Lifeless world ?

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Originally Posted by Ingolf

Any Quest NPC's should be static, that doesn't mean that fluff NPC's couldn't be wandering about, or only coming out at night or something.

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This I could understand.

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Originally Posted by Naoki_Yoshida

To our loyal fans,

I wanted to take the time to personally thank all of you once again for your support over the past two years. It has been a long, hard journey, and there is still much more road left to travel, but we could have never made it this far without each and every one of you providing the strength for us to carry on.

Since the release of the End of an Era trailer, we have been flooded with positive feedback from around the world. It was always our goal to create something that would equal the epic cinematics players have come to expect from the FINAL FANTASY series─not just graphically, but in terms of story and emotion, as well─and we are excited to see that so many were moved by the plight of Louisoix and the Eorzean Alliance.

This five-minute tribute to the heroes of Eorzea may mark the end of one era, but at the same time, it represents the dawn of another. To ensure that era is a truly breathtaking experience, we are paying close attention to even the smallest of details. As such, we must ask that you bear with us while we continue the creation process─though I believe most of you will find that it will have definitely been worth the wait.

I am looking forward to seeing all of you again soon.

FINAL FANTASY XIV Producer & Director, Naoki Yoshida

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.......The end.

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Originally Posted by Rex

.......The end.

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This isn't even relevant. We're discussing positive things. I swear to god the people on this forum...

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Originally Posted by Rex

.......The end.

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It's called suggestions to those smallest of detail of maybe what people would like to see also that maybe they did or did not think about thanks the end.

The Dev will thiink about it last time i heard... And i so damn well hope they do add some "lives" in it more.. like nonscene random rambling without interacting to them, you know.. gossips and such

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Originally Posted by Seirra_Lanzce

The Dev will thiink about it last time i heard... And i so damn well hope they do add some "lives" in it more.. like nonscene random rambling without interacting to them, you know.. gossips and such

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As good as this sounds, they need to have multiple lines if they're going to do this.

There's two NPC's in the main hub in GW2 that say "It's a bad day to buy wine..." "But it's a great day to drink it!" constantly.

It gets very annoying when you're crafting in town and stuff.

I think a general ambient sound that alludes to a lot of people talking would be good. (that file is awful, but you get my meaning hopefully)

most prefer it to be audiable than just text... :P

Thinking about a Lifeless world i tend not to think about static npcs and more about empty zones. I personally hope they bring the world to life with a ton of open world contents rather than instance everything.

Someone here said the wrld was just a lobby or waiting room for your instance and for the most part thats been true all through 1.0

I'd like to see a bunch of people engaged in an epic battle with some big dragon or gigas as I randomly choco past, or stumble upon a group of adventurers in the midst off their final af fights.

to me thats the sort of thing that brings the world to life. so hoping to see a ton of open world contents and make the world more than just a waiting room

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Originally Posted by Ingolf

I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility.

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It's possible, but they won't do it because it'll end up pissing players off. Unlike Skyrim, you can't skip over night time. A full day in FFXIV takes an hour, can you imagine having to wait around 20 minutes for the NPCs to come out before you can do your stuff?

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Originally Posted by Dzian

Thinking about a Lifeless world i tend not to think about static npcs and more about empty zones. I personally hope they bring the world to life with a ton of open world contents rather than instance everything.

Someone here said the wrld was just a lobby or waiting room for your instance and for the most part thats been true all through 1.0

I'd like to see a bunch of people engaged in an epic battle with some big dragon or gigas as I randomly choco past, or stumble upon a group of adventurers in the midst off their final af fights.

to me thats the sort of thing that brings the world to life. so hoping to see a ton of open world contents and make the world more than just a waiting room

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That's also of course a part of what I meant. Seeing wild life in the forest, snake in the desert, ants, birds, etc., not only as targetable mobs but also as environment life. Wild chocobo, mogs flying to deliver letters between cities, etc.

Perhaps that's much to ask as the server might not follow or maybe due to PS2 limitations, but I still think that would be a good idea to tend to that kind of "realism in the fantasy".

I remember the first time I fished the Black Shroud and found that frog... I was like OMG FROGGIE! :D

Some of us like a little life in our games.

By the way, when the video was released it was me that commented about it. Once. Not trolling.

