NPCs should talk amongst themselves.

I think the Adventurer's Guilds and the other guilds would feel a lot more alive if the NPCs had a line or two of dialogue they would speak aloud in /say now and then. It wouldn't have to be all the time (like spamming the same thing every five minutes), but just once in a while say something like, "Did you hear about the Garleans in Gridania?" little things like that to bring some life to the world. Text could change with future patches to reflect changes, and if someone doesn't want to see NPCs chit-chatting all the time, there could be a separate filter to turn it off.

Thoughts?

Yeah would be a nice addition to see.

P.S I like your sig.

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Originally Posted by Falcus

Yeah would be a nice addition to see.

P.S I like your sig.

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Thanks, I both like and agree with your sig. :D

They should make NPC's in general act like there alive. Have them walk to diff places, craft, talk laugh interact with players. Have the guards do shifts at all the different posts where u can also see them being relieved for ther shift.

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Originally Posted by Coombah

They should make NPC's in general act like there alive. Have them walk to diff places, craft, talk laugh interact with players. Have the guards have shifts at different posts where u can see them being relived of duty for ther shift.

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Would be cool to have monsters that roamed near the gates and see the gate guards have to put something down from time to time. Dusty Mongrels or something that would actually encroach on a population. Marmots probably wouldn't be all that threatening.

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Originally Posted by quantumsaint

Would be cool to have monsters that roamed near the gates and see the gate guards have to put something down from time to time. Dusty Mongrels or something that would actually encroach on a population. Marmots probably wouldn't be all that threatening.

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I agree, guards should remove threats in camp areas or at the entrance of City-States/ towns etc.

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Originally Posted by quantumsaint

Would be cool to have monsters that roamed near the gates and see the gate guards have to put something down from time to time. Dusty Mongrels or something that would actually encroach on a population. Marmots probably wouldn't be all that threatening.

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*Marmot approaches town*
Guard talking to the marmot: "I'm sorry, but you're not allowed in here."

Would definitely welcome this. I love seeing the npcs training in the various guilds, showing some form of life from them. I think NPC conversations would be great to have, and of course filterable for those who don't want to keep seeing them.

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Originally Posted by quantumsaint

Marmots probably wouldn't be all that threatening.

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Until we get some form of iron plated loin protection i'm always going to consider Nutbiter and Nutgrabber Marmots to be of a relatively high threat level. =S

I'd like to see NPCs have some autonomy, i know in Rift you have random mobs encroach on certain settlements and you can join in with an NPC to take them down, i kinda like that. Just gives you the feeling that you're in a dangerous world when the local wildlife gets involved. As for the text lines, yeah it'd be pretty nifty to see little chat lines here and there. Aslong as they cool it in Limsa, i can't understand a word those NPCs say. Half the time i think Baderon is speaking in tongues, he's like 'Oh ar' me 'arty o' sea o' 'er 'oer fer ye own 'ta sea arrrr' and im just like '...what?'

Sounds great as long as it's not voice acted.

I love the way Super Mario Rpgs chit-chat is going on as small speech bubbles all the time and their size depends on the importance of the information they contain.

Maybe. The question is how do you make it where it's not beyond annoying? Looking at you, Alfgar.

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Originally Posted by Corrderio

Maybe. The question is how do you make it where it's not beyond annoying? Looking at you, Alfgar.

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Randomized dialogue and randomized times, so it doesn't become predictable. Have them draw from a pool of a number of sentences (regarding what's going on in the world as well as general chit-chat), and don't have it at the top of every hour or on a set schedule at all. Maybe sometimes they go hours without talking, but other times they'll say stuff back-to-back.

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Originally Posted by quantumsaint

I think the Adventurer's Guilds and the other guilds would feel a lot more alive if the NPCs had a line or two of dialogue they would speak aloud in /say now and then. It wouldn't have to be all the time (like spamming the same thing every five minutes), but just once in a while say something like, "Did you hear about the Garleans in Gridania?" little things like that to bring some life to the world. Text could change with future patches to reflect changes, and if someone doesn't want to see NPCs chit-chatting all the time, there could be a separate filter to turn it off.

Thoughts?

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I would love this so much. As long as it wasn't spamming a ton like you said. :D
And I would love if it'd change to reflect new things happening in-game.

Yoshida said recently something about changing the weather so that it takes place in cities and is more varied than the current predictable patterns, so there is something NPCs could talk about that would change often. One NPC might say something like:

"Can you believe this rain? It hasn't let up for three days."

