PorkyThePaladin
Arcane
- Joined
- Dec 17, 2013
- Messages
- 5,222
Damn... and she looks so petite too...
Possibly the most fun I had with the game was robbing the Ayleid artifact collector's house in the Imperial City. You can even bribe the night guard to take a drink in the tavern so that you can sneak in unnoticed while everyone's asleep. It's a neat example of what you can do with NPC schedules, and it's not even a part of an actual quest IIRC. Too bad you'll only find level-scaled junk in there.You could rob stores in Oblivion at night, but there was no point. They barely had any money or merchandise.
Agent 47 from the Hitman games is probably wearing piss-soaked disguises most of the time, as half of the people he knocks out are taking a leak.When I noticed NPCs going for a leak in ELEX, I realized that no other games other than those made by Piranha Bytes have NPCs go out for a piss once in a while.
It's a problem of most of modern (and not so modern) games, when designers try to create illusion through scripted sequences that they've created living world with intelligent NPCs.One problem with Skyrim that Oblivion didn't have is indeed that it feels like a movie set where actors are waiting for the player to arrive so they can say their lines and walk away. This design is often necessary inside of quests, but when used in the gameworld outside of quests it's just lazy and goes against the whole concept of a living world.
IMO games that consists of purely scripted sequences, that were created through years of work of many designers are dead end of videogame evolution.
Even mainstream audience is bored with them, and would rather play latest looter shooter or Fortnite than next God of War or Uncharted.
The better approach is the one used in roguelikes, or Daggerfall, or Minecraft or sandbox MMOs or even Sims - don't create engaging story, give up the desire to control everything - and let the interesting situations appear naturally from interactions between world, NPCs and the players.
Everything that happens before the game starts is fine. There may be ancient artefacts, existing NPCs, hand crafted locations, books, etc.RPG's need structure and meaningful handcrafted content. That's why in the end random generated content doesn't work for this genre (you mentioned Daggerfall and that game is a good example of this).
Oblivion with Obscuro's Overhaul and the Better Cities mod is the only rpg ever created worth playing, everything else is inane storyfaggotry, and everything else can't be considered a game in comparison.
You cannot run away from boss fights, even if you're playing non-combat character.
You cannot hurt NPC
There is a wooden door that looks like every other wooden door, but even atomic explosion cannot damage it, because quest designer has some other ideas for quest solutions.
It's sad that 25 years later in modern RPGs you cannot do things you could do in Daggerfall.
Tbh this is one of my favorite things about Wasteland. If there’s a door in your way, just fucking smash the bitch. Or blow it up. Or pick the lock. Or crowbar it.There is a wooden door that looks like every other wooden door, but even atomic explosion cannot damage it, because quest designer has some other ideas for quest solutions.
tl;dr: STOP HAVING AN INTERESTING WORLDNo matter what you think of oblivious' schedules, they were just huge waste of effort.
For schedules to matter you need to have some motivation to get involved with them as a player.
In oblivious:
So yeah, reducing that in Skyrim was sane not only from business perspective, but also from actual quality perspective - having work to put where it matters.
- you sure as fuck don't want to hang around NPCs more than strictly necessary for fear of your brain dribbling out of your ears from sheer fucking inanity.
- there is no point to ever steal anything apart from filing TG quota to progress. Reason? No one has shit worth stealing because level scaling.
- Orc drug rings, NPCs derping around from city to city, etc. are never relevant to anything interesting or worthwhile, therefore they are meaningless.
You still have:
And, on top of that:
- Khajiit caravans travelling between cities.
- Companions running around randomly killing shit
- Travelling bard
- A number of NPCs counting as random encounters, but actually travelling around.
- Fallion, the friendly neighbourhood necromancer derping in the swamps occassionally around his summoning circle
- All the NPCs derping around in their villages and cities (eat, sleep, work, go to tavern)
That actually has much more impact on anything player might experience even if finite number of predefined random encounters means shit will get repetitive - guess what? NPCs derping back and forth and blurbling about mudcrabs are also repetitive in addition to not being gameplay, nor lore, nor anything worth playing for.
- A bunch of random encounters (of varying quality) just spawning
- basic NPC reactivity to stuff happening around
- a number of scripted events that can be triggered by player's interactions with NPCs and their stuff
- a number of quest relevant NPCs with more extensive schedules.
I SAW A MUDCRAP YESTERDAY.tl;dr: STOP HAVING AN INTERESTING WORLDNo matter what you think of oblivious' schedules, they were just huge waste of effort.
For schedules to matter you need to have some motivation to get involved with them as a player.
In oblivious:
So yeah, reducing that in Skyrim was sane not only from business perspective, but also from actual quality perspective - having work to put where it matters.
- you sure as fuck don't want to hang around NPCs more than strictly necessary for fear of your brain dribbling out of your ears from sheer fucking inanity.
- there is no point to ever steal anything apart from filing TG quota to progress. Reason? No one has shit worth stealing because level scaling.
- Orc drug rings, NPCs derping around from city to city, etc. are never relevant to anything interesting or worthwhile, therefore they are meaningless.
You still have:
And, on top of that:
- Khajiit caravans travelling between cities.
- Companions running around randomly killing shit
- Travelling bard
- A number of NPCs counting as random encounters, but actually travelling around.
