what is The World?

[TroloWiseEared]

Does the universe exist without our presence?

are events knowable without the experience.

can the experience be trusted?

Does the world alter without our meddling, or can the world react and reply to its own actions?

would that be redundant?

or immersive?

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Heres a little song to listen to while i take you on a journey.

Now, have you ever played Assassins Creed?

The map does not exist if you are not in a direct vicinity of it.

Only portions do.

The engine creates and renders the people you see only in a circumferance around you.

If a person walks -so many feet- in any direction away from you, they dissapear. entirely. they no longer exist.

This is done to save proccesing power as it would be quite difficult to render an entire world in constant motion.

Havnt you ever wondered why is it, that when you climb so high up and look down, you see no one? This is why.

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Now, transferring over to The Elder Scrolls.

Entering or exiting a loading cell discontinues all activities occuring in the loading cell you exited. If you attacked a guard and some of your guildmates joined in, by leaving the loading cell quickly, the action is freezed, and forgotten. Your guildmates will not be slaughtered and events will return to normal.

MY QUESTION IS. will this same mechanic make a return in Skyrim, a game HEAVILY influenced by Radiant A.I.

By entering a town, will all hell break loose?(the many radiant random quests being generated)

Will children go missing, and mayors be assasinated, and kittens get stuck in trees BECAUSE i entered the town?

Or will it occur BEFORE i enter the town, of its own accord?

What do you think?

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ALSO- will the world solve these problems without my input?

or will that child be held captive forever, until i get around to saving him. which may be never.

Would it be tedious for the game to CREATE and generate npc HEROES & HEROINS to wander the world and take these quests apon themselves, with and without our interaction?

EX

Scenario 1:You approach Riverwood and the town is all in an uproar.

The Lord's son has been abducted by bandits and are demanding 800 gold for his return.

You head up to Bleak Falls barrow and slay the bandits and return the boy to his father.

Scenario 2:You apprach Riverwood(a few days later) and the town is grieving, The mayor's son was killed by bandits becuase no-one rescued him or paid the ransom.

Scenario 3:You apprach Riverwood and the town is all impatiantly awaiting the return of a squad from the Companions Guild(Heroes) sent up to Bleak falls barrow to save the Mayor's son from bandits. If you wait, they will soon return with the boy, bloodied and scarred...or they may not. and the child may be lost. You travel up to bleak falls and assist the Companions and share the glory

SCENARIO 4: As a low member of the Companions, you are sent on a contract to bleak falls barrow to rescue a child with your squad. Radiant A.I. adjusts and multiplies the creatures in the barow to be challenging to you+your squad.

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Unff.opinions? thoughts? additions?

p.s. if your curious, the theory is called Solipsism, if im correct.

[SonOfMuffinMan]

Hey Sean it's Tim

 

I honestly think that we are gonna have to see what they did.

 

If Bethesda is smart they will have someone else complete the quest instead of said child being held captive for years.

 

But Bethesda has made mistakes before :wallbash: . So lets keep our fingers crossed and pray that they change aton of stuff around :psyduck:

 

<3

 

Tim

[bkmorton]

Yes. Yes it is.

 

All gaming technologies incrementally improve; there is never an abrupt and gigantic leap forward, it's a tedious evolution of trial and error. Radiant Story is an incremental upgrade from Radiant AI. Period.

[AlbinoDunmer]

You know me.

 

I think it is overhyped just like before. Just not AS overhyped. 11/11/11 is only a little over a month away. We will see then

[hector530]

name starts with "trol" which very close to troll. then you talk about Assassins Creed which isnt like oblivion or skyrim in anyway. its more like GTA making random things and NPCs near you. so i dont get why you bring up assassins creed?

 

kinda skim through the rest which is about Radiant A.I. ending the world or something.

[Horgr]

FB masterace reporting in. Honestly its hard to say, until the day, when all our worries go away...but Im more skeptical than excited about it.

[jedimembrain]

no offence to OP but they arn't hyping the AI at all this time .. they are hyping radiant story a bit but not AI .. they have barely talked about AI .. plus your understanding of how it works is off .. just because they derender an NPC doesn't mean the system can't keep track of it on a basic level.

[Alcrin]

If a person walks -so many feet- in any direction away from you, they dissapear. entirely. they no longer exist.

This is done to save proccesing power as it would be quite difficult to render an entire world in constant motion.

Havnt you ever wondered why is it, that when you climb so high up and look down, you see no one? This is why.

