Ch 7 – Inspection
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The next day when Tidal arrived, I had to return to my place behind the counter still. He eyed me several times as he moved around the room, and Mira showed up while he was glaring at me and looking intently at something in front of him.

Mira approached me and leaning in slightly she asked, “Soooo... you do that thing I told you to do?”

I nodded, smiling, “I did.”

Laughing to herself Mira asked, “Who was the lucky recipient?”

“Kervick.” I replied.

That just made her laugh more, “That’s great. Want to do something else that's fun?”

I tilted my head, “Fun?”

However, while she was about to explain whatever she wanted Tidal came over, “You shouldn’t mess with her, she's defective.”

“What? That's the best part about her.” Mira noted.

I frowned at that, not sure what they were trying to say.

Mira tried to poke her finger at me, and I stepped away automatically, “What are you doing?”

Mira just pouted at me, “Well whatever. I gotta log off anyway.”

Tidal waved to her, and after she vanished from the room he gave me one more look, “What's your name?”

“I’m Milly.” I supplied.

“Good, that bug report should do just fine.” He noted before I could inform him once again that there were no bugs.

He opened the door and stepped out.

Suddenly I wasn’t in the Mirana Guild Hall. In fact, I didn’t know where I was, location information replied blank. I glanced around to find I was standing in a room, the floor was not so dissimilar from the Mirana Guild Hall, reddish-brown wooden planks. However, unlike the Mirana Guild Hall, the floor stretched out in all directions until the light faded.

“Hello.” Said a voice from my side.

I turned and replied with casual dialog, “Hello.” I’d have preferred a more specific option, however, without location I also didn’t know what time it was.

The man standing before me was wearing a simple robe, perhaps he was a magic-user. I’d never met one, but something told me that it would be appropriate.

He nodded to himself, “What's your name?”

“I’m Milly,” I replied simply.

Again he nodded, “What do you do Milly?” He asked, taking a few steps towards me, though he was still not within reach of me.

“I work at the Mirana Guild Hall, I help give people quests and run the shop.” I explained.

He nodded along with that as well, and after prodding the air in front of him with a finger a few times he gestured behind me, “Milly lookout.”

I glanced at what he was pointing at. And immediately saw a goblin rushing toward me. I quickly began putting distance between myself and it, “Help adventurer!” I called out for assistance. I kept this up for some time, the goblin didn’t catch up, and I just kept running away. Though the man without a name over his head in the robe didn’t seem so interested in doing anything about it. I thought perhaps that unlike Tidal he wasn’t an adventurer and that's why he didn’t want to help. So I thought I’d test that, “Could you help me?” I asked. I’d have used his name, but as he was distinctly lacking one of those I couldn’t without delaying the request, and the request for help was quite urgent.

He considered me rather than helping. I repeated it a few more times as I continued to keep my distance from the goblin.

Eventually, I stopped asking for help, and just kept my distance. After a while, the man asked, “Why did you stop saying, adventurer?”

I stopped in my tracks turning to him, “I wasn’t sure if you were an adventurer or not, earlier Tidal helped me when I asked him, but he was certainly an adventurer. I’ve never seen someone like you before, so I wasn’t sure.” I explained as the goblin began to stab at my legs.

“Why are you just standing there?” He asked.

“Because we are engaged in a conversation.” I pointed out obviously, “By the way, would you be interested in a quest?” I continued after a moment.

He stared at me with a puzzled expression, “Interesting….”

He poked and moved his hand through the air as he seemed to be thinking. He didn’t seem to want to talk anymore, and so I continued running away from the goblin, shouting out my request for help as I had nothing more pressing to do.

After a short time, the goblin suddenly keeled over and stopped moving.

Once that happened I too stopped running away and looked back at it just in case it decided to get back up again.

For a time nothing happened, and so I glanced back to the man, “Where are we?”

He looked up from what he was looking at, “Where? Why do you ask?”

“I work at the Mirana Guild Hall, and this is not the Mirana Guild Hall, I also cannot find a route from here to the Mirana Guild Hall.” I explained simply.

“Yikes, that's jarring… he replied.

“What is?” I asked, not understanding the problem. In my own estimation, I had been quite concise and deliberate.

“The way you use the full name of the location each time. It's a proper noun, but it's unusual to never use alternative forms once context is established.” The man explained.

I considered processing for a moment. “Could you provide an example?”

He glanced at something in front of him, “Don’t worry about it. It's not really for you to figure out.”

I frowned at that, I’d have preferred to figure it out. “Why is it not for me to figure out?”

He looked up at me, “You are quite inquisitive huh?”

I nodded my reply.

He seemed to consider something for a time before replying, “An example of what you could have said instead. Would be something like, ‘I work at the Mirana Guild Hall, we aren't there, and I don’t know how to get there from here.’ You could also have used an alternative such as, ‘I work at the Mirana Guild Hall, and this isn’t the guild hall, there's also no way to get to where I work from here.’”

“Why did you change your mind?” I asked while processing what he had told me.

“I just felt like it.” He offered back, “No real reason. But I can definitely see some problems here.”

“Problems?” I asked, “With me? Someone told me I was defective earlier. They also called me an idiot. I was just trying to be helpful.”

“Maybe if you keep trying, and get better at helping someone will thank you instead.” He offered back.

I nodded that sounded nice, confirmation that I was helpful was certainly better than not.

He nodded, “Well back to work with you.”

 

Ticket #611 - Admin Team Response

Author: Kovin [Admin Team]

Status Change: Review, changed to Remediation

Priority: Medium / High

Sub Team: NPC - AI / Dialog

 

Having interviewed the NPC in question I’ve determined a few areas for improvement, so let's break this down into several dev items.

[Work Item #8943] First, the NPC stops in place while engaging in a conversation, which might be good for some settings, is clearly immersion breaking in others. Specifically the instance pointed out above, if an NPC is flagged as InDanger movement should never be disabled for instance.

[Work Item #8944] However, more importantly I think is the lack of urgency in the NPC related to monsters. Perhaps this applies more broadly to all potential hazards, however even as the NPC’s health dropped they didn’t show any reaction to it, as though they were entirely numb. Maybe this is simply an oversight? It demonstrates a clear need for NPC’s to register and react to damage, maybe even emulate fear for at least having some scripted dialog.

[Work Item #8945] There's also an obvious bug with some proper nouns in the speech processor, the NPC refused to use any speech variation for her assigned home, even when she referred to it three times in the same collection paragraph.

[Patch 0.12.7212] Complements to the team on this one, the AI dialog changes in this patch are a game changer, I’m 100% in agreement about setting up a role play alpha as well. If anyone else is on the fence about this, just checkout the interview session.

[Discussion #411] One final note, and opening a discussion ticket for this, Build 7212 uses more resources, but raises NPC engagement tremendously. While the Database Team is still working on numbers for us, Admin Team has some preliminary data, and that data suggests that the cost of each NPC is higher, and so we are seeing the cost of over instancing. I know this has much further game play reaching implications and we are all concerned about NPC murder ruining gameplay for others. But I think we need to consider more clustering beyond interaction based assignments. Or maybe we can find other more realistic assignments by leaning more heavily into player based economy models rather than the NPC focus. I just wanted to open this up and get Gameplay and Design Teams input on this.

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