I guess it’s best to put the tl;dr first: what should NPCs/OPCs be able to do?
Recently I stubled across a post from 2015 in which Caspain asked which talents players wished for their characters. The fact that even now new ideas are being posted proves how much potential we see in our character’s abilities and talents, how many expectations and wishes we have. Often we see our character’s talents as options what they (and therefore we) can do/achieve later on in the game! And that’s great fun! I, too, replied to the post with my idea of which talents could be fun to have.
However, afterwards I noticed that something was bugging me. I noticed that the overall idea of having certain “special” talents and therefore special characters – in what way ever – results in a character-centered approach to the game. Most (MMO)RPGs do this: there are player-characters and NPCs and their connection and interaction is a rather one sided one. Simply put: NPCs exist for the sole purpose of player-characters being able to interact with them. They may have their own day-and-night circles but usually they are reduced to a certain kind of function (giving quests, telling us something, helping OUR story progress, being killed by us, providing an option to hide in the crowd etc…)
There’s nothing bad about this but for a MEOW in contrast to a MMORPG I’d actually hope for more! The world and their inhabitants – as they are evolving – shouldn’t just exist for the purpose of being explored or interacted with by the players. As a virtual reality they should just exist by themselves! (As an example many strategy games have this: in city building games the citizens do not exist for us the players/city-mayors but rather we kind of exist for them: when we see they don’t get to work properly because of a traffic problem we (hopefully) feel obliged to help them achieve this. Not because they give us the quest to help them but just because they are there…!)
So I felt equally important as what talents we wish for our characters is the question of what talents we wish OPCs/NPCs and what they should be able to do!
Is it enough if they stand or walk around? Maybe eat, hunt, work on the field and go to bed? Or does a MEOW need more?
I personally think apart from waiting for us to interact with them they should also act by themselves and this means they need to interact amongst themselves and with player-characters (especially as unlike other in MMORPGs in CoE every inhabitant of Elyria can be both PC+NPC=OPC). Of course we don’t know how the soulbound engine works but in older statements and dev journals it was mentioned that it tracks what happens in the world and pays attention to it. And I’m pretty sure that as with every other engine the things to happen have to be defined/scripted at some point in the AI.
So what scripts (options to act, abilities) do you have in mind for NPCs/OPCs.
And also the other way around: what don’t you expect them to do? (Would it annoy you if your mentor-blacksmith in your town suddenly decided to travel and live somewhere else?)