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NPC Hirelings Coming To D&D Online
Posted by
Soulskill
on Sun Aug 17, 2008 12:01 PM
from the you!-cut-my-milk! dept.
from the you!-cut-my-milk! dept.
This weekend's GenCon saw Turbine release some new information about the upcoming Module 8 release for Dungeons and Dragons Online. Massively has a story with many of the new changes, which are focused on making the game more accessible to new and solo players. A big part of that will be the introduction of NPC hirelings, which will supplement individuals or smaller groups who want to play without waiting for a full party of player characters. Reader nicholsonb points out more coverage at Destructoid.
"... you're able to hire an NPC character that's your level or below, and they come in Cleric, Fighter, Rogue, kind of a variety. Sorceror as well. ...So they take a place on your HUD. You can heal them, they can heal you. You can help them. They'll break boxes, they'll kill monsters without any instructions from you. But they won't zerg through the dungeon, they won't open gates. You can ask them, 'yeah, go ahead and open that gate, dude,' but you're able to control all their behavior, so they're working for you. And of course they cost money, right? So they actually are working for you in the fiction of the game."
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Are they truly NPCs? (Score:3, Funny)
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Don't laugh.
EverQuest toyed with the idea of letting you play a level 1-5 Orc running around in the newbie lands. On logging in, instead of picking a char to play, you'd click a special button and find yourself dumped into the body of a yard trash NPC.
The idea was to give some player smarts to the yard trash to spice things up. It never went anywhere. Anyone know why? It seems like it would be a tremendously fun option.
Some day a game will come along that will allow more stuff like that, it will turn ou
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It didn't go anywhere for two reasons. First, people playing orcs would strafe, attack wizards first, and all sorts of other things and own low level players/parties. Second, people abused it by finding their friends and letting themselves be killed with little fight, etc.
The first one was quite entertaining. The second, meh.
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The second could be fixed by reducing or eliminating the XP and "drops".
"But then nobody will want to fight them!"
A. No. It's more exciting. Only sickening losers would run from this in favor of pointless leveling. What were you playing the game for again?
B. That's what the first "problem" is for. :)
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I did the 10-day trial thing (December 2006) and found it a bit different with respect to grouping.
Leveling up was painful, in the extreme. Unlocking the inner city (market place?) was painful and required groups to get through the waterworks, etc.
I had gained entry to a guild by the end of the trial and had some friends to play with when I found I had made an uber noobish mistake. I was playing on a European server in the US. It took some days of phone calls (after I had bought a full account) to discov
Re:Sign of a dying game (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not sure why the parent is modded down. I've played DDO for about a 1/2 year and I have to agree that the game has quiet a few problems that really dont keep players interested for very long.
The focus on grouping I think is one of the major problems of the game. Its pretty impossible to do anything without a group. Solo adventurers have shitty XP and even shittier loot. While its understandable to make some instances for groups only, by a large amount the content sucks for solo.
My second problem is the setting. I'm just not crazy about the world of "Eberon". I dont know why they cant use Forgotten Realms (like Zhentil Keep, or Shadow Dale, even Water Deep would have been nice). The "Punk Fantasy" look is pretty shitty IMHO and is certainly not the D&D that 80% of us old bastards started with and want to participate in today. Its sad too, because a large segment of DDO population are older people.
The logical layout of the landscape is also problematic. While having a majority of content confined to certain "areas" there is no feeling of connectedness between any part of the game world (exception of the Dockside and the Bazzare). Even the attached "houses" seem pretty out of place. I know people from WoW and EQ tend to complain about the "filler" space that connects "useful" regions, but DDO is a MMO without "filler" space and it just feels absolutely wrong... with no other way to explain it.
These problems are not immediately noticable and you can sink a lot of time into the game before these problems become an annoyance. After the graphics wear off and your left with just the game play, waiting for groups, popping in and out of "safe bubbles" and completing quests without having to really go anywhere becomes really boring.
I highly doubt that adding an NPC is going to really improve anything. Because we all know for every + feature there are two more more - tweaks to accompany it.
Parent
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D&D Online was fun for me for a while, but their house rules for D&D sucked so bad that the endgame was unplayable for me. My first character, a halfling 4 fighter/6 ranger specialized in bows, was great fun up until I got to the end game stuff, when I figured out that without fighter "action point" powers to boost my hit, I could never do any kind of damage to most of the endgame mobs, who all had rediculously high armor class that was basically unhittable. That and the insane saving throws of the
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Consider a group of character-level 15s coming across your everyday 18CR demon. A level 15 wizard tossing around chain lightning and a level 15 fighter getting 6 attacks will wipe the floor with the demon.
