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I am an early adopters like many people here.

 

I would like to share with you the following idea.

 

I think it has sense to have a world populated by NPC and governed by players.

 

The player role would be not only create starships, cities and so on, but command NPC characters into various activities.

 

NPCs at grinding

Grinding is the first thing that comes to mind, instead of grinding themselves, players would provide their loyal NPCs with the tools and instructions, and follow their progress. This seems personally much more challenging and stimulating to me than grinding myself as an automat. As the CEO of an NPC grinding company, you will have to get good profit in order to pay the salaries of your NPC.

 

NPCs for security

Your constructs need to be defended from possible intruders or boarding parties, armed NPCs with more or less preparation and equipment could provide for security and load the game with challenging situations, where players know that they will meet resistance whenever they try to take a building.

 

NPCs for crafting

Why have skills on the players themselves. Once more you are confronted with all the boring approach of leveling up, something that is well known from other games. The skills of a player should lie within him as an individual, not on his character. NPC characters could be engineers or scientists, the player is just a leader. NPCs themselves would level up and become more and more valuable as the human resource that they are.

 

NPC based economy guided by players

If a player has to pay salaries to NPCs, while at the same time gathering the profit from their economic activities, he would be able to build entire economies. This brings to the player the actual sense of power that he will be pursuing in a game like this from day one (correct me if Im wrong). Other players could join your NPC empire, always occupying positions of more or less power. Players attaining large resources (like constructs, energy, NPCs, weapons) could assign them to other players and give them goals or missions that they can accomplish.

 

I hope I have illustrated it well.

 

The reason of this is that I think that projects where a player will count only on himself and other players will tend to get boring. Getting the attention of other player may be dificult. Probably many players will feel like alone while trying to create their empire out of empty stations and starships where there no movement but their own.

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The main focus of the game is player interactions. NovaQuark is building this game with tons of awesome features that favor a system run and controlled by players. As such, NPCs (at least things besides creatures or nimals) will be very limited. There won't be stereotypical "quest givers" or anything like that, the whole point of the game is to be different than all others and to be a true sandbox, and it is being built as such.

 

The NPCs that will be in the game will be limited most likely entirely to entities dedicated to regulating the economy. After all, with the way the game is set up, it will emulate real world economies; so you cannot keep adding money to the system. It's delocated, and must be controlled. You don't want too much money floating around, but you don't want too little money either, so it must be regulated.

 

The way things look as of now (though of course stuff like this is always unpredictable), NPCs will be be limited to market bots, perhaps giving money in exchange for materials or something, and will then eventually fade out of existence as the player-to-player economy gets going.

 

Also, if you would like to read what the devs have said about this, give the internet a search; particularly the wiki, as it has all of the devs comments archived.

 

https://dualuniverse.gamepedia.com/Archive

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Yeah as the others said.

 

It would be a pretty boring game when you don't progress (=skills) with your char.

 

Besides the bots (which will ONLY buy/sell on markets to get the economy started) there will only be some animals

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Well that's a good way to undermine the entire premise of the game.

 

Having everything done by NPC's would turn the game from a MMO to a large scale RTS.

 

Hopefully you get what I mean by that. I'm not sure how to explain it.

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As others have said, the main point of this game is to avoid NPCs and scripted content. As such, having them would be completely counter to this game's design.

 

I think the game you are describing would be fun; but it is not this game. This game is an MMORPG, and what you are describing is an MMORTS. An MMO strategy game would be fun, but it is very challenging to design (which is why almost all attempts at such have flopped).

 

So long story short: no.

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Ya know... I've been playing MMO's for a long time... and I've seen LOTS of different things happen that, for me personally, made the game less interesting...  over the years I've coined a term for it --- pablumizing --- 

 

Pablumizing is what happens when a games features are replaced by over-simplification... 

 

So I played WoW back when it first hit the scene... I favored certain aspects of the game... one of the types of characters I really found myself enjoying was the Hunter class character...  and there were aspects to those hunters that made them a challenge to play effectively.  

