So, where do all the NPC's live?

I just got to the story about the refugees being refused by Uldah, which made me realize there's no apparent residential quarters in, or around the city. Actually, since I've never seen a vendor or any other NC absent from it's "workplace", I guess they don't need places to live :)

...would you rather have the vendors not be available for about half the time? This is a classic trade-off: Gameplay over realism/immersion.

Same can be said about not seeing to many residential quarters: Those are not the areas in the cities we're visiting in the first place. All the cities are much larger than what we can actually see, so... just imagine that the people live in parts of the cities we dont visit.

Other than that: People might stay at the inns, most cities have building that we cant enter, outside of Ul'dah you'll find tents that the refugees live in, certain smaller areas/villages contain actual homes, with beds, kitchens etc.

Oh they have places to live. They just keep the riffraff out, you know, the players. We're not allowed in those parts of the cities and can only live in special designated areas.

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Originally Posted by DeaconMoore

Oh they have places to live. They just keep the riffraff out, you know, the players. We're not allowed in those parts of the cities and can only live in special designated areas.

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To this day, Aleport remains one of my favourite in-game settlements. You can enter almost every building! Newer settlements aren't nearly as impressive - since everything is sealed off. :(

There's an area in the north of Gridania that we're not allowed to enter and the guard explicitly says it's residential and outsiders are not allowed in. There's also an insane amount of buildings in Ul'Dah we can't go into, either, presumably houses. Although Ul'dah itself is the most justified since it (along with the Brume in Ishgard) has a sizeable beggar/homeless situation.

Conservation of detail and resources, mostly :D

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Originally Posted by Theodric

To this day, Aleport remains one of my favourite in-game settlements. You can enter almost every building! Newer settlements aren't nearly as impressive - since everything is sealed off. :(

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To be fair: I lock my apartment door aswell - I always thought that its a bit weird that you can just walk into any home, jump on peoples beds and kitchen tables and nobody ever says "Excuse me, Miss, what are you doing here?" So having stuff sealed off always made sense to me - gameplay-wise (it would only be another copy-paste-room, right?), lorewise (you dont just enter the homes of strangers) and development-wise (not wasting ressources on another copy-paste-room that serves no purpose).

While I liked the exploring myself, I can totally see why they would put away with it - NPCs have a right to privacy too!

Radiata stories had that. Each npc had a schedule, they had housing, and they wandered around doing their thing. It was neat.

There are a few areas of Ishgard that you can't get into that look to be nice housing areas. These are mostly the gated areas at the ends of the public streets.

It would be cool if non-interactive NPCs retired to their quarters come the night hours, or during bad weather. Also, other non-interactive NPCs showing up during different times of the day. So long as we can't interact with them, SE can do whatever they want with them. I mean how long is that couple in the Gold Saucer going to embrace each other?

As another element of realism I would like to see; over at Costa del Sol, it would be awesome if one of Gejeruju's retainers grabbed his drink and threw it in his face, then tells him she quits. Then he just says, "She'll be back." thus starting the process all over again the next day.

If you were an NPC in an RPG world would you really want adventurers knowing where you lived?

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Originally Posted by Vidu

To be fair: I lock my apartment door aswell - I always thought that its a bit weird that you can just walk into any home, jump on peoples beds and kitchen tables and nobody ever says "Excuse me, Miss, what are you doing here?" So having stuff sealed off always made sense to me - gameplay-wise (it would only be another copy-paste-room, right?), lorewise (you dont just enter the homes of strangers) and development-wise (not wasting ressources on another copy-paste-room that serves no purpose).

While I liked the exploring myself, I can totally see why they would put away with it - NPCs have a right to privacy too!

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I agree. It's always seemed strange how you can just walk right in to so many people's houses in RPGs - and often walk off with their stuff.

(I still remember the most glaring iteration of this in the GBA game Golden Sun - the plot has you trying to track down a thief, a horrible person who takes other people's things... while you walk into houses and pick up money and items. And no, sadly it wasn't a clever meta-plot.)



As for Aleport, I think only those three inn rooms along the eastern side are accessible? (They're used as a staging location for one of the rogue quests, which is possibly why they're like that in the first place.)

There are still other buildings that you can't get into, like the western tower over the jail cells.

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Originally Posted by Vidu

...would you rather have the vendors not be available for about half the time? This is a classic trade-off: Gameplay over realism/immersion.

