Lack of NPCs... Tuluk vs. Allanak... and other issues

[Jenred]

I got to thinking lately in my in-game travels, that the world... seems to be devoid of NPCs. Days upon days of travel without seeing an NPC seems to me like entirely too long a time. And Im not really sure why this is the case. Its very jarring that I'm able to travel from Red-Storm to Allanak, Allanak to the West, Allanak to the East, Allanak to Luirs, Luirs to Tuluk - all without seeing an NPC.

There are of course some exceptions. The Tablelands seems to have been dealt some motherly love, and is always ripe with NPCs. The Grasslands can vary depending on the amount of PCs, but for the most part there are exceptions to the rule... the rule being less NPCs is better? Again, as I said, this is very jarring for a world that is indicated to be one of... traveling merchants, roving bands of raiders, ferocious/terrifying creatures, bands of would-be adventurers, rogue magickers, constantly trekking tribes, farmers, ranchers, and travelers.

Im hoping most of this gets worked out in Arm 2.0, but for the most part I feel very lonely in the outdoors, and cities too. I get kinda jealous when I go from playing Tuluk to Allanak. Tuluk got, with its rebirth, something that Allanak wasn't given. The opportunity, in an already running game, for Imms to redesign, and players contribute, a new city... with staff and players alike contributing their own quirks and perks to make it what they think is a good city.  Needless to say anyone who plays their noticed that it got a shitload of NPCs, more shops then you can shake a stick at, perks taverns all over the place, a conveniently designed commoner section...

But a common trait in both city seems to be that they are too big for their own good. They were designed so large in my opinion that it detracts from the overall experience of the city. Playing in Tuluk my first time since the reconstruction I found myself entirely lost, taken OUT OF THE GAME mentally by my inability to even get my bearings. Players shouldn't feel this way, it shouldn't be an inconvenience to get around what is considered in gaming conventions "a safe area". The type of area you come back to for interaction (including hostile interaction), rest/recuperation, and to buy/sell things. I shouldn't spend three hours of my day in a flux between trying to find something, walking somewhere, not finding it, walking some more, ending up somewhere else, and finally walking back, upset.

Cities, in my opinion should be more compact, condensed, and fleshed out. Rather then have 50 rooms, 35 of which have the same description as each other, and 15 of which have useful, unique, or interesting NPCs or Features, I'd rather there be 20 rooms, each providing either a function, aesthetics, or unique NPCs/features, and each having a unique description.


Anyways, back to Allanak... the area has started to upset me lately. I miss the days of the desert-sim code. With spiders, ants, silt-fliers, snakes, etc. The world seemed much more alive, and my non-combat characters trembled at the thought of going outside the gates. The poison some of these creatures used actually prompted a rise in the rarely seen medical-professions. (I made a good deal of money making poison cures).  People were more apt to travel together. Crafters had more to deal with then just scrab parts, and overall the desert just seemed more alive.

Now Im more likely to die in the desert of boredom then by any creature. Longest streak so far was almost a week (RL) worth of playtime (maybe an hour outside a city a day), traveling about, without seeing ONE NPC. NOT ONE. Thats maybe 7 accumulated hours of playtime without seeing an NPC.

This has many affects on the game, and its playerbase. Listed:
1. Jarring experience. (I use Jarring as - anti-immersive). The game becomes less realistic to me, if blatant flaws like a lack of NPC population exist.
2. Hurts hunting PCs. Several PCs rely on the outdoors to survive. Tribal characters, hunters, etc. The lack of outside interaction forces them into stale, city-dweller roles.
3. Makes outside non-combat professions easier, thus degrading the gameworld standards. It suddenly becomes very viable to travel back and forth across the known world without fear of death. Crafters can reach rarer areas and when in these areas... still not encounter NPCs.
4.  Promotes unrealistic play. (A mix of above reasons - causes players to travel further to hunt, travel further just because, go to areas previously inaccessible, etc).
5. Degrades crafters that rely on animal parts.
6. Overpopulates certain "working" hunting grounds. A few areas, mentioned above, are well populated, and this is taken advantage of by PCs who just flood these areas.


It is also no surprise that a good deal of the good hunting is around Tuluk. That a raw-materials shop could have 4 full-pages of raw materials for sale while a comparable shop in Allanak had maybe 15 items was appalling to me. There is an obvious imbalance.

Then there is weather... Tuluk weather.. Allanak weather.

Anyways, thats enough of my thoughts for now. Im just very bitter by what I perceive as a degradation in the outside world in Zalanthas, and apparent pandering going on in the North. They even took away the little, fledgling Bardic flair that Allanak had.

