NPCs with faces

Arubeto

Arubeto
Tommyknocker said:
As do many of us apparently. I personally would like to see procedurally generated npcs for all of the above and then some. I want to see portraits of the guys telling me to drop my cargo (pirates), from those offering me some service (luxury goods) and yes, even the guy scanning me for illegal goods. The original only had so many faces to choose from (if I remember correctly) but with the new software being able to produce billions of stars, I think having a good assortment of npc faces would not be to much to ask for here.
+1 and repped
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This would be absolutely brilliant. There are ways to reduce the number of faces that would have to be generated, too. Tier 3 characters, for example, would have less need to be unique. Authority vessels, for example, could all use the same, handmade portrait, showing a helmet/flight mask that hides the face, something like this:

View attachment 8572

It could therefore be reused for every cop that contacts you, at least within a given (main) faction. (each faction would still need it's own cop portrait, because of different decals/colors/uniforms, perhaps).
 

Cevap

C
Having no NPC in the game is the single biggest issue I have with it. I dont even mean faces, just, let me contact a ship to demand/ask something, or apologise for a stray shot. Anything really. Especially annoying when pirates can yell at you and you cant say anything back.
Its immersion breaking and annoying, they should have implemented at least the basics of NPC interactions, some simple un-animated pics for contacts and thats basically it. Job done for a start and youve improved countless player activities by it.

As is they didnt even bother to put in the foundations of NPC mechanics, Im guessing they thought people would argue about mining and USS so they wouldnt really notice...
 

Pib_Juju

Pib_Juju
I'd love to see procedurally generated NPCs that give you an instant insight into the nature of the station. A poor, out-of-the-way Empire system might create a disheveled, unshaven guy with a low-grade prosthetic arm and an unbuttoned uniform, for instance. There's a reason he's been assigned to that crap outpost. If the same guy was at a high tech, high wealth, Empire station, he might have a buttoned-up, tidy appearance and sleek, modern prosthetic.
 

Arubeto

Arubeto
Cevap said:
Having no NPC in the game is the single biggest issue I have with it. I dont even mean faces, just, let me contact a ship to demand/ask something, or apologise for a stray shot. Anything really. Especially annoying when pirates can yell at you and you cant say anything back.
Its immersion breaking and annoying, they should have implemented at least the basics of NPC interactions, some simple un-animated pics for contacts and thats basically it. Job done for a start and youve improved countless player activities by it.
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Yes, you are absolutely right. Having some basic interaction with NPCs is even more important than portraits or character models.

Tbh., I don't even perceive the entities from whom I receive my missions on the bulletin board as NPCs, or even individual entities at all, but rather as some kind of automatic computer agent. The same computer agent providing missions for every faction (even rivaling ones) on every station in every system...that's really lame.

Cevap said:
As is they didnt even bother to put in the foundations of NPC mechanics, Im guessing they thought people would argue about mining and USS so they wouldnt really notice...
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Well, I still give them the benefit of the doubt. All things considered, I think their plans are very ambitious, so they might still have NPCs on there agenda. I really hope so, it's the one point that keeps this game from being really great and immersive.
 

Arubeto

Arubeto
Pib_Juju said:
I'd love to see procedurally generated NPCs that give you an instant insight into the nature of the station. A poor, out-of-the-way Empire system might create a disheveled, unshaven guy with a low-grade prosthetic arm and an unbuttoned uniform, for instance. There's a reason he's been assigned to that crap outpost. If the same guy was at a high tech, high wealth, Empire station, he might have a buttoned-up, tidy appearance and sleek, modern prosthetic.
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Yes, that's exactly what I would like to see, too. If we had some character that looked like an outlaw, it would convey the atmosphere of some pirate outpost so much better than just having a scull hologram floating above some antenna...
 
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Arubeto

Arubeto
Every clickbait troll thread like "Yaw is awful, I want a refund" gets tons of replies, but a thread that actually tries to make some constructive suggestion like this one is left to starve.

Do I really need to bump this thread myself until it gets some attention? Is noone else interested in the topic? Should I use more angry smilies and words written purely in capital letters in the thread title?
 

Zustiur

Z
Like Zhang, and probably many others, I do not want to have faces on the bulletin board. For me that would be immersion breaking.
'Why?' you ask?.
Simple. I work in a job very much like the bulletin board. I don't see the faces of the many clients I work for. It is extremely rare for me to meet any of them. Futhermore, most missions are posted by companies or government bodies, not by individuals. A company posting should not be accompanied by the face of one single employee.

I also believe that even with the wonders of facial generation these days, it would feel fake.
I'm struggling to think of a proposed feature that I want less. Even the getting out of your ship stuff sounds better than faces, and I hate that concept. It's a space trading sim, not a FPS. Please keep it that way.
 

