[MUD-Dev2] [OFF-TOPIC] A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants

[Phillip Lenhardt]

On Fri, Mar 02, 2007 at 02:17:53PM -0500, John Buehler wrote:
> I've assumed for years that a high NPC:PC ratio is a good way to ensure
> immersion.  Single player games clearly do that.  They can get away with it
> because of the player only being at one location in the server.  All the
> NPCs in other areas are inactive.  In a massively multiplayer game, all the
> content has to be running all the time.  Smart NPCs are just too draining of
> resources.  The same is true of world physics.

You know, there is no particular reason why non-state affecting NPC AI
and world physics can't be run on the client side.  In fact, many games
already do so for some physics.  For example, WoW has a particle effects
slider that adjusts the eye-candy level of spells.  Ragdoll physics,
improved kinematics and collision hulls without changing the server
coordinates of an object can all be done client-side.  Many of these
things go unimplemented both because of the amount of developer-hours
required and because they require more CPU than is available.  The
situation for improving NPC AI on the client side is more hopeful. It
is entirely possible to give all world NPC a memory of past interactions
with a player and modify their non-game-state-affecting behaviour to
match.  Friendly NPC quest givers could cheerfully greet a player and
ask about their health as well as giving out the quest.  Unfriendly
NPC quest givers could frown and grudgingly give the player the quest.
Random NPCs could wave or cheer or chat about the player's accomplishments;
there's no real need to propagate those emotes to all players within
viewing/hearing distance.  All this could be kept in a database on the
player's machine with no harm done.  Whose game experience would it
hurt if a player hacks the file to make NPCs smile at her more?