NPCs

[welsh]

I know we've talked about NPCs before but I was thinking about the NPC opportunities in FO 2 that were never fulfilled. Remember- Sulik's lost sister? Or Cassidy and his heart pills. You are able to reunite Vic and his daughter but it's not really a quest.

It would be fun if the NPCs were given more autonomy in the game but were more real. For instance, NPCs should be rewarded, or paid or else they leave. If they have a particular quest (Sulik wants to find his sister) than you should have to comply with that quest to get Sulik's loyalty.

FO 2 does a bit of this with your NPC's leaving you if you become a slaver and such, but I think it would be more interesting if the NPCs had their own interests that the player had to consider as well.

 

[Francisco M L S G S]

You're right... it's not like you meet someone in a bar and the next thing you know he's swearing loyaltyto you and 10 days later he's dying for you while fighting supermutants toghether.

Something intresting about the NPCs would be knowing their attributes like you do in FOT with your squad

 

[Azarskittar]

Something intresting about the NPCs would be knowing their attributes like you do in FOT with your squad

I think Fallout's style was better...that way you could imagine they had a mind of their own, and weren't just creatures controlled by a puppeteer.

 

[Francisco M L S G S]

I didn't say you would control them. You should just simply see their atts, it had been something i was very about until i read the fallout bible.

They should also give you advice, like Morte in PST.

 

[OnTheBounce]

For instance, NPCs should be rewarded, or paid or else they leave.

That's a really good point, Welsh. Remember how Ian would join your for either 100 caps or "a piece of the action"? Yet if you paid him the caps you could take them back. The only "piece of the action" he ever got in any of my games was his share wounds.

The sad thing is that payment has been a staple of RPGs even before the days when Pac Man was the hottest thing in computer gaming. Yet I've never played a game where this was a real issue.

Loyalty and morale have also been long handled on the table top, yet their treatment in the CRPG arena has been somewhat lackluster. For instance, NPCs will run away in FO2, but only due to wounds, and they are still loyal to you once the combat has ended. While they would occassionally get grumpy and need to be taken to the Cat's Paw in New Reno to get their spirits back up this was buggy, and also a rather juvenile treatment of something that could have been an interesting dimension in a game.

The sad thing is that when CRPGs came out a lot of tabletop gamers looked at them as a way to have some of the fun destroying rule implementation and record keeping taken care of leaving a player free to enjoy the game more rather than play amateur archivist. So far I have to say that CRRGs aren't really living up to their potential. NPCs would be just one of those areas, though.

If they have a particular quest (Sulik wants to find his sister) than you should have to comply with that quest to get Sulik's loyalty.

This could be very interesting if handled correctly. I'd like to see NPCs move away from those in FO2 who join you indefinitely. In my last game of FO2 Sulik was w/me from Klamath until I left him on the docks en route to the Oil Rig. While some NPCs could still be like that, it would be much better, IMHO, if your party was a bit less stable. It could also provide some incentive to not simply reload every time one of your followers is killed since they are far more transient in a world where they have some depth to their motivation.

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[alec]

I'd like to see NPCs move away from those in FO2 who join you indefinitely. In my last game of FO2 Sulik was w/me from Klamath until I left him on the docks en route to the Oil Rig. While some NPCs could still be like that, it would be much better, IMHO, if your party was a bit less stable. It could also provide some incentive to not simply reload every time one of your followers is killed since they are far more transient in a world where they have some depth to their motivation.

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Good points, but I think this is just very dificult to do. You basically want more realism, but that might harm the gameplay. What if you're standing in front of a horde of pissed off supermutants and all of a sudden your three friendly NPCs remember they have a kid brother who's been waiting for them? I like to see some more depth in the behaviour of NPCs but loyalty should be one of their basic traits. Maybe a reward system would be the easiest way to do it, like hiring mercenaries in Jagged Alliance. I agree though that some NPCs would only go along for the ride until their own personal quest is solved (like Sulik leaving you after finding his sister, for instance). A love affair would be nice too. I always found it quite disappointing that Miria was so... limited. It would be nice too see some romantic affair bloom between you and one of the NPCs or two of the NPCs or something.

There was the Vic thing in FO2 where he would leave you if he got hit by too much friendly fire. That was a nice idea, but it never happened during one of my games.

 

[JJ86]

Leaving in the middle of combat would be a big no-no and would probably be a bad idea to implement. I think it would be appropriate to have NPC's with their own agenda though. Having all of them as faithful puppy dogs wears on the believability.

 

[OnTheBounce]

You basically want more realism, but that might harm the gameplay. What if you're standing in front of a horde of pissed off supermutants and all of a sudden your three friendly NPCs remember they have a kid brother who's been waiting for them? I like to see some more depth in the behaviour of NPCs but loyalty should be one of their basic traits.

I don't think that morale checks for NPCs would harm gameplay. I've played games on the table-top where the referee treated NPCs like expendable cannon-fodder and others where they were treated more like autonomous beings. I preferred the latter, even if it did mean that often things didn't go quite as planned because someone decided to run off at an unconvenient moment.

Getting more reliability out of one's NPCs would be a benefit that would make playing a charismatic character a bit more fun. A balancing action would be that the limit for NPCs might be waived or simply raised, so that you could take more people along w/less CH, but have their loyalty be significantly less.

There was the Vic thing in FO2 where he would leave you if he got hit by too much friendly fire. That was a nice idea, but it never happened during one of my games.

Likewise here. I'm not burst-crazed so my experience of it is limited to having read about it.

To be fair, there are some good aspects to FO2's handling of NPCs such as them having conditions that they will not join you under, such as low levels of general Rep, or specific town Rep, Karmic titles, or if certain NPCs are attacked. Examples are Marcus will leave you if your Rep goes below -100; Sulik will leave you if you have a negative Rep in Klamath; Cassidy will not join you if you are a Slaver; and Vic will turn on you if his daughter is killed. (Funny thing about that last one is that I've had Vic kill his own daughter, then turn on me for it...)

However, I still maintain that CRPGs are not living up to their potential in this regard. Instead of harnassing the power of the microprocessor to slave away at the records keeping and innumberable die rolls that could bog a table top game down in short order, we're instead seeing the same old rule systems implemented in abbreviated form w/flashy visuals tacked on. Rather than seeing something like the old Iron Crown Enterprises combat system -- which was so damned complex it wasn't fun to play, although it was a very well done system -- we're still seeing the D&D ruleset dragged out for yet another whoring. To top it off we're still seeing lots of aspects of the simple rulesets ignored, e.g. mounted combat and NPC morale.

I understand that some of things are difficult to implement. Not only that, but they are time consuming, which means that developers don't want to do it because they're worried about financial statements, product cycles, etc., etc. That doesn't keep me from wanting CRPGs to live up to their potential, even if it does mean that they likely won't.

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