[Nyr]

There is also a virtual world to account for the things that are not shown by objects, NPCs, and rooms.  If you do not see hunters or random travelers in the wastes that are NPCs, that does not mean they are not there.  Most of the categories you described are filled by PCs, and the "ferocious/terrifying creatures" are out there and have always been there--I can't say they've gone anywhere.  I think one contributing factor to less NPCs (and by NPCs, I mean non-sentient creatures that a character can hunt) is the game's stability.  Before a key fix, we had reboots or crashes far more often.  Perhaps the scripts for loading wilderness NPCs need to be adjusted; I will pursue looking at this.  (By "looking at this," of course, I mean prodding a real coder when they get some time.)  I've been working on helping out crafters by having players submit raw materials that do not have recipes for crafting, as well.  I don't think that having more raw materials in a shop in Tuluk vs. one in Allanak is a problem (it actually underlines other problems and points at a possible solution players can achieve on their own, but I'll let players figure that one out).

As for Tuluk, it got invaded, mostly destroyed, and rebuilt.  Allanak has a comparable amount of NPCs and shops (if not more) because I've had to fix things in them and count them myself, what with being on staff for two Merchant Houses as well as the AoD.  Any region "new" to a player can be confusing and hard to play--I remember my first time playing in the Labyrinth with a PC, and I was lost for the first few weeks--and the culture?  I barely understood it.  You may have understood Tuluk before, but keep in mind that it has been rebuilt in-character.  I've actually seen more complaints that the large amount of spread-out stuff in Tuluk creates a problem of lack of PC interaction.  If there are more places for PCs to congregate, more PCs will be spread out over more locations and interaction becomes difficult to find, at best.  I agree that there is some dead space in both cities that is largely unused, but whether or not that is a detriment depends on whether or not you are fleeing from the law.  I believe Betaal and other Arm 2 builders are making sure that the world's settlements have more utility than sprawl.

Weather is an IC occurrence.  Morgenes recently adjusted the weather code to have more realistic underpinnings that push it farther from the two extremes of "no sandstorms" and "constant sandstorms."  It also may still need tweaking, but the fact remains:  weather is going to be different in different places.  We're trying to make it more realistic and not something that we need to "clear away" for playability's sake during RPTs.

I think Fale is still a good choice for bardic flair in the south.  PCs gravitate to different areas over time and as different players become involved in world events, they tend to attract other players about them.  I always liked the Fale approach to bard activities and would love to see some PCs step up and push for that kind of role.  On the other hand, if PCs aren't stepping up to it, it may be because they are playing other roles already and enjoying those.

I hope that helped address some of your concerns.

[Rairen]

Can we throw in the kitchen sink, too?    If they had sinks, rather.

Lots of stuff I don't feel strongly about one way or the other up there, but please... don't shrink our cities.  Just, please.  I'm sorry it was jarring wherever you were for the first time, and yes, it's what new players go through.  But in the interests of retention - particularly when we have upwards of sixty players on at peak (which rocks, btw) - don't.    For the city-based folks, it's something to do.  For the people from out of town, it's a big city and you should be lost, disoriented, and otherwise confused.  I had the opposite experience from you, the first time I played in Allanak, where I loved being utterly confused and disoriented and terrifed that I was going to wander into some dark alley and not make it out again.  It made it real.

[Jenred]

Thank Nyr, I dont think any of my concerns are really "addressable" more venting and discussing thoughts that would never realistically make it into the game. But that it was even responded to at all is encouraging .


And Rairen, Im not necessarily for shrinking cities as much as... getting rid of dead zones that are not needed. But as it is, half of either city exists merely to cater to a fraction of the pbase, while then a fraction of either city serves the rest of the pbase. At any specific time their maybe 8-10 people in the western area of Allanak, and then 1-3 people in the entire rest of Allanak, walking to or from an estate, etc.

Sure, the areas become needed when as Nyr pointed out, running from the law, or in any of a number of rare circumstances.

And yes, again, its one of those things thats almost too late for Arm 1.  I have hope for Arm 2 though

[ale six]

I wish Allanak were redesigned with the same level of detail that went into Tuluk. Lots of it has been facelifted over the years, but there are still parts, like the rinth and the noble/templar quarters, that just... suck, and feel like a DIKU game.

[some guy]

I've always been of the opinion that the world is too safe. Most of the time you have to deliberately put yourself in harm's way to experience danger, and it's so easy to avoid. There's a few exceptions here and there, but most of the world can be easily traversed by a 0 day ranger provided that they make use of 'look <direction>' and have a general knowledge of where to go. Traveling between cities can normally be done without encountering a single NPC, robbing the trip from Allanak to Tuluk of any risk unless you happen to stumble into the annual raid. That's excluding the potential threat of wild magickers, but since they're not supposed to be the norm, they shouldn't be a factor in the general danger level of the game world.

