NPC's in planetside?

[Traak]

Originally Posted by Hamma

NPC's of some sort were in fact planned for PlanetSide 1. They even designed the AI for them.

What were they? The VS genblowmax NPC? NC Scattercannon spawn camper coward NPC? The TR Repeater-as-Sniperpistol-due-to-zero COF scum?

Did they realize they didn't need NPC's for mindless electronically-assisted zerg idiocy?

[Furber]

If they do consider this (which I doubt they will), it needs to be very low priority.

[Malorn]

Can't serve two masters. Either they make a game for PvP or they make a game for PvE. Games that tried to do both succeed in doing neither well. It also splits the playerbase between those who do PvE and those who do PvP. Energy spent on one is energy that could have been spent making the other better.

Do less; do better.

Planetside was awesome because it was PURE PvP. It's one of the very few MMOs that has been pure PvP. That is one of the reasons for its success. The developers don't have to balance PvE crap. They don't have to try to equalize rewards of PvP and PvE. They don't have to balance abilities for PvE and PvP. They don't need to bother with that whole level crap. This has been a thorn in the side of games for a long time. When you try to balance two fundamentally different things one or both suffer.

Planetside also showed us that Pure PvP can thrive and be awesome. It showed us that we didn't need PvE. It is a losing prospect in a PvP game to have PvE. Why? Because you want all of your players engaging in PvP content. Anyone not engaged in PvP is effectively removed from the game. That's one less person in the big battle. One less person in the squad. It takes the focus away from the core concept of an endless war among players and distracts them with something completely unnecessary.

Players are the content in Planetside. All they need to do is focus on making our interactions more rich. Any effort spent deviating from that core principle is the wrong direction for Planetside.

[Garem]

Originally Posted by Malorn

Can't serve two masters. Either they make a game for PvP or they make a game for PvE. Games that tried to do both succeed in doing neither well. It also splits the playerbase between those who do PvE and those who do PvP. Energy spent on one is energy that could have been spent making the other better.

That simply isn't true. Many, MANY games have been quite successful with both.

A few come to mind off the top of my head...
FPS: Call of Duty series, Battlefield series (to a lesser degree), Gears of War series, Halo series
Fantasy MMO: DAoC, Guild Wars, (from the looks of it) GW2's WvWvW

You may not like these games. Many, I don't. But they work and they're successful.

Co-Op Shooters have been wildly popular ever since Perfect Dark for the N64; I'm sure it wasn't the first, just the first to get major attention. And, for its time, Perfect Dark was great PvP fun too. Halo went on to rule the console gaming industry for what, 6 years? It wasn't just the PvP multiplayer, it was the single player greatness too, the PvE.

If the game is balanced for PvP, that's all that matters. PvE non-major imbalances make no difference whatsoever, as virtually all successful PvE MMOs have shown, and exactly as you say.

This is in no way an endorsement for NPCs. Or PvE. I'm absolutely neutral to the whole idea; won't phase me either way. I will play this game for PvP. However, it deserves a fair discussion at least- if it can and has been done, please don't say that it hasn't or can't. We know it can. This discussion is a question of whether we want it, what kind, and what priorities come first.

[Purple]

Originally Posted by Livefire

Please remember we are fighting on a colonized world with at lead 40,000 stranded explorers who have now multiplied over years of living there all over the planet, and not even a forth were soldiers, where is everyone,? they should be out and around doing there thing with us professional soldiers having to fight around them just like all wars in the past. And what about all the native alien wildlife that should be roaming around getting run over by tanks, getting shot by bored soldiers waiting for a base cap to go through.

there are no civilians anymore. the 1/4 you say were soldiers are infact the TR. the civilians split up between the NC and VS. the animals got killed off with the years of war. all food can be constructed with Nantes. this is just a world at war nothing more.

[FPClark]

So add a yeti...Make his spawn timer once every 3 months or so and make him spawn on the edge of the map. Also give him a random cloak timer and see what stories come out of it

[Fenrod]

I'm totally against this idea, but things such as little extra-terrestrial animals would be nice.

[Magpie]

God no, been asked to many times it would just make the game lag And cost a lot, there are talking about maybe a 4th empire of ai bots tho

[kertvon]

I vote for giant sand worms as a fourth faction...

seriously though. NPCs = not.

[Eyeklops]

Non-combatant NPC's would be cool. Namely, herds of animals that roam the map. A variety of large and small dinosaurs would be neat. To me, this would make the maps feel much more organic and alive.

I guess they could be considered "hazards", like if your driving around and hit the equivalent of a super large cow, or accidentally shoot one and provoke it. Give them some simple, predictable, attack in the event they get shot or hit by a vehicle. Make them tough as nails and powerful so people won't mess with them solo unless they want an ass-kicking. Not really fond of AI that attacks unprovoked though, it should really be the players fault when they get attacked.

An interesting idea: If you shoot one within a certain radius it will attack you, but if you are farther away it attacks the nearest player, friendly or enemy. I would make the radius pretty large, 300m or larger. Snipers could have a blast with this. Counter them with a fast-acting tranquilizer dart sidegrade (then run like hell).

[Shogun]

halflife like antlions that burry themselfes in the ground if disturbed by too many players.

if there are animals, they have to be restricted to low pop areas. dynamicly, so they vanish, when too many players arrive and only respawn, when the playercount gets lower.
npcs should not be allowed to decrease the maximum players on screen.

edit: or make it really creepy and design some bugs that try to mimik tr,nc and vs soldiers by form and color.
just to distract and create creepy night time play ;-)

[ringring]

Not this again

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by Garem

That simply isn't true. Many, MANY games have been quite successful with both.

A few come to mind off the top of my head...
FPS: Call of Duty series, Battlefield series (to a lesser degree), Gears of War series, Halo series
Fantasy MMO: DAoC, Guild Wars, (from the looks of it) GW2's WvWvW

You may not like these games. Many, I don't. But they work and they're successful.

First I said MMOs, not single player FPS games that get shat out every year whose single player is only played when the internet connection is down or for shits and giggles.

Just because a game is "successful" doesn't mean it has good gameplay or that they made good design decisions.

DAoC was a decent PvP game and it had very shitty PvE. Guild Wars had shitty PvE. Wow had good PvE but shitty PvP (I'm sure people will disagree but I don't really care, it was terrible to me). WAR tried to do both and ended up with decent PvP and shitty PvE. SWTOR could have had good PvP but not enough PvP content. Rift had some good potential with all the class combinations but again a split between PvE and PvP caused the PvP to run stale real fast.

As someone who yearns for good PvP I've been consistently disappointed by every MMO in existence except PlanetSide. And the reason is because PlanetSide doesn't half-ass player-vs-player and designed the entire game around it. They didn't try to cater to "casuals" or "pvers" to try to widen their player base. Every game that's tried to do that leaves both sides dissatisfied because they halfass one thing at the expense of the other.

[Zenben]

WTF is up with the necros lately? Knock it off people. When a discussion has run its course, let it die.

[Malorn]

lol

When people start a discussion that already has a thread they get yelled at for not using the search function.

When people use the search function to find an existing discussion and contribute to it they get yelled at for necro'ing.

There's just no winning!