conversation « Spearthane

From a thread on the Bethesda boards.

Crni Vuk: No fighting Zombies anymore PLEASE! We got enough of them … seriously. If they are just with you to give fire support I will not care about them. Give Characters – Voice *Dont let them sound all the same. Boring – Comments *They should have opinions about your actions and express them! – Personality *Good characters might not like and follow you if youre doing bad things. – Realistic movement *Why should females walk/act like males … – Optic *If it is possible to give them weapons and armor they should use it and it should be possible to see that as player. (- Maybe own quests you can do with them)More inteligent, more comments, own oppinions, own unique apearance and personalities. People should remember them. No one says that you (the player) has to fall in love to them even when I would think it is a nice adition but at least they should start conversations with you when something happens they either really like or disslike. Maybe a comment from time to time like the first time you use a Power Armor or when they blow up some head from hard enemies.)

bronzepoem: I won’t hear the funny argument between teammates… Most importment, they should be interactive with whale the environment. Talking with other teammates,with NPCs, have their opinion on a quest or a affair. A benemoth may be discriminated by some unfair NPC, of course he have his approach to deal with such things. A native teammate will be surpirised on high-tech item. Also a hooligans teammate must like some corruption citys, and he won’t like protagonists behave too honourous. That is fallout style, which ten year old game could give us.

Vainglorious: I agree. The vast majority of characters in Morrowind and Oblivion simply regurgitated the same generic topics, although quest-givers usually had interesting stuff to say. The number of truly unique and memorable characters was fairly small, though, compared to the original Fallout games… or at least, that’s the way it seemed from my point of view. Sure, in F1 and F2, there were generic townspeople. But of those NPCs you could talk to, almost all of them had memorable, distinct, and unique personalities, and they didn’t share any generic dialog with each other. Even bartenders and mechanics had interesting personalities. Also significantly, the companions had personalities and back stories. Sulik was my favorite… he had a funky accent, a gnarly ‘tude, a cool back story, and a unique way of phrasing sentences. That is for me one of the biggest indicators that Fallout had more memorable characters than Morrowind/Oblivion: I can easily remember Sulik, the village Elder, Tandy, Myron, Marcus, Cassidy, First Citizen Lynette… but I can barely remember any NPCs from Oblivion, or even Morrowind, which I am playing as we speak. I really hope they give a lot of the NPCs in F3 unique and memorable dialog and personalities. No more foot-long dialog menus with the same thirty topics, to which fifty other NPCs will give you the exact same response.

Daigoro: Not only is this the loss of multiple, intruiging party members, and the depth that their interection added, but it also nerfs Charisma in a major way. Eliminating the limitation for NPCs based on CH is reducing the potence of CH. That’s neutering it.

Since I’m not doing stats yet, number of teammates depends on whether you’ve earned them, whether they’ll work together (a new unpopular one could make all the old ones leave, eg Adoring Fan), whether you keep them happy (eg, some might have care or feeding requirements), whether you avoid attacking them or getting into situations where they become (or are forced to become) aggressive to you, whether they stay alive against the enemies you fight (need to make enemies with multiple attacks target friends too, and all enemies target you if you attack in around, otherwise your buddies), and whether they accept your alignment (this will do the most to limit powerful sentient friends). With all these limitations, why use a stat roll against a number that only reflects min-maxing at the start of the game, or grinding up skill levels with boring repetition of non-plot-advancing actions? Anything that changes the game from role-playing to stat management should be avoided. I’ve been able to do a lot by linking health to stealth, that avoids having to program in levels, dexterity, and thief-skill percentage tables.

Maia: I really hope that there is on-the-fly Hold/follow me command for the NPCs. Every game that lacked it just drove me up the wall. I still have nightmares about (temporary) followers in MW, the Gothics and even Fallouts that would attack something totally out of our league or annihilate my PC with area spells/weapons.

Done.

dagoth jeff: There should be no limit to companions. In such a trashed world, we’ll need something to make us feel less alone. Of course, having such an option early on would ruin the overall gaming experience, and mood settings.

The hunting buddy is in there early now just for testing. Once I write his intro, he’ll move somewhere else.

But money talks LOUDLY. Anyone physically able, and fit for the position would surely offer themselves up for hire (if asked.) Perhaps you saved someone’s life, and he feels the need to offer himself up as your bodyguard in return.

You initially won’t have any money, and tagalongs will either require: (1) coins for food, gear maintenance, and hazard pay; or vice versa, for the player to get coins as a mercenary, and handle it when he gets stiffed because of payer death or hate or dishonesty; (2) interest in where you’re going or a sense of duty or obligation, or (3) happens to be going there too, met either by coincidence or from talking to other NPCs. There should be a big pilgrimage to Windhelm for the Feast of the Dead for weeks before the appropriate day, and then a return back, both of which flood the roads with travelers. (A person can be a pilgrim to the Feast of the Dead.)

