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Names and Personalities for everyone in the villages

Posted: Mon Jan 08, 2024 5:24 pm
by tactical371
I believe that in a recent quest, one of the core quest characters is named "busy farmer." Can we give names and real personalities to more of the people in the villages? That way, they will feel less like filler, and the game world will feel more alive. Even if most of these characters have no relevance to any game story, giving them names would add to the immersion.

Re: Names and Personalities for everyone in the villages

Posted: Mon Jan 08, 2024 9:14 pm
by Antison
Most NPCs involved in a quest have a name. I left this character nameless on purpose as I didn't want to give him a name. It would give away too much information as the intuitive player would notice that not only is he knew but he has a name.

I have no clue what you mean by personality.

Re: Names and Personalities for everyone in the villages

Posted: Mon Jan 08, 2024 9:35 pm
by tactical371
I am thinking about games like, for example, Majora's Mask (or Skyrim, although that game has a lot of nameless guards), in which minor characters usually still have names. They may or may not have a little bit of personality, and their relatively small, unimportant problems still can shine through in the dialogue.

For Andor's Trail, here is a "commoner" in Remgard. Who is she? What does she value? What does she like? She does not have to have anything to do with any story, and her backstory and characterization can be very basic, But if she had a name and maybe an extra dialogue option or two, it would increase immersion. The same sort of reasoning can be applied to many characters across the land. For some, their dialogue does not even need to change, but it is still useful for them to have a name and appear as something other than a generic NPC who is only there to take up space. At least this example commoner provides useful information, which is probably sufficient when combined with a name, and it is more than what some generic NPCs provide through their existence.

Re: Names and Personalities for everyone in the villages

Posted: Mon Jan 08, 2024 9:43 pm
by tactical371
Here is an even better example.
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I do not know why there is apparently a viewcount at the bottom of this post...

Re: Names and Personalities for everyone in the villages

Posted: Mon Jan 08, 2024 10:18 pm
by Antison
Not every NPC is going to have a name. Especially one's not involved in a quest. It's just just not going to happen.
It's just way too much work for a handful of people to create "personality" for every NPC we've created or will create.

Re: Names and Personalities for everyone in the villages

Posted: Mon Jan 08, 2024 11:18 pm
by sdevaney
We would welcome a list of NPC names and personalities to pull from for future content if that's something you're interested in contributing.

Re: Names and Personalities for everyone in the villages

Posted: Mon Jan 08, 2024 11:58 pm
by rijackson741
Indeed. All contributions are welcome. We are a small dev team and have higher priorities (Brighthaven, Nor City, Feygard, and others). But we are certainly open to contributions from others.

Re: Names and Personalities for everyone in the villages

Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2024 12:36 am
by tactical371
I'll look into renaming some people after I get ATCS properly installed and I learn how it works (viewtopic.php?t=4806&start=340).

Re: Names and Personalities for everyone in the villages

Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2024 9:28 am
by Nut
Before you rename an NPC best look where he is used.
NPCs are sometimes reused.
E.g. a "Commoner" would be OK in 5 different places. But it would look strange, if in every 5 places, this NPC has the same name.

Re: Names and Personalities for everyone in the villages

Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2024 6:44 pm
by tactical371
Nut wrote: Tue Jan 09, 2024 9:28 am Before you rename an NPC best look where he is used.
NPCs are sometimes reused.
E.g. a "Commoner" would be OK in 5 different places. But it would look strange, if in every 5 places, this NPC has the same name.
Haha! I should have guessed that that would be the case.