Archived Purchaseable Npcs

[Mecharic]

So, I know this is a little early in the whole NCP Quests Plugin, but depending on how difficult it is to set up a simple quest like a random wandering advertizement NPC you could sell them for either IG silver or IRL money. Or make it a premium feature -gets yelled at by 1000 non-prems- so that it's worth your while to code each quest. Here is how it would work:

Player 1 Purchases an NPC for 1 Euro.
Cay codes in the specific quest that the player wants - in this case, an advertizement for their faction.
NPC wanders Regalia and tells anyone who clicks it about the faction it's advertizing, in a roleplay manner. It would/could also give a simple, copywritten book about the faction and how to join.

Player 2 Purchases an NCP for 1 Euro.
Cay codes the specific qust that the player wants - this time to give them a Book of Chet or Bible of Sol or something.
NPC wanders Regalia sneaking this book to players who right click it.

This would do a few things for the server I think:

1. Help new players get into the background of the server.
2. Help new players get into factions they like.
3. Populate Regalia.
4. Earn the server revenue.
5. Be Awesome.

So, Cayorion, MonMarty - what do you think?

And to other readers, what do you think? Ideas on improvement? Notice any flaws?

 

[Molimo]

I think I like this idea... somewhat. I think my biggest problem with it is how many npcs would walk around. Here, let's take a step backwards, and look at the whole picture.

Let's imagine that people could buy npcs. We both know that a LOT of people buy premium, so, a lot of people have the potential to buy NPCs. And let's think some more. Let's say that a premium wants to drum up support for his faction or whatever. He could do it himself, instead he buys an NPC. As does, let's say 1/4, of the other prems. I'm pretty sure this would cause a bit of lag. That's only a pretty sure, but...

DESPITE That, I think I like the idea. It could be pretty interesting. Good luck with it!

 

[PaulaDeen]

Mecharic
This would be good but people would need a limit on how many NPC's they can purchase. And there should be some guidelines about where you can put them. Because if this gets approved as soon as it comes out everyone will buy a million NPC's and put them all right in front of Regalia spawn or in the tavern and it will be extremely irritating for all of us.

 

[Jomdorr]

I like it but to many npc's will grind lag, regalia is already a low fps area

 

[favoured]

This could be good if you made a few limitations, like:

-People have to apply on forums for NPC's
-Advertised factions must follow server lore and be reasonably large, lets say more than 40 members. This makes sense because you won't see some 10 man hamlet out in the middle of nowhere advertising themselves, it'll be big cities or towns.
- Jack the price up a bit, it'll give the server a bit more revenue.

 

[WhiteApache]

Hmm... this reminds of an idle thought I had yesterday. NPC's to populate the spawn towns in certain worlds and maybe people who run up and ask them to help them somehow. Just a random little event involving NPC's to add realism.

 

[MonMarty]

Not going to happen for a long time, if ever. NPC's by themselves are taxing tot he server CPU, it would not be feasible to allow players to just buy them as they would push the slots per server down.

 

[Mecharic]

Ok, so more refined version of the original idea:

Player Owned:

1. 1 NCP per player.
2. Must have a Roleplay Purpose.
   • Advertizing Shops, Talking about Noble Families, Giving away Religious Books, and Talking about Locations
3. Cost 6 Euro (same as 1m Premium) per month? Or 1 time?
4. Must be located near a players house or shop.

Faction Owned:

1. 1 NCP per faction.
2. Must be Roleplay Abiding Faction
3. Must have 30+ members (average town sized faction)
4. Must talk about the faction in an RP sense.
5. Cost 12 Euro per month? Or 1 time?
6. Travel from various RP locations (Taverns, Tea House, Theater, Schools, ext) on semi-random routs.

 

[Mecharic]

Not going to happen for a long time, if ever. NPC's by themselves are taxing tot he server CPU, it would not be feasible to allow players to just buy them as they would push the slots per server down.

Click to shrink...

Ok, thanks for the answer! I can wait a few months for the server to be ready for this kind of addition

 

[obsidiandragon]

couldnt the calcluation put into the extra view distance be used to suport npcs? and it would have to be something like costs as much to have an npc as it does to have premium.