The 'rinth is another example of a place that is supposed to be extremely deadly but, if you know just a little about how the area works, isn't. As a human, if you're not wearing anything that triggers the mugger script or the various guys who attack rich-looking people, there's a grand total of one NPC that will attack you on sight. A single NPC in the whole alley network of the 'rinth who will attack you just for being there, and it's in a place you aren't supposed to be in the first place. Then there's one or two clan locales where they'll attack intruders, but that barely counts. Considering the usually low PC population of the area, this makes the 'rinth one of the safest places in the world if you don't go looking for trouble.

I feel that the game is doing its players a disservice by being so safe. The scarcity of danger coupled with the relative ease of escaping (flee is instant after all) means that not enough players seem to fathom the idea that this is supposedly a harsh and fiercely deadly world. One of the things that suffer the most from this is the economy since you can get most raw materials with little risk to your health, and you can get rich in the most bland and illogical ways. An obsidian miner can potentially earn more than a junior noble's monthly stipend, a merchant can ride alone from Allanak to Tuluk and back again with a few bags full of wooden shields (my god, please fix this blatant loophole) and a desert elf can slaughter as many near-harmless animals as he wishes and sell the skinned goods for a huge income in a shop that, when I played, seemingly didn't run out of money or limit how many they'd buy.

Some will argue that it's better to have a world that's only dangerous in theory but not in practice since you don't lose your characters so often or whatever. There was a time when the North Road was patrolled by raiders, the gith were populating more than their small, remote portion part of the Tablelands, and some animals couldn't be speedwalked away from so easily. Nowadays you've got characters who eagerly await their next chance to go hunting, city-dwellers who travel across the world without knowing which end of a sword you hold onto, and people earning fortunes off of this supposedly spent, barren wasteland which is slowly being drained of all resources by magick and whatnot.

You can't expect the players to take the virtual world into account when it's quite different in practice. Just as with the recent uproar concerning magickers and the documentation not being adhered to, the game world itself needs to represent the harshness and danger of its description or the players won't take it into account when they roleplay. It's fairly obvious that when the documentation states one thing and the game itself presents something else, the latter is what will make an impression on the players and ultimately affect their decisions and judgment. Some players are good at portraying their characters as if they lived in a perilous wasteland, but many take it for what it is and become the wealth-hoarding, spam-backstabbing, over-hunting, documentation-defying villains that we all keep complaining about.

[Synthesis]

1.  There aren't that many NPCs out in the wastes because twinks spamkill them for their loot or spar with them to skill up.

2. Everywhere is plenty dangerous.  I can't remember the last time I had a character for over 20 days played, and I've been playing this game for 10 years.  I know all the survival tricks, all the places to avoid, all the dumb shit you can pull to get ahead, and I rarely make it past 15.  Somehow, shit happens.  It's probably easier if you play in a clan or have a group of OOC homies to back you up, but as a real indie, the desert (or the 'rinth) is very far from being a cakewalk.

[Sokotra]

Some players are good at portraying their characters as if they lived in a perilous wasteland, but many take it for what it is and become the wealth-hoarding, spam-backstabbing, over-hunting, documentation-defying villains that we all keep complaining about.

All under the guise of being leet roleplayers, in some circumstances.

Don't get me wrong, I love the game as it is... but I have to agree with the OP and "some guy" about a lot of what they are saying.  I think the way the game works as it is now, is meant to deter powergamers and unrealistic RP'ers... but it seems to be having the opposite effect, in many ways.  I certainly don't want to be insta-killed whenever I go out to explore or hunt or roam the wastes, but I wouldn't mind having to defend myself from raiders or having the option to raid some randomly generated NPC travelers or something like that on occasion.  These things obviously shouldn't be easy 'money machines' where one can just dip their hand in whenever they please, but it would be cool for there to be some sort of middle ground where one might be able to defeat some raiders/merchants(with guards) on occasion - or at least one or two of them before the rest flee to safety.  I'm not sure what a solution would be, really, because any halfway decent thug could probably walk up and down the road and just lay waste to NPC's every day - but perhaps if there was some sort of recognition code or something that caused those to be hunted that took advantage of this.  I don't know, I guess I'm getting ahead of myself and going off into Arm2 idea possibilities.

Anyway, I think there are some really good points made in the above posts and I hope they are considered... and knowing the staff, they probably are already working on solutions to these kind of things.  Until then, however, I wouldn't mind a few NPC's thrown out here and there to populate the wastes a little more... especially in large empty areas or places where one might realistically see a humanoid traveler of some sort.  Those raiders that raomed the wastes years ago were probably taken out for good reasons, but I think some sort of middle ground could be found to keep things exciting and realistic and the same time.