- Fallion, the friendly neighbourhood necromancer derping in the swamps occassionally around his summoning circle
- All the NPCs derping around in their villages and cities (eat, sleep, work, go to tavern)
That actually has much more impact on anything player might experience even if finite number of predefined random encounters means shit will get repetitive - guess what? NPCs derping back and forth and blurbling about mudcrabs are also repetitive in addition to not being gameplay, nor lore, nor anything worth playing for.
- A bunch of random encounters (of varying quality) just spawning
- basic NPC reactivity to stuff happening around
- a number of scripted events that can be triggered by player's interactions with NPCs and their stuff
- a number of quest relevant NPCs with more extensive schedules.
HORRID CREATURES. THE FIGHTERS GUILD IS HIRING.I SAW A MUDCRAP YESTERDAY.tl;dr: STOP HAVING AN INTERESTING WORLDNo matter what you think of oblivious' schedules, they were just huge waste of effort.
For schedules to matter you need to have some motivation to get involved with them as a player.
In oblivious:
So yeah, reducing that in Skyrim was sane not only from business perspective, but also from actual quality perspective - having work to put where it matters.
- you sure as fuck don't want to hang around NPCs more than strictly necessary for fear of your brain dribbling out of your ears from sheer fucking inanity.
- there is no point to ever steal anything apart from filing TG quota to progress. Reason? No one has shit worth stealing because level scaling.
- Orc drug rings, NPCs derping around from city to city, etc. are never relevant to anything interesting or worthwhile, therefore they are meaningless.
You still have:
And, on top of that:
- Khajiit caravans travelling between cities.
- Companions running around randomly killing shit
- Travelling bard
- A number of NPCs counting as random encounters, but actually travelling around.
- Fallion, the friendly neighbourhood necromancer derping in the swamps occassionally around his summoning circle
- All the NPCs derping around in their villages and cities (eat, sleep, work, go to tavern)
That actually has much more impact on anything player might experience even if finite number of predefined random encounters means shit will get repetitive - guess what? NPCs derping back and forth and blurbling about mudcrabs are also repetitive in addition to not being gameplay, nor lore, nor anything worth playing for.
- A bunch of random encounters (of varying quality) just spawning
- basic NPC reactivity to stuff happening around
- a number of scripted events that can be triggered by player's interactions with NPCs and their stuff
- a number of quest relevant NPCs with more extensive schedules.
...So much for that interesting world.
wow if they didn't get it perfect the first attempt then nobody else should attempt it or try it again because it's obviously awfulI SAW A MUDCRAP YESTERDAY.tl;dr: STOP HAVING AN INTERESTING WORLDNo matter what you think of oblivious' schedules, they were just huge waste of effort.
For schedules to matter you need to have some motivation to get involved with them as a player.
In oblivious:
So yeah, reducing that in Skyrim was sane not only from business perspective, but also from actual quality perspective - having work to put where it matters.
- you sure as fuck don't want to hang around NPCs more than strictly necessary for fear of your brain dribbling out of your ears from sheer fucking inanity.
- there is no point to ever steal anything apart from filing TG quota to progress. Reason? No one has shit worth stealing because level scaling.
- Orc drug rings, NPCs derping around from city to city, etc. are never relevant to anything interesting or worthwhile, therefore they are meaningless.
You still have:
And, on top of that:
- Khajiit caravans travelling between cities.
- Companions running around randomly killing shit
- Travelling bard
- A number of NPCs counting as random encounters, but actually travelling around.
- Fallion, the friendly neighbourhood necromancer derping in the swamps occassionally around his summoning circle
- All the NPCs derping around in their villages and cities (eat, sleep, work, go to tavern)
That actually has much more impact on anything player might experience even if finite number of predefined random encounters means shit will get repetitive - guess what? NPCs derping back and forth and blurbling about mudcrabs are also repetitive in addition to not being gameplay, nor lore, nor anything worth playing for.
- A bunch of random encounters (of varying quality) just spawning
- basic NPC reactivity to stuff happening around
- a number of scripted events that can be triggered by player's interactions with NPCs and their stuff
- a number of quest relevant NPCs with more extensive schedules.
...So much for that interesting world.
Indeed, NPC from Disco Elysium don't have schedule, and they are the most alive NPC in RPG history.They say that when you play Disco Elysium the Codex comes to you in your sleep, it's how they recruit new members.
wow if they didn't get it perfect the first attempt then nobody else should attempt it or try it again because it's obviously awful
why even have NPCs if their only use is to act as a vending machine that buys your junk and dispenses quests? Might as well cut out the middle man.wow if they didn't get it perfect the first attempt then nobody else should attempt it or try it again because it's obviously awful
It is obviously awful. We are in agreement.
The number of times I'd rather have the stores in an RPGs be replaced with a single menu is every time.
Hunting down some dumbfuck NPC so I can navigate a menu to sell vendor trash is not engaging gameplay. In fact, schedules and moving NPCs are one of the reason minimaps and markers are seen as necessary by developers.
Schedules work and are effective gameplay in Thief 1&2 and Hitman. What RPG has actually used schedules to create interesting gameplay on that level?
Oblivion schedules and NPC AI were heavily castrated during development.Oblivious' more complex schedules don't seem to be helping here.
Indeed, NPC from Disco Elysium don't have schedule, and they are the most alive NPC in RPG history.