SmedBlog (last year): NPC Enemies and Armies

[Whiteagle]

Originally Posted by Booface

It reminds me of the PvP oriented MMORPG Shadowbane (I think it was called Shadowbane). Anyway, in this game, your guilds (basically outfits) could claim stakes of land and build castles there to gather resources. You designed your castle in every aspect: wall placement, critical structures, etcetera.

...

Anyway, the strategy to counter this was to build guard houses around your castle. These would spawn NPC guards, whose competency was determined by the resources you could pour into them. They weren't going to repel an attack, but they could bog it down. That way, unless you were totally decimated by a much larger guild, your castle could usually survive with fewer defenders during the morning long enough for you to rescue it when your guys logged on after the workday was over.

The only reason it was really desirable, though, was because the castles were player-created and player-owned. We wanted a way to protect our stuff we worked (well, gamed) for while we were logged off.

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On the other hand, if down the road we can create our own permanent facilities and gather outfit-specific resources and benefits from them, then this is something that I think a lot of players might want.

Indeed, but I doubt it would be actual moving NPC Guards and more like the Turrets from the Original Planetside.
Much less work involved and it uses Entities that should already be there.

[Sardus]

Shooting NPC players will never be the same as real players. It totally spoils it for me. Maybe in a game like everquest I'd expect to see that, with commanders sending npc armies, but I don't feel that it has a place in a shooter, because AI is just dumb at shooters.

[ezjumper]

I going to have to vote no as well. I love planetside because I am playing against other people, not tracking predictable paths.

That said if you are going to include some AI elements to the game, make them AI base defenses/ turrets that are attached to a generator or console that can be disabled.

that would be something I could get behind.

[Phantom Pain]

Originally Posted by AnamNantom

I'd love to see the Vanu aliens and see if my concepts are close :

http://anam.tilt180.com/vanu-alien-3d/

I also would prefer to see Vanu (aliens) as hostile NPCs in the game, but they shouldn't be biased to any faction, like VS.
I was thinking that on a random day every week, the vanu would invade a continent and claim all (or most of it) to themselves. Then players would be forced to fight for territories that were taken by Vanu. Of course NPCs would be guarding the territories, the amount guarding would depend on the place (ex. a small outpost wouldn't have more NPCs than a biolab). I'd prefer if the all player factions would be considered friendlies in Vanu zones only so that people wouldn't shoot you if you are fighting for the same cause as the other factions in the Vanu territories. Once all the facilities are owned by the player factions, the Vanu just leave.

[Zadexin]

I'm not really for completely separate NPC factions.

BUT I would like to see bases get some kind of NPC guards that get stationed there that are friendly to the faction that owns it. Put them on a very long respawn, something like 10-20 minutes so they don't pop back up while capping but are there just to discourage solo ninja caps. Also they would give you some token resistance because how many times does your army pull up to a COMPLETELY EMPTY base and just gut it before the enemy even start spawning. It would be nice to have something to shoot even if there was next to no pop on a continent.