The question is whether the amount of people, and the amount of time those people are willing to spend on ''trade skills'', is enough to fill the need for the services that NPCs normally provide to the world.

Henry

Maybe they just have NPC''s to fill in while they are offline... And they also need to earn enough in-game money to pay for those NPC''s... That way they would own it and run it, and could get an NPC to do the actual work.... They just have their name on it... That would be cool right? I think so anyway

-Chris Bennett of Dwarfsoft - Site:"The Philosophers'' Stone of Programming Alchemy" - IOL
The future of RPGs - Thanks to all the goblins over in our little Game Design Corner niche
          

That would be cool unless someone decides to kill the NPC. I do not think players would be very happy about getting killed while they are offline =)

One idea that I have been thinking about would be to remove the ownerships that players have over their chars today. In other words, the players should be assigned a char by the server every time they log in and when they log out an NPC takes over the role of that char until it is assigned to another player. There are lots and lots of problems with that idea though since it is open for abuse and since in-game ownership is claimed to be one of the main things that make players stay with a MUD or MMRPG.

Henry

Dwarfsoft: - I like that idea. Maybe ppl will kill NPC''s less if they realise that by killing them, they are probably going to piss off some PC who might then place a bounty on their head.. or just hunt them down. And if a PC is in a position where he can be in charge of several NPC''s, he will probably be a fairly dangerous enemy to have.....

"I assume you are the same anon poster that wanted NPCs to be gone from the MMRGPs too. I do not agree with that statement or the one quoted above. If the interaction between people is all that matters, then you have a chatroom, not a game. If NPCs, buildings and other game mechanics are not useful in your game, then it would seem like your game design is flawed."

what mechanics come from a tavern? Is a place to serve alcholic beverages essential to your game design? Unlikely. Perhaps stores are needed in your game (though I am against that too) but how many do you need? Why not just have players sell to each other? Hmm how are goods actually created, you might need a blacksmith for that. Still it is no where near the number that they are currently using.

"NPCs are similar to backdrops in movies. They do not have to be fully functional to add to the immersion of the game."

So you are saying that a game without NPCs is flawed and similar to a chatroom, but when you add NPCs that are not functional it somehow makes your game mechanics better?

quoting from different post:
"Um, no buildings? Doesn''t sound lik e much of a role-playable experience to me. Buildings provide the setting, the infrastructure to the world. Without a setting, you just have a mindless hack and slash.

People in nomadic cultures don''t have buildings. Do they live mindless hack and slash lives? Not really. Actually the more I think about this the crazier that seems. How exactly to buildings reduce the mindless hack and slash factor? No really, last time I played an FPS it had a lot of buildings and that didn''t stop people from shooting each other.

Any way you slice it people are going to kill stuff and buy stuff. Do you want them killing monsters or intelligent players? Do you want them buying stuff from NPCs or from each other? When it comes down to it there is player to player interaction and there is its inferior substitute. The trick is to focus on building game mechanics that make interplayer interaction fun.

In reply to Dak Lozar, I play dozens of MUDs, and try out some online game demos. I think NPCs should be used until an online rpg has lots of people to populate the game. You want to keep the atmosphere of the most populated city in the realms in the beginning by filling in those gaps. And, I really do hate the "respawn" system. It is not realistic to kill a whole army of goblins, and then have em pop up again like they had a reproduction spree. I appreciate all the replies I am getting... My friend is now out of the writers block for a Online RPG we are making. And, I can''t agree more with Dwarfsoft, NPCS ARE PEOPLE TOO!!!

>> what mechanics come from a tavern? Is a place to serve alcholic beverages essential to your game design? Unlikely. >>

Well, if alcoholic beverages are sold by an NPC in a building, players are more likely to assume that the building is a tavern and not a library. That will remove some confusion that can otherwise disrupt player interaction. You won''t get great RPing if half the people in a room are asking for calm and silence while the other half are playing drunk and calling for louder music. Drinking alcohol (and possibly raising their alcohol tolerance as in EQ) also gives the player something to do and provides a nice distraction from whatever the most usual action in the game is (camping MOBs in EQ).

Taverns and NPCs in bars are also great for proving information about recent event or quests that happen in the area.

>> Perhaps stores are needed in your game (though I am against that too) but how many do you need? >>

In a major city there should be many stores. Even if most of the stores are redundant, they help give the place a sense of life and guides the player''s imagination into feeling comfortable about the idea that they are in a major city. They provide a backdrop. Also, if everything that lots of players need can be found in one city, it will give people an incentive to visit the place often and encourage interaction as well as immerse players in the idea that the place is a highly populated area.

