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Erevorn

NPCs - world not so empty

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So I have just seen Darmalus's suggestion and it's great. I have decided to take this a little further and if the innkeepers show up I'd like to see more NPCs to make the world a little less empty and sad. Most of them would not be relevant, possibly not even able to talk. My perfect view is below:

 

1. Merchant travelers:

 

They would travel from starter towns to starter towns over GM protected highways. They would act like traders and if you caught one you could see items that people sold to the traders while they were travelling. Locking a merchant would be illegal ofcourse to prevent greediness.

Every town a traveling merchant visits a starter town they replenish their money amount (let's say up to 5s) and move on, while the items players sold to them disappear as well and the merchant is a blank slate.

 

2. Traveling knights:

 

Generic NPCs in beautiful armor with beautiful weaponry on beautiful horses riding from starter town to starter town. If you caught one on the road and talked to him you'd get an option to tell him: "follow me, I need your help". For choosing this option the knight would charge for example 30 copper coins and he would follow you for 5 minutes while attacking every aggressive creature in range.

 

3. Quest NPCs:

 

Stationed in starter towns they would offer various quests for new players so they learn the mechanics of the game faster. Quests wouldn't be difficult, for example: "bring me 5 black wolf furs" or "craft a hatchet for me". For these quests they'd be given some simple starter items like a portion of bangers and mash.

We could take this further and create quest NPCs for older players as well, that would offer quests like "bring me a barrel of ale and I will reward you with this 70ql 70woa mallet".

 

4. Generic NPCs:

 

Some people hate seeing their deeds have no life. I assume this idea would bring more lag to the game but if there is a way to make it lag-free the suggestion is to create purchasable NPCs to put in your towns. They could basically stand in one place and chat from time to time, they could be jesters, they could be walking paths players designate for them.

 

 

Note: this is just a suggestion so this idea can be heavily manipulated and changed at this stage. The above are only general outlines.

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ehm, are you aware, that only Xanadu (talking about PvE servers) has more than one starting town? " travel from starter towns to starter towns" can be a problem on other servers

 

BTW, similar NPCs are already working in game ... in World of Warcraft, for example

but Wurm is quite different and special kind of game, do not try to turn Wurm into WoW, please

Edited by Zakerak
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God no. This game is about real player communities filling the world.

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Maybe if one could "parent" and train NPCs to a certain degree along with them doing their own thing. Heck thinking back on the old player breeding bug... :D

 

More "evil" acts could involve slavery to gain more control.

 

I'm not a fan of the trend towards quest-driven gameplay. Now if its player-driven (fetch me ten rat tails for rat tail soup), in that context, I MIGHT be friendly towards merchant NPC acting as middlepeople for offline players.

 

Edited by Klaa

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I think the merchant travelers have potential.

 

We already have merchants managed by players.  They sit, mostly idle, in long rows.  People travel long distances to go see if there's anything reasonably priced to buy...  How exciting.  Shouldn't be that hard to imagine a bit more could be done with them right?

 

Build a wagon.  Add a merchant.  Send them to follow a road to another village.  Make it a particular kind of road that the wagon would follow.  Or, something else.

 

Might be cool to have a player owned and controlled wagon come by my homestead once in a while.

 

+1 for giving the idea some thought.

+like for structured post :)

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Aye NPC especially as merchants should be more in the way of intermediaries to offset offline players.

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5 hours ago, Zakerak said:

ehm, are you aware, that only Xanadu (talking about PvE servers) has more than one starting town? " travel from starter towns to starter towns" can be a problem on other servers

 

BTW, similar NPCs are already working in game ... in World of Warcraft, for example

but Wurm is quite different and special kind of game, do not try to turn Wurm into WoW, please

 

I am aware that only Xanadu has more than one starter deeds. Also hope you are aware that you can make a circle around the smaller servers.

And no, I am not trying to turn Wurm into WoW. I've never played WoW and it's in my best interest to keep it away from Wurm.

 

 

5 hours ago, Nadroj said:

God no. This game is about real player communities filling the world.

 

Problem is those real player communities usually (at least on PvE) consist of two people.

 

 

31 minutes ago, Klaa said:

Maybe if one could "parent" and train NPCs to a certain degree along with them doing their own thing. Heck thinking back on the old player breeding bug... :D

 

More "evil" acts could involve slavery to gain more control.

 

I'm not a fan of the trend towards quest-driven gameplay. Now if its player-driven (fetch me ten rat tails for rat tail soup), in that context, I MIGHT be friendly towards merchant NPC acting as middlepeople for offline players.

 

 

I don't mean to turn gameplay into quest-needy. Just to put quests as a thing to add to your occassional journey when you get tired of crafting. As to slavery, using NPCs to mine rock shards might be too op but using them to speed up knarrs... Why not.

 

 

30 minutes ago, Reylaark said:

I think the merchant travelers have potential.

 

We already have merchants managed by players.  They sit, mostly idle, in long rows.  People travel long distances to go see if there's anything reasonably priced to buy...  How exciting.  Shouldn't be that hard to imagine a bit more could be done with them right?

 

Build a wagon.  Add a merchant.  Send them to follow a road to another village.  Make it a particular kind of road that the wagon would follow.  Or, something else.

