Re: Adding marriage - poll about how you find its priority
I just put a long post is a separate subject that probably should have gone here:
I have a few comments on the marriage poll and incorporating marriage into URW. Others can comment on the role-playing nature of an NPC spouse or the ability to have children and have a multi-generational URW experience. But I am reducing the arguments to two options for incorporating a NPC spouse: 1) the Resource Drain NPC Spouse, or 2) the Resource Generator NPC Spouse. These options might be considered over simplifications (they are mechanistically not mutually exclusive).
Option 1: The Resource Drain
For this option, a NPC spouse becomes a drain on player resources. First, the spouse must be wooed and courted with furs, tools, weapons, valuables, etc. In this option, a significant expenditure of player time is given to attract and then obtain a spouse. The "cost" of a spouse would then be proportional to the perceived "value" of that spouse. In this scenario, the spouse becomes a status symbol for the player through their ability to attract the "best". It could be even that the spouse gives the player increasingly difficult quests as they become more involved along the wooing path. Maybe there are differences between an in-culture marriage versus an out-of-culture marriage?
Second, after a marriage ceremony, the spouse must be provided for. In this option, the NPC spouse is a bystander that consumes the player's food, clothes, tools, and weapons (maybe also armor, cords, bandages, bowls, etc.). The player must spend time ensuring the spouse is sufficiently provided for so they stay committed to the marriage and alive. In this option, a NPC spouse likely functions like current NPC villagers. They wander around a specific location or follow the player around, but have limited utility.
The entire purpose of a resource drain NPC spouse is to add a monumental achievement to the URW experience. That is, the player can not only provide for them-self, but they can attract and maintain the NPC spouse as a status symbol. The resource drain NPC spouse then would "unlock" PALU's generational feature...
It can also be noted that there are probably very few people who play their characters for 17+ years so that they could have had "adult" offspring. This means you could potentially start a family, but any children would be unlikely to be adult when your character expires, so if a generational feature would be introduced it would probably have to be able to skip a number of years, which would require some kind of logic to advance the world (which should include repopulating village animal stocks, at the least, and probably replace some of all those villagers who died fighting robbers with your ex character as well).
Option 2: The Resource Generator
For this option, a NPC spouse would need to function differently than other villager or companion NPCs. The NPC spouse in this scenario would need to be a productive member to contribute to living in URW. For example, the resource generator NPC spouse would need to actually engage in meaningful labor around a settlement or while on a hunt. This means they would need to accept and execute commands that take advantage of skills. A resource generator NPC spouse is likely more accurate (they help contribute to life), but much more difficult to develop. This option could also lead to players gaming the system or to unexpected results (or danger to the NPC spouse) due to poorly issues commands and limitations of the AI.
A wooing process would need to take place. However, while a resource drain NPC spouse would be a status symbol, a resource generator NPC spouse would be valued to complement the player. For example, if a player is unskilled in something, woo a resource generator NPC spouse to compensate so they can perform those skills for you.
Once the courtship is completed, the resource generator NPC spouse would need to be functionally helpful to a player. For example, if a player provides the necessary items (tools, weapons, seeds, pots, cords, etc.) and key instructions (location of a field to prepare/tend, trap fence to monitor, materials to process, etc.), the resource generator NPC spouse could process through a que of instructions. For example, a resource generating NPC spouse could contribute to agriculture, hideworking, fishing, food preparation (smoking, salting, drying meat or making flatbread, stews, grinding flour, etc.), hunting, building, monitoring a trap fence, checking traps, making clothes, tools, or weapons, etc.. A resource generator NPC spouse would need to have skills that would affect their ability to perform all of these actions/functions.
The entire purpose of a resource generator NPC spouse would be to expand a players skills set, provide a companion in shared activities, and/or help reduce the tedium that can occur when surviving in URW (i.e. division of labor). I can imagine scenarios where the resource generator NPC spouse...
- prepares the soil, plants seeds, harvests crops, threshes for grain/seeds, grinds flour
- skins a carcass, cleans the skin, tans furs and leather
- butchers and smoke the meat or cooks any of the other food recipes
- prepares logs, blocks of wood, boards, etc.
- builds a wooden building or kota if the player outlines the walls and doors
- follows a circuit of traps, or a trap fence, to collect the trapped animals, reset the traps
- being sent out into a delineated geography and asked to harvest all the berries or herbs of a given type
- wanders a geographical area to actively hunt
- joins the player and sets traps in a designated place
- joins the player on an active hunt
- follows the player to a village to trade and carry items
- etc.
I've said too much...
Option 1 would be easier and provide for "end game" objectives.
Option 2 would require the player to spend a great deal of time managing the NPC spouse.
December 18, 2017, 11:03:31 PM
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