A 7/8 fighter/wizard in this group will be doing less than half the damage per round, tossing around low powered (5d6?) fireballs, trying (poorly) to beat the demon's spell resist
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Wizards of the Coast has been trying to half kill the Forgotten realms for years now.
Such a shame too.
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Yeah, considering it is their best setting, I don't know wtf their problem is. Maybe they're still having to pay royalties on it or something.
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Wizards has abandoned the 3.X rules which comprise the core of DDO. All new material being published by Wizards is for the new 4.0 rules and -- consequently -- third-party publishers are likewise focusing on materials for the new version.
Also, while the Eberron setting is still suppor
Old idea, but a good one. (Score:5, Informative)
In Diablo 2 you could at least hire one (perhaps 2 my memory is hazy).
It made the earlier-middle parts in GuildWars soloable. It's something more mmos should have.
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GuildWars had this from the start.
In Diablo 2 you could at least hire one (perhaps 2 my memory is hazy).
yes, an old idea. But i have yet to see it implemented well. (the ad&d NPCs won't suck?).
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"yes, an old idea. But i have yet to see it implemented well."
The original Guild Wars henchmen were a nightmare, but over time they've become fairly smart. The new heroes are often more effective than real human players, and much more so than henchmen because you can tell them which skills to memorise and use.
The big problem is making them smart enough to be useful without making them so smart that no-one will join a pick-up group with a random selection of players of whose skill levels you know nothing.
Did
D2:LOTD, not original D2. (Score:2)
In the expansion only, Lord of Destruction [blizzard.com].
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Good point. I was thinking of henchmen that could follow everywhere and you could buy.
Henchmen (Score:1)
I always kept the archer from the first land. The only really useful one, imo.
As I usually played Sorceress I found the A2 mercs with their auras more helpful. In one of the very recent expansions they added many polearm runewords (a2 mercs use polearms) that give auras, including one with an easy to acquire very very handy mana regen aura.
The biggest problem was that it was very difficult keeping one alive when fighting bosses because Blizzard set it up so that they take something like 4x the damage from bosses. As a sorceress I can keep it alive by constantly teleporting it away
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Yep, not only does GW have this feature, but in City of Heroes you can group with a friend with a new character, make them a sidekick and then he is one level below you for the duration. This solves a lot of grouping issues because the people who are online are not usually at your level. So you invite them, sidekick/lackey them, and off you go. Once you ungroup he's back to his original level. No need for robots.
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Final Fantasy XI has "Adventuring Fellows". You have to quest to get one. The amount of time you get to keep it out is limited, and there are some other limitations. Also, it starts at level 30 and you have to level it up.
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Needs more capitalism. (Score:5, Interesting)
If you pay more money, you should be able to hire more hirelings.
Having done work in both AI and game physics, I have the suspicion that the first true AI entity will be an NPC. There's ongoing demand for smarter NPCs, they have a world with which they can interact, they're physical within that world, not abstract intelligences, and they compete. That's the space in which we can make progress.
Laugh now, but someday we'll be in charge - an NPC.
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If you pay more money, you should be able to hire more hirelings.
Having done work in both AI and game physics, I have the suspicion that the first true AI entity will be an NPC. There's ongoing demand for smarter NPCs, they have a world with which they can interact, they're physical within that world, not abstract intelligences, and they compete. That's the space in which we can make progress.
Laugh now, but someday we'll be in charge - an NPC.
Sadly, I don't have any mod points. However, they'd be redundent because you've already (deservedly) maxed out your 'Interesting' score on that post.... As it happens, ten minutes before I read that I had written, in a design document I'm drafting:
Bioware and CDPR both talk to some extent about 'Game AI', but in practice the characters in Aurora-based games have virtually no agency; they have tightly scripted behaviour. The appearance of agency is a consequence of tight scripting. I'm looking for an enviro
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Coming next: autoplay! (Score:4, Funny)
And now that you can enhance your party with hired npc's you shouldn't despair yet. For now the next development is almost done: making these npc's play fully on their own! And the next development to that will be the fully automated D&D RPG game!
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You should try Progress Quest [progressquest.com], the ultimate automated rpg. No more annoying time sinks. Just start it and watch your character gain in strength. Besides, where else can you play as an enchanted motorcycle!
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Am I the only one? (Score:4, Funny)
Saw the headline, and my first thought is, "They're hiring people to play every NPC? Awesome!"
Player run NPCs (Score:1)
That would be awesome. With as much money as they're making in most MMOs, why not?
Similar to the ARK program in Anarchy Online, you could train advanced players to run NPCs also. You can reward them with in-game perks worth a pittance.
