COMMUNITY - FORUMS - GENERAL DISCUSSION
Idle OPC's discussion thread

Okay, so, recently in my food production thread it was brought to my attention that NPCs will be the backbone of society for the first few months but NPC's will become players as the community booms. my question for this discussion is, What happens to idle OPC's? do they become NPC's or act like NPC's once their 'owner' has been offline for X amount of weeks? what happens if the OPC is poorly scripted? will it simply eat and sleep? will it fill the role in society it left? will it produce food and goods even while the player is away? at what point to OPC scripts get replaced by NPC scripts?

my question is not meant to be or sound like a criticism, just a curiosity. i just don't want Idle characters to become a stain on the in-game economy and become "couch potatoes". the decline of players is to be expected over the lifetime of any mmo, but will it have a negative effect on the rest of the player base?

i look forward to your feedback, cheers.

1/16/2017 9:08:53 AM #1

My take on this is that the general idea is you have to log in at least once a month, or your character automatically will die.

How do I come to this?

  1. Causus Belli - a player has exactly 28 days in which to challenge said CB and take back their titles. To me this means, either they are so lazy (or decide to change their character completely a result of CB) or don't log in after this period, then the title is yours.
  2. Land ownership - Adverse Possession allows you to take over someone's land and if they don't visit in 28 days, it's yours! So again the same time frame, thus similar reasons for no show of the O/PC.
  3. Now, this is more speculative - Permadeath Timer - I'm recalling at least a Discord coversation wherein we were treated to info that went more or less "if your OPC is CdG while you are offline, you will immediately spirit walk upon your return, but if you don't log in within a certain timeframe, their is a permadeath timer that will make the body start to decay at a certain point.
    • That tells me that there's a 28 day timer (or maybe only a week? who knows) for an obviously NOT close to death character (spirit loss and age may factor in) to come back to the same body, else loss that spark at the end of the timer.

There you have my thoughts on the matter.


~ Goody Odsbodikins, Count of the Highest State. ~
Friend Code: F41EFF

1/16/2017 9:20:49 AM #2

personally i hope they don't use a death timer, to me it would feel very unfair to some people to just kill them. some people might have their PC explode or have to go on a vacation. so punishing them for have a life seems a bit harsh to me. and i think it would result in angry people quitting the game permanently.

also this system would be avoidable by people who dont want to lose their character but still have no desire to play. so they simply log in once a month and avoid the issue completely. creating idle OPC's that contribute very little to the game and much less than an NPC.

1/16/2017 9:37:18 AM #3

Posted By annfrank at 01:20 AM - Mon Jan 16 2017

personally i hope they don't use a death timer, to me it would feel very unfair to some people to just kill them. some people might have their PC explode or have to go on a vacation. so punishing them for have a life seems a bit harsh to me. and i think it would result in angry people quitting the game permanently.

also this system would be avoidable by people who dont want to lose their character but still have no desire to play. so they simply log in once a month and avoid the issue completely. creating idle OPC's that contribute very little to the game and much less than an NPC.

I think there are ways for people to get around vacations. SBS has always maintained a "Community first" model, and I doubt they would slight the community by doing this without providing some sort of way around it for legit reasons.

First thing that comes to mind is the very rarely mentioned Phone App that's been hinted at for players to check on an OPC (mentioned by Caspian in an interview I believe), which would allow players to perhaps check a log of their toon's activities and maybe put a vacation hold on their current spark or something.

Other than that, if you are planning a vacation... well, have fun and I personally will plan around my sparks if I go on holiday where I have no net access. ;)


~ Goody Odsbodikins, Count of the Highest State. ~
Friend Code: F41EFF

1/16/2017 9:46:53 AM #4

fair enough but this still doesn't solve the problem of people who lack the ability to script their OPC properly or script it to stay in their house and do nothing. that would essentially be taking the character out of the world and providing nothing. just a concern.

1/16/2017 10:06:15 AM #5

Well, SBS has already stated that they will be providing players with ways to easily mod their OPCs. At first the allowances for scripts will be a little limited, since there won't BE any essentially (other than the basics figured out in testing and Dev playthroughs).

However, SBS has said they will monitor and "cherry pick" scripts that would be good for NPC and OPC alike. They have also said they will give players ways to employ these scripts, hopefully with a user friendly UI for those players not well versed in the various coding scripts.

