NPC's in planetside?

[Magpie]

Originally Posted by Graywolves

Did you see birds?

If you didn't see birds something's wrong with where you live.


Like even inner city areas have birds and rodents.

I see animals everywhere I go and we all talk and sing together like it's a big Disney Movie.

My town is full of magpies crows and pigeons

[Shogun]

that´s why i suggested to only spawn animals around lonesome players.

in a fight you feel immersed enough, but this changes when you are crossing the cont on your own.

if you go to work, and there were no vehicles, no humans and no animals, yould you still feel immersed?

but it´s not only about animals... a little movement of the plants, like leaves moved by wind, or rivers with moving water. all scalable to automaticly minimize when the army comes to take all the framerate.

[IronMole]

Originally Posted by Shogun

that´s why i suggested to only spawn animals around lonesome players.

in a fight you feel immersed enough, but this changes when you are crossing the cont on your own.

if you go to work, and there were no vehicles, no humans and no animals, yould you still feel immersed?

but it´s not only about animals... a little movement of the plants, like leaves moved by wind, or rivers with moving water. all scalable to automaticly minimize when the army comes to take all the framerate.

Are a lot of people forgetting that in PS2 travelling across a whole continent will not be the case any more?

Highby wants the whole pace of fights to be quicker, so if you aren't already immersed within a fight or group then something is wrong.

Also, another thing. We don't know how the Forgelight engine will cope with amount of players they hope for.

[Cosmical]

Your all saying no. But imagine the viral videos of people running over rabbits with tanks, or a sniper crapping his pants when a rabbit runs into his scope of view. Anything that makes me feel like im playing in a real world is only good news to me. Human NPC's ide probably say no to though. Even though the concept of dropping on an enemy base with NO ONE WHATSOEVER INSIDE IT! is rediculous.

And im a big fine of strategic choices. Cloaking and running into a forest only to have my persuers ripped apart by horney space apes sounds good to me.... but you know.... im into that stuff.

[alienmoose]

NPCs might be cool but only if they also add more Sims-like features like a restroom urgency gauge for your character and possibly a hunger meter that degenerates on a fixed basis that correlates directly to the body size and stomach girth of your character, which by the way is another thing I hope they add - sliders for fat and skinny character models...otherwise I will likely deduct points from the immersion scale in my review of the game. With all of these features and NPCs then I will really have no reason to go outside except to say that I left the house when my parents ask.

[TekDragon]

There was plenty of room for NPC's in PS1. Sanctuary felt like a virtual reality room everything was so sterile and automated.

Now that Sanctuary has been axed, there's no real room for NPC's.

[NivexQ]

Originally Posted by alienmoose

NPCs might be cool but only if they also add more Sims-like features like a restroom urgency gauge for your character and possibly a hunger meter that degenerates on a fixed basis that correlates directly to the body size and stomach girth of your character, which by the way is another thing I hope they add - sliders for fat and skinny character models...otherwise I will likely deduct points from the immersion scale in my review of the game. With all of these features and NPCs then I will really have no reason to go outside except to say that I left the house when my parents ask.

You forgot [sarcasm][/sarcasm], I hope

Originally Posted by TekDragon

There was plenty of room for NPC's in PS1. Sanctuary felt like a virtual reality room everything was so sterile and automated.

Now that Sanctuary has been axed, there's no real room for NPC's.

There's gonna be cities/urban areas in PS2, so there's room for human npcs, but I don't agree with human npcs, actually. They'll get in the way. The only way I see that working in any way is if, when fighting happens, they immediately run like crazy in terror for some super safe room that nobody can get in. But that'd be stupid.

What I want to see is some just a few animals. It's not like I want the world cluttered with them. Just a couple. Every once and a while i'd like to see the Auraxis version of a deer, or a rabbit. Some birds flying around, even if we aren't able to interact with them, would be cool.

[Tatwi]

I'd bet $10 that if NPCs were added to PS2 then five years from now they would be treated like the BFRs of PS2 - "zomg they ruined everything! *hate hate hate scream*"....

[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.

[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.

[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