"My fellow gamers, forget goblin genocide! The problem is lazy, immoral party members that suck up all of our hero''s hard earned resources! If you elect me, I promise to end this scourge on our great gaming nation..." Ahem. In most party based RPGs you pay not only to build up your main character-- if you have one-- but your party as well. But what if, as Luxury was suggesting in a recent post you were only a main character hiring other characters. Let''s assume the AI isn''t an issue. How would you go about advancement? In the name of NPC autonomy, what do you think of this: You pay them, but how they spend their money is up to them. This becomes a personality issue, as a dedicated Paladin will take his money and go train, whereas a drunkard bard may waste most of it drinking and carousing. You could still train them out of your own pocket, but dedicated NPCs would go the extra mile to advance (and hence become more treasured to the player) I can imagine an NPC saying to you, "Hey, learned a new trick... watch this!" as he shows off new skills he''s acquired. Also, what if you extended this to inventory? You''d divide up the booty, and NPCs would keep a share based on their personality. Paladins, having little need for wealth, would put more into the pool, whereas greedy theives might even try to withhold from everyone. The goal here, btw, is to make your party seem more alive. I hate it when you''re wandering around with zombies that are supposed to be people with names, histories, and some sort of personality. (Heck, if I wanted zombies I''d go play the Necromancer in Diablo 2!!!) -------------------- Just waiting for the mothership...

Sound alot better than spending all of your money on that moron who dies in the next battle and it all goes to waste!

Sounds very interesting to me, this would be a good way to show a bit of personality to the NPC AI. At last, you would get a wizard that would not buff up his sword and weapons skill, but rather count on you to protect him, unless he is a very independent person who like to play with daggers ?
Anyway, this would be a good opportunity to show off and use the nicely crafted background story of those characters...
A paladin would spend his time in prayers and exercises, the hobbit/halfling of the group would cook, etc

yeah, I like that a lot !

youpla :-P

That is a very good concept, for one it would help to reduce the user-interface and decision making overload that many party RPGs have. Ie. You have to control these supposedly capable people in battles, and equip them!

In the Fallout series, any NPC party members act on their own volition (you can''t point and click them). They just have a range of suggestions you can give them Ie. Coward > Berzerker, but depending on the character some of these options are not selectable.

With an advanced enough AI system, they would be able to be independent in their choices, and help demonstrate their character, motivation, and beliefs via the gameplay. This would add to the "realism" of the characters that you were playing with

Maybe you could get their combat and work experience CVs , to get an idea of what they are going to train in.


Here is the thread link to my thread Character by Gameplay, this concept is a nice extension of the ideas raised there.

http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=25358&forum_id=17&Topic_Title=Character+by+gameplay&forum_title=Game+Design&M=False&S=True

nice thinking wav...taking it another step

boy...i just cant wait until phantasy star online....getting to run around with "real" NPC''s i wonder how they are going to handle splitting up the swag?

-Luxury

Maybe the characters would need to earn money as they go along in the world, to pay or their debts or support their families back home on the farm.

So depending on their morals they might need to take muckraking jobs in villages, or instead steal from the mayor.

This could happen everynow and then when they got to a town, you wouldn''t need to actually see it, or do it.. but you could see the effects of their work when they return covered in dried hay etc.