Discussions and Spread of Rumors

[Kajin]

Sorta related to the Karma Meter idea floated around earlier, but worked in a way that fits with the game. It should be possible for your character to have a reputation, but only if it spreads organically from survivor to survivor through rumors and discussions that take place between non-player characters.

 

Say you encounter a group of two survivors. You kill one of them, and the other one bolts and runs. The survivor you failed to kill happens across another survivor group. Now with them, said survivor informs them of what you did, and gives them a physical description of you. Now everyone in that survivor group knows what you did and may well become hostile towards you should you ever see them again.

 

Perhaps it could play off of the relationships the NPC's will have once that feature is implemented? Every time an NPC meets someone or talks with someone they're in a relationship of, information about the actions of other survivors they encountered has a chance to spread and become acknowledged by the community.

[MrZombifiedGamer]

I really like this but you should have put a poll on it so we as a community could vote on it.

[Rathlord]

I like the idea but not sure if practical. It could be a lot of information to store?

 

Also, how far does it spread? Does person 1 tell person 2 and then it stops? Does 2 tell 3? I would think just one jump would be practical.

[Kajin]

I was imagining the spread to be somewhat organic in nature. Meaning it only travels as far the the NPC's spread it themselves. So, how far it spreads would depend on how the NPC's themselves are programmed and what their relationships are with each other.

 

In the previous example, one guy survived an attack and then joined another group with a small number of survivors. Let's say three, meaning he is now the fourth member. Their opinion of him is neutral, so they take the information at face value, but don't put all that much weight on it since they don't know him too well and they didn't see the attack themselves. Since the information has no weight with the group as a whole, the information isn't too likely to spread outside the group to any survivors they encounter because they're not too likely to bring it up in conversation.

 

But say the group encounters the murdering player from before and he kills the survivor that escaped and retreats before he can be put down. The weight of the information has increased greatly. Now any survivor they encounter from that point forward is going to be warned of the player's actions and the reputation will spread further because of it.

 

This may prove to be a pretty big task for the devs to put into the game, so if they do decide it's a good idea it might be a while before they decide to roll with it. Not a programmer, so I've got no idea how difficult this will be to implement.

[Rathlord]

Well I don't think storage of the variables would be a problem but the actual act of spreading the rumors and all would just be a lot of work (to get the system in place). I'm not the one to ask on that, though! For all I know they already have this planned.

[Scyoni]

In terms of implementation, this doesn't seem ridiculously difficult... The game tracks all of the survivors all of the time, right? So how about this.

 

Say you meet NPC #1, and you do a few horrible things. You shoot at him and call him a few names your mother wouldn't be proud to hear. His opinion of you becomes -3, and he runs away to do whatever NPCs do.

 

At any time any NPCs interact (if NPCs interact, otherwise I suppose when any NPCs are within X blocks of each other) all NPCs that have opinions of you merge. So, if NPC #1 meets people who haven't heard of you, their opinions of you become -3. If he meets another survivor (#2) that likes you (say, he's got a +4 variable) then both NPCs opinions average out and they both think you're +1. Then say survivor #2, having spoken to survivor #1, meets survivor #3 who just watched you murder his entire team and thinks -10 of you, the two speak and their opinions average out (both to -4.5, or -5 rounded, whatever). NPC #1 wasn't in on this conversation, so he still thinks +1.

 

This limits the variables to one and doesn't over-complicate the interactions. One could argue that the guy who watched you murder a bunch of folks won't hate you much less if someone else says you gave them painkillers, but this is an apocalypse and people aren't always rational - nor do they have a lot of choice. Give it a bit of leeway.

[k12314]

I absolutely love this. I'd enjoy murdering someone and then coming back to the area later, and surprise! A group of survivors down the road saw me murder the guy and are weary of me or downright hostile, depending on their personality. They might not be hostile if nobody survives your attack because you could have had a reason/lie to them about the people you killed being bandits, maybe.