NPC/Faction/Reputation Overhaul

[Kurien]

To the developer If you are reading this, please focus on the immersion aspects. The concept behind this game is great and fresh, it would be a pity if it turned into some cookie cutter rpg grind fest.

The only way to prevent this would be to enhance immersion aspects such as:

More Interactive possibilities with npc's and greater variety of npc's,

Choosing to pickup an empire soldier who's wounded from battle and delivering him to his faction cities barracks will net you a reward: either monetary, a relationship bonus, possible recruitment of npc, or maybe an item?

Bribe shop guards to "leave" their post, so you can attack shop vendors or bribe bandits to attack a caravan for you, all forms of the bribery concept.

NPCs might request your assistance in a battle/raid, or ask you to help deliver some supplies with non monetary rewards, eg. heavy discount in future purchases for the next 30 days or reward you with an item(s)

If your party loses and you're knocked unconscious, you will lose all party members and depending on the faction you might be "picked up" then locked in jail, lose all items and/or forced to work in a mine/farm with people guarding you to prevent you from escaping. (You have to find an opporunity to escape)

If you leave a battle and abandon unconscious party members, they might be either killed (cannibals) or captured (non bandit humans) and subsequently lost from your enlsitment.

A greater variety of NPCs
-gamblers
-drunks
-beggars
-farmers
-assassins
-Town leaders/mayors

Dynamic NPC dialogue:

-possibly unprompted by the player
-mention of the character's name
-variations of dialogue content style and text eg. a bandit talks to you differently compared to a holy paladin,
-having a random number generator create dialogue in regards to an event, eg.
1-"how are you today" "insert character name" ?
2-"are you well" "insert character name" ?
3-"insert character name" "are you well today?"
-chance of dialogue between player party members after a battle
-if a character is low on blood/chest/stomache/head hit points he may exclaim a random expression, this is dire..., it cannot end like this.., I will see you in hell.. et cetera
-healing a downed character or someone on very low hp may initiate a response, thanks.. for a moment there I thought I was a goner, much appreciated, it still hurts.. but I can stand.
-crippling/severing a limb may initiate dialogue, My leg!!?, fuck where's my arm.. my arm?

NPC's Fight differently/morale:

-Sand ninjas might attack and run or attempt to surround you
-if a group of lesser enemies, ie hungry bandits attack you and you kill their leader/50% of the group the remainder might drop their weapons and run for it, or fight extremely defensively with a great deduction to their attack skill
-empire troops will try to gang up on characters, 3 vs 1 situations
-leader units may exclaim something along the lines of " I will lead the charge !" then attack the enemy leader troop or your main character
-Elite units like Holy paladins will never flee and may instead gain a bonus to attack when you kill their allies.
-Assassins will only engage in combat with you for a short period of time, if they can't defeat you or they're losing they will attempt to run. Assassins also have very high athletic skill.

Rehauling the faction system

if your relationship with a faction is extremely low they may send "bounty hunters" after you who're very skilled and attack differently to other NPCs:
-might pop out of no where when you're injured or sleeping in a bed
-camouflage himself as a normal npc then land a sneak attack when you're unaware
-when ranged weapons are introduced; snipe you from long range when you are engaged in a battle with another group)
-Interactive possibilities to persuade the bounty hunter with either items or gold if you discover him before he attacks

The faction ( if strong enough and dependant on it's nature ) may also send war parties after you if a single/group of bounty hunters isn't enough.

on the other end of the scale, if your relationship with a certain faction is very good:

-you may gain access to faction stores/equipment
-gain discounts in stores
-unlock faction related "unique" technologies
-establish trade agreements with a faction
-alliances?

Reputation System:

-Titles
-Integrity reputation, a different system to the normal good bad relations with factions. It will depend on your actions, do you attack civilians? Break trade agreements? raid trading parties? How often do you heal people enemy or not? etc
-NPCs will treat you differently depending on your Integrity

Combat:

Introducing a variety of combat animations based on your skill/attribute levels (kind of silly that a novice uses the same moves as an adept)

If possible I would suggest that maybe you could get someone who's very talented at writing to assist you with dialogue and story telling. People often forget that a well written game is core to it's immersive aspect and makes it long lasting.

[PnzrNorm]

I have to +1 each and every idea here. All of them are really great suggestions, but they will take time to implement.

[Kurien]

Hopefully Chris will have the chance to read this. When it comes to true gameplay immersion and enjoyable mechanisms, there are just so many; I could go on for ages. The ones that I listed are really the realistically possible features, they don't require a team of programmers or voice actors .

I'm personally a mount and blade/warband veteran (played native + all the major mods, brytenwalda, PoP, The last days etc) and from my experience with that game and it's mods, I would have to summise, while combat is decent and the world is large, the game itself lacked that extra step.

-The world was largely empty
-The npcs were forgettable and static
-The items really didn't have much going for them, basically all the same concept just different values
-Total lack of goals. Open world is great, but that doesn't mean there are no short term goals, and none of your actions in anyway is reflected on the world itself.

So as many players of rpg's have hoped for in the past, what we really want is a game that feels real. Our actions "will" have an impact on the world, great or small, like a real world the inhabitants will do and say thing's non cookie cutter ( "hail traveler and well met, perhaps you may assist me in this perilous quest to obtain this item of infinite similarity" god, lines like that are in every current rpg) and the possible actions and variations should be quirky, fun and overall harsh ( kenshi is not based on disneyland, we're in the middle of the desert >_> ).

The game itself does not need to have AAA graphics and voice acted by troy baker (google him if you want to know) to be enjoyable. Simple mechanics, which require a bit more coding and ingenuity far outshines enhanced graphics and sound. Sadly this is something that most game developers do not strive towards as the market is saturated, hopefully Chris will make a game that satisfies the creative gap for the past 10-12 years.

[Bancheis]

I have to say, I am impressed at the extensive list you have compiled. I am also a M&B veteran with multiple mods as well as vanilla. I agree with you on every single point here.

The only thing I would like to add to the list is being able to recruit members from another faction into your own. This could fall under the mention of bribery. The ability to bribe someone to leave their faction and join yours, at the expense of upsetting their faction - and money of course. How awesome would it be to have a squad of sand ninja jounin? While I am sure this could be rather overpowered in later stages of the game getting already trained soldiers, perhaps there could be some sort of limiting factor. For example, they would be NPCs still that follow a squad leader and stick to their scripts. You could not modify their equipment or control them directly, but maybe assign them to roles such as combat medic, fighter, tank (saw a taunt option in the GUI, figured it was for this).

Anyway to put it simply, yes. Agreed 100% with everything from both posts