Reactional world faction changes

[SergeDavid]

As I understand how the different npc's and their factions (village A, farmers, guild B, etc) interact with you and each other depend on different goals. Say some bandits set up camp near a village and they've been killing some of the villagers and stealing their goods (less for you! :O). They could either send a horse out to the capital (you might run into them and vanquish the bandits yourself) or find yourself wandering into a guard infested village as they defend it against bandits and they might think you are one.

Now how complicated they can become and up scale would be interesting to see. What happens if you defend a village from bandits and word got out. Maybe that could lead you to being recruited as a soldier and wondered from town to town slaying monsters and bandits in the kings name. You could be promoted, given a nice house, earned a wife from some high ranking nobleman and maybe even become an heir to the throne (about 43rd). Then what happens if you decide to kill those 42 others in front of you through assassins, accidents, etc? Maybe you could even become high ruler of the realm. Now what if you pissed off the magic users guild at some point but not too badly for them to kill you at the time. Then after you became ruler you decided to turn down their budget demands or some small slight that pushed them into deciding to overthrow you. Assasins come after your head now and you hear rumors of unrest, they don't do it openly yet. Then all hell breaks loose as your wife and children are killed as you are out hunting and a rebellion breaks out as your most trusted adviser stabs you in the back with his dagger. Next life the rebellion is still full steam as you start as another character (As I get it when you die you start out fresh with maybe the different magics and weaponry skills unlocked as you've learned them in your last life) which you can join in on the guilds side and put a new king on the throne (though you'll probably just kill a few imperial soldiers here and there that could tip the balance just enough for the rebellion to win).

Another test study I'd love to find out is what would happen if you go around burning down all the food fields and killing the farmers, would the world go into starvation? Would there be guards posted at fields and would plagues develop? I love the idea of how free this can become and would love to not only join factions like join a guild but also a village where you could buy a house, get a wife, set up a trade like being a black smith and earn a living without adventuring. And I'd also love it if you where kicked out of factions like if you decided to kill your wife for adultery or being caught by her you could be rejected by your peers and kicked out of the village forcefully. (Or you could somehow hide the fact and be asked some very awkward questions)

I've pretty much lost myself in this but I'll give it up to the rest of you to continue my ramblings.

 

[oncrack1]

Interesting ideas love the whole cause and affect theory, even though you could totally ruin the game world for yourself in a multitude of ways. Following on from your example, when killing off all of the food supply the guards that would be posted around fields in order to defend them would mean they couldn’t protect certain areas as well meaning the world could be more dangerous for players and NPCs in certain areas, also, due to the lack of food, prices for commodities could go up dynamically depending on how much damage could be done to the world. This makes it even harder for the player as well, however they could manipulate it for their own purposes e.g. hording grain, burning down the fields and selling grain for a profit.

I suppose it just a matter of all the ridiculous coding and balancing that would go into that….
I'm also worried that this would make you play the game in one way or another but I guess if your reincarnation idea is implemented you could do it differently or fix your mistakes the next time around.

This could work with my suggestion of "random random events" pretty well (game world/random events), although, it may be too random and you could find all of the fields burnt down and every professional NPC dead.

 

[d0ct0rscarecr0w]

Well I'm sure cause and effect involving factions will play its part. Unscripted interactions can be hard to pull off though, in fact I'd go as far as to say that no game has really pulled off unscripted interactions perfectly (at least in the RPG genre).

 

[oncrack1]

Well I'm sure cause and effect involving factions will play its part. Unscripted interactions can be hard to pull off though, in fact I'd go as far as to say that no game has really pulled off unscripted interactions perfectly (at least in the RPG genre).

 

[SergeDavid]

This makes it even harder for the player as well, however they could manipulate it for their own purposes e.g. hording grain, burning down the fields and selling grain for a profit.

I suppose it just a matter of all the ridiculous coding and balancing that would go into that….

Why bother balancing if the player wants to just watch the world burn I'd love to see them succeed at it. There is always the chance of people traveling into the playable world from another region to repopulate. Even tough the fields are burned there is still hunting game and farmers can always replant. If there are no farmers of course there will be others that could try their hand at farming even though they'll be pretty bad at it in the beginning.

We're talking about humans. There is always a way to overcome anything, even the player. If you want to burn fields and stock pile wheat the npcs have a few different options. The farmers want you dead and might hire assassins, or ask for guards to help defend against you. Hunting and other non-grain means of food will gain a boost such as fish, deer, etc. All of this is really handled in the goal system, you just string a few together and npcs start doing some very complex things with just a few basic things coded. A recent paper I read about Fears AI design gives an idea of how it can work, you just have to chain actions together to achieve their goals.