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Originally Posted by Wolfie

It's possible, but they won't do it because it'll end up pissing players off. Unlike Skyrim, you can't skip over night time. A full day in FFXIV takes an hour, can you imagine having to wait around 20 minutes for the NPCs to come out before you can do your stuff?

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Which is why I said:

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Originally Posted by Ingolf

Any Quest NPC's should be static, that doesn't mean that fluff NPC's couldn't be wandering about, or only coming out at night or something.

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XI towns were pretty dead too, except for that kid running back and forth in sandy lol. Doesn't bother me but would be cool if there were some npcs that walked around a bit, or city guards on patrol.

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Originally Posted by Riv

XI towns were pretty dead too, except for that kid running back and forth in sandy lol. Doesn't bother me but would be cool if there were some npcs that walked around a bit, or city guards on patrol.

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I think each town had that. Windurst had Dazi Nosuk pacing back and forth in Windurst Woods. Jeuno had that Galka with "Ghost" in their name pacing back and forth in... Upper Jeuno I think? And I forget who Bastok's was....

In the old FF games the NPCs move, too
5 steps forward, 5 steps backward

I thought I read somewhere that at launch NPCs would not be very active, but they wanted to phase in behaviors over time.

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Originally Posted by Ingolf

I've never seen a game make a town look sufficiently lively. I'd like to see how XIV hopes to achieve this.

Even in GW2, which has NPC's roaming, once you realise they say the same voice lines and follow the same path in a loop the immersion is broken.

We need more players or NPC's with spontaneous patterns.

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Hey guy I'm pretty sure if you have a solution for this planned out you could win some pretty prestigious AI awards.

Just sayin'. :D

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Originally Posted by Wolfie

It's possible, but they won't do it because it'll end up pissing players off. Unlike Skyrim, you can't skip over night time. A full day in FFXIV takes an hour, can you imagine having to wait around 20 minutes for the NPCs to come out before you can do your stuff?

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In skyrim you just lockpicked their door, stole everything and called it good... :P

Assuming that all npc schedules cant include places that you cant get to yourself. It could still work lol

Though anyone who wasnt a real rpg fan would be confused XD


I think all npcs should have a general schedule / shifts - so long as there is a finder system (like the guard system I suggested). Life limited to the unimportant is depressing, though I get that some hate having to find something lol

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Originally Posted by Shougun

In skyrim you just lockpicked their door, stole everything and called it good... :P

Assuming that all npc schedules cant include places that you cant get to yourself. It could still work lol

Though anyone who wasnt a real rpg fan would be confused XD


I think all npcs should have a general schedule / shifts - so long as there is a finder system (like the guard system I suggested). Life limited to the unimportant is depressing, though I get that some hate having to find something lol

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Buddy, after you have to hunt down somebody in a busy airport to deliver a document before you can leave work, i'll let you make a judgement call on having to find somebody.
Seriously, having to hunt down people when you need to talk to them is so awful even in real life, there is no need to bring that tidbit to virtual life :(

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Originally Posted by Skies

Buddy, after you have to hunt down somebody in a busy airport to deliver a document before you can leave work, i'll let you make a judgement call on having to find somebody.
Seriously, having to hunt down people when you need to talk to them is so awful even in real life, there is no need to bring that tidbit to virtual life :(

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Lol, like the picture you painted.

I didnt figure people with a short time limit wanting to do something real quick. The towns are not big enough, and with a search feature through guards or omnipotent map it wouldnt be as aimless as an airport (still may take a min or so though) - I can get/appreciate the "I want it done now" approach.

Itd be cool if there where NPCs roaming around Outside. Like merchants, Roaming around at different times. To make the world more Dynamic. c:

I don't think it's possible to program NPCs with the ability to display random or unique behaviors. Even in Skyrim, they were limited to a preset behavior pattern that only changed if, say a dragon attacked the town, or you started killing children or something to that effect. If you are talking about NPCs that say go home and sleep at night, then that is probably doable.

Besides, you wouldn't want random behavior in an MMORPG, since it would make finding a particular quest NPC difficult if not impossible if they could travel anywhere in the gameworld, with no way to know where they may go next.

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Originally Posted by Vanguard319

Besides, you wouldn't want random behavior in an MMORPG, since it would make finding a particular quest NPC difficult if not impossible if they could travel anywhere in the gameworld, with no way to know where they may go next.

