Thoughts on Companions

[Cognisant]

Spoiler

I'd like companions to have their own agendas for example you're playing Skyrim, you're in a town, and your companion initiates dialogue: "I'm going to the market to get something to eat, catch you later outside the mage's guild?"

• Yeah sure see ya later.
• Something to eat sounds good I'll come with you.
• If you're hungry how about this? <select food item from inventory>
• Stay, I need you here. We'll get something later. (new quest "a bite to eat" expires in 1 day)

I figure the player character and companions need to eat a typical morsel about twice a day (a typical morsel being something like a wedge of cheese or a cabbage) otherwise their satiation meter will run out and they'll become hungry. While hungry they have a debuff that increases in severity with every couple hours (in game hours) that pass, when that debuff is maxed out they start losing health a 1pt/sec then two hours later 2pt/sec then later still 4pt/sec and so on.

Companions will automatically eat food items from their inventory and pick up (not steal) nearby food items if their supplies are low, in practice this means they'll automatically loot bandit camps and forage the woods for food, insofar as doing so doesn't take them too far away from the player and there isn't something more important going on like combat. A companion who is low on food will initiate dialogue with the player to ask permission to go to the market, go hunting, or foraging, etc (depending upon context and the nature of the character in question) or storm off in a huff if they're sufficiently hungry or if the player's reputation/relationship with that character is low.

Starving your companions will lower your reputation/relationship with them, likewise feeding them will improve it if the food given is something they like, but with diminishing returns so you can't just make a character fall in love with you by giving them 100 sweet rolls. In general going along with your companion's agendas is the best way to get them to like you and I quite like the idea of the player voluntarily acting as the NPC's companion. Going to the tavern for a beer because the companion wants to chill for a bit seems very immersive to me and it's the perfect setup to organically introduce a quest hook, during this chill out time someone might stumble in covered in bloody wounds ranting about a werewolf.

Or you follow your companion to the market and as they're buying a sweet roll they strike up a conversation with the vendor and you happen to overhear that there's been a lot of robberies happening recently, someone keeps breaking into stores the stores at night. The player can then stake out the merchant district and try to catch the thief in the act of lock-picking or follow them into the store and confront them where they can't escape, alternatively the player can speak to the vendor or another merchant and offer to guard their store overnight, likely encountering the thief in the process.

 

[Hadoblado]

While there is probably a market for this, personally I'd find it bothersome/repetitive. Immersion is good, but I don't want to balance my character's goals against an NPCs dinner all the time? Are they not adults who can look after themselves?

 

[Cognisant]

True but I think it would be manageable, they need to eat twice a day (a Skyrim day is 1h 12min irl by default) and going to the market could also be for the sake of restocking their supplies (14 food items will last a week) so you could play for eight hours and not have this occur twice. Assuming the average play session is about 1h a day a player may not have this interaction twice in the same irl week, by which time the novelty will have returned somewhat.

Are they not adults who can look after themselves?

Well yeah but you wouldn't want your active companion abandoning you in the middle of a dungeon, unless being a piker was part of their in-game character (like Patches noping out of the fight with Radahn) so better to have them ask the player first, then abandon them when the player is being unreasonable.

NPCs are far too reasonable, and as Arch pointed out a large part of why Lydia had such a fan following was that she had a voice line that sounded a little bit snide which humanized the otherwise lifeless character.

 

[Hadoblado]

I guess to me it feels more finicky but not more realistic.

If you and I are adventuring companions, sure we probably think about food together but me not micromanaging your needs shouldn't really be a primary concern. If anything, if I'm the starpower behind our merry little band (I'm an MC, you're an NPC), I'd expect my entourage to keep me fed and watered, not vice versa.

When I used to DM some, I would often attach an NPC to the group so that players didn't have to think too hard about what they have for breakfast for this exact reason. This way if players want to express themselves in this way they can, but the game isn't turned into churning minutia for them.

That's not to say that this stuff is bad - I really enjoy survival games and often use alchemy/cooking in RPGs when such trees offer sufficient benefit. But punishing players in a game about choices for not having a logistical focus feels unfun even if the systems themselves are interesting.

I do think there's a lot of value in exploring NPCs a bit more, but I think players should be rewarded for it rather than punished for not doing it.

 

[Cognisant]

Are you saying it can't be done at all or are you nit-picking my implementation which is as I said, an example, and obviously hasn't been play tested? If the mechanic is too tedious or punishing it can be adjusted in various ways and if you're just saying that, if implemented wrong (i.e. not play-tested), it could be tedious or punishing, well yeah duh, that's true of every game mechanic.

