i hope we can..

It has been asked and answered many times, actually. And the answer right now is no.

till now, the answer is sadly no. but many people asked for this several times, so the answer may change... there's still some years to think about it before release anyway^^

I, personally, want it mainly to have a fluid conversion while logging in or out or being afk without having to logout. I'd like to see what my character does when I login, so I can just go on doing that thing or change, depending on what it is. I mean... if I login in a wood... then I'd like to know, if my character is in the woods for hunting, for woodworking or just for sightseeing/travelling/research/exploration... looking what he does for a minute would give me the answer, just like having a closer look into the inventory and journal and all those... but looking all those things up would stop my character from doing what he does, I think... and if I'm in the woods with a group of lumberjacks, they might be annoyed, if my character suddenly stands around doing nothing for a minute or two, just because I as a player need to find out, why I am where I am...

For various reasons people ask for a feature/option of this sort ... I did as well. As it is now the most common response is the issues it might bring in terms of lost/crowded connection - a few suggests misuse, though i find it hard to see how that's possible, given it's either PC or OPC anyway ... who cares how people play their game as long as they don't break it. I'm not an expert on the technical aspects and have no insights to share on that bit... but a lot of honest request on this matter seem to be forwarded.

Posted By fenrisu at 2:47 PM - Thu Jun 13 2019

who cares how people play their game as long as they don't break it.

Usually imo when developers restrict mechanics that are mainly QoL and don't "hurt" the game directly it's for the integrity and spirit of the game which is a fair argument.

Before anyone strawman's me, I'm not saying in my opinion being able to switch on and off OPCs does degrade the spirit. Idk yet, I haven't played the game. While at the same time from a developer standpoint I could see how one would come to that conclusion.

For example, I believe someone brought up in Fenrisu's thread, they would use such toggle feature so their OPC fought all their battles because they are bad with mouse accuracy or something. Whenever a sense of danger, they could just /afk and have auto-bot fight it. I can definitely see how a dev looks at that and is like wait a minute....no that's not okay, we don't want that.

Sure you can log-out and accomplish the same but if the responses to these threads are any indication, the inconvenience of having to log out kind of dissuades such action as many people are complaining about having to log out then back and in.

In the past about OPCs the developers seemed to be pretty keen on the notion that if you are at your PC and want to see CoE you be logged in as your character and the above may be a reason for it. So that you don't intentionally automate the game and only jump in for content you deem "worthy" of your time.

we should be able to. I mean how are we supposed to test if our scripts work as intended?

combat OPC would be good

most of the time pvp in games comes down to a mix of

best ping, best hardware, player skill, luck & best meta build

If I recall correctly, the reason for not allowing it is due to technical issues. Something like, player's input while OPC script is running etc.

I can also imagine more technical concern, but I haven't heard anything substantial on those.

On the other hand, for testing OPC, I think something like PrElyria / Alpha client should be good enough for testing, unless you are the type who write codes from scratch for OPC scripting. Then maybe you need a friend account, or another character account to look at how's your OPC script is performing.

The intended stand-alone client should be good enough to test most OPC scripts, but probably won't be good enough for combat scripts. I'm assuming of course that self-defense combat scripts will be not only available but necessary.

Depending on how the standalone client is built, it should more than suffice for all OPC script crafting purposes. If they include multiplayer connectivity in it (peer-to-peer), even PvP combat could be tested and tweaked by a scriptmaker.

The entire point of the OPC system is to create a baseline capacity for characters to continue working when a player is offline - a means to devalue and ultimately destroy the efficacy of RMT bots, and ensure that characters remain healthy and safe during periods of inactivity. There's no real need for a bot to be active while the player's online if we can test our scripts offline.

The whole point of the OPC system is so that your characters stay in the world and present unlike so many MMO games where your avatar disappears after you log out. It means you have to think about where you camp, what you do and where you are staying when not playing because of Survival attributes. It also means Deviants can't escape being found by Bounty Hunters because they are always present in the world same as everyone else even when offline in OPC mode.

It was never intended to be a AFK method for anyone, I would not get my hopes up that it would every be allowed to be used that way. If you want to watch your OPC work log-off and then log into your alt ;-)

@Ortherion

By your own conclusion the lines between offline and online blur ... The game becomes more hardcore as you have to consider logout (which i disagree with, seeing as the OPC have a life on it's own and in a sense, might wander off). All this is great and I dig it ... i really do. What i find hard to wrap my head around is the point at while the game blur the aspects of PC and OPC... Why am i suddenly restricted so harshly using this game mechanic ... The fact that you can avoid combat with so many scripts and AI already - game already advertises Pupeteer-gameplay with pets as an example - order attack and hide in a bush yourself.

... While I have no intention of playing the game passively with direct scripting of my character, i find it really really hard to ethically counter-argue the wishes of active scripting ... combat, afk'ing, etc.

In conclusion i'll wait and see what the devs come up with and work with what they give me. I'd also like to apologize those who might feel that i'm bending rules or asking for cheats - all I really wanted to was point out was that my life presents challenges that could be overcome using what this game already partly implements.

cheers :)

Posted By Wolfguarde at 10:02 PM - Fri Jun 14 2019

The entire point of the OPC system is to create a baseline capacity for characters to continue working when a player is offline ...

That could be so. However, I see part of the OPC system as a way to provide services to online player characters without the need for dedicated NPCs managed by SBS. In other words, I see OPCs as being part of the "light" SBS development model, where SBS creates the world mechanics but players, for the most part, create the world, or at least the living details of the world.

Not sure why it hasn't come up yet, but we will get the capacity to test our OPC scripts prior to launch :P

Last it was said, Prologue: The Awakening was going to allow for OPC scripting so that people could test out their scripts before trusting their literal in game lives to untested script.

Anyways, I would support this function, but it needs to be really restricted if anything imo. Maybe you hit AFK and your character stands there for 10 seconds before the script kicks in, and on top of it maybe it takes a full 30-60 seconds to turn it back off, and the only thing that you are able to do is essentially watch your "offline" character with 0 control over them?

Would be more like logging off, but not quite. if that makes sense? Anyways, allowing people to just switch to opc mode has so many implications it would be much easier and safer to simply not allow it.

With respect to combat and self defense, I fully expect SBS to have default scripts for this and other common OPC functions. The only time you should have to script is to program your OPC with custom behaviors.