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

[John Buehler]

Phillip Lenhardt writes:

> 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.

"Non-state affecting" is terribly limiting.  The most interesting NPCs are
going to be the ones that most affect state.

> 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.

State rears its head.

It would seem odd to me that the cheers of NPCs in town were invisible to
the people I was traveling with.  Including any NPCs travelling with me and
my fellow players.  This is a scenario that I use for faction adjustment;
NPCs perceiving the cheers will sometimes adjust their own faction with me.
Perhaps up ("hurray, a hero!"), perhaps down ("what a pompous idiot").

JB