My point is, ONE isn’t very satisfactory. Two or three wouldn’t be. Why not cook up randomly generated no-name mercs-for-hire in infinite supply? We all know that when someone is rich, they’re powerful. If you got the cash, you should be able to surround yourself with hired guns. If you’re saving the world, that should make you “important.”

To preserve any sense of game balance (leads to challenge leads to accomplishment leads to fun), quantity of follower must be inverse to quality (eg, conscripts have few HP, and no silver or magical weapons to hit undead or magical creatures).

At least in Morrowind (and I fear I’d use that phrase often) you can Command any NPC into following you. If you’re powerful enough, you could have many NPC’s under your spell. As far as hiring goes, there’s only one merc. And you can find a little tagalong help here and there on quests. As far as pets go, it’s useless in vanilla Morrowind. Little critters.

Dungeons & Dragons based your maximum number of henchmen on your Charisma. This was always acceptable to me. And their henchmen didn’t stop at just ONE. I think at 25 (god-like) you could have up to 50. Sure, 50’s a lot – but let’s put it in terms of average mortal man – ten to twenty. Isn’t that better than one? And pets in D&D were a dime a dozen. If you had the cash, you could buy guard dogs, war horses, anything. Buy a dozen chickens if you want to. (But ask your DM first if he’ll give you XP for killing those.)

No XP, no leveling. With appropriate buffs, not sure its needed. We’ll see how long this lasts.

Pets in Fallout would CERTAINLY add to the atmosphere. You’re creeping up a dark alley with your faithful dog, and suddenly he growls at something. You don’t know what’s up ahead, but now you’re ready for anything. He charges up ahead for the attack, and surprise! You’re attacked from behind, by another creepy something. Pets would mean a lot in a world like this. Without pets, there really is no one else you can really trust.

I like this.

princess_stomper: Each has to have a script on them to give specific instructions – first of all to stop them getting stuck behind the furniture (Grumpy’s “warping”), then to tell them to copy the player in any of their actions (e.g. levitating, water breathing), or whether to move aside if they’re in the way, and then to give options on combat style.

Most of this is abstracted away by text, which only occasionally reports what companions are doing.

Then you get to what you really need from a companion. To really make it worthwhile, you need personality as well as functionality. Oblivion touched on this with Mazoga the Orc but that was quite a brief if memorable encounter. The really good companions – of the likes of the aforementioned Emma ‘n’ Grumpy/Qarl/Kateri mods – have a simply staggering amount of work behind them, requiring far more resources than Bethesda are likely to allocate to something like this. Example: Kateri’s Julan companion mod for Morrowind had two thousand lines of dialogue. That’s just one companion. Now start talking about six, and you see why they might not be so willing to incorporate such a feature.

dagoth jeff: You don’t need thousands of lines to present a player with a viable party member. Who cares that he/she doesn’t comment on the weather? If you can give out a few commands (stay/follow/fight with melee/fight with missiles) and access their inventory, isn’t that enough?

princess_stomper: The more scripts that you throw in, the more processing power is required, which restricts the number of people who can enjoy the game. In order to please you, they’d have to pee off everyone else, effectively speaking. Plus, even though you might want to have half a dozen meat shields in tow, in practice they get in the way, get stuck behind the furniture, get lost, and all sorts … really and honestly you’re better off with just one detailed companion who is actually any use.

The trouble is that we’re not agreeing here on what good companions are. Let’s think about two mods here that I’ve played: (1) One had dozens of companions, each of which had various point-and-click options in which to increase that companion’s disposition towards you and move the relationship up to the next level. It was all fiddling with menus, with just information about classes and types – there was no reaction, no individualisation and no personality. This mod was one person’s idea of a role-playing style that left me absolutely cold. I had zero interest in playing anything like this, because all I was doing was pushing buttons. There was no sense of engaging properly in a conversation. This is exactly what a lot of people are looking for. (2) Then there is another mod, in which there is one companion for your character to build a relationship with. It took one person one full year to write. The mods with companions of that type are mods where the companion is the centre and focus of that mod – not just casual strangers with whom the player may or may not approach to join their party. As far as I know, most games only have one companion of this type. I know my friend goes on about KOTOR, but she only ever mentions one character. I don’t know of any adventure RPGs that have multitudes of fully fledged companions – only of the depth-free variety that left me cold with the other mod.

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