Guys, girls, I was wondering about this one little thing and decided I would like to share it with you and hear your opinion. Here we go.
Have you ever wondered why we can't really interact with NPCs? How is the poor guy in a Hauler supposed to know I'm no pirate but a bounty hunter, and that the scan notification he gets is my Kill Warrant Scan, not pirate Cargo Scan? That if his account is clear, he has nothing to be afraid of and staying still will win the day for him?
I have, and I thought "why the hell can't we talk to then?".
Here are few possible scenarios of implementing such a feature (please don't kill me if I missed a thread saying such a feature is on the way, I've made some search on forums but came up empty handed).
1) Prepared answers / hails. (reasonable scenario)
This one is very much like seen in many other games where you can send pre-determined messages to NPCs. Ranging from variety of hauls, orders or greetings, messages NPCs can respond to and adjust their behavior based on. There are many ways of introducing this feature, from choice wheel (I'm not sure it would work well in this game, plus - the more options, the more difficult the navigation is), through on-screen menu you can navigate with your menu-navigation hotkeys (better, but still hard if given too many options) up to single button calling up the menu where calling on items is based on numerical keyboard (last game I remember that had this was Unreal Tournament, but I'm pretty sure there were newer games I can't remember of now). Since the game is not based on voice-overs, shouldn't be much fuss to implement it itself. AI reaction is the hard part.
2) Type recognition as opposed to voice-recognition (more 21st-century-gameindustry-like solution)
This one would simply feature recognizing chat messages sent from players to NPCs. Much more interactive approach, but also much more development-demanding. As a reward, much more immersive for the player to be able to command NPCs through direct communication. Hard part is recognizing sentences if player's don't use correct English words / phrases.
Fun scenario: imagine player writing "Drop you're cargo" and NPC responding "I'm not a cargo, what do you want?" or "Dropping, I'm cargo"
3) Voice recognition systems (even more 21st-century-like approach)
While NPCs' response to human messages may be fun, this would be a whole-new-level fun. Since we already have voice-recognition software running on our PCs, giving us the possibility to bind voice commands to keyboard macros for that power management (and much more), such an option should prove to be less development-demanding than chat recognition. There are tools available already, starting with google services and 3rd party software available for installation on player's gaming rig. I'm not sure what problems would FD encounter during implementation so your input is very welcome. I simply may not know it is impossible or on the contrary, easy to do.
Despite any of the propositions above, I find no means of communicating with NPCs lacking. It would come such a long way to calm that trader down and let him know you're just looking for bounties. It would be so nice to be able to respond "Following orders" to police scanning you, making them less likely to become trigger-happy. For now, there is no real way of influencing interactions with NPCs. I can only kill-warrant-scan him, hoping he doesn't get scared. And when he deploys weapons, hoping retracting mine would show I'm not hostile. Too much hoping, if you ask me.
What's your view on the subject?
Have you ever wondered why we can't really interact with NPCs? How is the poor guy in a Hauler supposed to know I'm no pirate but a bounty hunter, and that the scan notification he gets is my Kill Warrant Scan, not pirate Cargo Scan? That if his account is clear, he has nothing to be afraid of and staying still will win the day for him?
I have, and I thought "why the hell can't we talk to then?".
Here are few possible scenarios of implementing such a feature (please don't kill me if I missed a thread saying such a feature is on the way, I've made some search on forums but came up empty handed).
1) Prepared answers / hails. (reasonable scenario)
This one is very much like seen in many other games where you can send pre-determined messages to NPCs. Ranging from variety of hauls, orders or greetings, messages NPCs can respond to and adjust their behavior based on. There are many ways of introducing this feature, from choice wheel (I'm not sure it would work well in this game, plus - the more options, the more difficult the navigation is), through on-screen menu you can navigate with your menu-navigation hotkeys (better, but still hard if given too many options) up to single button calling up the menu where calling on items is based on numerical keyboard (last game I remember that had this was Unreal Tournament, but I'm pretty sure there were newer games I can't remember of now). Since the game is not based on voice-overs, shouldn't be much fuss to implement it itself. AI reaction is the hard part.
2) Type recognition as opposed to voice-recognition (more 21st-century-gameindustry-like solution)
This one would simply feature recognizing chat messages sent from players to NPCs. Much more interactive approach, but also much more development-demanding. As a reward, much more immersive for the player to be able to command NPCs through direct communication. Hard part is recognizing sentences if player's don't use correct English words / phrases.
Fun scenario: imagine player writing "Drop you're cargo" and NPC responding "I'm not a cargo, what do you want?" or "Dropping, I'm cargo"
3) Voice recognition systems (even more 21st-century-like approach)
While NPCs' response to human messages may be fun, this would be a whole-new-level fun. Since we already have voice-recognition software running on our PCs, giving us the possibility to bind voice commands to keyboard macros for that power management (and much more), such an option should prove to be less development-demanding than chat recognition. There are tools available already, starting with google services and 3rd party software available for installation on player's gaming rig. I'm not sure what problems would FD encounter during implementation so your input is very welcome. I simply may not know it is impossible or on the contrary, easy to do.
Despite any of the propositions above, I find no means of communicating with NPCs lacking. It would come such a long way to calm that trader down and let him know you're just looking for bounties. It would be so nice to be able to respond "Following orders" to police scanning you, making them less likely to become trigger-happy. For now, there is no real way of influencing interactions with NPCs. I can only kill-warrant-scan him, hoping he doesn't get scared. And when he deploys weapons, hoping retracting mine would show I'm not hostile. Too much hoping, if you ask me.
What's your view on the subject?
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