LEAVE YOUR THOUGHTS ABOUT HUMAN NPC'S IN DISTANT UPDATES (Feel free to fantasize)

[danimeco73]

I'd love to know how PZ community imagine the NPC system (for human/character npc's) will work and wich mechanics will have in very future updates!! These are mine:

IA BEHAVIOR

Spawn system based on human meeting probability, for example, finding survivors more easily in urban areas such as big cities and reducing that probability in minor settlements
(Louisville > Muldraugh > Rosewood > Fallas Lake > And so on...)

Human NPC's spawning alone, in group or couples randomly, each one with his own survival needs being able to: making new allies/enemies, betraying his group or single partner, setting up bases from scratch or in existing buildings and developing or generating survival philosophies (Traders, raiders/looters, farmers/breeders, authoritarian groups, slavers/cannibals, religious communities...)

Maybe some kind of relationship meter would fit well with the social issue, for example, joining a raider group would set you at odds with a religious or farmer community that's enemy of the raider ones.

Then I imagine a mission/task system like searching for personal items for another survivor, rescuing people in dangerous or dramatic situations, eradicating some group/community/gang, helping recover sick survivors or with his labors in their basements, building necessary structures in bases...

MECHANICS

-Survival needs in each human NPC
-Group system (Couple, group or community)
-Philosofy system (Farmers, traders, criminals...)
-Relationship system (or ''karma'' style system like old Fallout games)
-Mission system
-Survivor management of your allies (swap items, equip/unequip clothes, assing tasks such as looting, farming, building, protecting, repairing, follow/unfollow, restrict items/actions...)

I am sorry for my bad english, for those saying this is AI generated, it is not, it's just a spanish guy at home dreaming about NPC's on B43 and future updates :)

[Nordil(Hun)]

This screams AI generated.:D

[THE REAL CAPT3N]

Negan

[Great_Puffer]

Originally posted by Nordil(Hun):

This screams AI generated.:D

maybe some of it, but im pretty sure it was atleast looked over to more reflect their thoughts

[Nordil(Hun)]

Originally posted by Great_Puffer:

Originally posted by Nordil(Hun):

This screams AI generated.:D

maybe some of it, but im pretty sure it was atleast looked over to more reflect their thoughts

And? Does that make it any more presentable?
Dunno it feels like cheating, just like all the guys that use AI to write their homework and stuff.

[Buwaro Elexion]

Originally posted by Nordil(Hun):

Originally posted by Great_Puffer:

maybe some of it, but im pretty sure it was atleast looked over to more reflect their thoughts

And? Does that make it any more presentable?
Dunno it feels like cheating, just like all the guys that use AI to write their homework and stuff.

this is a forum, not a math test

[Nordil(Hun)]

Originally posted by Buwaro Elexion:

Originally posted by Nordil(Hun):

And? Does that make it any more presentable?
Dunno it feels like cheating, just like all the guys that use AI to write their homework and stuff.

this is a forum, not a math test

Yeah and a forum is a place you express yourself and debate, not use some chat machine to come up with stuff for yourself or to use it as troll bait:P

[Alekai]

AI womping aside, I believe it would be interesting to have NPCs in game. Specially if you play more solo or have a small group, I could imagine friends building their own towns and 'trading' with each other. It would be quite fun to have a back up as well if a friend ins't online or you're solo. plus the helping with looting? 10/10 I'd collect them all.

[martindirt]

Originally posted by Nordil(Hun):

Originally posted by Buwaro Elexion:

this is a forum, not a math test

Yeah and a forum is a place you express yourself and debate, not use some chat machine to come up with stuff for yourself or to use it as troll bait:P

Or op is bad at English like me, and it was more easy for him to ask ai to write an understandable post.
Also I don't think it's a troll bait.

To op, I'm mostly agreed with your opinion. I would love to see PZ mixed with management / ideology elements from RimWorld. Setting up zones, bills, ideologies.

[JimG]

I was actually watching a demo of "Into the Dead" and I realised that NPC's are not as easy to code as people think they are. So for the PC its just a case of coding animations but remembering that the player is the one who has to push the button. But with NPC's there is no player so the engine has to tell the code to essentially push that button. Its also very contextual. Youre talking about millions of lines of code. When does the NPC sleep? Eat? Drink? Cook? Craft? Yes you can set instructions but some poor ♥♥♥♥♥♥ has to sit and code all of that in and make sure its working.

