Posted By SnowFury at

I know there are many questions surrounding this topic. How can we interact with them? And How can the NPC's interact with the world? A NPC who's a Farmer harvests his crop. Does the crop just magically appear for sale, does a contract appear for someone to deliver, or with they physically move the crop to warehouses and eventually, physically themselves, move it to the market for sale.

Another example. Say you take up a contract to deliver 10 crates of steel to a skilled blacksmith in a nearby town, and when you get there, and talk to the blacksmith. Does the blacksmith tell you to place the cargo somewhere? Or does he (again) magically absorb it into his stock?

This question is purely for immersion sake. As long as the system works and a flowing economy and specific NPC commands/interactions work I'm happy.

Other than the video and accompanying explanation in Caspian’s most recent “State of Elyria” update, we don’t know the mechanics of that. However, based on what has been said about the world, things shouldn’t happen by poof magic, and what you see is what you get. That suggests that NPCs should be seen working of farming and will need to be interacted with to form contracts (even immediately performed ones like sales). It is even possible you can’t negotiate with a farmer while that NPC is farming. You might get a “good busy now, meet me at my silo tonight” response or something.

Transportation of goods is also an unknown, although a lot of players are planning businesses to make those player-offered services. According to economic history of the Middle Ages I have read, other than farming, more people were employed in transportation than anything else because transportation was so labor-intensive.

I believe NPC's will have to have stock physically there, it shouldn't just magically appear in their stock, they would need to have it organized and put up for sale I'd imagine.

From what has been spoken about in Discord and in numerous forum posts, NPC's are hopefully going to be as acting on desires and needs as they come and go, managing a store will probably not be a npcs needs it, it pops up kind of deal. They still need to get stock from somewhere.

Posted By Caspian at 07:49 AM - Thu Sep 17 2015

We have a good plan. The NPCs use a goal-based, hierarchical AI. They have needs just like players do and they act to make sure their needs are met.

After that, they have personalities like players do using the BIG-5 personality theory. Every NPC has some personality based on a distribution of those traits. These will determine things like how open an NPC is and willing to talk to you, whether they're inclined to lie to you, and even if they'll seek revenge if harmed.

Next, the Soulborn Engine gives NPCs a push where necessary, modifying their goals in order to leverage story opportunities.

Finally, the reputation and fame system causes NPCs to pass information between them, changing how they respond to you based on what they know of you by your name.

This post was from Caspian in a very old thread so take it with a grain of salt, however I don't think theres been a dev post about how in depth the NPC's will be.

It's a great question which I don't think the studio can fully answer at this point. I suspect they will start at the full simulation end of things given their desire to create a world full of NPCs that feel/look/act real and then optimize those processes for performance reasons. So, we might end up with the kind of magic POOFery you describe at some point just to make things work.

As Snipehunter often says, verisimilitude is greater than veracity. That's their guiding philosophy.