Does this game ever get any NPC free will?

[Blackstone30]

So i started the game like 4 hours ago and got my first village. But i am asking myself...There are so many NPCs standing around, why cant they be productive? Why do i have to keep my farm busy all by myself? Let them do the farm work or composter.
Why cant they collect materials like wood, stone fibers and keep the village running.
To be fair but with such a useless Feature...why do i actually need those villages? Just give me the regular survival kit with base building and keep this village crap out of this game.

[Tenoshii]

If you are curious about what the game will get in the next 18 months, there is a post here:
https://steamcommunity.com/ogg/2178070/announcements/detail/6256157311436324907

Originally posted by Blackstone30:

So i started the game like 4 hours ago and got my first village. But i am asking myself...There are so many NPCs standing around, why cant they be productive? Why do i have to keep my farm busy all by myself? Let them do the farm work or composter.
Why cant they collect materials like wood, stone fibers and keep the village running.

Well that's easy, they don't do more because the average game that gets released in a given genre doesn't include extensive colony management style AI behavior and mechanics. For the games like this one that don't have it, the presence of NPCs is more cosmetic and atmospheric in nature in order to present a specific theme or setting to the game world. Quite similar to how every instance of flora and fauna can't be interacted with (i.e. the bugs, some fish and other small creatures you see but can't hit, feed, or collect).

Originally posted by Blackstone30:

To be fair but with such a useless Feature...why do i actually need those villages? Just give me the regular survival kit with base building and keep this village crap out of this game.

The game is clearly not designed as a carbon copy of the common open world base building/crafting model of creating/processing everything from some workbench or crafting station while letting the player custom create their own buildings from individual walls, floors, roofs, windows, doors, stairs, etc.

The player's objective here is to bring both life and civilization back to the island, with the civilization already having it's own pre-fabricated building types, decorations, production/processing methods, and structures.