If you're saying it cannot be implemented without being tedious or punishing well to some extent that's actually necessary, having enemies damage and sometimes kill the player is punishing them, making the player search for an item or learn alchemy through experimentation is tedious, but if you don't put any challenges in the way of the player to slow their progress it's no longer a game, it's a book.

In the STALKER series the player needs to feed their character and it has no other impact on the game other than if you don't eat you'll die, it doesn't matter what you eat, there's no buffs gained by eating, so arguably it's nothing but a tedious waste of time. But say that to anyone that enjoys these games and you've just started an argument because this is one of the most beloved mechanics of the game, because it's not a game mechanic, it's a story mechanic.

That need to eat creates a story, before you go wandering off into the zone you stock up on supplies for the trip and mentally take stock of how long those supplies will last. Any storyteller will tell you that you need a ticking clock (ideally several) something that drives the plot forwards and builds tension, something that pushes the protagonist into making decisions that they otherwise wouldn't.

There's a psy-storm rolling in, if I'm caught out in the open I'm dead, now I have a choice I can take shelter underground in that nearby storm drain, I'll be safe there and whatever mutants I encounter shouldn't pose much of a threat. But I'm out of food, I'm getting hungry and I don't know how long the storm will last. I do know it's a half-day's trek (in-game) from here to the nearest settlement, that's if I don't get interrupted on the way. But there's a factory nearby with a gang of bandits that just moved in recently, they outnumber me a dozen to one, but there's a good chance one of them has some food, and with the storm raging they'll be making camp.

A dozen is too many, but if they're all sitting around campfire a single grenade could put the odds back in my favor...

STALKER is a game where you kill a dozen men for a can of baked beans.
If it wasn't punishing what would be the point?

When I used to DM some, I would often attach an NPC to the group so that players didn't have to think too hard about what they have for breakfast for this exact reason. This way if players want to express themselves in this way they can, but the game isn't turned into churning minutia for them.

DM: "You haven't eaten in two days, you have gained the first level of exhaustion and you're a week away from the closest settlement, what do you do?"

Player: "Cast Goodberry."

DM:

 

[Hadoblado]

You gave your thoughts I gave mine. I don't really understand why you're getting upset. If this being a punishment is just "implementation", then sure we agree I guess. But if that's the idea, then I have thoughts to share. Keep in mind I have no idea what you class as "implementation" and what you class as the core idea.

There is a difference between tedium, challenge, and punishment. Paling around with companions is not challenging but it can be tedious, and if you don't engage with the tedium you are punished. This makes your RPG into a friends simulator and isolates any audience who's not interested in exactly both.

Stalker is a survival game. As I said, I enjoy survival games. But the purpose of a survival game is to survive. Survival in RPGs is just a necessity for progressing story. The existence of a mechanic somewhere else in gaming doesn't mean it makes sense everywhere in gaming.

 

[Cognisant]

There is a difference between tedium, challenge, and punishment. Paling around with companions is not challenging but it can be tedious, and if you don't engage with the tedium you are punished.

Are you saying my hypothetical game mechanic is tedious or that the companions in Skyrim are tedious? I assume the latter because nobody's forcing you to play with a companion in Skyrim so you're hardly being punished for not "engaging with the tedium". But the other angle doesn't make sense either, how do you know my hypothetical game mechanic is tedious if you haven't actually played it yet, what's your Litmus test for hypothetical tedium?

Are you saying all survival mechanics are tedious by default?
I cited STALKER to prove that is not the case.

Stalker is a survival game. As I said, I enjoy survival games. But the purpose of a survival game is to survive. Survival in RPGs is just a necessity for progressing story. The existence of a mechanic somewhere else in gaming doesn't mean it makes sense everywhere in gaming.

Indeed and what are we talking about here, are we talking about Skyrim, or are talking about D&D, or are we talking about STALKER? Because I'm pretty sure I'm talking about a game mechanic that doesn't exist yet and I'm just using Skyrim as my example because it's a game I can safely assume most people reading this thread will be familiar with.

Is your point is that this mechanic will ruin your Skyrim experience?
If so why are bothering me with this irrelevant nitpick?

Keep in mind I have no idea what you class as "implementation" and what you class as the core idea.

Implementation is adjustable variables, like how often a character needs to eat, how much food they keep in their inventory, y'know simple value based stuff that could be adjusted easily. So if a game mechanic is tedious it's because someone has set the variables in a way that makes it tedious, for example if this going-to-the-market-for-food interaction only happened ONCE in someone's entire playthrough of the game I hardly think it's fair to presume it would be tedious. Now if once isn't tedious what about twice, what about three times, what about about a frequency of about every two irl hours, maybe that would be tedious but I don't know and that's why you do play-testing because that's the only way you're going to know.

