1st, 2nd, 3rd tier npcs
- Thread starter smartroad
- Start date
Sorry for my ignorance but what are they? I see them mentioned from time to time but have no idea what they refer to
This might shed some light on it for you:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php?t=7494
Cheers for that. So what we have for PP characters would be considered Tier 1 and the people we see milling around systems/stations are T3's?
I'd love the idea of finding a character who you could go to for missions once you gain enough rep with that faction (from general BB missions)
Interesting read.. has there been any evidence of this system working. Can't say I have ever noticed it, but haven't paid attention to it nor have I worked a single area/line of the game persistently.
as yet, we do not have the interesting NPC's (tier 2) and at this point there is no real sign of them coming either though ship crew may be a strong first step.
During the last live stream David Braben said one problem with the concept of Tier 2 NPCs - the kind we are all waiting for - is that players would just kill them off to quickly to make sense as persistent entities.
I hope eventually we are going to see some kind of persistent NPCs, even if they only rarely fly ships themselves and more often can be encountered as mission givers, passengers - once the corresponding gameplay is introduced - or as shop owners and black market contacts via station services - an environment where players can't harm them. This way the probability of being blown up buy players would be reduced and we'd have a realistic chance to meet them multiple times and build up personal reputation with them.
I hope eventually we are going to see some kind of persistent NPCs, even if they only rarely fly ships themselves and more often can be encountered as mission givers, passengers - once the corresponding gameplay is introduced - or as shop owners and black market contacts via station services - an environment where players can't harm them
. This way the probability of being blown up buy players would be reduced and we'd have a realistic chance to meet them multiple times and build up personal reputation with them.
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It does say in the list that it would be a per player list of Tier 2 NPCs. There no reason that those NPCs could only be semi-persistent to me, they don't have day to day routines, therefore can't be destroyed by other players. For instance a trader who I save from a pirate attack who later on contacts me and offers me a mission, we build up a working relation, only for him to betray and set me up, I in return hunt him down for revenge...
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I would say that the new missions, find NPC X and get your next instruction, would count as a tier 2 NPC. As would the 'follow me over here' NPC's.
Tier 3 NPC's are the innocuous NPC's just flying around going between planets...ignorable...but if you have a scanner might be interesting to deal with for a given purpose.
Tier 1 are the PP personalities.
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I heard that too. It doesn't really make sense as for players it is impossible to die so why not for tier 2 NPC's as well?
he may have done, but that's just simple design work to resolve in one way or another, sounds more to me like he was making excuses for them not being here yet or in any plans for what comes next! Pretty much every game with NPC's has some kind of persistent NPC's, is he really suggesting that FD devs cant come up with a way to make them persist that is at least as good (or bad) as any other game out there?
Don't think it works. The tier 3 NPCs they should just do away with, complete immersion breaking mechanic for an NPC to magically appear in the middle of no where just because you are there. That's arcade not simulation. We need NPCs that actually haul cargo, NPCs that don't disappear when you exit SC with them, Non-USS missions, and so much more than what little there is now.
Yes, that sounds like a scenario I'd like to play, too. But how do you deduct from this that other players don't have "access" to "your" Tier 2 NPCs, so to speak? Yes, the thread says
but if you read on, there is also this part:
As far as I understand it, this means whenever one of "your" Tier 2 NPCs crosses the path with another player, it will be added to "his" list of Tier 2 NPCs, too. (and if enough players have one particular Tier 2 NPC on their list, it could even be promoted to Tier 1).
If this would be the case, what would prevent another player from killing of the Tier 2 NPCs from your list? If other players couldn't interact with persistent NPCs on your list, it would become pretty strange should there ever be a player present in a situation where you interact with an NPC from your personal list. Should the NPC be invisible to the other player? Should he be immune to harm from the other player so he can't destroy your NPC contact list? I think this "per player list of tier 2 characters" only means that tier 2 characters are initially created on a per player base, but this doesn't prevent them from meeting other players and hence ending on their contact lists, too.
I think the problem is FD didn't anticipate NPCs becoming cannon fodder so fast, they didn't expect NPCs to be "farmed" by players in RES, for example. So they'd either need to make NPCs much, much stronger to increase their survivability (at least of those considered "Tier 2") - which would without a doubt start a rage storm by bounty hunters who couldn't fulfil their "quota" and cr/hr anymore - or they'd have to limit interaction with Tier 2 NPCs to a level where players can't shoot them, hence my idea to not place them in Sidewinders in front of your ships weapons, but rather on the bulletin board, in your passenger cabins or in a shady bar where they trade illicit goods.
The argument that players can't die and therefore NPCs can't die doesn't hold, IHMO. Those missions on the bulletin boards say "kill pirates", not "destroy their ships end let them escape in their pods", after all. A whole galaxy where no character ever dies, not even the assassination target you are supposed to kill, would feel all that "dangerous", I suppose.
I guess that could be sorted, as someone else mentioned, only having them appear to a single person. Or PC saves them, giving them fuel for example, mentions they are based in XYZ system and on ABC starport. You are given contact details for them and they appear in the contact list in the station? Just one (probably bad!!) idea I thought about this problem
I guess that could be sorted, as someone else mentioned, only having them appear to a single person. Or PC saves them, giving them fuel for example, mentions they are based in XYZ system and on ABC starport. You are given contact details for them and they appear in the contact list in the station? Just one (probably bad!!) idea I thought about this problem
How do you prevent other players from turning up in the same USS where you helped the NPC? Or could they turn up but the NPC would be invisible to them, so they only see you alone in that instance? Sounds weird, it's an online multiplayer game after all.