 

Actually, no. Just because the game starts rendering them doesn't mean their calculations completely stop: The AI packages are still managed. You can see this in cases like that one Dark Brotherhood quest with the guy who wanders around to every city as he's likely to already by dead by the time the quest starts if you wait long enough. It's actually cheaper to calculate stuff going on in places where the player ISN'T than in places where the player is, precisely because stuff offscreen doesn't need to be rendered. Graphics are by far the most computationally expensive part of a modern game.

 

As for whether there will be people going around solving RS quests if you don't take them up... I don't think so. It'd effectively put a time limit on the quests, which doesn't really work well in a non-linear game for much the same reasons exclusionary content doesn't (like only being able to be part of 1 of the three Great Houses in Morrowind).

[TroloWiseEared]

Actually, no. Just because the game starts rendering them doesn't mean their calculations completely stop: The AI packages are still managed. You can see this in cases like that one Dark Brotherhood quest with the guy who wanders around to every city as he's likely to already by dead by the time the quest starts if you wait long enough. It's actually cheaper to calculate stuff going on in places where the player ISN'T than in places where the player is, precisely because stuff offscreen doesn't need to be rendered. Graphics are by far the most computationally expensive part of a modern game.

 

As for whether there will be people going around solving RS quests if you don't take them up... I don't think so. It'd effectively put a time limit on the quests, which doesn't really work well in a non-linear game for much the same reasons exclusionary content doesn't (like only being able to be part of 1 of the three Great Houses in Morrowind).

 

KUDOS! well said, but i still hold my belief in Randomised heroes and guildmembers taking quests.

Yes it does add an effective time limit, but this is only in situiations of certain nature. not menial quests such as bring me some alchemical ingrediants.etc

but in situations of emergeny it adds a much higher level stress and importance. the knowledge that you are not compelled to do anything breeds apathy in my opinion. you could have easily walked away from kvatch, and Lucious matteus would have held the road FOREVER. There was no influence puching you forward. the guards made no assaults or were not attacked until YOU came near them. It may have just been silly scripting but....i hope they have abandoned it.

But my point remains, Guards,And guildmember npcs would haveNO equality to CITIZENS who fill their day with realistic activities. Guards and guildmembers would just patrol and walk around...maybe raid a dungeon here and there.

but they SHOULD be set to leave the hall and take up and attempt quests which the player ignored.

they dont have to suceed, but failure shouldnt always mean death. Perhaps theyl seek you out to help them in bleak falls barrow. or theyll seek out other guild members, or travelling heroes.

Or maybe the Guild itself will send out full squads.

But the ability to actaully FAIL a quest is just.....amazing. going into conflict KNOWING the game only accounts for you winning is ....boring.

Think....Methredel from'May the Best thief win' she could actually BEAT YOU. now it didnt disbar you from the guild. or make you try again.(like it should have)

but its a start.

[Odai]

The Facebook Army marching in eh?

 

Well... as said before, the RAI hasnt been hyped at all, the only hype is for the RS, which in reality they havent hyped much at all. They make the RS sound like a simplified and calculated madlib.

 

RAI I personally believe will be what it was supposed to be in Oblivion minus the NPCs all knowing eachother by name (and even that may be possible).

 

As for quests doing themselves, it depends on if Bethesda introduces a timed completion aspect (similar to a brotherhood betrayed or closing the great gate). The game might also choose to present an antithesis to the player based on decisions the player makes. If you tend to be a little helper, this person may steal your thunder if you choose not to do a RS quest within a certain allotted amount of time. (This antithesis could simply be a randomized NPC "Adventurer" assigned to your active miscellaneous quests, who never actually leaves to go do the mission, but doesnt ever exist until after you fail it.)

 

Now. Timing aspects to quests. That isnt something that Bethesda likes to do because it forces the player in a certain direction. And because of that simple fact, I think it is a safe bet that the RS quests wont be self-fulfilling.

 

HOWEVER; I do believe that it is possible that NPCs can actually be assigned NPC RS quests. These would either be too simple, or too difficult for these NPCs. This would be, go gather X, or go collect taxes from Y, go scout out Z... and predetermined dialogue can exist for their most recent quest that may provide useful information for the player. When a quest is designed to be too hard (go to X and kill everything, and X is 10 levels too high for the NPCs) they all die, or only one runs away to tell the tail. This then can suggest high level, and high loot locations to the player while adding flavor to the world. Think about the "Jobs for the Fighter's guild" quest, after you get them work they actually go out and hunt ogres and minotaurs, or Mazoga goes out for BBB. Instead of making them all be people we have helped, make it be NPCs who dont matter, and make them be quests to do things that the player would be interested in doing (too hard for the NPC) or going to scout places the player has already cleared out (saying that the place has respawned)

 

Now will that happen... no I doubt it