Same can be said about not seeing to many residential quarters: Those are not the areas in the cities we're visiting in the first place. All the cities are much larger than what we can actually see, so... just imagine that the people live in parts of the cities we dont visit.

Other than that: People might stay at the inns, most cities have building that we cant enter, outside of Ul'dah you'll find tents that the refugees live in, certain smaller areas/villages contain actual homes, with beds, kitchens etc.

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Yes i would id love if they had a stock for the day when sold out you have to wait till they reopen store

...why is this even a question? It's an MMO. We have flying Goobus, talking dragons, and potato overlords and this is the question that you think is important enough to make a thread for?

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Originally Posted by Transient_Shadow

...why is this even a question? It's an MMO. We have flying Goobus, talking dragons, and potato overlords and this is the question that you think is important enough to make a thread for?

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This isnt just a mmo something you and the dev team need to learn.. its a rpg first then a mmo

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Originally Posted by MorbolvampireQueen6

This isnt just a mmo something you and the dev team need to learn.. its a rpg first then a mmo

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And single-player RPGs can have the exact same issue, where towns tend to consist of [local plot-relevant building], an inn, a shop and two houses.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

And single-player RPGs can have the exact same issue, where towns tend to consist of [local plot-relevant building], an inn, a shop and two houses.

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Your not fully playing single player rpgs then because normally there is 1 house per family of npcs outside destroyed towns and warzones... in fact if you believe that youv never complete a full treasure list in single player rpgs

Best to see it like this: we only see the what could be called the Commons part of the cities. Places like guild halls, markets and things people would use/work at every day. There are residential portions, but we don't visit them because we technically aren't citizens/residents of those cities.

Never mind the fact we've pulled their butts out of HOW MANY FIRES!?

The explorable map is FAR smaller than the actual city. People live in the "blank" spaces of the city where residential is. FF11 had kind of a similar setup with the explorable areas having the interactive NPCs and the residential area being off to the side and not rendered.

I honestly assumed all the Limsa shipbuilder NPCs resided in Moraby Drydocks... I've always liked that place.

Simple case of gameplay and story segregation. You can imagine the cities as being much larger than what is accessible to us in-game.

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Originally Posted by MorbolvampireQueen6

Your not fully playing single player rpgs then because normally there is 1 house per family of npcs outside destroyed towns and warzones... in fact if you believe that youv never complete a full treasure list in single player rpgs

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And maybe we're just thinking of completely different RPGs here?

Improbably small towns are just a normal RPG thing, as far as I can think.

Also I can't imagine how completing a treasure list or not would affect whether you've seen how many houses are shown to be in a town. Or are you just saying that I'm not dedicated enough or paying enough attention or something?

(Does 100% on KH1/KH2 and GSC-era Pokémon Master count as completing a treasure list? Oh, and all the collectibles in Shadow of the Colossus. Stupid lizards dodging all my arrows.) >_>


But seriously, if I've completed a game's story and I'm not going to get anything out of 100%ing it except for a lot of frustration and an eventual pat on the back... I'm very unlikely to persevere. A lot of side content thrown into RPGs is annoying. No I'm not going to spend hours completing the fishing log and getting perfect scores on all the fiddly minigames just so I can say I beat them. I'd rather move on to playing something else.

I know it's all about separating the gameplay from the story, but I wish we could see more of how Limsa Lominsa is supposed to look. The game shows a few tiny rocky islands in a bay, but in the story, this is supposed to be one of the 4 most powerful places on the continent. Characters like Thancred and Rhoswen have backstories about living in "the back-alleys of Limsa Lominsa", which would imply actual buildings that aren't hollowed out of rock. 1.0 had a vague reference to a residential and market district off a ways, but always had the impression that the city proper was isolated to the islands and that the only settlements on the mainland were farm villages. Until convinced otherwise, I'll continue to blame "PS3 limitations" on why Limsa doesn't look completely like its concept art.

Well, it miss a little; sometimes, we can wonder where they are living since some villages look pretty small with really few houses. But it is understable for graphical ressources. But day/night NPC's, it is probably doable to make two characters for shops/quests NPC's and make disappear/change random no-named characters (after all we have the random Edda's ghost). Changing characters is mainly only changing name and character 3D model (and there are enough existing ones to just switch to another. And hide some at night is even easier).
Technically it is not really difficult, but it needs ressources to do the change for each map, each NPC's since for some, they will almost have to do this one by one.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

And maybe we're just thinking of completely different RPGs here?

