[MUD-Dev] Respecting NPCs

[Freeman]

> From: Michael Tresca [mailto:talien at toast.net]
> Jeff Freeman posted on Friday, October 26, 2001 11:07 AM
 
>> This frustrates players who are looking for people to talk to,
>> only to find idiotic NPCs at every turn.
 
> Don't make idiotic NPCs in the first place.

If we had the abiltity to make NPCs that could actually think, then
we wouldn't need to make multiplayer games at all.  Assuming the
thinking NPCs spend some time playing games with us hoomans before
they begin the exterminations.

But anyway, since they can't think, they're going to be idiotic.

All we can do is to disguise the fact that NPCs are stupid.

> Which ultimately invalidates the point of having an NPC even look
> like an intelligent being.  Make it a talking tree and that's fine
> -- make it a human, and the reasonable baseline assumption is that
> human (not "that NPC") will be capable of carrying on the most
> basic of conversations.

And I mentioned how to do that in the part of the email that you
snipped.

To that goal, limiting what players can say to NPCs, so that the NPC
always responds intelligently, works.  Chatbots don't.
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