 

As time passed, Blizzard, in their infinite wisdom, chose to water down some of the aspects of playing a hunter character... they changed how you skilled, they changed how you skilled your pet... they changed how quickly you would have a pet as a hunter to help you along... they made it so you had fewer weapons you could carry (ranged vs melee) etc... they even introduced an 'expansion' that to many were the equivalent of 'Facebook Games' where you'd assign an 'NPC' to run missions for you and then reap the rewards...  and in the process you got to build a mediocre 'Garrison' you could call 'home' in a sense... but one that was 'instanced' in the same physical location every other player got to build their garrison... it wasn't really an effective place to invite your guildies to hang out in (in fact they couldn't really enter it unless you were there with them).... 

 

Eventually... they pablumized my interest right out of the game... 

 

I'm all for a certain amount of automation... I think auto-turrets with a certain amount of 'automation' built in to them would be 'ok', but that a 'crewed gun' SHOULD be able to do better... 

 

A large ship might be flown by a single pilot, but to operate effectively and to its potential should require someone to crew it...  

 

I would HATE to see someone be able to 'eventually' build something like a 'Death-star' and then single handedly be able to pull it up to the planet I'm living on and blast me, my base, and my friends into oblivion... LOL 

 

I've seen plenty of people cry boo-hoo on forums about "Oh wouldn't it be cool if we could make this simpler...." and the obverse of "OMG WHY DID YOU MAKE IT SO SIMPLE!?!?"  

 

Frankly a game that holds my interest for any length of time is one that challenges my abilities to think, plan, and prosper.. something that requires More than just point and click and if I happen to have the higher level or the better gear anyone that stand in my way is dead meat.... 

 

That's what drew my interest in wanting to play this game.  If ya want point and click click click click click go play the Family Guy Quest for Stuff or Disney Magic Kingdom... or better still, <insert name of choice>Ville on Facebook. 

 

'nuff said!

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Ya know... I've been playing MMO's for a long time... and I've seen LOTS of different things happen that, for me personally, made the game less interesting...  over the years I've coined a term for it --- pablumizing --- 

 

Pablumizing is what happens when a games features are replaced by over-simplification... 

 

So I played WoW back when it first hit the scene... I favored certain aspects of the game... one of the types of characters I really found myself enjoying was the Hunter class character...  and there were aspects to those hunters that made them a challenge to play effectively.  

 

As time passed, Blizzard, in their infinite wisdom, chose to water down some of the aspects of playing a hunter character... they changed how you skilled, they changed how you skilled your pet... they changed how quickly you would have a pet as a hunter to help you along... they made it so you had fewer weapons you could carry (ranged vs melee) etc... they even introduced an 'expansion' that to many were the equivalent of 'Facebook Games' where you'd assign an 'NPC' to run missions for you and then reap the rewards...  and in the process you got to build a mediocre 'Garrison' you could call 'home' in a sense... but one that was 'instanced' in the same physical location every other player got to build their garrison... it wasn't really an effective place to invite your guildies to hang out in (in fact they couldn't really enter it unless you were there with them).... 

 

Eventually... they pablumized my interest right out of the game... 

 

I'm all for a certain amount of automation... I think auto-turrets with a certain amount of 'automation' built in to them would be 'ok', but that a 'crewed gun' SHOULD be able to do better... 

 

A large ship might be flown by a single pilot, but to operate effectively and to its potential should require someone to crew it...  

 

I would HATE to see someone be able to 'eventually' build something like a 'Death-star' and then single handedly be able to pull it up to the planet I'm living on and blast me, my base, and my friends into oblivion... LOL 

 

I've seen plenty of people cry boo-hoo on forums about "Oh wouldn't it be cool if we could make this simpler...." and the obverse of "OMG WHY DID YOU MAKE IT SO SIMPLE!?!?"  

 

Frankly a game that holds my interest for any length of time is one that challenges my abilities to think, plan, and prosper.. something that requires More than just point and click and if I happen to have the higher level or the better gear anyone that stand in my way is dead meat.... 

 

That's what drew my interest in wanting to play this game.  If ya want point and click click click click click go play the Family Guy Quest for Stuff or Disney Magic Kingdom... or better still, <insert name of choice>Ville on Facebook. 

 

'nuff said!

 

*jaw drops*

 

*slow claps*

 

This is perfectly said

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Well said, Lachenlaud! 

 

I had a very similar experience with WoW. I greatly disliked how they oversimplified the talent trees and number of abilities. The game changed from having a large number of abilities (people would choose a smaller group that they liked and would use more than others) to having just a couple simple abilities that you mash over and over. I quit shortly thereafter.

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