The difficult part would be to give them enough leeway in the things they can say and quests they can give to keep both them and the players interesting. The nice thing is that a player run quest character could inspect the party that is asking for the quest and give them a
GW henchmen now improved with heroes (Score:4, Informative)
Others have pointed out that Guild Wars has had henchmen for hire from the start, but that idea gained an even more striking boost in the 3rd GW campaign, Nightfall [guildwars.com] --- Heroes.
In the original two campaigns (Profecies, and Factions), you had a choice of one or two henchmen (both male and female) per profession in the game, which at that time had 8 different professions (now 10). Most professions offered only one henchman for hire per town, but the important professions of monk (healer/protection) and warrier provided two henchmen in most places. So, for example, in a town with a maximum teamsize of 8 members which can be either live players or henchmen, you might build a team with 7 henchmen of various kinds plus yourself, or 7 real people plus a henchman to fill the empty slot, or any other combination.
However, those original henchmen had a fixed skill set and a standard AI behaviour which you could not alter, and you could not control their positions either. They simply followed the human team players around, and fought whatever you fought.
When Nightfall came out, the original henchmen remained available, but to them were added customizable Heroes which you earned by completion of special storyline quests. When you complete such a quest, the corresponding Hero is "unlocked", which means that it is available to you in every town or campaign in the game, forever more, and the level of customization is extremely impressive. (Each human player can add up to 3 Heroes to a team, and the mix of players, Heroes and henchmen can be anything you like.)
Not only can you set up the weapons and shields of each of each of your own Heroes, but you can also set up two properties on each of their 5 pieces of armor (insignias and runes, on each of head/chest/arms/legs/feet). Furthermore, while each Hero has a fixed primary profession, you can change the secondary profession of each one at will, and spread the Hero's available attribute points across any of the Hero's skill attributes. Typically you do this just before heading into a fight zone or dungeon, so that your Heroes are most effectively configured for the battle ahead.
In addition to the above, you can configure up each Hero's skills bar with 8 active skills (the same as human players get), chosen from among any of the skills that any of the characters on your account have acquired, in other words thousands of skills once you've played the game for a while. The combination of skill attribute points allocation and set of skills on the skills bar is called a build in GW parlance, and you can can configure such a build in just a couple of seconds, simply by loading a skill template that you stored away earlier, or which another player has given you.
And, the icing on the cake: each Hero recruited has a "control flag" button on the window decoration surrounding the mini-map/radar of its owner, and with a click of that button you can make the corresponding hero go to any spot on the map or terrain and remain there until the control button is unclicked. There is also a general team control flag which any henchmen in your team will obey, and this is also obeyed by your Heroes unless overridden by their individual flags.
Finally, the UI allows the behavioural AI of heroes to be varied a bit as well, by giving them individual attack targets, and also by setting their fight mode to Fight, Guard, or Avoid Combat. And, for the most part, they will each use their 8 chosen skills quite intelligently, often better than players. :-)
This level of customization and control is very powerful, and the balance between control and complexity is quite good. It sounds complex at first, but it takes only a few hours to become quite expert at using the control interface at high speed during the mayhem of battle. And, since the skills deployed by Heroes are ordinary player skills, the competence you acquire with skills on your own characters i
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As opposed to?
Actually... Nevermind.
Minions of Mirth: Heroes = Other Player Characters (Score:1)
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. :-)
And, for the most part, they will each use their 8 chosen skills quite intelligently, often better than players.
That says more about the players than the henchmen. Zenmai and Anton can't go 2 seconds without buggering up an attack chain. None of the monks can prot without so much micromanagement that you might as well be dualboxing, so they're only good as semi-useful healbots... Even on "guard", Koss' idea of target selection makes GWB look rational. None of them has any idea how to use a rez skill in a non-mentally-deficient fashion.
The biggest advantages to the H/H approach is Zho and the Ranger heroes. A nice part about being a computer is that you have reflexes like a mutant and there's no lag. Unfortunately, they also tend to be twitchy. Zho would Dshot a sneeze instead of waiting for the res signet.
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Since we're already way offtopic, mind sharing that build? Is it any good for PvE? (GvG and PvE builds often vary widely in effectiveness when used in the other)
Great Idea (Score:2)
This is a great idea, and one I hope to see them port to other MMOs as well. Even WOW with 11 million subscribers suffers that sometimes, some places you just cannot find a person online that wants to run a particular dungeon playing a particular role/class that you need. The fact that this can prevent you from advancing in the game is one of the most frustrating aspects of an MMORPG.
DDO and Hirelings (Score:2)
This is an interesting move by Turbine - I think it says that they do believe in DDO, and still want to attract new players to it. The early game stuff is definitely frustrating when you don't know how to group (it takes about 3 weeks to get the hang of grouping, IMO).