[Rob Smith]

What do you mean, like make a quest that wouldn't involve NPCs at all, or a quest that allows for the related NPCs to die?

Having the same quest being given by more than one NPC, each with his own agenda, having a second in command step up if his superior dies, etc. And yes, you should be able to fail a quest.

[Beast Attire]

It's almost like "railroading," when you play D&D or something and the dungeon master comes up with all these convenient events to force the players to continue a quest if they screwed it up.

That's different though...
cRPGs' will (if good), be played again and again, and have lots in reserve... but a DM's scenario is something that will likely be played only once (or twice?) by the same group, and is something that likely took them several hours to construct... So they want to ease the players along the preferred path and to encounter most [if not all] of the planned events (while hopefully not making it too obvious that that's what they are doing ~but that depends on the DM & the players).

*Its true that cRPG makers might well have but one play through also... but I agree that its a bad idea to design an RPG where the player will be pulled along by the nose through every set piece.

[Naomi Lastname]

It's almost like "railroading," when you play D&D or something and the dungeon master comes up with all these convenient events to force the players to continue a quest if they screwed it up.

Yeah, that's the age-old roleplaying problem - how do you get your players to go into the haunted house when they decide to walk right past it?

It's a less obvious problem in a videogame (because if you want to keep playing long enough, you're going to go there eventually...) But I still think it's probably a concern. Just like a good GM will get their players into that house without making it feel forced, the ideal game designer should be able to get you through the Main Quest, at least, regardless of who dies maybe? (I had this one GM who was so good at "winging it," that he'd come up with a completely new adventure on the fly if we decided to bypass the pre-planned story entrances - and then do it in such a way that we still ended up where he wanted us to be in time for the next session, without us really realizing it. That's obviously impossible in a videogame, but you could probably get some of that feeling with alternate routes to a Quest, etc.)

Another thought, though - for the most part I'm not a big fan of NPCs dying due to random events. Like the time I travelled past Arefu mid-way through the game and by the time I even realized they were under attack by a group of radscorpions, they'd already slaughtered half the town. If I murder someone, that's one thing. Or if they die while I'm escorting them somewhere, etc. But in that Arefu example, I was just walking by that place - I wasn't even intending to go up there; but simply happened to be passing through that cell. If I hadn't heard some gunshots in the distance I wouldn't have even known it was going on in the first place - they would have all died and I'd never have been any the wiser until Lucy West started talking bad about me even though I'd finished that quest the "good" way. For something like that - if there's even a possibility that they're going to die, then that eventuality needs to be accomodated. (I consider everyone treating me like I'm evil whenever the Arefu quest comes up in conversation or over Three Dog's radio, even though I did the exact opposite, to be a bug...)

On the other hand, if I go around slaughtering quest-givers - there probably should be some consequence to that. If I end up killing someone that was tied to the Main Quest - well, too bad. That was the player's decision, then. If I make a mistake in combat and end up dying - I have to reload. If I make a horrible mistake like killing someone that I'd need for the MQ, then I figure that's the sme. I might be biased, though - I grew up playing games where it was possible to completely mess things up like that. Like those old Adventure games where if you forgot to pick up that one important object at the beginning of the game that you need to complete a puzzle later on, you were just going to have to reload. (That's an outmoded game design, but I think if you're killing NPCs, I wouldn't have a problem with that being a consequence...)

[Dean]

I wouldn't mind it if Quest Items could be dropped [perhaps with reason to] ~but always with a warning, and some NPCf Dialog later on along the lines of, "What do you mean you dropped it!??", or other appropriate response.

In Myst you could all but finished the game, and then teleport to the end world, and not have brought the one item you were positively told must come with you in order to ever leave again... When Atrius (the man expecting you), asks for it, and you don't have it... he gets the most livid/annoyed expression (yet totally non threatening )... He tells you you're an idiot with his gaze, then says something like, "Welcome to D'Ni, where you will live for the rest of your life".

[Nicole Elocin]

I wouldn't mind it if Quest Items could be dropped

Or, at least some of them, sold to merchants.

[Lakyn Ellery]

The fact is Morrowind allowed you to kill anybody and everybody, and the game is not hard at all to complete. Hard to complete every single quest with one character? Yes... actually impossible... but is that a bad thing?

It's a fundemental gameplay philosophy of risk, freedom and complexity, versus the philosophy of Oblivion and Fallout 3, which is on simplicity and ease of completion, in regards to quests anyway.

