Population size

[Namutree]

I find that a lot of crpgs don't have enough people in their cities. I hope that in PoE the cities actually have a reasonable number of people per city. I think at least 300 npc's per city is reasonable. Does anyone know if PoE will satisfy my need for big cities?

Edited June 6, 2014 by Namutree

[Bryy]

I find that a lot of crpgs don't have enough people in their cities. I hope that in PoE the cities actually have a reasonable number of people per city. I think at least 300 npc's per city is reasonable. Does anyone know if PoE will satisfy my need for big cities?

300 NPCs is a lot of resources. 

 

For two cities, which PoE has, that would be 600. 

 

So either you get a lot of copy paste, or you don't get your peeps. I personally think Torment was a good number of people. 

[Namutree]

 

I find that a lot of crpgs don't have enough people in their cities. I hope that in PoE the cities actually have a reasonable number of people per city. I think at least 300 npc's per city is reasonable. Does anyone know if PoE will satisfy my need for big cities?

300 NPCs is a lot of resources. 

 

For two cities, which PoE has, that would be 600. 

 

So either you get a lot of copy paste, or you don't get your peeps. I personally think Torment was a good number of people. 

 

Never played torment enough to know how many that is. Also, as long as they had an effiective way to create npc's; I don't think 600 is unreasonable.

[Messier-31]

Don't assume that every inhabitant will be roaming the streets so you can see them. Some of the populace will be hanging inside the buildings, some will be conveniently in other areas than you at the moment, some will reside in areas that are inaccessible for you ingame (like districts of Athkatla not showing all of its places, opposite to BG which covered entirety of the city).

[Namutree]

Don't assume that every inhabitant will be roaming the streets so you can see them. Some of the populace will be hanging inside the buildings, some will be conveniently in other areas than you at the moment, some will reside in areas that are inaccessible for you ingame (like districts of Athkatla not showing all of its places, opposite to BG which covered entirety of the city).

I was fine with Athkatla and how it didn't cover the entire city. It was Nashkel and it's roughly 20 (Half were guards) npcs that made me upset. Nashkel and Beregost were WAY too small/empty. I could have sworn the bandits outnumbered the general populace.

[JFSOCC]

in 2014 surely a lot of extras should be possible to make the place feel alive.

[Jarmo]

After seeing some fan made NWN modules with a lot of people in cities, all of them named, all having something little to say.

I have changed my opinion and hope there's not an endless variety. Preferably some solution where only the important people

are named, the rest being "townsmen", "townswoman" and "traveler" and whatever.

 

I've grown too old and impatient to appreciate the rewarding exploration, where you talk to everybody without reason, barge in their homes and ask if they happen to have rats in the basement or whatever. Especially if it's a city of ten thousand inhabitants.

[PrimeJunta]

Having crowds of people wonder around for flavor is nice. Having them speak generic greetings or background chatter is nicer. Having all of them be discrete individuals with hand-written dialog is a silly waste of resources.

 

I.e. if it was me, I might add procedurally-generated crowds where appropriate. Mix and match heads, hairdos, and attire, give them random lines of chatter, and a generic label so you don't confuse them with characters who matter. Just not so dense crowds that it makes getting from place to place a chore.

[Bartimaeus]

How hard would it be, I wonder, to have NPCs with relatively small collision - but still some - that are constantly moving and milling about that you can't click on/interact with. There's no way cities would actually work as envisioned in Baldur's Gate (2), but you can't have the streets completely unnavigable and impossible to sort through for actually useful NPCs, too.

[Sabotin]

I think you can fake a lot of city life with just sound. I mean who doesn't remember BG's taverns or the unintelligible shouting noises of Athkatla. I didn't even realize there's this many.

[Sad Panda]

How hard would it be, I wonder, to have NPCs with relatively small collision - but still some - that are constantly moving and milling about that you can't click on/interact with. There's no way cities would actually work as envisioned in Baldur's Gate (2), but you can't have the streets completely unnavigable and impossible to sort through for actually useful NPCs, too.