And a nearby NPC may retort, "Tell me about it, my boots are soaked."

But it wouldn't always have to be three days, and they could program it so they would report whatever the weather was.

If we can blist npc's then i'm all for it.

They need to do like in the opening movie of the game, that tavern is full of life,then you go to the Uldah's one,*silence*....
How about adding crowd sfx or something like that?.

I saw a Coblyn the other day, disgusting creatures.

Funny story, when I first started playing back at launch, I thought the game did have that feature where npc's would talk amongst themselves...

Then I realized it was just rp'ers, and that the rp'ers had laid claim to the server I was on lol, so it was pretty common for a bit. It was kind of novel at first, but I never really saw them talk about anything all that interesting. I don't imagine the peon npc's who have nothing to do with any of the cool lore from the game being any better... Probably just generic 'oh noes evil is coming, won't somebody save us!' and blah blah blah. Maybe if it was like that mine carny troop in ffxi, than that'd be kinda amusing I suppose. But one of them had better throw a pie or something, or I'll turn on the npc convo mute toggle and there it shall stay forever. XD

So yeah, I'd rather SE just focus on the other stuff they have on their list... If they did finally get around to working on anything like this, I'd much rather they add in some quirky behavior for the mobs than the crummy peon npc's. Would be a lot cooler to see those dusty mongrels occasionally dig around at random or eat squirrels, as opposed to some lame npc granny go on about some garbage pertaining to saving the kingdom from teh evil doers. I think they killed what little mob behavior they had put in though, so I don't think they're going in that direction...

My general rule of thumb... npc's should only speak when spoken to... Unless they are announcing something of interest like those npc's that talk about the empire invasions or the battlewardens... That's my 2 cents at least. I know a lot of people really eat that micro lore up and all, but I skip just about all of the miniquest stories already... I will listen to what the actual plot significant guys have to say, but those peon npc's... meh lol.

LOVE this idea.

Nice trickle down effect

NPCs should walk around the town instead of stand in place, and turn slightly when they see you and have a MGS style "!" above their heads when they have a quest for you or valuable information on a quest you are currently doing.

Anyone remember The Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask? Each Npc in that game had their own lives. The game consisted of only 3 game days that repeated over and over and an Npc had somewhere to be or something to do during the flow of time.

Be nice if FFXIV did something close to this, give a good number of npcs actual lives. The cook spends hours x-y baking something for the adventure's guild...then during hour z....he sends someone to walk to the guild and deliver it...then the guild...serves it...and maybe a npc linkshell is there throwing some kinda party...

Get creative! can easily link 20 npcs to this simple 2 second idea.

Majora mask was my favourite zelda game for a lot of reaosns one being as the poster above me mentioned, the interactivity between the residents of Clock town, they don't stand in one place but walk around and give valuable information, depending on the time of day and I can see FFXIV have the same feature where NPCs would walk around town say at noon, and the leves reset, and two of them would go "Have you seen the new batch of Leves at the guild?" and the other would just reply "New batch? Tis what I've been waiting for for days".

and this is just an example of something, a lot of places could be more lively, Class guilds could have people talking among themselves about Class moves and such, while say Cooks could discuss a new recipe and that would benefit the player that over hears the conversation.

You may get information about unusual stuff at DoL guilds, say you walk into the miners guild, and you see two miners run in through the door and walk to the counter while talking about a rare ore at (X,Y) location, that would benefit people who are looking for rare stuff.

Just a couple of suggestion off the top of the my head, wanted to contribute. :)

To further develop into the above poster....

Maybe make some rare items become available during npc events!

ex. Some pro leather crafter walks into Grid from the gates...the guards welcome him back...he explains he just got done hunting some beast and skinned its rare hide....he then makes his march to a certain point in town and begins tanning the hide....then after so much time...you can buy the leather off him for a certain period of time then he closes shop and head back into the wilds.

Adventure's Guild has some famous rich man's son walk in with his groupies and he buys everyone in the house drinks to show off his wealth and whatever. During this event players can receive a free drink from the bartender and get a buff that lasts for an hour or two...

imagine your in one of the capitals and you see shouts of people saying THE RICH GUY IS IN TOWN!! HURRY TO THE ADVENTURE'S GUILD!

Make this random...and in all cities.

I think a good example of this are the gunners in the musketeer guild in Limsa.

Just wanted to say thanks to everybody for their contributions and support so far.