If you're role-playing a good character who wants to save the world, you wouldn't go around killing random people anyway. If you are role-playing a chaotic evil character and killing random people, you probably aren't interested in the main heroic quest. It rewards multiple playhtoughs and adds depth to character choices... I wish Bethesda would go back to this style.

I agree accidental death can be a bummer... I assume, more than "dumbing down", the main cause of essential NPCs was the radiant AI and giving NPCs schedules and pathways and such. Still, as Gizmo said, they should be able to work something out where only the PC can kill certain NPCs, or an NPC only being vulnerable when within the actual cell the player is in.

[CHARLODDE]

It's almost like "railroading," when you play D&D or something and the dungeon master comes up with all these convenient events to force the players to continue a quest if they screwed it up.

I never role-played with D&D. I always used GURPS which is the same system that some of the Fallout creators used to play with. This is what made me interested in Fallout. GURPS incentives players to find imaginative solutions for quests and to make every skill important to play and not just a backup skill for combat.

Obviously giving the player the chance to role-play his failures is essential. Modern crpg designers see this as a problem and try to hand-hold the player too much, when this is actually one of the best reasons for playing a crpg. Probably the most important reason besides being able to build your own character with all kinds of different skills.

This shouldn't create a problem to play the game or finish the main quest. There should be other quests for the character build the player is using can do, that will let him gain experience and reach his objectives. The problem is when progress in the game has to go through a single node, which requires a specific character build to go through.

[Add Me]

There's always a way to make quests that don't involve keeping an npc alive. It's called creativity and it always works.

Maybe so, but it seems to me that the base activity of RPGs is the interaction between the PC and NPCs. NPCs tend to give quests, and onten, it's the same NPC who eventually pays you.

[Rozlyn Robinson]

Yes, but if you want to get paid, you better be smart enough not to kill the NPC in question. The game doesn't need to prevent you from ever failing any quest.

[Katie Samuel]

Yes, but if you want to get paid, you better be smart enough not to kill the NPC in question. The game doesn't need to prevent you from ever failing any quest.

It does these days, with the crowd we have.

[m Gardner]

It does these days, with the crowd we have.

Or it thinks it does.

Seriously, how do we know that the bulk of the audience would hate this kind of depth? I think developers and publishers assume this stuff, more than anything. If Oblivion was just like Morrowind except the for the real-time combat, I bet it would have been almost as successful, or even as successful, as it was.

And again, I think essential NPCs has more to do with the roaming NPCs than it does dumbing the game down or making quests impossible to fail.

[Latino HeaT]

And again, I think essential NPCs has more to do with the roaming NPCs than it does dumbing the game down or making quests impossible to fail.

This could be fixed by simply making some NPCs killable only by the PC.

[Sakura Haruno]

Or it thinks it does.

Seriously, how do we know that the bulk of the audience would hate this kind of depth? I think developers and publishers assume this stuff, more than anything. If Oblivion was just like Morrowind except the for the real-time combat, I bet it would have been almost as successful, or even as successful, as it was.

And again, I think essential NPCs has more to do with the roaming NPCs than it does dumbing the game down or making quests impossible to fail.

Oh, probably, they'd enjoy the depth but as you say they assume it - and I doubt their perception is going to change anytime soon. It should be easy to have more than one way to do the MQ and you could always allow for key NPCs dying (or not, better to punish people for killing a key figure heh).

[sexy zara]

This could be fixed by simply making some NPCs killable only by the PC.

I'm not a programmer but I agree that sounds like an easy fix... my point was more about the cause of the original decision being technical, rather than philosophical.

[Sharra Llenos]

You might want to be careful about who you murder.

Umm ... did you read my post? The point is that I didn't kill any of them. They just happened to bump into something stronger than themselves in the course of their travels. My role in their death was limited to discovery of their corpse.

Backup quest-givers/variation from one playthrough to another are acceptable work-arounds ... to a degree. I can agree that every quest doesn't need to be available every playthrough. Major questlines, however, do. And the amount of dev time I'd like to see devoted to designing back-up quest-givers (as opposed to new quests) is severely limited.

@Gizmo: killable only by the PC would work for me personally, although as someone whose characters don't kill NPCs who don't attack first, I don't see any real personal benefit. My guess is that a fair number of folks would be unaffected, a fair number would experience extreme frustration, and a minority would find that it enhanced their game experience.

[Emma Pennington]

The killable Essantial NPC's sound good to me. Shooting a Fatman at someone rendering them *unconsious* is an annoyance.

