Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General Games with NPC schedules

I like the idea of the time only being deducable from physical things within the game, like Ultima-style sundials, or just intuiting it from NPC behaviour. The weather conditions should be pretty obvious from on-screen effects, to be honest.

I'm just happy for them to include any system for schedules and weather, so the modders have some shortcuts on hand to implement in a fashion that suits their unique story/environment.

I thought all Bethesda games have them. So do the Witcher games. The trick is to give the player cues as to where NPC's will be according to time of day, and both Witcher games did that fairly well.

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 and 4 have NPC schedules.
Several Dragon Quest games (fe. DQ 8) have them.
Xenoblade was already mentioned on here.

Oh, that would be nice! In fact, all this talk of Ultima 7 has persuaded me to buy the game again from GoG so I can have some fresh memories of it. Just need to get it set up in Exult. I can't think of any recent games that have done schedules well, so I hope that Larian set a new standard.

Oblivion was the first TES game to implement it. I remember the NPC's in Morrowind, they just walked around to waypoints and occasionally walked into walls. I can't remember much good about that game.

Concerning games with NPC's schedules I can only think of two that haven't been listed:

Two Worlds 1 had an NPC schedule system but it was as crap as f***. Nevertheless, people went to sleep, merchants arose and went to their stalls and occasionally (but rarely) you'd find two NPC's talking. Yeah I was surprised too considering the poor scripting elsewhere in this game. Two Worlds 2 ditched this feature though and just made NPC's vanish when night-time came (like how Baldur's Gate did it).

Dragon's Dogma is a recent example. You won't find NPC's sleeping (although they vanish at night) but NPC's do return to their homes (at least this is observed within the starting village where NPC's go to their house and lock their doors but you don't see it in the city), have jobs that they perform, as well as hobbies and you'll find them trading, praying in the church, talking amongst each other, eating, drinking and generally just wondering through the village/city.

There are some Neverwinter Nights modules which have this feature too. Of course they aren't as dynamic as what Larian are aiming for and don't include unique scripts for every individual NPC.

I think that it's not the amount of NPCs, but the quality of NPC setup and schedule that matters.
D:OS can sort of get away with this if they are not going to a hugh city like what other games did.

In Oblivion I just kinda lost, I have the impulse to talk to everyone and get all information I could, but to track down everyone is a annoying task, they just move around too much. It take such a long time to get those info(sometimes useless), if you stick to the gun and go for main quests only, it feels like you cut away a hugh part of the game.

To me, those collect X items quest is really boring time filler, so a tightly structured area with careful planning of evens are more important than have 5000 side quests which are 95% identical with way points.(By the time I reach 1st major fight in Oblivion, it was too easy because of all the side quest exp buff.)

so, yeah, my 2 cents.

I am in hope (esp given the last update with Lar_q standing in the rain) that mobs will be reactive to changing condition - which I think is far more interesting than 'schedules' esp if you are able to manipulate the environment

(I suspect I am getting repetitive because I probably already said the above). Having said that as someone else already noted I remember Gothic 1 having schedules as well as a few other games but I think schedules are less interesting than reactiveness. In fact one of my *giant* dislike with Skyrim is that cities were not reactive to players actions (you didn't see the atmosphere or resident of cities changing based on characters 'reputation'). Other than games with fix transition (DKS for example) I'm not too sure I remember any games that show attitude changing based on player reputation or historical activity.

I'd rather have a time display. I know it's not especially realistic in a medieval setting, but there are some issues where gameplay trumps realism, especially if quests etc. are going to be affected by NPC schedules.