You also have the issue of what happens when the player isnt around. In CDDA there were reality bubbles which paused time essentially until you arrived in that area and then it resumed. I don't know how the "reality bubble" works in PZ but they might have to look into doing something similar because if you have 20 NPC's all coded to do their thing, things could get messy.

[kod77]

I'd be happy to play on vanilla map with NPCs that would follow events mentioned in the lore of the game (news, etc)

For example, on july 14th or so, the infected got to Louisville, I suppose that they've broken the fence surrounding the city (you can even find a hole in the fence deep in the forest, maybe that's the place where it happened, idk)

There could be NPC soldiers guarding this quarantine zone's fence, and on july 14th, a zombie horde spawns somewhere near this fence, starts breaking it down or sth, while the NPC soldiers try to shoot this zombie horde, but fail in the end.


Would be cool to see stuff like that. Maybe NPCs from Westpoint, Muldraugh, Brandenburg cities (and other non-Louisville cities/towns) would flee north, trying to get away from where the infection first started spreading, and they'd gartehr at Louisville checkpoint then, creating more danger when the virus would go airborne, and all of those not immune to the airborne strain would turn there, creating more chaos and stuff

[Good Night Owl]

Well, I'd love the experience to be story, quest-like, and dynamic. Highly involved, all that.

But I haven't read statements by devs on the matter. So I tend to keep my expectations low on the types of matters. I expect an npc to randomly spawn within 200 blocks of the player with relatively basic goals and behaviors. That's the route most games go with npcs. Indie games in particular.

[Pan.Turkusik]

You know what would be good?
Od course ofter the anarchy on day one peopole would actually rasion out the little food they have. Barricade on theitlr own house and rearly go outsider.
And that's how the first week goes out.

[Sloop]

I'd like NPC's to do their own thing instead of me managing them in any way, for them to survive on their own and have encounters with them, compete for loot, maybe trade, etc... I really don't want them to go State Of Decay route...

If it's gonna be "Hello main character protagonist mister sir, I am now your servant and I will selflessly do every single chore and task you give me because you filled some arbitrary reputation bar with me, an I only exist when this particular chunk is loaded" then the NPC update will just get a full body MEH from me.

I played enough survival games and sandbox games in general with NPC's they rarely do them right. In Conan Exiles they're literal slaves, in Soulmask they do chores in your base but are useless in combat, in Kenshi you could make huge squads for combat and also have them do base work...

I would love if PZ had something like STALKER (and GAMMA mod for it), where NPC's live their own lives, go on missions, collect actual loot and use it, get into fights between eachother, roam the map on their own, die off screen, etc... I think that would be perfect but maybe a bit of an utopia to expect, no game really pulled off what STALKER games did. It would be perfection, but, again, utopia (I mean, even STALKER developers couldn't pull off for STALKER 2 what they did for the first games back in 2007, the A-LIFE system was lightning in a bottle). They'd have to create a separate simulation of the game world in the background and the NPC's living their lives (ON THE ENTIRE MAP) while they're not on screen, it's a huge technical challenge.

The more NPC's depend on the player (and only exist when in proximity to the player) the more MEH it's gonna be for me. The more they are autonomous and do their own thing and don't give a ♥♥♥♥ about the player the better and more immersive. No scripting, no "epic quests", no SIMS managing moddles and "getting social points" or whatever, just pure simulation (I mean, the tag on steam store for PZ is "simulation" anyway, not "action adventure RPG").

I think PZ devs are insanely capable at pulling off what others couldn't, considering the depth of the game they created, so if anyone can make A-LIFE of STALKER games work, I think Indie Stone can. I think the fact that this game isn't some UNREAL 5 HYPER REALLISTIC ROCK TEXTURES WOW would really let them go nuts with the NPC simulation in terms of resources too, STALKER 2 AI system was held back because they went all in on the graphics.

[H 4 Z E]

i've just tried week one mod with npcs and stuff, and man, they take way too much punishment while they also mess you up in way less time than what it takes to kill them.

would be cool if they were simulated just like the player's health system, and maybe at least a little smarter. that would be amazing already

[Xenomorph]

Only care about NPC to take care of the tedious stuff, like crops, animals, storing loot, fueling the genny, that stuff, so I can actually play the rest of the game and not having to worry about coming back every week to deal with the predictable chaos.