 

Might be cool to have a player owned and controlled wagon come by my homestead once in a while.

 

+1 for giving the idea some thought.

+like for structured post :)

 

29 minutes ago, Klaa said:

Aye NPC especially as merchants should be more in the way of intermediaries to offset offline players.

 

 

That's what I mean, this is a very early alpha stage of the idea but the idea of choosing a type of pavement which the trader should follow in the direction of some particular coordinates may not be a very bad idea. I don't mean to make it too obnoxious and change the whole landscape of Wurm but an occassional soul to pass by would be nice.

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1 hour ago, Erevorn said:

Problem is those real player communities usually (at least on PvE) consist of two people.

blame the devs for that

 

>hey lets open a ton of servers and later on move over half our active playerbase to WU, what could go wrong :^)

no wonder most servers are ghost towns

 

-1 to npcs

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1 hour ago, Erevorn said:

 

I don't mean to turn gameplay into quest-needy. Just to put quests as a thing to add to your occassional journey when you get tired of crafting. As to slavery, using NPCs to mine rock shards might be too op but using them to speed up knarrs... Why not.

 

 

Years ago I suggested a sort of 'quest interface' be created as a spin on the perennial 'jobs board' suggestion.   Player generated quests is pretty doable now with the new mission ruler.   It would take a little tweaking to make it so any monetary or item rewards *only* came from the quest creators owned items.  Could just make a special type of chest that a player designates and the quest pulls from.  The point being that PCs are always more interesting than NPCs and player made quests will have a lot more breadth and volume than GM made ones.

 

As far as speeding up knarrs that's what priest alts are for.   Pretty easy to get them to 15 or 20 SB while grinding to 21+ BC, at that point they can make all those goofy pegs/tenons/planks while your main is playing a rousing game of attach item A to slot B.

 

Overall -1 to NPCs,  if there's a need for an NPC to do something then the game should find a better way for players to fill that roll.

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14 hours ago, belthize said:

 

Years ago I suggested a sort of 'quest interface' be created as a spin on the perennial 'jobs board' suggestion.   Player generated quests is pretty doable now with the new mission ruler.   It would take a little tweaking to make it so any monetary or item rewards *only* came from the quest creators owned items.  Could just make a special type of chest that a player designates and the quest pulls from.  The point being that PCs are always more interesting than NPCs and player made quests will have a lot more breadth and volume than GM made ones.

 

As far as speeding up knarrs that's what priest alts are for.   Pretty easy to get them to 15 or 20 SB while grinding to 21+ BC, at that point they can make all those goofy pegs/tenons/planks while your main is playing a rousing game of attach item A to slot B.

 

Overall -1 to NPCs,  if there's a need for an NPC to do something then the game should find a better way for players to fill that roll.

 

Fair enough on the NPCs considering most gives the minus one, but let's stay on the player questing topic.

 

People tend to order tools, dirt, rocks, services etc etc etc on the trade chat. I'm fine with keeping crafting and gathering in there but services should be moved and this is where job notice boards come along. Say, guy A makes a board in his backyard and pins a note to it by filling out a specific "survey". Type of service, detailed information, cost, location. Then guy B looks at his own board somewhere else, sees the job, either accepts or does nothing and moves on.

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23 hours ago, Erevorn said:

3. Quest NPCs:

 

Stationed in starter towns they would offer various quests for new players so they learn the mechanics of the game faster. Quests wouldn't be difficult, for example: "bring me 5 black wolf furs" or "craft a hatchet for me". For these quests they'd be given some simple starter items like a portion of bangers and mash.

Years ago on Golden Valley, the server on which all new players spawned until they paid for Premium to get off of it, there were NPC's at each of the starter Villages that did exactly this. After completion you would get a few iron coins and learn a thing or two in the process. So I see no reason why once again at the server starter Villages these NPC's could be enabled and improved upon to current standards. Something novel to keep the new players entertained and motivated in certain directions of learning the game mechanics.

 

23 hours ago, Erevorn said:

4. Generic NPCs:

 

Some people hate seeing their deeds have no life. I assume this idea would bring more lag to the game but if there is a way to make it lag-free the suggestion is to create purchasable NPCs to put in your towns. They could basically stand in one place and chat from time to time, they could be jesters, they could be walking paths players designate for them.

This would be pretty cool too. I especially like the Jester type where the deed owner could insert some amusing or bizarre comments for others to read when clicking on it.

 

All in all a lot could be done with these NPC's as outlined in the OP by Erevorn. I imagine it would require a lot of Dev work though and you know how that goes per other projects of preference.

 

=Ayes=

Edited by Ayes
who is mispelling all my words!?!
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On 10/01/2017 at 4:38 AM, Zakerak said:

BTW, similar NPCs are already working in game ... in World of Warcraft, for example

but Wurm is quite different and special kind of game, do not try to turn Wurm into WoW, please

At first i read this as "Wurm has a lot of features plenty of people don't like, do not try to turn Wurm into a successful game, please" then after reading it again I realized it still doesn't make sense to me.

 

+1 i would like to see the merchant travellers be purchasable so theres a chance your wares could pass by people who are willing to buy. Many people don't like going off deed. And quest NPCS are like the missions that are already available so nothing new, infact better because some missions are extremely hard for new players (building epic structures). I like the idea :3 

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