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

What would probably be a great idea, to supplant the villains which are no longer as numerous because of various IC events and solutions, is to offer new villains, connected to the overall world scheme. With the places our villians are coming from, there are obviously excellent ways to add hordes of new villians, and make the world start feeling like it is under seige, now. Once the wilderness was under seige by gith and mantis - why not have the Foe begin sending its troops out to pillage and plunder?

I want a purpose to having military forces again, beyond endless sparring and psuedo-training. Patrols used to be nearly mandatory, even OOCly, to protect the travelling merchant. They are now nearly always fruitlessly boring, and more of an bored reason to wander a bit than neccessary.

[Sokotra]

I want a purpose to having military forces again, beyond endless sparring and psuedo-training. Patrols used to be nearly mandatory, even OOCly, to protect the travelling merchant. They are now nearly always fruitlessly boring, and more of an bored reason to wander a bit than neccessary.

Heck, even within the cities an occasional random mugger or group of thugs might be interesting... I guess that stuff might be more rare or left up to PC's... but the way criminal activity is squashed, it doesn't seem to happen very often at all.  I know some people are against any kind of danger or action in the cities, but not all of us are.  Again, I think it could be adjusted to provide more action without going overboard in an unrealistic manner.  Of course, I don't always play in the cities very often so I may be off base.. but that's just my opinion.

[Nyr]

The weathered, grizzled sea captain yawns and shakes his head, leaning against the starboard wooden rail of the deck.

The weathered, grizzled sea captain says, in seafaring-accented English, "Well boys, it sure looks mighty calm out there."

A group of burly sailors nod their agreement.

The weathered, grizzled sea captain looks at a scrap of parchment, and points down at a spot on the map before saying, in seafaring-accented English, "Well, we'll cut around the tip of this island and head due east to our destination."

-------------------
Meanwhile...

One hundred fathoms below:  A massive, many-tentacled sea creature watches a tiny sailing vessel.
Eighty knots east:  A squall line has begun to form, turning the seas into a topsy-turvy mess of destruction.
Belowdecks:  A young sailor plots a mutiny against the captain with a few of his mates, sick of the captain's leadership.
On the other side of the island:  A ship bearing a black flag with a skull and crossbones waits out of sight for unwary travelers.

--------------------
One of the sailors looks up at the weathered, grizzled sea captain.

The burly sailor says, in seafaring-accented English, "Fuckin' boring out here, Cap'n.  Seas've been calm fer weeks now since we ran into them pirates."

A group of sailors nod their agreement.

The weathered, grizzled sea captain says, in seafaring-accented English, "Sure does seem boring, aye."

[brytta.leofa]

Creepeh, Nyr.  Thank you.

But on the original note:  I've always wanted to see NPC crime in Allanak proper.  Once a RL year, I want somebody to try to sap my character when (s)he cuts through an alley after dark.

[Kyviantre]

Perhaps the occasional NPC that tries to swipe something from another NPC and gets hunted down...make for some interesting watching of chases...

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

Nyr.

I know. But the point wasn't that there is nothing going on. Being involved in it, I know there is plenty going on, plot wise. But it is not visible like it should be for simple gameplay reasons. When there are no threats of reasonable repetitiveness, it gives, as the OP said, the world a dead feel. That is all I am saying. Certianly, I am not claiming that nothing is going on. I am simply saying that the threats which once seized the traveller's heart in terror are diminished greatly because of IC reasons. Now, however, is a new villain on the horizon, and a new reason for the traveller to piss in fear.

Only, there's not.

We can look at the bright side of this and call it the calm before the storm, of course. I suppose that'll do.

[touringCompl3t3]

Creepeh, Nyr.  Thank you.

But on the original note:  I've always wanted to see NPC crime in Allanak proper.  Once a RL year, I want somebody to try to sap my character when (s)he cuts through an alley after dark.

Agreed.  I think that by adding more NPC-PC crime, it would make players more used to seeing crime and it would scare them a little.  They'd realize they don't have time to go chasing after every cutpurse that steals their watch. 

...with time, PCs would feel bolder about indulging in the odd bit of street crime...

and the game might become grittier?

[Synthesis]

Pshaw.  I've seen plenty of street crime recently.

Perhaps I've engaged in a bit of it myself.

Do you think I'm scared?

DO YOU FEEL LUCKY, PUNK? WELL, DO YOU?

[spawnloser]

There is also a virtual world to account for the things that are not shown by objects, NPCs, and rooms.  If you do not see hunters or random travelers in the wastes that are NPCs, that does not mean they are not there.

That's all fine and good, but PC hunters and crafters can't hunt, skin and then craft things from virtual prey.