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we are not talking about quest NPC's only god damn..

there could be the old granny who is going for a walk with her dog over the bridge and around the town.. and maybe in the evening is going back into her house.

i dont care about "loop" npcs if the world seems a -little- more livier.
NPC who have no important role can roam around and nobody would have a problem with it. my opinion.

i mean in FFXI from time to time there was a circus in the sandorian city.. which was a nice goody i think. caravans or whatever.


in FFXII you also have NPC who walk through the cities.


and even with some of the quest npcs you can do this also.. how about a mysterious quest npc who just appears at night in a forest glade.... a lake or somethin... if you implement roaming npc it does not mean that all npcs have to be affected by it..

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Originally Posted by Ingolf

Any Quest NPC's should be static, that doesn't mean that fluff NPC's couldn't be wandering about, or only coming out at night or something.

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agreed. although, as i said before. it'd be fun if there are some "special" "hidden" NPC who only appear at a certain time or anything. but that should be not the rule.

I don't know why everyone is opposed to mobile Quest NPCs.. Thanks to the ungodly invention of Quest Tracker, the game points you straight to them anyway..

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Originally Posted by Kiote

I don't know why everyone is opposed to mobile Quest NPCs.. Thanks to the ungodly invention of Quest Tracker, the game points you straight to them anyway..

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I was thinking about npc schedules and since there are no beds and probably not enough houses (unless there is an NPC housing system). I think that SE would obviously have to limit how complex the schedules get to small patrols rather then schedules.

Still I would like to see a small disregard for "being a quest giver" so long as they are not frustrating to find and are also meaningful to that character.

Obviously the system would mean a lot to the randoms (like loading the docks/unloading and bustling markets during the day, having the crowd dynamic would add a lot as well)

What's the point complaining about "Alpha" game....?

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Originally Posted by Petdo

What's the point complaining about "Alpha" game....?

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We don't complain, we suggest as it is still time to do. It will be too late when they release the game to say "oh I wanted a lifefull world". For a matter of conception, it's better to include that during development stage.

And after reading through 7 pages of comments, I think everyone wants "more animation" in town and outside. As 2.0 is still in an early development stage, there might be "someone" reading our topic and thinking about it !

i like yer wishfull thinking :p

I'm testing GW2 atm (free trial) and I have to say the towns are pretty lively there. Having something like this in ARR would be nice, even if it's just set patterns, it's still better than having mutes. NPC talking can also be used to tell more about the different races, kinda like the charr teaching history about their war with humans to their cubs.

Also, humor! Some dialogues in recent western games made me laugh multiple times, without feeling forced to do so.

One thing they should be careful about is not making the NPC trigger their speech when a player comes into vicinity, and most important, not show it on everyone's screen when someone triggers it. Imagine 800 players triggering the speech over and over again @.@;; (GW2 players will know)

@Garion: Aunt Pol was looking for you.

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Originally Posted by Soukyuu

I'm testing GW2 atm (free trial) and I have to say the towns are pretty lively there. Having something like this in ARR would be nice, even if it's just set patterns, it's still better than having mutes. NPC talking can also be used to tell more about the different races, kinda like the charr teaching history about their war with humans to their cubs.

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I don't know, the towns DON'T seem lively at all for me, though that might be more related to the fact that the design of the Black Citadel is awful in making it seem like it is a city and less a wide open field with people here and there, maybe. Gridania seemed more lively than this.

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Originally Posted by Petdo

What's the point complaining about "Alpha" game....?

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That's exactly the point. You're supposed to complain and show concerns. That's what Alpha and Betas used to be about until the western developers turned them into early demos.

If there's one thing FFXI did well, it was making a "world" instead of just a "game". Currently ARR is just a game, like WoW is. It's a side effect of being a theme park MMO, and I hope they balance it out with a lot of open world content hidden away in the deep and dark places of the world.

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Originally Posted by Skies

I don't know, the towns DON'T seem lively at all for me, though that might be more related to the fact that the design of the Black Citadel is awful in making it seem like it is a city and less a wide open field with people here and there, maybe. Gridania seemed more lively than this.

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Maybe you should turn your volume on Skies.

FFXIV has the whole company behind it. And it's a company that has way more experience with making MMOs than ArenaNet could ever hope for. It shouldn't be a big deal to add a lot more NPCs and to make them move around. It's not too much to ask and it makes a big difference.

This should be in at launch. Lots of people want it, and it will make the game way better than it's empty prequel.

