Introducing NPCs, the Neat Personable Characters

[Nik_Blazius]

NPCs are important to create a living atmosphere and you can create a lot of fun with them. This time I’d like to write some ideas on how to make random NPCs in villages better. Someone has already suggested some of the ideas (Malla?), but I decided to collect all of them in this thread.

1.
I believe it would be better if NPCs had personalities and they were somewhat constant in their location. However, the same person could appear in different towns (with different messages) and they could have a bigger place to walk.
How to give personalities to NPCs?

1.1 Give them a name. It would be great to find all the famous HP characters all around the map. We could also learn their lore name this way.​

1.2 Give them unique skins, at least to the important ones.​

1.3 Change their communication from “Salutations!” to something interesting. “The Quabbleball pitch is my favourite place, I love playing Quabbleball! Did you know that you can play it in Potterworld? Use /game.”​

1.3.1 Quest NPCs could have two different types of message. “I’d like to ask you for help in the future. Please come back if you are lvl70 or more.” and “Thank you so much again for opening my box!”​

1.4 Let them wear different hats, wands or other types of items from the store or the game.​

2.
What purposes could NPCs have?

2.1 Promoting the webshop and showing items from it.. “Hey! Do you like my hat? You can buy it in /shop!”​

2.2 Promoting games you can play in PW, houses, classes, etc.​

2.3 Secret quests, riddles or other fun activities, easter eggs, collectables. They could also spread flyers for a shop.​

2.4 Making gameplay more interactive. “Are you the student Dalia is expecting to meet? You can find her at [x], [y], [z].”, “I’m here to buy some robes at this shop. I’ve heard that it’s the best robe shop in the whole world!”​

2.5 Interesting facts about the server or the staff team. “This building looks amazing! Did you know that [builder1], … and [builderN] built it?”, “Did you know that [staffmember1] spends a lot of time in this inn? You might find him/her/them here.”​

3.
I spent time looking at how the current NPC system functions and I think NPCs like them could also stay in the future. I believe it’s great that they are changing (despawning after a while), but they are somewhat weird now.

3.1 Let them spawn in more locations, so the NPCs are not grouping with 5-10 more NPCs every time.​

3.2 Let them walk a longer distance. They could walk to a shop, a house, etc. and despawn there.​

3.3 Set their collisionRule to false.​

I believe NPCs could make the gameplay much better! Please share your opinion with us!

 

[Somnambulist]

I really like this idea and think that something similar should be implemented on the server.

Right now, the towns are nice, but they are boring and lack personality as there really aren't any random NPCs in houses that say weird stuff or have interesting stuff to do. It's all buildings and nothing fun to do especially after doing a quest. For example, I haven't really gone back to most of the towns after I finished the quests specific to that area.

The lack of anything interesting to find in each of the towns kinda makes exploring them again useless unless you're doing a chest run. This would probably encourage players to explore the areas more and give a bit of character to them.

 

[FlatJambo]

Yeah! Some character background/backstory would be really cool. Individuality is what I love about the dialogue and such in quests, and it would be cool if NPCs said even longer phrases.

 

[Mallaidh]

I completely agree with this! It feels very immersion-breaking when a NPC with a very distinctive personality during their quest just reverts to "Salutations!". I planned to eventually make a suggestion on this myself, but, beat me to it

 

[Aspasia Castellanos]

I think this is a amazing idea and would fit perfectly with Potterworld. This will definitely make the NPC community more lively and look more active with different skins, names, wands, hats, etc. So thank you @Nik_Blazius for the amazing suggestion and I hope it gets approved.

 

[Aurora]

Hello Nik,
Thank you for suggesting this to us. I will make this idea known to the other Poltergeists so that we can discuss it. We will inform you when a decision is made.
Meanwhile, have a great time!

 

[Aurora]

Hello again @Nik_Blazius,

Apologies for the delay, but we have a decision now.
Unfortunately, we will have to decline your suggestion. While we love the idea and would like to implement some of it, we are unfortunately unable to due to the current tech and this limit will likely continue to exist in the future as well, We currently use an older version of mythic mobs, so we are unable to have specific skins on the random NPCs that wander around the separate towns. We are also unable to give them unique names.
The only thing we can do is have most of the quest NPCs and important NPCs have their own skins and this is something that will remain that way in the future. Having too many of these random NPCs impacts the server's performance, so we are limited on the number of NPCs and location that they can be spawned in.
However, one thing that we definitely can implement is having the quest NPCs mention that a player isn't the correct level and to come back in the future, if they talk to them when they aren't a high enough level to accept the quest yet. This is something we would like to do in the future.

Again, thank you for the great suggestion and have a fantastic day!