Improbably small towns are just a normal RPG thing, as far as I can think.

Also I can't imagine how completing a treasure list or not would affect whether you've seen how many houses are shown to be in a town. Or are you just saying that I'm not dedicated enough or paying enough attention or something?

(Does 100% on KH1/KH2 and GSC-era Pokémon Master count as completing a treasure list? Oh, and all the collectibles in Shadow of the Colossus. Stupid lizards dodging all my arrows.) >_>


But seriously, if I've completed a game's story and I'm not going to get anything out of 100%ing it except for a lot of frustration and an eventual pat on the back... I'm very unlikely to persevere. A lot of side content thrown into RPGs is annoying. No I'm not going to spend hours completing the fishing log and getting perfect scores on all the fiddly minigames just so I can say I beat them. I'd rather move on to playing something else.

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Legend of dragoon ff5-6-9 and tbh 8 although never liked 8, breath of fire, legend of legia, Suikoden..

Also lets be honest kh although its great leaves out many rpg aspects and pokemon isn't a rpg lol
...

Now for why it would effect because all those house have around 1-4 treasures in it

On behalf of all WoW refugees, I feel like a more important question should be asked: where do NPCs poop?

Seriously, I think there's only one outhouse in the entire game. Give 'em a bedpan or something.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

And maybe we're just thinking of completely different RPGs here?

Improbably small towns are just a normal RPG thing, as far as I can think.

Also I can't imagine how completing a treasure list or not would affect whether you've seen how many houses are shown to be in a town. Or are you just saying that I'm not dedicated enough or paying enough attention or something?

(Does 100% on KH1/KH2 and GSC-era Pokémon Master count as completing a treasure list? Oh, and all the collectibles in Shadow of the Colossus. Stupid lizards dodging all my arrows.) >_>



But seriously, if I've completed a game's story and I'm not going to get anything out of 100%ing it except for a lot of frustration and an eventual pat on the back... I'm very unlikely to persevere. A lot of side content thrown into RPGs is annoying. No I'm not going to spend hours completing the fishing log and getting perfect scores on all the fiddly minigames just so I can say I beat them. I'd rather move on to playing something else.

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They did a better job with Kugane, as there are almost as many buildings (that you can't enter) as there are NPCs in the city. But you'll note how the Kugane zone is about the largest city zone in the game, so it's clear the devs are improving their craft.

https://i.imgur.com/WpVBPyi.png

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Originally Posted by MorbolvampireQueen6

pokemon isn't a rpg lol

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It's not a standard RPG, but all the mechanics of a turn-based RPG are there.

- going on a journey of exploration
- recruit new party members
- level them up by fighting monsters
- learn new skills
- explore dungeons with traps and puzzles
- random monster encounters
- find treasure*
- fight bosses
- save the world

* there are even "Mimics" - this is literally Voltorb's original purpose in Red/Blue. Looks like treasure, turns out to be a high-speed monster with a tendency to explode.


Pokémon was my introduction to RPGs. I'd never played one before - and when I started playing normal ones it was basically my frame of reference. "This works like Pokémon! You pick skills from the list and then we take turns at attacking!"

They sleep when you log out, I swear.

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Originally Posted by Gemina

It would be cool if non-interactive NPCs retired to their quarters come the night hours, or during bad weather. Also, other non-interactive NPCs showing up during different times of the day. So long as we can't interact with them, SE can do whatever they want with them. I mean how long is that couple in the Gold Saucer going to embrace each other?

As another element of realism I would like to see; over at Costa del Sol, it would be awesome if one of Gejeruju's retainers grabbed his drink and threw it in his face, then tells him she quits. Then he just says, "She'll be back." thus starting the process all over again the next day.

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This is pretty much spot on. NPCs should move from positiosn depending the time of day if theyre 'filler'. So I shoudlnt see some NPC kid asking his dad to buy more scones or something at 1 AM ET. Minor details like this in games make the world feel more alive. Heck basic shop dialogue can sometimes be nice. If a vendor says good morning, then says evening when its night time that would be cool. Theres a lot teh devs could do to improve the life of the world without much actual effort.

Dont get me wrong, I appreciate the small touches the game does have. But theres more to do I think.