 

[DrFong]

The first thing I though on seeing the NPCs was: WANT.

I would like to purchase one screaming advertising clown NPC for the funhouse. Wouldn't that be great/annoying!?

 

[Phantom Reaper]

The first thing I though on seeing the NPCs was: WANT.

I would like to purchase one screaming advertising clown NPC for the funhouse. Wouldn't that be great/annoying!?

Click to shrink...

You could make a horror house with the idea "Screaming clown"

 

[PickAccess]

It would be rather awesome, but I'd imagine it was a matter of cost per purchase as opposed to constant bandwidth use- a one time payment wouldn't cover months of continuous drain.

Bwah. If only there was a way to just make it look like actual characters, rather than using up slots. Like... a pre-programmed message that goes off in a certain zoned area. Marty's right of course, but it honestly makes you wish for those little extra characters that could populate the streets.

I would have little maiars swimming all up and down the canals haha! Out of curiosity Marty, is there no other way to make npc interaction in Massive besides that unfortunate drain on the server?

 

[Mecharic]

MonMarty - Would it be more doable if it was a monthly payment like premium? Or maybe something like this:

You purchase the NPC for 12 Euro, 1 time payment, and the entity is saved - however, to use it you need to pay 6 Euro a month, meaning the same as a premium player. This way you only need to buy the NPC once, reducing coding/questsetting time for staff, but still need to pay a fee to have it running.

Also, about how much ram/memory/whateverthatcomputertermis does each NPC take up, aprox, and how much does a player take up?

 

[MonMarty]

It took us about 4 hours (between 3 people actively running commands and 2 people doing check-up work) to set up the quest line for the current Regalia beta quest. The idea of having NPC's like this sounds cool, and it would be an interesting alternative to donator income, but honestly we have much better things to do than code an NPC that runs around advertising a faction. The amount of hours spent into it can be much better spent elsewhere.

 

[Mecharic]

It took us about 4 hours (between 3 people actively running commands and 2 people doing check-up work) to set up the quest line for the current Regalia beta quest. The idea of having NPC's like this sounds cool, and it would be an interesting alternative to donator income, but honestly we have much better things to do than code an NPC that runs around advertising a faction. The amount of hours spent into it can be much better spent elsewhere.

Click to shrink...

Ok

Just curious, is it possible to make like an Archetype for NPC's so that instead of coding something new each time you just insert new text or drops? Or is that just as complex?

 

[BulbousDevourer]

Honestly this sounds like it would be greatly abused and would in general ruin the roleplay aspect of the server. Because be honest here, who in medieval times had some person running around saying something 24/7? And I imagine people would be putting racist or sexual messages in their NPC's. And the time doing this could be time spent making new worlds or adding new stuff to the server. If this could be closely monitored what people made their NPC's say, and if it didn't take up as much time, it would be a cool feature. But these don't sound useful enough to bother implementing. And Regalia would just be filled with robots saying a message about their faction over and over. Does that sound like a good place for roleplay? No.

 

[PaulaDeen]

Honestly this sounds like it would be greatly abused and would in general ruin the roleplay aspect of the server. Because be honest here, who in medieval times had some person running around saying something 24/7? And I imagine people would be putting racist or sexual messages in their NPC's. And the time doing this could be time spent making new worlds or adding new stuff to the server. If this could be closely monitored what people made their NPC's say, and if it didn't take up as much time, it would be a cool feature. But these don't sound useful enough to bother implementing. And Regalia would just be filled with robots saying a message about their faction over and over. Does that sound like a good place for roleplay? No.

Click to shrink...

If staff are the ones coding the NPC's they wouldn't put a racist or sexual message in. Even though you payed them to.

 

[BulbousDevourer]

If staff are the ones coding the NPC's they wouldn't put a racist or sexual message in. Even though you payed them to.

Click to shrink...

Oh, my understanding of it was that you could enter whatever message the player wanted. My mistake.

 

[Ethanol2906]

MonMarty Out of curiosity does MassiveCraft use a mod to insert NPCs or not? Because from what I know of it either is an option but one is easier than the other (you all can take a guess which one is the easy one )