Ryzom

jared96 wrote:I wouldn't want to see every player walking around w/ his own personal npc healer

There was a time I would agree. But these days, half of the players seem to have their own dual-booted-second-account-heal'an'CP-slave-alt anyways. Being able to hire one (one!) NPC lackey that can perform any task at less efficiency than a PC might actually be an equalizer.

I'd have a lot of ideas about how to implement this, and how it could both make fame useful, provide a dapper sink, and introduce interesting new tactics, but it's a bit outside the scope of the thread.

Even though I do have another account, I don't use it for CPing or healing myself. In fact, I don't even have a single character created on it. Why ? I'd rather play with other people (it's a MMO, dammit !) or even solo than with a bot or a slave NPC.

I thought Ryzom was more difficult to encourage teams and cooperation, a feeling of community. Are we talking Ryzom, where players are continually exposed to their dangerous environment, or Guildwars, where you can mostly solo everything with a bunch of NPC teammates ? I wouldn't pay a sub to watch NPCs waxing each other's faces. Start instancing the whole place and I'm out the nearest window.

I know it's hard to control more than one character at once, but I prefer the challenge of finding a good team of players to the loneliness of having a NPC as a teammate. To each one their playstyles, I guess, but if I end up alone because of too many people soloing with their NPCs, I'll probably cry. If you implement such a thing, at least give a significant advantage to teams of real players over having a NPC slave so that people will use the NPCs only if they can't find a "real" team.

Really, a NPC slave would be just like a bot slave but legal since included in the game mechanics, and removing the necessity of paying a second subscribtion to have one. Why would Spiderweb spend money on a feature that makes them lose the money gained by those extra accounts ?

Storage alts ? That would pretty much be the only reason to have a second account.

Yes, thank you Sherk for clarifying exactly what we'll want to avoid at all costs. Guildwar's NPC teammates horrified me to the point where I still can't really consider the game an MMO.

To give a more concrete example of what I had in mind then: Imagine a 1 star NPC caster who can cast exactly one spell at a quarter the efficiency of a PC, and in complex situations gets in the way more than he helps. A fun little addition to play around with and to make soloing a little more bearable to those who insist on doing it, yes*. A viable alternative to a fully-controllable and versatile alt character, let alone another player? Not even close.

*Personally I think soloing is fine, I just want these things to play around with, ordering them around and getting them killed a lot. But it's a common complaint I hear from people who prefer to solo or can't find teams at their playing times. The ones amongst this group who can will probably just get a healer-alt, but not everyone can.

[quote="kalindra"]I know it's hard to control more than one character at once, but I prefer the challenge of finding a good team of players to the loneliness of having a NPC as a teammate. To each one their playstyles, I guess, but if I end up alone because of too many people soloing with their NPCs, I'll probably cry. [/quote

I don't want a teammate. But I am tired of digging and digging and digging just to produce mats so I can then, after 4 hours of no gain for my efforts, be productive for 10 minutes. A dig slave would not be able to heal you, would not be able to cp for you, would not be able to gain xp.

In one sense, it would just be an equivalent of cats, a nice option for the OP less, as you would essentially double the amount of mats you dig. It would also give you something to do with that 400 million dappers. Even better, it could give players a reason to dig a 2nd above ground region.

-Master 1 region and you can hire an npc slave that digs 50% (or 20%) of the mats you do.
-Master 2 regions and you can hire an npc slave that digs 60% (or 40%)of the mats you do.
-Master 3 regions and you can hire an npc slave that digs 70% (or 60%) of the mats you do.
-Master 4 regions and you can hire an npc slave that digs 80% (or 80%) of the mats you do.
-Master 5 regions and you can hire an npc slave that digs 100% of the mats you do.

I don't even have to see the guy. I'd be quite happy to go to the raw mat dealer, hire the dude, then come back after digging 1000 oil and find that my slave deposited a matching 1000 oil (or better yet 1000 sap) in my "your stuff" tab.