Citadel of Sorcery Forum » General Discussion » Npc Allies and Animals

       The first thing I want to ask is are there going to be npc allies in any form meaning: anything from deeply intricate partners with their own storyline, to basic assisting guards, or soldiers in huge epic battleground like fights, to just npcs that help you because they hate your enemy; but are just as happy to carve you up (i.e attack everyone), or are they going to be just quick easy meat shield summons that are cast by mages then dismissed as quickly. I personally would prefer deep characters but there really hard to write and design.

       The second thing I want to ask is if there are npc allies of any type will you make sure that they are not complete morons like in other games where the npc allies are as bright as a bucket of tar at midnight and about as fast acting too. The thing that really gets annoying is that you would figure a npc ally would at least be as smart as an enemy or perferably smarter but they generally are even dimmer than regular enemies in most games.

       My final question pertains to the animals and mosters that populate the game world firstly are they going to be placed with a real world sense of population i.e not hugely overpopulatted (unless there is a reason ( that would make a good quest now that i think about it) any way will the animals in this game have an ecosystem meaning that they will eat other animals and as such create a real living world that works like a simplified version of real world effects on the enviroment.

        p.s. Will things like dragons and other large, predatory, or otherwise hostile creatures have an effect on the places they live i.e dragons lairs are mainly deserted of wild life and have a few scorched trees and some slagged rocks around; or extremely evil demons creating a curroption zone around them due to there extreme grim nature that causes the life in plants, flowers, and trees to wither and decay (that would be epic). This last thing is just me wishing so no need to get to worried about to huge expectations it is just me fantasizing about an epic example of an enviroment effect.

As Mater once said, "Them hirelings sure are dumb." I agree Savarage, npc allies seem to get the lowest level of AI and generally come with two modes Attk and Defend (which are indistinguishable from each other). Pets are pretty much the same way, but at least you can give them a few direct commands.

What would be really awesome is to use a player controlled AI like in FFXII. As you progress in the game and can access higher level hirelings/pets, you have access to a wider range of commands and you can set up more of them. You should be able to save multiple AI setups so you can create and load different templates based on the type of hireling. I know Jatar has mentioned that there are no immediate plans for pets and gave some examples in a previous thread. I think that giving them a robust player editable AI would resolve some issues. Such as if you decide to sneak and your pet/hireling is able to sneak then you can set them up to: Master-Sneaks -> Sneak.

Realistic ecosystem would be cool. As well as seasons and changing landscape.

Originally posted by savarage

       The first thing I want to ask is are there going to be npc allies in any form meaning: anything from deeply intricate partners with their own storyline, to basic assisting guards, or soldiers in huge epic battleground like fights, to just npcs that help you because they hate your enemy; but are just as happy to carve you up (i.e attack everyone), or are they going to be just quick easy meat shield summons that are cast by mages then dismissed as quickly. I personally would prefer deep characters but there really hard to write and design.

       The second thing I want to ask is if there are npc allies of any type will you make sure that they are not complete morons like in other games where the npc allies are as bright as a bucket of tar at midnight and about as fast acting too. The thing that really gets annoying is that you would figure a npc ally would at least be as smart as an enemy or perferably smarter but they generally are even dimmer than regular enemies in most games.

       My final question pertains to the animals and mosters that populate the game world firstly are they going to be placed with a real world sense of population i.e not hugely overpopulatted (unless there is a reason ( that would make a good quest now that i think about it) any way will the animals in this game have an ecosystem meaning that they will eat other animals and as such create a real living world that works like a simplified version of real world effects on the enviroment.

        p.s. Will things like dragons and other large, predatory, or otherwise hostile creatures have an effect on the places they live i.e dragons lairs are mainly deserted of wild life and have a few scorched trees and some slagged rocks around; or extremely evil demons creating a curroption zone around them due to there extreme grim nature that causes the life in plants, flowers, and trees to wither and decay (that would be epic). This last thing is just me wishing so no need to get to worried about to huge expectations it is just me fantasizing about an epic example of an enviroment effect.

Yes, there are going to be PC allies, but perhaps not like you are asking. They will seldom travel with your party, instead they will help you at times. You can seek them out, or they may come to you, but they will not act as party members (as in a solo player traveling with three NPC group members). Like all creatures in CoS, we have various levels of intelligence which are used as appropriate. However, the reason NPCs will not travel with you as group members is simply that our quests are so deep and involved that you will need all the intelligence of real players to handle everything we throw at you.

But, during your quests, missions and adventures you will interact with NPCs (allies and enemies) and create personal relationships with some of these NPC characters. The NPCs that become your allies or enemies will not be the same ones as other players. They will be your personal friends or enemies. These NPCs will tend to show up in your quests, but not in other player's quests. After all, this is your character's unique story.

As for NPC or monster populations, CoS uses a completely different system for distributing these NPs throughout the world. Most games use a type of grid system to populate the world evenly and guarantee encounters every few feet. An NP stays within their grid square and if killed pops back into existence somewhere in that square a few minutes later. CoS does NOT use this system. Our goal is to create a more realistic world, and one way of doing this is to give all our monsters their own goals and tasks. They don't hang out in some grid square for no apparent reason and they never pop back into existence when killed. This does not mean that if you move through a portion of the Reflected Worlds and run into a den of creatures that has taken up residence here, and you kill them all that this portion of the world will remain unpopulated forever. But instead of popping this group of monsters back into existence, what happens is that over time other monsters will move into the area because it is now available. It might be a completely different kind of monster, and they might be up to something different than the previous inhabitants. Therefore, players will not know what they might expect to find here even if they have been through this area before.

Due to this system of monsters having their own agendas, it is therefore possible to run into areas that don't have a lot of creatures at the moment, or you might wander into an area where a whole community of creatures has recently taken up residence... or you might run into a raiding party moving through on their way to destroy a town, or just a loan scout. The world is in motion, so even we don't know what density of creature population you will run into at any given place at any given time.

I'll talk more about seasons and environmental effects later on, we're still developing a lot of that technology and so I don't want to talk about it prematurely.