Do you want Essential NPCs? : V - Skyrim

» Mon Oct 19, 2009 6:14 am

I liked the Morrowind system, you can kill anyone, but if he is important to the main quest you get a little notice.

» Mon Oct 19, 2009 3:05 am

Morrowind version

» Sun Oct 18, 2009 7:28 pm

I'm ok with them being killable, as long as I know that I just killed Dovahkiin.

» Mon Oct 19, 2009 3:43 am

I want to kill anybody that I want to kill. I hate trying to kill someone and they just stand up 2 minutes later, So to put it lightly, hell no. :wink_smile:

» Mon Oct 19, 2009 6:28 am

I only want important NPCs to be killable by me, and me alone.

I agree with this.

» Mon Oct 19, 2009 7:22 am

Essential NPCs doesn't really bother me. I'm almost always a good guy so it doesn't affect me.

» Mon Oct 19, 2009 1:43 am

I selected the third option, as I firmly believe that Morrowind had the correct method to handling the PC killing MQ essential NPCs.
In MW, there was no way to know that an NPC was an MQ essential, unless you killed the NPC, and the warning box came up. And the way the warning was handled in MW meant that you COULD continue playing after an MQ essential NPC was killed.
Because of the problems arising from the lack of constraints in MW, complaints about the results of the lack of constraints in MW became the norm. As a consequence of these complaints, Oblivion was 'fixed' by making it far too heavily constrained. And that 'fixing' of the problems has generated far more complaints.

Jenifur Charne

» Mon Oct 19, 2009 9:50 am

snip

Interesting perspective. It's seems like the 2 Big Problems would be 1) When you kill characters who repeatedly come up, there are problems in normally scripted events, and 2) if that character were to disappear, how should the world react?

As far as one goes, I had never thought about it. I don't think it would be too hard to code for that kind of situation, especially because it would seem like an obvious room for error.

As far as two goes, that's another reason to have well scripted, generalized NPC interactions. Not only should characters have dialogue in case Martin dies, but also Joe Dunmer down the block. A logarithm made up of {# of times NPC1 "talked with" NPC2} x {# of times NPC1 talked to NPCX about NPC2} x {average geographic proximity of NPC1 and NPC2} x {# of NPCX's who have data of the previous types) would determine the level of dialogue to use.

In Martin's case, Jaufree would have a lot to say because he had "talked with" Martin a lot, talked to you about Martin, was around Martin at the priory, and because many NPCs eventually "learned" about him. A commoner in the streets would only have the (# of NPCX's "aware" of Martin) to base his dialogue on.

I realize that all seems complex, but it really is the future of AI, essentially giving NPCs more "memory," concerning the Player as well as other NPCs. If implemented, you could hunt someone down by asking other NPCs, with no needed scripted dialogue.

» Mon Oct 19, 2009 10:23 am

I think it might help if someone explains why developers make their important quest characters invincible. It's not because they want to annoy you, or because they can't bear to see them hurt. It's because quests in video games are a pre-written series of events that require a lot of work (and content, and processing, and disk space) to create. Let's take Oblivion as an example. Martin's an important part of the main quest. They record a bunch of dialogue with people talking about Martin, and a bunch of dialogue from Martin himself. They write a bunch of scripts where Martin does things. They write a bunch of quests that all center around you looking for Martin and then doing things for him. All of that takes a lot of time. Then they're finally done and they have one main path to complete the game and do the main quest. Now, they focus on a few other paths through the main quest that people might take. Let's say you sneak into A rather than going to B. They record some new dialogue referencing you doing A instead of B, and tweak some quests and scripts to account for that. They probably do that for a few different parts of the quest. Now, you want them to deal with you killing Martin (for no apparent reason other than your character being a psychopath who wants the world to end). In order for the game to continue to make sense, they'd have to record a bunch of new dialogue so that all the people who would usually talk about Martin now talk about how he's dead, because otherwise it looks stupid when you're parading his severed head around and they all keep talking as if he's standing right next to them. They have to change all the main quest points to include code and content to deal with the now-dead Martin. Any places where he normally would have spawned in now have to be redone. Any places where NPC's would usually reference him need to be changed. They have to think about the game's story a bit... in the actual game story, you killing Martin is supposed to mean the Daedra invade and destroy everything and the world is doomed. Do they actually write all the code and art and dialogue to handle that?

I don't think anyone underestimates or misunderstand why Bethesda choses to make characters essential. It's the natural outcome when you have such scripts and character dependencies. But that's why such character dependencies are ridiculous. It's why quest designs shouldn't be rigidly structured around a single person or persons being alive for the whole shebang. I'm sorry, but backpaths are what gives the game its complexity and makes it interesting. The dialogue in such circumstances does not have to be extensive; aside from a few lines from the primarily affected quest-giver or quest-respondent, a few one-liners can be recorded for the races to represent the effect of the player's actions. And in terms of coordinating that dialogue, it's not nearly that difficult, really just setting the dialogue filter to a quest stage or some other boolean result.

Martin is an ineffectual example, because what Martin represents is quest-design that inherently assumes essential characters. Instead of designing a storyline that could act independent of specific characters, or one that has one or two failsafe tiers, they throw a character into the mix whose death automatically means consequences that cannot feasibly be displayed by the game. That isn't affirming the need for essential characters; it's just poor design.

» Mon Oct 19, 2009 6:58 am

I remember a lot of essential characters in Oblivion would end up getting knocked out from the other side of the map while I was in a random dungeon. And sometimes I would try to return the fork to Big Head he would get into a fight with a random NPC and wind up dead.

Killing essentials is one thing. But nothing would piss me off more than coming back to find an NPC dead just because he got in a fight with a pickpocket thus preventing me from completing a quest. I'm against it, I guess.

» Sun Oct 18, 2009 6:56 pm

3rd option

» Sun Oct 18, 2009 6:35 pm

I'd like them either flagged, or for Immortality to be toggle-able.