I think this is something that's easier to accomplish in (non-sandbox) 3D, since you can more easily imply that you're ever only seeing small portion of the city, the rest of which can be seen stretching far into the landscape -- Mass Effect did this very well, especially in the Citadel, where there was always tons of bustle in the background. Of course, same can be accomplished in 2D, but it kind of doesn't have the same impact when you're just told it's a vast, busy city without being able to actually see it.

 

Anyways, despite the need to then resolve the question, "Why can't I go anywhere I like?", limiting the player to just some portions of the city is still IMO the best way to create a sense of scale. This is what IE games generally did, anyhow, whether this was made explicitly clear or not. If you look the combined ingame areas of Baldur's Gate and take it to represent the whole of the city, it wouldn't be a city so much as keep, with generously only some hundreds of residents. In contrast, the lore places the population count at 42,000, which is obviously a bit more than what you see ingame. As long as there's enough NPCs to make the portion of the city I'm in not seem abandoned, I'm happy.

Edited June 6, 2014 by Sad Panda

[Namutree]

Having crowds of people wonder around for flavor is nice. Having them speak generic greetings or background chatter is nicer. Having all of them be discrete individuals with hand-written dialog is a silly waste of resources.

 

I.e. if it was me, I might add procedurally-generated crowds where appropriate. Mix and match heads, hairdos, and attire, give them random lines of chatter, and a generic label so you don't confuse them with characters who matter. Just not so dense crowds that it makes getting from place to place a chore.

That would be perfect.

[rjshae]

I don't think they need to put a mob everywhere, but one city area with a large ambient crowd would be a nice touch. Like a market place.

[Nonek]

Two stand out for me, Britain from Ultima VII and Vizima from the first Witcher. Obviously npc routines help, along with reactions to the weather and protagonist, I especially liked how the common folk would run for cover when it rained, or Geralt would push them out of his way. A lovely addition in the Witcher 2 was Geralt drawing his sword in Flotsam, at which point everybody would be alarmed and back away in panic.

 

I agree that this is an important feature, if cities are just empty grey and boring background paintings, like say Kirkwall from Dragon Age 2, then they are robbed of all vibrancy and interest. The worst feature is of course when one can walk through the npc's, as if they were ghosts, really a cheap and nasty trick that nobody should settle for.

 

Sigil and then Athkatla are less ambitious, but satisfactory, for me.

Edited June 6, 2014 by Nonek

[Walsingham]

I find that a lot of crpgs don't have enough people in their cities. I hope that in PoE the cities actually have a reasonable number of people per city. I think at least 300 npc's per city is reasonable. Does anyone know if PoE will satisfy my need for big cities?

 

While I entirely agree with you, it's a bit bloody late in the day to be trying to add requirements.

[Silent Winter]

TBH it never actually bothered me in any of the IE games.

Sure, Athkatla was done better, but even BG was ok.  I didn't stop to think about it while playing the game - just assumed there was a certain level of abstraction going on.  The visible NPCs represent the rest.

There would come a point that hundreds of NPCs in a small area would get annoying rather than immersive.

Ambient sounds does it for me.

[Sedrefilos]

I'd say... 150000 npcs at least per big city. It'll be more realistic this way.

[Kjaamor]

I'd say... 150000 npcs at least per big city. It'll be more realistic this way.

 

At least. Also they need to be named and have individual dialogue. I hate having to track down one person amongst 20 for a quest when clearly it should be 1 person amongst several hundred thousand. Also, cities and maps aren't big enough generally. It should take me several weeks in real life to cross from one side of the map to the other, otherwise it's just unrealistic.