Arubeto

Arubeto
Zustiur said:
Like Zhang, and probably many others, I do not want to have faces on the bulletin board. For me that would be immersion breaking.
...
I'm struggling to think of a proposed feature that I want less.
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Wow, that is discouraging :(

I thought I was proposing something that lots of people want. But apparently I was wrong. I will let go of this now, or perhaps try one last vote about the topic, and if it's clear then that most people don't want faces/character models for NPCs in the game, I will let go of the idea.
 

Arubeto

Arubeto
Sorry, just one more...

Zustiur said:
Like Zhang, and probably many others, I do not want to have faces on the bulletin board. For me that would be immersion breaking.
'Why?' you ask?.
Simple. I work in a job very much like the bulletin board. I don't see the faces of the many clients I work for. It is extremely rare for me to meet any of them. Futhermore, most missions are posted by companies or government bodies, not by individuals. A company posting should not be accompanied by the face of one single employee.
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Ok, that's a good point. I can see why some people might find faces on the bulletin board inappropriate.

But what about other cases? Some black market dealer might for example contact you in person, right? Or what about the mystical "tier 2" NPCs or "contacts" (for links see above) - if they ever become reality?

Even more so for the Tier 1 NPCs (the emperor, the president of the federation, the imperial senators, etc.). Shouldn't at least they have faces? You wouldn't meet them in person anyway (as described in the DDA, the player does not interact with Tier 1 characters directly), but some stills in the Galnet news could go a long way, don't you agree?

Wouldn't it be nice to have a face to relate to in those cases? Even a static one? Just a picture? No spoken dialog needed, text would be totally fine.

Zustiur said:
I also believe that even with the wonders of facial generation these days, it would feel fake.
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Yes, but even the game - as visually marvelous as it is - doesn't imitate reality in a perfect way. Those habitation rings of the Orbis stations look great, but from very near it's clearly visible that they mostly contain flat textures only, too. The same small concessions should be made to visual representations of (N)PCs. I think we would gain a lot more than we would lose (even those rough videos in FFE added a lot to the atmosphere)

Don't you think those pretty advanced character modeling tools I have linked in the original post are good enough at least for still (or only very sparsely animated, like slight head movements) portraits? Of course, they are not perfect, but as far as in game characters go, wouldn't they suffice to add character (no pun intended) to the NPCs and galaxy as a whole?
 

Captain Breton

Captain Breton
Perjoss said:
I do miss the bulletin board faces from Elite 2.
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:) You and me both.
I imagine these are things that will be added to the game (and if not they should! D:) , especially if there's talk of being able to walk about the ship hangars, and maybe stations.

Black Prophecy, though a short-lasting game also had a fantastic character creator, as does Eve Online (even if I've never really managed to sit with that one for long due to the murderous learning-curve).

Again, I do imagine NPC faces will be added as well.
 

Arubeto

Arubeto
Captain Breton said:
Black Prophecy, though a short-lasting game also had a fantastic character creator, as does Eve Online (even if I've never really managed to sit with that one for long due to the murderous learning-curve).
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Thanks for the heads-up.

Black Prophecy character creator:

[video=youtube;KQwCrDT_vDw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQwCrDT_vDw[/video]

I do think the quality of the character models isn't as high as that of Eve, but it's another nice example that the whole idea is far from unfeasible and should be well within the scope of what FD would be able to do (and - as I said - they could still just license one of the those tools that are already established - or just the tech behind it, and fill it with FDs own options for hair, skin eyes, noses, etc.).

And remember: for comms, contacts etc. you wouldn't even need to model the whole body, just enough to render a portrait of the character.
 

Ixnatifual

Ixnatifual
My guess is almost anyone would prefer faces as long as they're done well. Many games do faces well, but I'm not sure anyone is doing procedurally generated faces well.
 

Arubeto

Arubeto
Ixnatifual said:
My guess is almost anyone would prefer faces as long as they're done well.
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That was what I thought, too. But then I read Zhangs and Zustiurs posts::

Zhang said:
Well I don't want faces for the npcs. I don't want to see them at all.
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Zustiur said:
Like Zhang, and probably many others, I do not want to have faces on the bulletin board.
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Especially after seeing so few positive responds I wasn't so sure the anymore if this is a feature many people would welcome.

I think (and hope) that the fact that they have to be done right and FD therefore wants to take its time with this feature is the reason why we haven't heard anything about it, yet.

But since there aren't even ideas about character portraits or models in the DDA, I fear we might not see NPC faces until the first person expansions (walking around ships, stations and planet surfaces) hit - at which point character models can't be avoided anymore anyway (at least if you don't want to meet tables and spreadsheets walking around corridors).
 

SE-Apocalypse

S
Black Dessert is impressive, it even blows away the early developments from CCP (EVE-Online) for their World of Darkness MMO. Thanks for sharing.
 

Chevy66

C
There are plans to be able to get out of your ship and walk around, they need to do NPCs with faces for this, or do people still not want to see them?
 

1mirg

1mirg
well, personally I like the text only style while your flying through space. But, they could add voices. But, only when you accepted the missions otherwise it wouldn't make sense. I mean you are accepting these mission via bullet board.
 
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