Allow us to hire NPCs for various purposes.

[Hoseph 49]

Whether unconditionally or upon making a house with sufficient parameters and requirements, you would have the option to hire or take on a resident NPC. These NPCs are the appearance of whatever their roles are, and have simple and basic capabilities for those roles.

 

In some jobs and roles, these NPCs could be assigned to:

•  Rake one tile per minute
• Acquire simple food/resources over time
• Make something at a slow rate
• Haul things between containers/vehicles over time
• Maintain a stockpile of an item on your merchant stand
• Guard something (with equipment you give)
• Prune an orchard on deed
• Groom animals on deed

 

The reason for this is to provide a very basic amenity for those who need something done for whatever reason. An assistant even, or an extension of the player at times.

Limitations could include only usable while while you have premium gametime, or at the expense of slower skillgain while the NPC is active. This would allow it to provide a reason to purchase premium, and hopefully remain undesireable as a botting method.

 

Some functions could be freely available, like following and carrying items or simply to populate an area as they walk along paths and sit on furniture.

 

 

Edited June 18, 2018 by Hoseph

[Ekib 183]

-1... too many automatic things...if you need some help hire it or get a villager...

[user 568]

-1 Robots stealing jobs from noobs isn't the best.

[lelovito 70]

-1 Defeats the purpose of grinding in this game, if it's too slow get some better tools or like Ekib suggested hire some help, then at least money would go into economy instead of being eaten by an npc

[Milkdrop 278]

Has been suggeste before in nearly the same or slightly different form and was not received in a warm way. ?

 

People who play Wurm play it for the sake of doing those tasks and if someone does not enjoy task X or Y then they hire someone to do it for them or make an alt to do it while they do stuff on their main.

(or grind their teeth while doing it anyhow )

Now while making an alt is not ideal, thats how the game works right now and it is still done by a human.

 

People do not want the game being automatized to much.

QoL features are fine, but automatizing entire tasks from start to end is generally a no-no here.

I guess thinking how certain tasks can be made better or more enjoyable would be a better thing to do. ?

 

[Wilczan 2,048]

+1

 

Grinding is grinding. And hores are something completely different.

[Themystrix 376]

Would be cool to have more npc's in this game and npc's that actually do something for you. Since i am lazy, i would like to get npc that grooms the animals, feeds them and maybe even tends the farms. QoL improvement right there and for those who live underground and keep horses there would benefit from automatic animal feeder. Cant even count how many horses has died to hunger already.

 

+1 for some new npc's

Edited June 18, 2018 by Themystrix

[Alkhadias 548]

-1

[Milkdrop 278]

40 minutes ago, Themystrix said:

QoL improvement right there and for those who live underground and keep horses there would benefit from automatic animal feeder. Cant even count how many horses has died to hunger already.

 

Well, there have been a few suggestion threads about feeding troughs and I certainly do get in line with those... having to feed my pigs and rats every second day by dumping fish filets is not a big task, but you easily forget it and then bang something dies.

But thats vastly different from NPCs that do entire tasks for you, would still have to refill the trough and not forget it though hah... urgh v.v

I guess I will go set some calendar entries to remind me of feeding every second day, so next to Excel I can use Outlook now as well to play Wurm.

 

Fun aside, there is some good in this but I would keep it decorative.

I would not want to login someday finding myself having nothing to do cause hey... it's all done by NPCs.

Now you may go and say "But Milk, it's just for those tedious boring tasks!" ... but then, who does judge what is boring and tedious? Some other player may very much enjoys what others find boring and tedious.

If there would be a farming NPC, then it should have a major draw back like the QL of crops being capped at 75QL and less yield, cause the poor fellow needs something to eat, right? (just as an idea anyhow)

So much for the sake of the discussion anyhow.

 

Personally however, I would still do things on my own.

But - I would get a few NPCs just to have my deed a bit more lively (yea, I could get villagers for that too... but lets be honest, I trust a NPC more than the random passerby I don't know at all... there is plenty of newbie helping villages, I play hermit style.)

 

[Wulfgarr 810]

Sorry, automated npcs will get a -1 from me. We could have more tools to help with the works like lumbermills and such, but thats it. No NPC-s. 

[Galadhel 92]

-1

[FranktheTank 1,901]

-1

 

If you are looking to cut out time on daily tasks I recommend checking out epic where you can make planks in 1 second timers, and rake in 3-4.

[armyskin 930]

9 hours ago, Wilczan said:

 

Grinding is grinding. And hores are something completely different.

-1 to slavery in Wurm even if they aren't used for virtual prostitution

[Wilczan 2,048]

Slavery? What slavery? You would have to pay for it, and max quality would be capped. Also no mats creation like bricks/mortar or terraforming.

 

Anyway, seeing so many -1 I see no point to discuss more about it, couse it won't pass, but I think that NPC's still could be for a "decorative" purposes, bringing some kind of artificial life into empty villages.

Ofc, you still would need to pay for them, and if someone won't, don't have to. Freedom of choice.

[Wargasm 1,927]

-1

[Ekib 183]

10 hours ago, Wilczan said:

 

Anyway, seeing so many -1 I see no point to discuss more about it, couse it won't pass, but I think that NPC's still could be for a "decorative" purposes, bringing some kind of artificial life into empty villages.

Ofc, you still would need to pay for them, and if someone won't, don't have to. Freedom of choice.

 

that would be fine...the -1 is for the automatic bot doing your work for you. very limited tasks (like merchand selling a few items) could be fine but having a zombie deed running fully on npc alone....brrr...no thanks. i prefer my zombies to be killable

[Inventor 549]

-1

[mysterydate 49]

I dream of having a pageboy or girl that could do small jobs to help then grow with skill to an adult helper ..would add fun to village and u could make it cost 20s or something and let people buy them only for deed use ..i think it would be alot of fun ..people dont have to have them if they dont want to ..just those that want them could 

[Trake 360]

-1 

Play the game. 

 

 

 

[Ekib 183]

1 hour ago, mysterydate said:

I dream of having a pageboy or girl that could do small jobs to help then grow with skill to an adult helper ..would add fun to village and u could make it cost 20s or something and let people buy them only for deed use ..i think it would be alot of fun ..people dont have to have them if they dont want to ..just those that want them could 

the idea is nice i guess but the issue is too many automatic actions = same as having bot alts... and if you can afford a 20s npc helper why not hire a player instead? 

not to mention its hard to draw the line between a little help and 'do everything for me'

an example is currently i started a caravel. making all the pegs is going to be a boring hell. one option would be to buy it from someone. having those automatic bots would remove the need to hire help...and even if the production is limited to say 10 items an hour... would take 60 hours for 600 pegs. so i leave it to work even when im offline for a few days and i got everything.

yes the production of some items can be slow and boring, espetialy in large quantities. but bots arent a great solution. the craft menu helped into making those items more easily. can go futher down this path, perhaps with some more specialised workshop allowing to create multiple items at once at the cost of ql (like a sawbench to cut from logs to shafts into more items at once?).

but having a bot to do it... i like new ideas and changes... but i got to use an argument i hate and say "this would hurt the game and the feel of it" , as removing the bulk work would would make it even harder to new people to find jobs...and cut most of the social interaction needs. ok idea for a WU server. not for WO.

[Roccandil 959]

A useful NPC population isn't a bad idea--for a different game, designed from the ground up around players managing NPCs.

[nicedreams 1,035]

I already don't like the NPCs in this game.  A guard comes into my house and then I feel lonely because I can't interact with him.  He waves at me and I wave back, but it's a blank stare.