NPC (Node Specific Towns)
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I am writing this for the weekly draw but it's still a good idea.
Minor towns/communities computer controlled. Grant protection, gain resources, gain farmers, henchmen, soldiers, fish, wood, iron and so forth.
Grants boon bonus to city player owned of choice for protection.
This feature is in most games but why not here?
Cheers.
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I don't really understand what you mean. You want trees to be gathered only in forest areas, iron only in mountain areas and so on? Or you want towns to pick a specific bonus (for example armor crafting costs 20% less resources here)? Or maybe it's something else? Can you be more specific?
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For what I understood.. there would be minor hubs fully controlled by NPCs?
But how would the concept of "the economy is user-driven" if we have a steady income of some resources (even if they are the basic wood/stone/iron type of resources)?Improving on the Idea, I would like to see towns having the option to have NPCs.
So let's say you just started a town, you have to build it and put a lot of resources into it.
when it reaches a certain point, there is an option there like "Hire builder for 3 hours", so, for 3 hours, you would have a NPC that can pick up logs/stones and bring to the construction sites (he will not collect stuff on its own, and the resources HAVE to be at a specific spot, say a warehouse for example)
And those kind of NPCs would be really expensive too, so it is not common to have them. We could even have a limit of "maximum of 4 NPCs" (according to town size) and there would be a range of jobs the NPCs could do.We just have to take extreme care as to not make this system exploitable nor it changing a lot the gameplay... we still want the user-driven economy, the town size to be approximately the guild/party/organization size that controls it and so on
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Problem:
- NPCs should be attackable and lootable (Tartaros / Syndesia) so that communities that are trying to prevent harvesting of certain resource can do so vs NPCs same like vs players
- arising from issue above, moderate NPC AI and mechanical skills could be abused to harvest resources by harvesting those NPCs
And if NPCs aren't really doing anything then whats the point of having them.
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@Gothix said in NPC (Node Specific Towns):
And if NPCs aren't really doing anything then what's the point of having them.
Eye candy, looking at your fellow Demons all day can become (literally) hell, put some blonde humans in a kind of settler town.
On a serious note, I have always thought that NPC's have a function of bringing a town to live, they are doing things, making noise, maybe a town crier, artists. While most players just run around (if they are even in towns for a longer period). A town/settlement without NPC's can become dead quickly, especially in certain areas or play hours over the day.
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@Yitra said in NPC (Node Specific Towns):
On a serious note, I have always thought that NPC's have a function of bringing a town to live, they are doing things, making noise, maybe a town crier, artists. While most players just run around (if they are even in towns for a longer period). A town/settlement without NPC's can become dead quickly, especially in certain areas or play hours over the day.
I agree with this. Especially for smaller towns, if players are either offline or out gathering resources. There could literally be noone in the town at any given time.
My suggestion would be supportive NPC's that are either part of the cost of the town to give it 'life', or are an expense afterwards, set and poitentially even 'owned' by players, like small shop vendors that players can 'hire' to sell resources possibly, while they are out gathering more. Because i surely wouldn't want to actively have to sit there for hours managing a shop that potentially wont get any customers. I also wouldn't want to have to leave my computer running all night if my players shop can manage itself, just to potentially make some coin.
Other bought services (that may or may not have an NPC present) could be things the towns' player community work towards, like buying and building a forge, a jeweller and a tailor, to reduce the amount of space it would take for every player to have their own personal crafting stations at every house inside said town/city.