I'm pretty unbiased about wether it should be open world or world map traveling. I just don't have a problem with it.
Perhaps they could just make a few grids the size of the FO3 and connect. In FO3 if you get to the edge, you get a message that you can't go there. Instead of the message you could get a loading screen transferring you to the next grid. It vastly increases the wasteland and since you get a load screen everytime you enter a building, this one probably won't bother much people. More realistic timescaling would be appreciated, this can be achieved by scaling the wasteland a little less but has as a result that the wasteland is gonna grow pretty big. However this enlarged wasteland makes walking to another settlement a little bit tedious (and perhaps boring. I would love it, but hey, that's just me) wich can be solved with a world map a la Fallout 1 and 2. I don't know the scaling in FO3 compared to the actual RL distance but lets say it's 1:2 make it 1:1.50. It effectively doubles the distance, creating at least some more depth in gameplay.

What I also would love to see in the game is that they stick to the 3d environment as depicted in FO3. I couldn't care less if they got rid of the FPP and made it TPP (probably better, allows more possibility)

Also the usual: Reboot the SPECIAL system, make some better use of stats (for instance, low Small Guns haves you flail with your arm like a [censored], reducing accuracy by far, and have it improve to a steady and 95% hit over time. )
better dialog and have character models show more emotion.

[Gen Daley]

I honestly hope for some Leader boards, like it would say how many people I killed how many mutants I killed. and maybe other then getting xp in the game the xp will also count towards our leader board postion and give us a different title for gaining a rank on the Leader Board. So 1 million XP would give you the Rank of Wasteland Annihalator, and having 1 xp would give you Noob of the Wastland. Not asking for online multiplayer but a way to see if your friend actually does have 500,000 caps or if he is lying, it would mainly be for fun though.

[christelle047]

Umm ... did you read my post? The point is that I didn't kill any of them. They just happened to bump into something stronger than themselves in the course of their travels. My role in their death was limited to discovery of their corpse.

Backup quest-givers/variation from one playthrough to another are acceptable work-arounds ... to a degree. I can agree that every quest doesn't need to be available every playthrough. Major questlines, however, do. And the amount of dev time I'd like to see devoted to designing back-up quest-givers (as opposed to new quests) is severely limited.

I read your post. NPC fall over the rail? Too bad, man. Do you want a world that feels real, or do you ant an easy game?

[Saul C]

I read your post. NPC fall over the rail? Too bad, man. Do you want a world that feels real, or do you ant an easy game?

Having NPC's die at random when not seen by the PC, nor engineered by PC action ~adds nothing to the game but frustration. It is not the point of any RPG to simulate the world outside of the experience of the player. These games are not weather sims, and exist solely to hold the player's interest. While I'm all for pseudo-sentient NPC's that adventure, loot, and or kill & defend, these events should only add spice and minor changes to the gameworld, and never affect major quests and opportunities.

[Chad Holloway]

I read your post. NPC fall over the rail? Too bad, man. Do you want a world that feels real, or do you ant an easy game?

The NPCs in Fallout 3 fall over the rail due to bad programming. That has nothing to do with "realism," and it's not as if Bethesda has even spared a though for realism during the design of any of their games. You speak as though random NPC deaths are part of some grand plan of Bethesda's to make Fallout 3 feel real and gritty, when in reality it's just bad game design.

I'm not only talking about NPCs randomly falling over railings or plunging into scenery items, either. Those NPCs who are intentionally exposed to danger (caravans, for example) have no chance to survive once level-scaled enemies start appearing. Is it "realistic" that tough enemies magically start appearing everywhere when you've reached X number of character levels? Is it "realistic" that the wasteland travelers don't get better weapons, armor and stats, even though the wild enemies all magically get stronger? Is it "realistic" that all the wasteland travelers simultaneously die off in the span of one month late in the game due to level-scaled enemies?

Also, Fallout 3 already is an easy game. Sorry to break the news to you, but its predecessors were all far more challenging in pretty much every way. The fact that NPCs die off for no good reason (thus breaking quests and ruining content senselessly) is annoying and frustrating, not "realistic."

If the NPCs who died were just random individuals or groups (as they were in Fallout and Fallout 2, slavers fighting farmers in a random encounter being one example), that would be fine. But they are often necessary for side-quests or other activities you might not even know you're missing out on until it's too late, caravan investments being an example (a stupid investment, since level-scaled enemies will ultimately slaughter them all).