 

[oncrack1]

Hhmmm, read the paper, not sure why the author used F.E.A.R wouldn't class that game as having amazing AI even back in 06, but maybe I'm just biased after playing F3AR. Anyway I see why you linked it, and SG would defiantly need some form of dynamic cognition in its AIs to fix the stuff I break or as you said repopulate.... However, how far that goes before it can’s just a game breaker; you could just quote Minecraft as that has infinite spawning monsters etc. BUT even minecraft doesn't an infinite amount of resources in a set defined area sure you can continually expand until the game world is 6x the area of the Earth but i doubt that is something we can expect from something as GPU consuming as this game and to be honest I don't want that, I want the game to be hard and there to be consequences for both my actions and failures, and more importantly for me to feel and see them. Sure if I die and respawn I want that world to be sort of fixed, maybe time can pass (20 years or so). I think we are both in agreement it's just how far we want the consequences to spread is the point of contention.

Basically what I'm saying is... I don't want this game to be a cross between Fable and Minecraft.
I want it to be a cross between Morrowind and GTA just like the Kickstarter headline said, maybe with a bit of Dark Souls thrown in for good measure.
Besides... if some people are finding it too hard there are always difficulty sliders and config options... and there is always the modders who can build this stuff for us post launch.

 

[Algea]

As far as I understand we know nothing about this 'death will have its consequences' stuff. Am I mistaken?

I mean everything is just speculation and quite pointless at that; not many games utilized this mechanics and I for sure can't wrap my mind around the fact that we'll be unable to use save/load.

I want this to be clarified ASAP. Death, saving, loading, continuing adventure, endgame, endless exploration. It's hard to make any viable assumptions without this information.

Did I miss something about it when I was following Kickstarter campaign?

 

[Tony]

As far as I understand we know nothing about this 'death will have its consequences' stuff. Am I mistaken?

I mean everything is just speculation and quite pointless at that; not many games utilized this mechanics and I for sure can't wrap my mind around the fact that we'll be unable to use save/load.

I want this to be clarified ASAP. Death, saving, loading, continuing adventure, endgame, endless exploration. It's hard to make any viable assumptions without this information.

Did I miss something about it when I was following Kickstarter campaign?

In one of the updates and in the Kickstarter main description of the game they say that there is no manual save/reload option and that the game will automatically save your progress. This way your actions have permanent consequences. You can't just reload the game every time you do something stupid. They say you will be resurrected after death but they haven't given details on how this mechanic will work or what the consequences will be.

 

[Algea]

In one of the updates and in the Kickstarter main description of the game they say that there is no manual save/reload option and that the game will automatically save your progress.

Thanks, Tony. I gathered as much but I'm really interested in other things. Especially how they are going to explain resurrection and what the main quest is going to be, and why we have to fight any evildoers when we can spend this time ravaging villages. And of course how harsh those consequenses are going to be - I feel like I'm going to die a lot.

 

[BigT2themax]

I suppose if the AI was really good, complex interactions like this would just happen naturally, with bandits having goals to earn money by pillaging and stealing and robbing, villagers having goals of just doing their particular profession to earn money and food, guards having a goal to protect the town and stop evil-doers (or, if their personality calls for it, maybe guards could be corrupt and just want to get coin), kings, queens, dukes, lords, etc. having goals related to ruling their area based on their personalities (kind rulers might want to make the place successful and such, warmongers will go to war, corrupt guys will just further their own means). Maybe groups of people (e.g, peasant group, peacekeepers group, bandits group, etc.) would have a sort-of "hive mind", where their goals and such occasionally go together based on the group's situation (so, people might eventually revolt, like you said).

So yeah, by having good enough AI, the kind of stuff you've desribed will all be possible without really having to program in the specific situation you've talked about.

 

[oncrack1]

I suppose if the AI was really good ... all be possible without really having to program in the specific situation you've talked about.

Yeah, if being the word this all hinges on.... I think pretty much everyone including myself is expecting a lot out of this game perhaps too much ( even more than even a $60/£40 full priced game), we'll just have to wait and see (which is the hardest part). The combat looks great, so do the graphics we just have to hope the AI and world follow on from this and meet the same level.

Fingers crossed!

 

[Tony]

Thanks, Tony. I gathered as much but I'm really interested in other things. Especially how they are going to explain resurrection and what the main quest is going to be, and why we have to fight any evildoers when we can spend this time ravaging villages. And of course how harsh those consequenses are going to be - I feel like I'm going to die a lot.

Oops, my bad for stating the obvious then I wasn't sure if you were asking whether or not these features were confirmed or stating that they were confirmed but you had no idea how they'd implement such mechanics.

My guess would be that the devs have a general idea about how these mechanics will work but don't want to give us too many specifics since a lot of ideas will be trial and error. I'm assuming they have several ideas how to go about doing certain things and will make a final decision after they are able to actually try them out in-game and see which ones work the best. By not giving us too many specifics about things before they themselves know the answer is a wise choice. It keeps us fans from saying "but you promised such and such a feature!".

 

[Algea]

Yeah, you're probably right. And it's definitely a wise approach to avoid any unnecessary complications. I just can't wait, I want to know everything about Sui Generis.