I suppose what I originally meant was that they would not be killed with out your knowledge, if I was interacting with my NPC and we were attacked by player pirates and then NPC would be visible to all and they could kill him, end of his story line. While I am not interacting with him, he ceases to exist allowing him to persist in my game.
The downfall I can see to this is if I said wanted to enlist a player bounty hunter to rid me of a group of NPC enemies, it wouldn't work.
I'm not a games designer, I'm a games player. I know it's probably full of holes. just my musings really.
The solution to players killing them off is simple: just make them immortal like players currently are. You "kill" one, they respawn at the nearest station in their escape pod. There, they either put a bounty on your head or raise a posse themselves to hunt you down.
Most of these NPCs are going to be famous at some level - not at the same level as one of the Powers, perhaps, but maybe a regional equivalent. Therefore, your reputation will be severely affected one way or another.
And if the NPC was a "made man" in one of the Powers organisations, you could become a high-value target, possibly even a mission target if the mission structure fills out a bit for Powerplay to include such specific targets.
(edit: ninja'd by previous poster. Serves me right for making myself a cup of tea and leaving a post unposted.)
Most of these NPCs are going to be famous at some level - not at the same level as one of the Powers, perhaps, but maybe a regional equivalent. Therefore, your reputation will be severely affected one way or another.
And if the NPC was a "made man" in one of the Powers organisations, you could become a high-value target, possibly even a mission target if the mission structure fills out a bit for Powerplay to include such specific targets.
(edit: ninja'd by previous poster. Serves me right for making myself a cup of tea and leaving a post unposted.)
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The game does not discriminate between murder and blowing up a ship. If you blow up my ship, you are wanted for murder, a bounty is awarded to you for the murder of CMDR Bacalao, etc.
he may have done, but that's just simple design work to resolve in one way or another, sounds more to me like he was making excuses for them not being here yet or in any plans for what comes next! Pretty much every game with NPC's has some kind of persistent NPC's, is he really suggesting that FD devs cant come up with a way to make them persist that is at least as good (or bad) as any other game out there?
Yes, it's all so easy to say "come up with a solution" and present none yourself, much safer from criticism too.
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The issue is introducing them in a way that they feel meaningful. Why add something that essential amounts to a tier 3 NPC (cannon fodder) or a tier 1 NPC (always behind the curtain, a picture in an interface)? The idea of Tier 2 NPCs is personal interaction (as opposed to tier 1 group interaction, or tier 3 non consequential interaction) and that is a hard thing to do where anyone can (and would) be killed. The idea of persistence isn't that they just exist in the game for you or me, it is that they exist in the game like you and me. They exist in all modes for all players that happen upon them with all the same vulnerabilities and repercussions as you and me, otherwise they are just going to be a disappointing, highly criticized husk of an addition.
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Now maybe if the AI gets good enough to run away and bring backup and outfit correctly and fight formidably, and the penalties for crime become something that players actually feel, and there are a few more mechanics added to the game (mission types, NPC dialogue options, character creation for PCs and NPCs) the foundation will exist for meaningful tier 2 NPCs, but as the game stands now they wouldn't be differentiated enough to be noticed. The "follow my wake" and pirates that chase you are essentially an embryonic form of tier 2 NPC, but no one cares because while they offer and affect missions, they don't provide meaningful interaction. They are too transient and disposable. So how do you make something non disposable, in a galaxy where everything is?
I don't think that's really possible with the current architecture, and I'd imagine would be very difficult to implement even with a fresh start. They'd need to greatly expand the NPC AI to add their routine - and without it being so repetitive it's jarring - then have some process to track tens of thousands of these persistent NPCs. Then what happens if you have a mission to meet an NPC, but it got killed on the way to the rendezvous. You could waste a lot of time searching for an NPC who died a long time ago in a system far, far away.
In the existing system they do have a way of handing off NPCs from one instance to another - hence you can follow an NPC's wake, or they can interdict you into normal space and follow you in. But often there are jarring inconsistencies - like sometimes they're heavily damaged but if you follow them to the next system their ship is pristine. Or in one case I destroyed one pirate 3 times in about 10 minutes (since I wasn't destroying him in the mission system, he kept re-spawning). If these little things were fixed it'd go a long way in making it all a bit more believable.
I don't think that's really possible with the current architecture, and I'd imagine would be very difficult to implement even with a fresh start. They'd need to greatly expand the NPC AI to add their routine - and without it being so repetitive it's jarring - then have some process to track tens of thousands of these persistent NPCs. Then what happens if you have a mission to meet an NPC, but it got killed on the way to the rendezvous. You could waste a lot of time searching for an NPC who died a long time ago in a system far, far away.
In the existing system they do have a way of handing off NPCs from one instance to another - hence you can follow an NPC's wake, or they can interdict you into normal space and follow you in. But often there are jarring inconsistencies - like sometimes they're heavily damaged but if you follow them to the next system their ship is pristine. Or in one case I destroyed one pirate 3 times in about 10 minutes (since I wasn't destroying him in the mission system, he kept re-spawning). If these little things were fixed it'd go a long way in making it all a bit more believable.
So they'd basically have to save multiple instances for one commander. Even if I drop out of supercruise to follow a wake, when I go back into supercruise the ships that were there before are still there, just a minute or two further along in their interactions. That and NPCs need to be saved from one instance to another, not regenerated on instance swapping.
You also get into issues with multiple instances, if there is a persistent NPC "Joe", if I am in an instance in Solo dealing with Joe, can you be in solo also dealing with Joe? Which instance is Joe in? Do you make one Joe for all instances? Or one Joe for each instance? Keeping them in stations kind of takes care of all that for you, but it also sucks the life out of them.