1s and 0s. Somebody has to tell it: "when you reach this value, you are hungry, then look for this other value which is food, then when you are this many units close to it, you play this animation called eating, and then you zero out the hungry value and then set this other value called I am full." That is how it works.

And on the contrary: having a game world where every NPC/creature does whatever they want will not be an incredible gain in gameplay, you will have no game. I mean, what happens to Skyrim if the people who live in Skyrim get smart and move out from where the dragons are? Or if the dragons decide to fly across the ocean and never come back to Skyrim because it is too cold or because there's this dude killing all dragons? Or if the dragons get smart and decide to attack you all at the same time because you are killing a bunch of them? Or Aldouin changes its mind and decides not to destroy Nim? Then you have no Skyrim.

What's your point exactly? It is like I was talking about magic all this time. :shakehead: Yes, it is programming. Yes, a game is all 0s and 1s. But there is a game just like there is an AI implementation in the game for real. There are AI programmers doing this for a living. I was gonna post a "captain obvious" themed post for you but then I thought it won't add anything to the discussion. But you forced me now, Captain Obvious. :wave:

The second part of your post is really amusing... You think I don't know that. So what? Define all those variables and program the behaviors and call it best AI implementation as of 2011. I'm talking about the guys called AI designer/programmer who you can see their names in the credits of video games.

Last part, yeah... That's very close to what I want. But you should tailor their goals to match the story you want to tell in Skyrim. :foodndrink:

Ooooh-Kay, buddy, whatever you say... as you were... :rofl:

We talk about this non-existent AI http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1187304-improvemnts-for-ai-in-skyrim/ like we talk about it in this thread.

It is all magic but maybe if you change your mind, you want to contribute there this time.

You seem to not understand what I mean by "insane AI".

We are not talking about people walking around talking to themselves here; we are talking about things like:
1. Everything that isn't nailed down is stolen, so nothing is left for the player to obtain.
2. Alliance system causing one NPC to aid another in battle, causing them both to be arrested. This cause a chain reaction leading to the entire city being imprisoned.
3. And the worst case scenario, which actually happened during Oblivion beta, which is World War III. Every person who isn't unkillable in every town died. Because everyone is a friend to someone else, and the start of any argument lead to everyone drawing swords and hack each other to pieces. Final result being the playing entering the city only to find no one left alive.

The responsibility level only prevents crimes from being intentionally commuted. It doesn't prevent disagreements from AIs clashing because they both want the same thing at the same time. And even high responsibility NPCs would still join the melee if their "friend" is in danger.

Yielding just puts everyone in prison. And once again, that means the city is empty. You have not justified the idea that somehow having insane NPCs is somehow beneficial to anyone who wants to play the game.

Just to clarify the bold there. NPC's were never given the same opportunity to pay a fine or go to jail. Any crime committed by an NPC = death by guard.

Actually, I remember Bethesda in an interview mentioning that they once gave the option for Oblivion NPCs to be arrested. All the examples I gave are genuine situations that happened during Oblivion Beta testing that Bethesda had told us.
In the end, Bethesda decided it is more important that the NPCs actually stay in their regular locations so that the player can find them. The NPCs exist for the sole purpose of meeting and interacting with the player; if they aren't available due to death or imprisonment, then they lost their purpose of existence.

The way you describe it, it sounds ideal, but I think it would get annoying if an NPC continuously reminded me that I was avoiding the end of a quest for some reason, specifically if I were avoiding the end on purpose, like the Main Quest.

It was some sort of a pun. Lobotomy, insane, humanity... :sweat:



You gave the solution in the same sentence. Give responsibility the higher priority than disposition. Majority of the town should not be potential criminals. Responsibility should prevent that from happening at all times. The system must be tweaked until the imprisonment numbers graph stays under the cell numbers.

For first point, I'm sure if thieves steal a lot, they will get killed quicker. I'm sure you know the poor NPCs being murdered with EAT AI packages early in the game. Even then, the items can be sold back and bought back to return their original places.

I'm sure there were another reason/s. These don't make sense at all. Building majority of the system(all AI packages) and then quit for a small balance problem. Maybe they didn't have enough time to test? Or all AI packages running at the same time caused performance problems? They didn't have time to optimize? I would believe that.

I don't want insane NPCs but a little bit unpredictably adds so much to my enjoyment. Emergent gameplay opens more possibilities than the developers intended for us. It is for open world RPGs especially.

In my view, the world should "live and breath" outside of the player. NPCs shouldn't be moving around for show...

course the game should know when you either do a job halfway or just do a altogether half arsed job

I offered a system where that's not necessary.



Not because the game knows that but merely a simple counting algorithm working separately giving the same effect, and for any similar situation.(The dialog doesn't need to be more general then what's in the previous game.)

Accepitng and half finishing a quest is a RPing choice and should have some consequence. You finish the quest to get some benefit. Your part finish the quest you have some benefit or it may even hurt you. It is an advanced mechanic and I would be surprised if it is in the game.

Then you could end up with friends attacking friends because a crime of necessity or accident was committed.

AI of this magnitude is not easy. Everything you modify will affect things you didn't realize in strange ways. Yeah, they could've likely fixed if given more time, but Oblivion was already delayed, and they have to release with what they got. Keeping the game in perpetual development to fix issues will just give us another Duke Nukem Forever oh wait..


They didn't quit. I highly doubt they scrapped everything and redid FO3's and Skyrim's AI from scratch. They didn't get what they wanted for Oblivion in time, but that doesn't mean they gave up on it completely.

I have mentioned elsewhere, perhaps in a different thread that focused on the radiant AI, that there are fairly easy ways of dealing with this most problematic outcome. Namely, if the gaurds react automatically to misbehaving NPCs withthe same speed and near omniscience that they have previously reacted to the Player/Character AND, if instead of attack being their default option for disorderly NPCs, arrest is the primary response to violent crimes, with NPCs seldom resisting (95% or more non-resistance) guards once confronted by them, and with the prison stays lasting no more than a few days (even violent crimes would normally only be minor assaults, as the guards would intervene in pretty much every case long before it could turn into murder). For minor infractions the guard might only warn the NPC citizen, who would then get their act together and cease to misbehave.

This way you ensure controlled chaos. There is ample room for random behaviour on behalf or creatures and NPCs, but there is also a safeguard against the random turning into complete ruin.

Though all this is a little off topic from the original point of the thread. :wink_smile: