Traits, NPCs and Interactions!

[FawkesGaming]

So I've been watching Arumba, Mathas and NorthernLion playthroughs of Crusader Kings II, which is an amazing game and one I intend on obtaining once I'm at university. However, one thing that struck me as a good feature was the way AI is handled in the game. From what I can gather, you have personal relationships with other characters, and these relationships are based on positive and negative traits you pick up. These traits can be picked up randomly, and I think a system like this in PZ would be really good.

 

How I see this working; certain actions you can perform will give you positive, negative and neutral traits (similar to the Fallout karma system). Performin heroic acts would give you a chance of obtaining a positive trait related to the action, whereas murder would provide a chance of getting a negative trait. Now, these traits would only provide opinion buffs and debuffs, so no traits like strength or anything like that would be obtained.

 

A few examples of how this works in Crusader Kings II; your character's religion affects how your vassals treat you. The same religion gets a bonus to opinion, whilst other religions get an infidel penalty which negatively affects their opinion of you. Of course, I'd never propose bringing religions into the game, but my idea would have the same basis as above. So, performing heroic acts would make you seem more trustworthy, providing a buff to initial trust, whereas murdering NPCs would make you appear more shity, less trustworthy. If that makes sense xD

 

This was just a quick posting of my ideas, hopefully they made sense. I'll format them later, after I've eaten this delicious pizza.

[Kaitel]

It's a very different game, not sure how PZ would be able to judge a heroic action. And how could it tell the difference between murder and an accident? Also, why should any new NPC's you meet have any initial reasons to trust or distrust you, they wouldn't know if you'd been a saint or a sadist before they met you or events they haven't witnessed.

[FawkesGaming]

Hmmm, a potential problem, I'll admit. Perhaps good actions would be anything beneficial to anyone else... as for your point about murder, in some opinions killing is always murder, whether it is justified or not. Taking someone's life would still have some impact.

 

And, I envision this as some kind of game mechanic as opposed to one of 'realism'- yes, NPCs have no way of knowing, but it gives the player a sense of reward for committing good deeds. Perhaps it could be explained by the way your character composes themselves; someone untrustworthy might act shiftily, not able to hold eye contact etc. It's all up for discussion after all!

[Suomiboi]

This is somewhat planned already. The devs have said that there will be personality dynamics within a group and the personalities will be handled by traits. Things like 'brooding', 'short tempered' and 'patient' are already in the code, so you can deduct something from that. The devs have explicitly mentioned CKII as an influence and Lemmy has also mentioned it once or twice in context with the NPCs. You should read this post by Lemmy on the subject. Suffice to say, I think the NPCs will be more complicated than you're even thinking.