You want persistent NPC's, I want this.

[Windscreen Smudge]

They just announced the sequel to Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor which got me to thinking about it. It was an alright game for a third person open world game. No surprises on that front. Except the Nemesis system.

The Nemesis system was superb, and in the Not-A-Snowball's-Chance-In-Hell event that we get persistent NPC's, I'd want to see it applied to them.

For those of you who have played it: Put the Nemesis system in for pirate and Anarchy factions as it was, put it in for Independents after including a heavy emphasis on diplomacy and contributions to society, and put it in for the big 3 factions as a purely diplomatic system. Let the BGS engine take care of the rest and then give players their side of it as it existed in SoM.

Revel in that mental image for a few minutes.

For those of you who haven't played it: It's $20 for the GOTY version right now and it holds up, go play it, I'm not going to spend the next 30 posts explaining it to you when you could be playing a good game.

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

*looks around*

I played that game and I have no idea what you're talking about.

Admittedly, I didn't get too far before realising it wasn't actually any good. Lol

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

*looks around*

I played that game and I have no idea what you're talking about.

Admittedly, I didn't get too far before realising it wasn't actually any good. Lol

You missed the best part of the game by quitting early. Fire it back up tonight and slog through the boring parts until the Nemesis system opens up.

 

[GreyAreaUK]

For those of us that haven't played it, what is this Nemesis whatchamacallit?

 

[Conch]

ahhh the joy of taking over sauron's army..

 

[CMDR Cosmic Spacehead]

You missed the best part of the game by quitting early. Fire it back up tonight and slog through the boring parts until the Nemesis system opens up.

Hmm, I don't own it anymore. Lol
Or the console it was on...

Damn suicidal Xbox 360.

I know it's available for the PC, but my £23 of steam wallet money is reserved for one of 4 games on my wish list that drop below £23. Lol

Never mind, I'll read about it somewhere!

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

Hmm, I don't own it anymore. Lol
Or the console it was on...

Damn suicidal Xbox 360.

I know it's available for the PC, but my £23 of steam wallet money is reserved for one of 4 games on my wish list that drop below £23. Lol

Never mind, I'll read about it somewhere!

Don't read, go find a good 30 minute video that shows it in detail. I can't link one right now, my current connection isn't suitable.

 

[Sapyx]

I've never played the game, but as I recall it being discussed elsewhere here on the forum as a good model for FD to consider, I believe it runs something like this:

If you defeat a randomly-generated NPC but do not destroy them, the next time you meet a character with that same randomly-generated name, they're in a better ship - and they remember being defeated by you. Keep defeating-but-not-destroying them and you create a nemesis, a very powerful bad guy who is out for personal revenge against you, personally, and whose ship is specifically designed to counteract your own preferences for weapons, shields etc.

 

[Martian Successor]

The Nemesis system in a nutshell -

https://youtu.be/rwsEokXOIlo

 

[dannysquid]

I've never played the game, but as I recall it being discussed elsewhere here on the forum as a good model for FD to consider, I believe it runs something like this:

If you defeat a randomly-generated NPC but do not destroy them, the next time you meet a character with that same randomly-generated name, they're in a better ship - and they remember being defeated by you. Keep defeating-but-not-destroying them and you create a nemesis, a very powerful bad guy who is out for personal revenge against you, personally, and whose ship is specifically designed to counteract your own preferences for weapons, shields etc.

Isn't it complicated by the fact that the character doesn't just exist for you. They exist for anybody else in that instance. So persistence would have to be shared among players. Which I imagine is scary.

 

[Muetdhiver]

It would be a rather good addition, and put some challenge back into the game.

Extra points if the nemesis NPC's can send minions to bother you

 

[beta]

I can imagine it now. "KILL THE COMMANDER!" *Scared of Beam Lasers* *High wakes*

 

[cmdr_Havalok]

But can't you have this already by just posting your location and expected route and play hours here in the forums, then insulting SDC or The CODE. Persistent enemies will soon be in pursuit.

 

[kofeyh]

Given frontier's ongoing struggles with getting a dozen commanders (or more) to function in the same instance, there's snowballs chance in heck of persistent AI.

Lastly AI don't have to be persistent. As AI spawn, a check is performed to identify if a precious encounter lead to a set of defined outcomes and if so, the AI is strengthened.

But this scaled out to the thousands of simultaneous encounters across shared instances? In the current engine? Yikes.

Most of the interactions are various cludges and scripts; this would be amazing but Frontier would have to bin their entire encounter system and start again.

Remember this is the game were your combat rank, a cumulative statistic, is used to derive AI proficiency. So we are talking a massive overhaul here.

Never mind that the escalation of threat is going to trigger a bunch of commanders.

 

[Windscreen Smudge]

I can imagine it now. "KILL THE COMMANDER!" *Scared of Beam Lasers* *High wakes*

As amusing as I would find that, we don't have to take it that far.

 

[Daitya Zo]

But can't you have this already by just posting your location and expected route and play hours here in the forums, then insulting SDC or The CODE. Persistent enemies will soon be in pursuit.

It's no good insulting them. They don't feel things like NPCs.

 

[IndigoWyrd]

I've owned this game for.. quite a while for the PS4
I still haven't even opened it.

I have a number of console games in that condition - still wrapped in their original plastic.
And they're all good games - I just don't fire up my console very often.

 

[UnhappyDev]

Excellent idea! The nemesis system was a great innovation in SOM. I think it would work well in ED too

 

[Yaffle]

Moved to general gaming discussion because that's where it belongs.

 

[Mendaharin Tusca]

Anything that makes the game more.. "alive" and less random I am all for.