 

I'm sure the op wasn't suggesting that (or at least I hope not), but there seems to be a tendancy for people to forget that games represent things in a certain way and you have to expect certain things to be off-camera. In the npc and housing example, it helps to keep things low to avoid forcing the player to engage in dull and repetitive actions. One of the things BG did well, that in my opinion the 3D Fallouts did very poorly, was keep a sensible amount of houses in the city so that an explorer could check every single one of them and loot them for gold and quests - but the rewards for doing so were very small. Looting every house that you weren't sent to as part of a quest probably amount, at best, to a couple of hundred gold in BG. There was a reward but it didn't make the game substantially easier than if you just went to the inns and quest-driven properties. In Fallout 3, if you didn't search every cursed container in every identikit subway, you ran out of ammo. Bureaucratic gameplay is not a good thing - unless you're "Papers, Please."

[Nonek]

Three hundred to me sounds like quite a reasonable number spread over all of the cities content, with patrolling guards, shopkeepers, passers by, quest givers and such. The lack of voice acting helps as well, so we can more easily implement broad and diverse text responses, something that for instance Torment does very well.

[teknoman2]

gothic did it right. you walked around and saw npc work the fields, stand and chat, tend to their shops, sit and drink in the bar and so on. it made the place feel alive. of course with most you could not talk, and only the important ones were named so you did not waste time to talk to all to find who is relevant

[Orange Death]

"In Fallout 3, if you didn't search every cursed container in every identikit subway, you ran out of ammo."

 

​That was the point, it was post apocalyptic. I personally thought they did a good job with Fallout 3. 

[Kjaamor]

"In Fallout 3, if you didn't search every cursed container in every identikit subway, you ran out of ammo."

 

​That was the point, it was post apocalyptic. I personally thought they did a good job with Fallout 3. 

 

Oh, it was in keeping with the theme, all right. No debate there. I question, however, whether manually routing around through containers of crap was a good game mechanic, since it is based not on skill, tactics or any form of strategy but rather just on repetitive mundane actions.

 

Naturally, in the mmo age, the plaudits piled up.

[Namutree]

 

"In Fallout 3, if you didn't search every cursed container in every identikit subway, you ran out of ammo."

 

​That was the point, it was post apocalyptic. I personally thought they did a good job with Fallout 3. 

 

Oh, it was in keeping with the theme, all right. No debate there. I question, however, whether manually routing around through containers of crap was a good game mechanic, since it is based not on skill, tactics or any form of strategy but rather just on repetitive mundane actions.

 

Naturally, in the mmo age, the plaudits piled up.

 

I would say it was a good game mechanic considering the theme of the gameplay. They wanted the player to feel desperate and convey a sense of struggle to be overcome with work. This appeals to mans desire to feel competent, in a survivor man kind of way. If having ammo didn't require tedious work; the player would feel too powerful, like they didn't earn their resources.

[anameforobsidian]

 

"In Fallout 3, if you didn't search every cursed container in every identikit subway, you ran out of ammo."

 

​That was the point, it was post apocalyptic. I personally thought they did a good job with Fallout 3. 

 

Oh, it was in keeping with the theme, all right. No debate there. I question, however, whether manually routing around through containers of crap was a good game mechanic, since it is based not on skill, tactics or any form of strategy but rather just on repetitive mundane actions.

 

Naturally, in the mmo age, the plaudits piled up.

 

 

That's not quite true that it wasn't based on tactics.  You did have the choice to pick perks that made searching more fruitful at the expense of other perks.  I was not a huge fan of Fallout 3, but found it an adequate dungeon crawler.

[Sad Panda]

That's not quite true that it wasn't based on tactics.  You did have the choice to pick perks that made searching more fruitful at the expense of other perks.  I was not a huge fan of Fallout 3, but found it an adequate dungeon crawler.

QFT.

 

Scrounger made keeping in stock an afterthought at the cost of a single perk (and LK of at least 5). In general I found that ammo consevation was really an issue for automatic weapons (and to a smaller degree pistols, due to having such low accuracy). If you rolled with rifles or energy weapons, you'd rarely need to use more than a handful of shots per enemy, though this too was to a degree a character progression choice: You had to invest in the skills and accuracy-boosting perks to really get the benefits of single-shot weapons.

Edited June 9, 2014 by Sad Panda