>> So you are saying that a game without NPCs is flawed and similar to a chatroom... >>

It''s a balance. People do run totally freeform RPGs in chatrooms but my experience from RPG chatrooms tells me that they work best when you have some common world to relate to, some common rules. NPCs and other game elements can help create a common platform for players to interact in and makes it easier to immerse oneself. Freeform RPGs are in my opinion too full of contradicting opinions about ''how things are'' to work really well for player interaction.

Besides, interaction between players is just one activity that players can engage in when playing multiplayer games. I think it would be a waste to ignore other singe-player activities that we know from traditional games.

Henry

quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
what mechanics come from a tavern? Is a place to serve alcholic beverages essential to your game design? Unlikely.

Since the dawn of time, inns and taverns have been meeting places. Even if the beer they are drinking is just virtual, the majority of players enjoy role-playing a drunken lout - particularly if the game mechanics are backing them up by making their character far more clumsy while "under the influence"

quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
Perhaps stores are needed in your game (though I am against that too) but how many do you need? Why not just have players sell to each other?

That does go on, quite a bit. However, without stores, where are you suggesting that players store all the loot they wish to sell? Do they carry it around with them? That''s a lot of inventory.

Additionally, role playing generally works better when you have a backdrop to roleplay into. A settlement (such as a city) with numerous taverns, shops, homes, guards, NPC townsfolk etc, helps to set the scene, provide an environment.

Even if you have a good playerbase, you can''t guarantee that all players are going to be in the same area at the same time, unless you have a very small world. You need NPC characters to pad the population out.

quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
Hmm how are goods actually created, you might need a blacksmith for that. Still it is no where near the number that they are currently using.

I don''t think you''ve grasped the sheer number of goods that can be (and are) produced. It would be a bit silly to presume that one single blacksmith could supply the needs of a good-sized city, just as it would be plain lunacy to see a blacksmith churning out fur cloaks.

quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
People in nomadic cultures don''t have buildings. Do they live mindless hack and slash lives? Not really. Actually the more I think about this the crazier that seems. How exactly to buildings reduce the mindless hack and slash factor? No really, last time I played an FPS it had a lot of buildings and that didn''t stop people from shooting each other.

One term in that explains why everyone is mindlessly slaying everyone else. In an FPS, the whole idea is to kill everything else. In an RPG, the aim is to interact with others, and have fun. Slaying tends to form a large part of the experience, yes, but it is by no means the be-all, and end-all.

In an online role playing game, with a good infrastructure backing it up to RP off of, it is not unusual for large groups of players to log on for several hours, not slay a thing, and still have a great time.

quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster
Any way you slice it people are going to kill stuff and buy stuff. Do you want them killing monsters or intelligent players? Do you want them buying stuff from NPCs or from each other? When it comes down to it there is player to player interaction and there is its inferior substitute. The trick is to focus on building game mechanics that make interplayer interaction fun.

Whatever you do, you''re not going to stop players killing or harrassing other players. Rather then trying to stop it, channel it.

When it comes down to it, it is nice to have players buy from other players oven NPCs, I agree. But they should be the ones to decide that. Forcing them to buy only from other players creates too many problems. What happens if the player who has the item another needs drops offline, and no other player has a substitue? With no NPC shopkeepers around selling sub-standard substitutes, the player has a problem.

For that matter, what about newbies to the game? The equipment they need is often of too low a level for older players to carry round, with them too often preferring to sell on the more profitable, higher-power equipment that the experienced player wants.

Anyhow, time is getting short, End of rant

This seems to have drifted far off-topic. Arguing about buildings and taverns ey?

Best get back to the topic, or start a new one.


People might not remember what you said, or what you did, but they will always remember how you made them feel.
~ (V)^|) |<é!t|-| ~

Not being a MMORPG player myself you don´t have to listen to me. But I think that this is going into the direction of redesigning the genre itself, not just doing away with the troublesome pointless npc-murders.
Whether there are NPCs or not will eventually be determined by the players (are there any studies/polls on this?), if a player is ready to be a beggar, townguard or innkeeper then everything will be ok.
Then you wouldn´t even have to provide much of a background because towns and so would evolve by themselves..

And if you have NPCs (which i personally think is necessary) then you simply have to protect the important ones (anyone try to give the shopkeeper any trouble he´s mashed up by the guards, no matter how strong he is) and put enough negative consequences on killing a minor one. If you kill a farmer for his few gold coins and nobody sees you - ok, but farmers are rarely alone, they tend to have family (angry brothers perhaps? out to seek revenge), if you´re seen there´s a wanted-poster in the nearby towns....

I think that for a RPG (of whatever kind) it´s good to make everything possible, lots of things just aren´t smart. (Fallout and Fallout2 did a pretty ok job)