I'm assuming that some of these scripts will be available between sparks as things that players can earn Story Points for. (SP is the game currency for "improving your lot between sparks".)

Another thing SBS will have is actual places to do trading IG. The Devs have also said that they are working on or will have a method to physically trade these codes within the game. Perhaps as contracted "learning" or maybe as scrolls or books that toons can purchase and study? Or maybe even a kind of food, pill or potion that your toon eats so they learn the new script.

Who knows? Only the Devs and they aren't squealing.


~ Goody Odsbodikins, Count of the Highest State. ~
Friend Code: F41EFF

1/16/2017 10:18:41 AM #6

fair enough. i still think they should make players scripts stop after about a week and then have them act as NPC's and use the NPC scripts instead. it just makes sense to me to have it that way.

1/16/2017 10:28:13 AM #7

then it becomes a question of when and if the AI should take over. Perhap a player could set the NPC AI to take over if they don't log in for a certain amount of time (ie vacation) and there's a default of either 28 days or 7 days or whatever before it switches over.

However, if an OPC is dealt a killing blow they won't be walking around anyhow, since the player will be immediately sent to a spirit walk upon logging in if thos happens. So, depending on how dangerous a life you let your OPC live... well... easier on the AI server. hehe


~ Goody Odsbodikins, Count of the Highest State. ~
Friend Code: F41EFF

1/16/2017 10:31:17 AM #8

indeed. i would much rather have this as a kind of artificial death timer. so you opc isn't forced to die, but instead becomes AI and might have a higher risk of begin killed this at least forces the OPC to be a more productive member of society until they meet their deaths. making the player have to log in to resume control.

1/16/2017 11:16:34 AM #9

I think that if the character was close to death at the time, a timer might be allowable? After all, a 90 year old in a coma might not be such a fun thing after a while. (Bury the old guy and try to take off his armor? I can't, why? He's still in a coma. Dammit, he's NOT dead, Jim!)

Alternately, for toons with a little more realistic lifespan left to them, it's conceivable that the could go NPC after a ceratin amount of time until the character naturally would die, since it's known that players can take on NTCs at any time in their life span up to a certain age (max 52 I think, maybe less).


~ Goody Odsbodikins, Count of the Highest State. ~
Friend Code: F41EFF

1/16/2017 11:26:27 AM #10

i was under the impression you could still loot players in a coma, because they are not knocked out but are spirit walking. mind you this would be considered a deviant act.

1/16/2017 11:40:05 AM #11

The way I understand it, you can only loot a certain amount depending on if they are KO, CdG or PermaDead. I could be wrong?

If the toon isn't back up by the player in a certain amount of time they go permadead. That's what I know from the Devs. and permadeath means you can literally strip the body of its armor, you can't do that before, but that may be a time limited thing also.

Maybe if you wait too long to log back in you will wake from your spirit walk buck neked?


~ Goody Odsbodikins, Count of the Highest State. ~
Friend Code: F41EFF

1/16/2017 12:36:34 PM #12

I think people in this thread are overthinking it a bit. OPCs will already be indistinguishable from NPCs. The only difference is the OPC is linked to the account of an offline player. They will be running on the same AI scripts. I would venture the guess that OPCs will often actually be more advanced since players will be able to update their scripts.

I don't really see a need for OPCs to be killed even if their player has been offline for an extended period of time. Their OPC can still be a productive member of society, allowing other players to interact with it just like any other NPC..


1/16/2017 12:49:03 PM #13

you could be right Ari, i'm sure there will be scripts that NPCs and OPCs share. but i would imagine you could probably toggle these on or off if you don't want your OPC to be taking to many risks.

1/16/2017 1:04:04 PM #14

Tbh I don't even see the point of the OPC

might be one of the things that make bring the game down


You may have erased my signature, but you can't corner the dorner

1/16/2017 1:08:22 PM #15

Posted By OrangeBoy at 06:04 AM - Mon Jan 16 2017

Tbh I don't even see the point of the OPC

might be one of the things that make bring the game down

the point of OPC is to allow towns to still feel occupied. this world is massive. it would be no fun playing a game if you are the only person in your town, it would be terrible. so OPCs are there to make the world populated. (NPCs can be permanently killed in this game). i think it is a terrific idea.