I agree with the OP. This is not a living world. In fact, it was funny when I was standing there looking through my controls. This npc kept saying the same thing to another npc over and over and over and over. I bet if I go back there, those npc’s will still be there and the same thing will still be said. Those NPC are there 24/7 never sleeping or eating. Just hanging out repeating the same dialog over and over.
I know AI is limited but to be honest, despite developers talking about new break throughs in AI with their games, I haven’t noticed a difference in AI in over a decade.
When I first read about the game, I was under the impression we can choose sides in a situation. If a bunch of bandits were attacking a town, we could help defend the town or we could help the bandits take the town. Instead we are forced to play the “good guy” in every situation.
Also there is no consequence. Our actions have no real impact. So the bandits attack the town and now you are either successful at defending or you fail. If you fail, the bandits take over the town. You can then later fight to take it back. If you are successful at defending it, the bandits will later try again. These events are nothing more than a tug-o-war and are not very elaborate nor deep.
I think what is really holding developers back is that they feel that there is this need for every person to be able to experience the exact same content. As long as they feel that they have to do this, then they can never ever create a game world that actually advances through time.
Eg. You clear a cave out of baby spiders, and finish by killing their mother (boss) deep inside. The spiders shouldn’t spawn again. The cave is now empty. Only after some time, that cave may become a haven for some bandits or a cave troll might make it a new home. That cave troll could then be a champion boss. Players come by and kill this troll, and the cave is now empty again. In a couple hours that cave may then become a den for a pack of wolves.
Part of a world that actually changes and advances is the concept of “right place, right time” and in this game, that simply doesn’t exist because if you are late for an event, all you have to do is wait and the event will happen again.
Rather than having a story line that each person can experience individually, they should just make the open world itself the story line. A story line that advances regardless if you are logged in or not. That doesn’t mean that everybody has to be all at one place at one time to experience the “story line” because the “story line” isn’t between a handful of characters at a specific location and time. The “story line” is the world itself in its entirety.
Since AI is too limited to do this in an automated manner, this is where the developers stop being game designers and start the role of a “puppet master” where the npcs of the game are the puppets and the game world is the stage. Events happen all over, are forecast so people can plan where they want to be. People will have to make choices as events would happen at overlapping times and/or multiple events would happen at the same time all at different location. Events are developed and run once, with an actual change depending on the outcome. If you miss a particular event, oh well. You’ll just have to make sure you don’t miss the next one that interests you because the one you missed is now part of the past and won’t be replayed again.
NPCs would then only need to be given a daily routine to follow when not following an event script. The game has a day/night cycle. NPCs should have a 24 hour automated cycle of sleeping, working, eating, partaking in local gossip which should cover recent events as common topics so as events come and go, what these people talk about changes.
Much of that automated AI has been done by Bethesda.
Let’s take a look at those heart quests. You clean up a pond, set traps, revive fishermen and kill off hostile creatures. Every player will do that exact thing for the same NPC as everyone else. It doesn’t stay cleaned up. The fishermen don’t stay revived unless you constantly fight off a respawning creatures. Those creatures don’t stay dead.
Action without consequence. A world that is really frozen in time.
) why would you EVER GO BACK ? New Vistas/Hearts and Map Completion rewards might make you want to go back ^^