But no please keep telling me my ideas are inherently tedious based on... your experiences running a tabletop game, because yeah that's totally the same.

Whatever I wrote the OP for a bit of fun, this isn't fun so there's no point continuing.

 

[Hadoblado]

omg you're such a shit sometimes

 

[Black Rose]

sounds like no more than a hierarchical dialog box and action box with checkpoint activations in the world. As the video said they would need to focus on one or two character personalities instead of hundreds of random dialogs. But then this would make the world highly more complex because if there is nothing to do like solve puzzles together then it is just a story mechanic game. Like Star Wars: knights of the old republic, where you had to be a Jedi or Sith with several paths and endings. It was limited because the world did not change but the people did change and psychology was the main part. A true A.I. would learn from the player through emotion and dialog but the physics of the world would need to allow for experimentation. Its knowledge of the world should be limited and then it should be an open-ended world, a sandbox with all things being manipulable. Manipulation is a key part of learning because a broken game makes you stuck on one thing and advancement stalls. There should be multiple ways of achieving goals. and a replay save points when mistakes are made.

Instead of hierarchical dialog trees, it should have perceptions and the ability to reason. The complexity of its brain should be able to predict the world and make choices based on the values function. Computers can now perform trillions of calculations per second, processing power is no longer a limitation. A sing true A.I. may take up a quarter of a system's computations. it should learn about the world as the player does, starting with a minimum of common sense.

 

[Ex-User (9086)]

In the STALKER series the player needs to feed their character and it has no other impact on the game other than if you don't eat you'll die, it doesn't matter what you eat, there's no buffs gained by eating, so arguably it's nothing but a tedious waste of time. But say that to anyone that enjoys these games and you've just started an argument because this is one of the most beloved mechanics of the game, because it's not a game mechanic, it's a story mechanic.

The only Stalker to force hunger on the player was the first game of the series. In all of the games after that the authors learned from their mistakes and made food optional as extra healing and decorative world flavor.

Another thing about Stalker is that it inadvertently represents the average daily struggles of people living in post-communist Eastern Europe such as Ukraine or Poland in the 90s. So what you might consider to be an exciting survival mechanic or a dark setting full of threats, monsters, alcohol and urban legends would be pretty much the lowlife reality for people living in Eastern Europe then and now.

Take an average depressing, post-communist state reality and crash it into Strugatsky's Roadside Picnic Soviet-style sci-fi and you get a weird trip down the memory lane that's both familiar and fake where your imagination glorifies, gives actual meaning to the ruined factories and desolate industrial complexes or cracked pavement and unemployment into a story greater than life. Where the average person's unambitious attempt to just get by is not only heroic, but also meaningful and full of purpose.

There's no better place for urban exploring than post-soviet countries. Each town has at least one abandoned industrial complex that you can sneak into and spend some time wondering about the actual function this place had until these empty, haunted buildings will lead you to asking what exactly went wrong in your life.
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Side note: Eating in games is silly. Why do you need this game element? How about pissing or taking a shit? Why don't rpg games let you take a realistic dump? Why does your GM not let you roleplay your nasty poisoning that led to a diarrhea? Your GM has no actual reason to forbid you from taking a shit and he ruins your immersion, character expression and the realism of the world.

I can understand it if it's a game built around survival and crafting where making different meals or hunting matters, but not if this game cares at all about telling an interesting story. Basically if a game element does not play any defensible role like building narrative or gameplay then it should not exist in the game. Games are better than reality because they cut the tedium and mundane elements out.

-NPC's having their own agendas and independent moments is good if done properly-
That doesn't mean that your idea about companions having personal agendas or duties can't work. Your idea with NPC going off to get food is fine as a story element to start off a new scene. Fine if they do it once, not twice a day every time.

This has been done in a number of rpg games. One light example of it is in SWTOR where your companions ask you if they can leave the ship to do their personal quest at which point you can forbid them from leaving, let them have some time off or join them and help in their personal story.

Even a 20 year old game such as Harvest Moon did this. Some NPC's appeared at specific hours in set places for reasons related to their work, leisure or sometimes randomly as a one off and if you did not meet them at that time and place that interaction would be gone forever. Some of those interactions only gave you a +5 to your relation, but a few of those meetings were long story cutscenes that one couldn't miss in order to progress that companion's story.

So if you weren't in the [Forest Clearing] at 22:00 on 15th of "Summer" and you did not bring a [water undine omelette] then your friend would not tell you about their childhood and you were locked out of getting to know them FOREVER. Fuck yeah I love me some obscurantist design.