I absolutely enjoy playing ED and even like most of it's more disputed aspects like real-time mission times, strict friendly fire rules etc.
But there is one thing I really dislike: the total absence of any NPCs in the game. I am not even talking about persistent NPCs (even though they should definitely remain on the "features-to-come" list!), but NPCs at all. Yes, we see NPC ships with funny names, but we never see the actual pilots (be it just as static bitmaps or as fully fleshed out and animated polygonal models).
And the mission givers don't even have names! How am I supposed to feel any kind of relation to a faction in some system if there are no actual people there, and none in the whole galaxy, for that matter?
Even FFE had characters with faces and personality (even with full motion video), hell, you could even engage in some simple conversations with them (which was basic but loads of fun)! Isn't ED supposed to be the fourth part of the Elite series? Wouldn't you consider it as an actual step back to have a very cool feature like the NPC conversation mechanic from a former game removed in the the new game?
I know it's going to be pretty difficult to implement many different character models that
1. graphically hold up to the high standards ED already established and
2. have enough variety so that you don't meet the same manually modeled face in every space station.
But couldn't it be realized procedurally with some kind of sophisticated character model system like that used in games like Eve:Online, Mass Effect and many other MMOs? Then FD wouldn't have to model all the individual faces manually and instead just create the character model system and give it random some seed values for new NPCs you encounter in station bulletin boards etc. That system could even be expanded with new facial / body / clothing options in the future.
Eve: Online character creator:
[video=youtube;yo9L8d-5x20]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yo9L8d-5x20[/video]
Black Desert (probably not a very good game, but this character creator is cool, isn't it?):
[video=youtube;4TP4L1vHfpk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TP4L1vHfpk[/video]
Even a much less ambitious space sim then ED, Rebel Galaxy, has NPC characters (granted: those are likely created manually) that you can have conversations with, and judging from the trailer it already gives that game a lot of personality:
[video=youtube;Q9jr8uZ-UQI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9jr8uZ-UQI&t=0m18s[/video]
Here is a quote from a Polygon article (http://www.polygon.com/features/2014/10/14/6974343/rebel-galaxy-diablo-torchlight-double-damage) about the game that describes the benefit of having NPCs with faces you can interact with pretty good:
Players will be able to speak to individual units while in the battlespace, but they’ll also come in contact at interstellar watering holes — cantinas, taverns and the like. The real joy of discovery, the team hopes, will come in meeting and interacting with the game’s alien races either by entering their systems or buying them a drink.
"When we were outsourcing character art," Baldree said, "Jim Henson puppets came up a lot. We asked artists to think about The Dark Crystal, to talk about how these characters were made.
"And that’s also a throwback to Star Control 2, which had that kind of character to it. That’s one of the things that I always liked about that game. It wasn’t cold. There was a lot of warmth to it, and we wanted a lot of that."
To be clear here: I don't expect the devs to manually use such character model creation tools to create all the countless individual NPCs in the game. Instead I see these character modeling tools as something that could be automated and give you some faces you can relate to when browsing the bulletin boards, talking to the police NPCs on stations or engaging in negotiations with black market representatives. For more important NPCs ("tier 1", to keep the old DDA terminology, like the imperial family and senators etc.), the devs could use the modeling tool manually to create exactly those faces they think would convey the NPCs character in the best way!
If we really get a first person expansion for walking around space stations and on planet surfaces, don't we need NPCs with faces and in fact bodies anyway?
I sometimes have the feeling I am the only one who is really unhappy about the state of the NPCs. For a game that puts so much effort on being immersive (and succeeds in many ways, I think!), not having any faces - or humans at all, for that matter - in the whole galaxy is kind of a serious blow, IMHO.
But there is one thing I really dislike: the total absence of any NPCs in the game. I am not even talking about persistent NPCs (even though they should definitely remain on the "features-to-come" list!), but NPCs at all. Yes, we see NPC ships with funny names, but we never see the actual pilots (be it just as static bitmaps or as fully fleshed out and animated polygonal models).
And the mission givers don't even have names! How am I supposed to feel any kind of relation to a faction in some system if there are no actual people there, and none in the whole galaxy, for that matter?
Even FFE had characters with faces and personality (even with full motion video), hell, you could even engage in some simple conversations with them (which was basic but loads of fun)! Isn't ED supposed to be the fourth part of the Elite series? Wouldn't you consider it as an actual step back to have a very cool feature like the NPC conversation mechanic from a former game removed in the the new game?
I know it's going to be pretty difficult to implement many different character models that
1. graphically hold up to the high standards ED already established and
2. have enough variety so that you don't meet the same manually modeled face in every space station.
But couldn't it be realized procedurally with some kind of sophisticated character model system like that used in games like Eve:Online, Mass Effect and many other MMOs? Then FD wouldn't have to model all the individual faces manually and instead just create the character model system and give it random some seed values for new NPCs you encounter in station bulletin boards etc. That system could even be expanded with new facial / body / clothing options in the future.
Eve: Online character creator:
[video=youtube;yo9L8d-5x20]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yo9L8d-5x20[/video]
Black Desert (probably not a very good game, but this character creator is cool, isn't it?):
[video=youtube;4TP4L1vHfpk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TP4L1vHfpk[/video]
Even a much less ambitious space sim then ED, Rebel Galaxy, has NPC characters (granted: those are likely created manually) that you can have conversations with, and judging from the trailer it already gives that game a lot of personality:
[video=youtube;Q9jr8uZ-UQI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9jr8uZ-UQI&t=0m18s[/video]
Here is a quote from a Polygon article (http://www.polygon.com/features/2014/10/14/6974343/rebel-galaxy-diablo-torchlight-double-damage) about the game that describes the benefit of having NPCs with faces you can interact with pretty good:
Players will be able to speak to individual units while in the battlespace, but they’ll also come in contact at interstellar watering holes — cantinas, taverns and the like. The real joy of discovery, the team hopes, will come in meeting and interacting with the game’s alien races either by entering their systems or buying them a drink.
"When we were outsourcing character art," Baldree said, "Jim Henson puppets came up a lot. We asked artists to think about The Dark Crystal, to talk about how these characters were made.
"And that’s also a throwback to Star Control 2, which had that kind of character to it. That’s one of the things that I always liked about that game. It wasn’t cold. There was a lot of warmth to it, and we wanted a lot of that."
To be clear here: I don't expect the devs to manually use such character model creation tools to create all the countless individual NPCs in the game. Instead I see these character modeling tools as something that could be automated and give you some faces you can relate to when browsing the bulletin boards, talking to the police NPCs on stations or engaging in negotiations with black market representatives. For more important NPCs ("tier 1", to keep the old DDA terminology, like the imperial family and senators etc.), the devs could use the modeling tool manually to create exactly those faces they think would convey the NPCs character in the best way!
If we really get a first person expansion for walking around space stations and on planet surfaces, don't we need NPCs with faces and in fact bodies anyway?
I sometimes have the feeling I am the only one who is really unhappy about the state of the NPCs. For a game that puts so much effort on being immersive (and succeeds in many ways, I think!), not having any faces - or humans at all, for that matter - in the whole galaxy is kind of a serious blow, IMHO.
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