Minor idea for taverns of the game

[lezard21]

There are already RP venues through estates where people turn them into bars, churches or strip clubs where you can have actual players (instead of NPC) approach you and offer you drinks, demand your tithe, or offer you lap dances.

I'd rather the devs focus their time on developing raids and Ultimates since players can't reproduce those on their erp clubs.

[GeminiReed]

Right now, my idea is specially for the RP community: Add some interactions with waiters/waitress NPC's in Adverturers Guild and some other places. The idea is basically that when you sit at a table, a few moments later an NPC will comes at you and simply ask if you want to place an order.

Dunno how things stand on Primal but on Crystal the open world RP spots are super packed to the point where avatar culling kicks in. Interactive NPCs would just make that even worse.

[Iscah]

I don't think it would be a "minor" idea if they tried to implement something like this. Every part of it relies on behaviours that NPCs don't carry out in the open world: dynamic movement according to player actions, possibly multiple players one after another, and talking to a player directly.

And if you can't carry on a conversation with them (which would involve a whole new level of programming for them to recognise and reply), the illusion breaks anyway.

Personally if I'm going to sit down in one of the taverns I'll just pick a spot that already has food placed at it.

[Saefinn]

Hmm, I'm not sure how much benefit it would offer in terms of immersion. I guess cool if it's simple to implement for a little more interactively with the world but I don't know if it'd be an RP benefit.

Interaction would be more limited than say, writing the NPC in character, which is what I'm used to doing and you can do it in time with what you're RPing. Three people sit a table "hi what will you have today?" could be played 3 times and then a 4th if a 4th person shows up, I think that could end up immersion breaking in RP or just have people ignoring it altogether.

Whereas if you were to do it entirely IC you could have:

Player 1: hey lets take a seat whilst we wait for Player 4
Player 2: Sure
The three players sit down & a waiter walks over
Waiter: Can I get you some drinks whilst you think about what you want to order?
Player 3: Maybe just a few minutes, we're waiting on somebody.
Waiter (narrated by player 1): Okay
The waiter disappears
Player 4 shows up, the waiter reappears
Waiter (narrated by player 1): Shall I take those drinks orders now?

[kaynide]

GW2 does a pretty decent job of this; There are a lot of just generic buildings that are wide open. Some have a bartender that's an actual vendor NPC, some have NPCs that path around. It's very similar to FFXIV's adventurer guilds, but on a larger scale. An average establishment is probably nearer to the restaurant area in Crystalarium in size, or the entire aetheryte plaza area in Eulmore.

The good is that it's easy to wander into one of these and find people RPing casually in a pretty PG setting. The bad is that they kind of unrealistically big or in a weird, out of the way place. (The entire scale for everything in GW2 is rather huge)

What really makes the game good in these settings is there is minor banter happening in the background between NPCs that is voiced. Some of it is quite long or detailed.. obviously some is just 1-2 liners. It makes a lot of difference/immersion to hear/see the banter in your chat box.

[Evergrey]

GW2 does a pretty decent job of this; There are a lot of just generic buildings that are wide open. Some have a bartender that's an actual vendor NPC, some have NPCs that path around. It's very similar to FFXIV's adventurer guilds, but on a larger scale. An average establishment is probably nearer to the restaurant area in Crystalarium in size, or the entire aetheryte plaza area in Eulmore.

The good is that it's easy to wander into one of these and find people RPing casually in a pretty PG setting. The bad is that they kind of unrealistically big or in a weird, out of the way place. (The entire scale for everything in GW2 is rather huge)

What really makes the game good in these settings is there is minor banter happening in the background between NPCs that is voiced. Some of it is quite long or detailed.. obviously some is just 1-2 liners. It makes a lot of difference/immersion to hear/see the banter in your chat box.

Been so long since I played GW2 so can't remember much of that.
But I do remember some random quest (or something) where NPCs started a bar brawl and you had to knock some sense in them.

I do enjoy the Inns in ESO.
I must be honest that I haven't really payed much attention to the NPCs or pathings they do.
But each inn (as far as I can remember) got a bard playing music.
When I am inbetween queues or something I tend to just park my dude next to a bard and listen to the songs they sing.
Some are really good and adds a nice cosy atmosphere.

[kaynide]

Been so long since I played GW2 so can't remember much of that

That's fair because most of it is pretty forgettable; it's just atmosphere fluff.

Like where I'm playing atm in GW2, NPCs are shooting fish from a dock with spearguns and yanking them in (some complete with Mortal Kombat "Get over here!"). It's a fun game to just look around, but you'd absolutely miss if focused on task.

[Keramory]

I remember when heavensword came in a lot of people used the new city's Tavern as a hot RP spot in Balmung. Only time I really saw RP happening outside the main cities.

I'm okay with some incentives to use some of the beautiful and large spaces we have in towns never used. I do think you're underestimating however the involvement of work needed to get what you want done with NPC involvement. None of the options will exactly be clean.

The absolute easiest way to get this done is to have it only instanced on your screen (like we see in quests/missions) when you sit down, where an Npc has appears out of thin air, has simple walk animation up to you, and asks for your "order". Enjoy watching a ghost walk through a whole bunch of people though.

If this Npc is visible to everyone, enjoy the hilarious nightmare of as many waiters as there are seats popping and appearing constantly in mass.

And this is before you want anything even remotely complicated like speech, the orders themselves, stress on the area from waiters and food just magically popping and vanishing constantly, etc.

__

While not the perfect solution, I think a far easier compromise is for there to be a wage system for tavern areas that already exist where an actual character can "clock in" and be the waiter / barkeep. Then payday upon clocking out. That would take far less coding and less of a headache. Admittingly though you'd still need a GM babysitting the user's behavior on some level... so it's not ideal.