[Cameron Garrod]

I've rarely had a caravan die, even with my level 30 character. Maybe that's me though...

In any case, there is a friction here between Elder Scrolls gameplay and Fallout gameplay... what is typically good for the former is not always good for the latter. In the case of dying NPCs, I think it makes a lot of sense in Fallout's world... it's a harsh place, and traders travelling the wasteland probably do die a lot. I'm fine with finding Crazy Wolfgang dead and saying "man, that svcks"... makes the world feel alive. Same thing with companions, when they die I don't reload, I try to feel the loss as my character would (Star Paladin Cross dies sooooo easily).

In the case of Elder Scrolls though, it makes little sense that traveling from one town to another in Tamriel would be so life threatening. The roads in Oblivion should be mostly clear of enemies, and I believe OOO makes this happen. Finding traders and travelers dead in Oblivion feels kind of off... why would the Countess of Leyawiin be traveling with only one guard through Minotaur inhabited territory? If it was that dangerous, shouldn't she have taken more protection, or not gone at all?

Anyway, all of that said, little of it has to do with gameplay.

I like seeing NPCs die... it should happen in both games... but Bethesda should read the suggestions here and elsewhere and attempt to make it feel less like a thing that happens due to stupid AI and more like something that happens because the world is a harsh place.

[Rachel Hall]

I've rarely had a caravan die, even with my level 30 character. Maybe that's me though...

Seriously? I find that really hard to believe considering I've had 3 out of 4 of them die by level 14 with a character who didn't initiate the main quest...but at the same time, I know it's possible given the wonky programming...are you sure you aren't using a mod that unknowingly fixes the caravans or makes them unkillable?

Anyways...I agree that Beth should reconsider some of these issues...I personally don't want the game world changing too much if I'm not there to witness it unless it makes sense from a narrative standpoint...I know this isn't realistic, but I don't play games for realism...I play to be engaged in a story...usually a story that my character is at the center of

[sas]

I don't think I've ever had a caravan die on me, either. Then again, I don't usually pay much attention to them - just whenever they show up outside of Megaton or Rivet City or something. It's possible that some of them have died and I just hadn't noticed.

I think I'd be totally fine with all the NPCs being killable. It is a harsh Wasteland, after all. I guess the real trouble with something like that, though, is keeping everything balanced and making sure nothing breaks if someone important dies. Like the Arefu "bug" that I ran into. I don't have a problem with the fact that I just happened to be crossing briefly through the Arefu cell and a few of their residents ended up getting slaughtered by some radscorpions before I even knew anything was happening (wasn't even intending to go there at the time - it was the sound of combat that drew me over there.)

But now that they're dead, the game assumes that I finished that mission the "evil" way, even though I'd actually done the exact opposite; and all the death there had absolutely nothing to do with me. Personally, I think that's just an unforeseen consequence of the way the mission objectives were programmed. But now Lucy West won't even talk to me...

My thing with killable NPCs is that if they're going to randomly die like this, I'd want to make sure it didn't frak something else up. (Not to mention that people just randomly dying from essentially random chance - while nice as a simulation element - is kind of pointless.) The thing is, an NPC can just happen to have loaded into the same cell as me. They can get killed without me even knowing they were there in the first place. Stuff like that I sort of have a problem with.

If NPCs are going to die, I'd like to at least know about it when it's going on. Especially if they're tied to a quest or something. Me going on a killing spree and getting locked out of some quests because of my own actions is one thing. But at the same time, I don't want the responsibility of baby-sitting every NPC in the game, making sure they're not killed by a random spawn. I think that's putting too much in the players' hands.

[Harry Hearing]

I have no problem with NPCs being killable (I think they all should, like Morrowind), I just don't think it's a good idea to punish the player for weird design decisions...I know some might consider that harsh, but it really svcks that certain PCs can't repair their stuff fully if those caravans get killed off, or like in your example, the PC is blamed for an outcome they didn't do (I realize it is probably a bug, but it's the decision to allow stuff like that to happen that allowed it to occur...that whole quest is messed up and doesn't make any sense on a karmic sense...at least the designer's idea of karma)

And don't get me wrong...in a lot of ways, it's cool that you can stumble upon interesting encounters like this, but I feel like this is one of those instances where realism needs to be balanced with playability...like you say: the PC shouldn't have to babysit all the NPCs in the game

[Monika Fiolek]

Hey whats up with Vegas, any nerw info I haven't stopped by in months!