No to quest-giving/shopkeeping NPC moving around, especially if those have day/night cycle. This is not off-line RPG, in other MMO it's annoying to follow the NPC to get reward, especially when they have a very large patrol route that has nothing to do with the location of their own quest >_> unlike Behest. Thankfully only a very small portion of them move and they are not main quests. You think it's fun to pick lock the NPC house at night to dump your inventory junk? We don't have a wait 12 hours button FYI.

I'm glad we see eye to eye Quantumsaint.

I know I've mentioned the lack of life in the game, a few times actually. One of the biggest things that contribute to that problem is that the NPC's are silent and stationary.

I approve of the suggestions and I hope SE decides to act on some of them.
I'd love to be able to see NPC's engaging with each other, the player, and the world.

I realize FFXII wasn't liked by many people but Rabanastre(for example) was so full of life and one of the biggest reasons why was because the NPC's behaved like real people. FFXIV being an MMO doesn't mean that the NPC's have to be statues basically.

In addition to having NPC"s actually behave like living people they need to dirty up the cities. I mean really, all of the cities are stupidly, freakishly clean. Even in areas where there the poorest of the poor live. D=!!

Attention to detail!

But you know what a really nice addition to all of this would be? If the NPC's actually remembered you.

I remember I tried out LOTRO when FFXI went down cause of the unfortunate events in Japan last March. The game was more or less fun, but what I really liked was that when you started the game the NPC's didn't think much of you. Then as you did more quests and the like they would greet you and remember you if you left. I thought something like that was cool because it felt like the player was somewhat important to the game world. o o;

Anyway! Thanks everyone for your great suggestions and to Quantumsaint for making this thread! I hope SE listens to some of these suggestions!

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Originally Posted by Sypherblade

To further develop into the above poster....

Maybe make some rare items become available during npc events!

ex. Some pro leather crafter walks into Grid from the gates...the guards welcome him back...he explains he just got done hunting some beast and skinned its rare hide....he then makes his march to a certain point in town and begins tanning the hide....then after so much time...you can buy the leather off him for a certain period of time then he closes shop and head back into the wilds.

Adventure's Guild has some famous rich man's son walk in with his groupies and he buys everyone in the house drinks to show off his wealth and whatever. During this event players can receive a free drink from the bartender and get a buff that lasts for an hour or two...

imagine your in one of the capitals and you see shouts of people saying THE RICH GUY IS IN TOWN!! HURRY TO THE ADVENTURE'S GUILD!

Make this random...and in all cities.

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Wow... That would be really cool. O O; +1's and if I could I'd +1k you lol.

I know console games will have merchants do that but this way is much more cooler. Maybe he can even train people in a specific skill in their craft (adding on to suggestion 1)

and maybe the rich patron could give you some special drink or whatever that you wouldn't be able to get anywhere else, and you could get a pretty sweet buff. If he recognized you of being worthy? (fame based type of a thing?)

Anyway, great idea! /gold star

Back when I played Fable II I remembered that when it turned nighttime all the NPCs would walk away to random houses and be unnavailable until morning. When they would leave their homes and return to their post (and you could speak to them along the way).

I thought this was really awesome and gave much needed depth to the came, I would love if they implemented something similar here. As stupid as this is going to sound... having that NPC in XI's Sandy that walked across the way to deliver packages to the other NPC was amazing. Even though I obviously knew what they were going to say, it still made that particular area seem so much more alive even after 5 years of playing.

Now if we can only get PCs to talk amongst themselves... :p

I understand there are people who read the quests and get into the lore of games...and there are those who accept quest don't read the story and just look at the "kill x amount of y mobs and the reward." and as player you have every right to be either of these.

but from the developer's point of view. The game world should be real! Making everything come alive should be important to the developers. Npcs in town should be working, talking, protecting their towns, and spending money!

Monsters and Beastmen should be the same ideally. Thats what always bugged me in MMOs....mobs just stand there and day dream all day and only come to "life" when they are attacked. Beastmen should have their own lives too! They should be "working, talking, protecting their towns, and spending money!" and wild beasts should be grazing/hunting, sleeping, taking care of their offspring.

Nothing in the game that is supposed to be alive should just stare into the abyss....praying for the end of days.... so their meaningless life will finally find closure.

I agree! As for the Empire about to take over um, cities seem way to peaceful. We have about 4 guards total outside of Uldah. Give us some besieged action with the Garleans in the cities occasionally or something. Eorzea as it stands now is still very boring and bland. What happened to all that talk about impending doom when it still feels the same with just monster placement adjustments.

there should be some just walking around too. lively NPCs can easily make a game unique