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Originally Posted by Skies

I don't know, the towns DON'T seem lively at all for me, though that might be more related to the fact that the design of the Black Citadel is awful in making it seem like it is a city and less a wide open field with people here and there, maybe. Gridania seemed more lively than this.

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Divinity's Reach or Lion's Arc is what I was talking about. Most of the atmosphere comes from the sound, followed by NPCs running around (kids chasing each other) or chatting. Those kind of things.

The Black Citadel is... full of sweaty packmates, "BOOM", "KLANG" and "Help, my tail is on fire!" :P

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Originally Posted by Tonkra

we are not talking about quest NPC's only god damn..

there could be the old granny who is going for a walk with her dog over the bridge and around the town.. and maybe in the evening is going back into her house.

i dont care about "loop" npcs if the world seems a -little- more livier.
NPC who have no important role can roam around and nobody would have a problem with it. my opinion.

i mean in FFXI from time to time there was a circus in the sandorian city.. which was a nice goody i think. caravans or whatever.


in FFXII you also have NPC who walk through the cities.


and even with some of the quest npcs you can do this also.. how about a mysterious quest npc who just appears at night in a forest glade.... a lake or somethin... if you implement roaming npc it does not mean that all npcs have to be affected by it..

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No need to rage, I just made an observation, nor did I completely dismiss the idea of roaming npcs. My point was that you have to devote a lot of memory resources to give multiple npcs in a game world AI that mimics human behavior, and don't forget that the server has to be robust enough to track these npcs, along with all the players that will be moving around as well.

Let me put it this way: If they had put roaming npcs in 1.0, you would have seen far more disconnects due to the additional stress on the servers. We know ARR will have new regional servers, and that will help, but the devs probably won't know for sure how well they'll handle those kind of loads until they do some large population stress tests, probably when the game goes into beta.

Yeah but Uni, we're talking 800 people should be able to be in the same place and viewable. Servers are not the same as 1.0. 1.0 server structure was so broken you couldn't even display more than 20 people at a time. You had to split the city across servers it was so horrible.

I don't think it's going to be nearly as big of an issue as people are making it. If the server structure is not capable of playing a couple dozen NPC behavior on a loop, I'm not optimistic about the games future.

I think this is a good illustration of 1.0 problem. Take a look at the Introduction of Uld'ah. And then at the town itself during real game.

During the intro, you have people browsing market, girl buying flowers, children running around, mother buying vegetables. You have "car" carrying travelers, gates are opening, lalafell laughing all together, etc. Mercants carrying their stuffs...
And when it switch to real, game, everything disappear.

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Originally Posted by Freyane

I think this is a good illustration of 1.0 problem. Take a look at the Introduction of Uld'ah. And then at the town itself during real game.

During the intro, you have people browsing market, girl buying flowers, children running around, mother buying vegetables. You have "car" carrying travelers, gates are opening, lalafell laughing all together, etc. Mercants carrying their stuffs...
And when it switch to real, game, everything disappear.

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Not exactly the best example to take to be honest. Considering Ul'dah had a festival going on during the cutscene. Not to mention a large accident. Basically, it would have been weird if the festival was still on-going for ages.

That said, it certainly would have been nice to see people buy stuff from the merchants or the likes.

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Originally Posted by Vydos

Not exactly the best example to take to be honest. Considering Ul'dah had a festival going on during the cutscene. Not to mention a large accident. Basically, it would have been weird if the festival was still on-going for ages.

That said, it certainly would have been nice to see people buy stuff from the merchants or the likes.

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Actually it's a great example. But if you want another one, try the Limsa Intro from when you put in to port. This is not a festival, it's supposed to be a normal day in a port city. Something that really disappointed me in FFXIV 1.0 is that the ships never moved. :( You couldn't even really get on them.

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Originally Posted by HiirNoivl

Actually it's a great example. But if you want another one, try the Limsa Intro from when you put in to port. This is not a festival, it's supposed to be a normal day in a port city. Something that really disappointed me in FFXIV 1.0 is that the ships never moved. :( You couldn't even really get on them.

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While I know we will have zones so not 100% applicable I would like the general philosophy that if you see it you can do something with it lol

Hate seeing docked ships 2 inches from the pier and I cant get on the damn thing XD (no guards around even to stop me!? lol).

With the addition of sea, sky and the jump feature maybe it will be so.