Busier towns

[Artimedes]

Busier towns

This time I would really like to feel like I'm part of a much larger world. In the last couple Diablos it really only felt like it was the players plus a few other random npcs that existed in the entire universe. This time I hope some of the bigger towns are full of people walking around going about their daily business. And maybe they could even hold seasonal festivals and do different things during different times of the day. Some of them may even travel town to town in order to find different items to buy/sell. Just a thought.

 

[Fleshvirus]

Re: Busier towns

/signed
Great idea and would really make the make more interactive

 

[AlexanderM]

Re: Busier towns

Traveling merchants that sold strange or specialized items! Can you imagine if you came back to town to find a random merchant at the town square selling charms or jewels, or something else that merchants don't typically sell? I love the idea!

 

[sicilian]

Re: Busier towns

Traveling merchants that sold strange or specialized items! Can you imagine if you came back to town to find a random merchant at the town square selling charms or jewels, or something else that merchants don't typically sell? I love the idea!

Yeah, anything to add a more varying flavor to replays. Even if these types of things are rare, with the amount of time we're bound to spend playing, you'll run across them often enough.

 

[theBanger]

Re: Busier towns

Sounds cool. Totally agree that the previous Diablos felt kinda small.

 

[entranced]

Re: Busier towns

Traveling merchants that sold strange or specialized items! Can you imagine if you came back to town to find a random merchant at the town square selling charms or jewels, or something else that merchants don't typically sell?

Oh that's an excellent idea, and fits perfectly into the randomness of the Diablo series (and what i love about it)!

 

[AlexanderM]

Re: Busier towns

I recall hearing about the scripted events they were planning on including in D3, (source: http://www.cnet.com.au/games/pcs/0,239029655,339290414,00.htm) and this would jive very well with that. It almost hearkens back to Diablo 1's quests that you'd sometimes get, and sometimes not (only one of my three characters ever got the Harlequin Crest Quest in D1, thankfully my sorcerer!).

 

[phaolo]

Re: Busier towns

I'd like more people in the towns too. If they could open new subquests, create new shop options, add precious hints and stories it would be even better.

A bad thing for me, however, is that when you finish an Act all the previous NPCs become suddenly useless. I personally need more background story, happenings and gratefulness to really care about those citizens. More RPG deepness? :dontknow:

Random merchants would be interesting, but I fear that would simply end with.. merchant runs! Like MF but even worse as they're in town..

 

[Artimedes]

Re: Busier towns

I'd like more people in the towns too. If they could open new subquests, create new shop options, add precious hints and stories it would be even better.

A bad thing for me, however, is that when you finish an Act all the previous NPCs become suddenly useless. I personally need more background story, happenings and gratefulness to really care about those citizens. More RPG deepness? :dontknow:

Random merchants would be interesting, but I fear that would simply end with.. merchant runs! Like MF but even worse as they're in town..

Maybe you'd have a limit of 5 purchases per week or something like that for big items, maybe less. And he could have different special potions week to week also or something like that, not just magic items. Or enchants, runes, or whatever other magic effect items will be in D3. They may even be able to open new quests in old areas. Hopefully the acts wont be as linear this time so old npcs dont get forgotten.

 

[stillman]

Re: Busier towns

There could also be random merchants with something irresistable but very expensive, which could act as a gold sink in they need gold sinks.

I'd like it if the busy town was even busier because it is where we see all of our chrs standing around waiting to make or join games. This would be better than having us all lined up like in a shooting gallery as in d2. Kind of a different idea all together though.

 

[sicilian]

Re: Busier towns

There could also be random merchants with something irresistable but very expensive, which could act as a gold sink in they need gold sinks.

I'd like it if the busy town was even busier because it is where we see all of our chrs standing around waiting to make or join games. This would be better than having us all lined up like in a shooting gallery as in d2. Kind of a different idea all together though.

Eh, that kind of takes away from the immersion for me. If I see hundreds of heroes in town all about to head out and kill, it makes me feel like I'm not needed. "We must stop Diablo! If we don't who wi... oh. Right. All them..."

 

[AlexanderM]

Re: Busier towns

I stick with single player. Zero change a lv99 barbarian in amazing gear who'll pop into my world and one-shot Diablo before I can spend 5 minutes wailing on him

 

[Artimedes]

Re: Busier towns

Eh, that kind of takes away from the immersion for me. If I see hundreds of heroes in town all about to head out and kill, it makes me feel like I'm not needed. "We must stop Diablo! If we don't who wi... oh. Right. All them..."

As far as players are concerned I think they should only show the people in your game, which would be 8 im guessing. But I would love to see hundreds of npcs in the larger towns.

 

[Dwovar]

Re: Busier towns

You know what would be really cool (obviously, from my point of view).

If we can bring back the random quests, and have the random events, could we get random townsfolk?

Sure, there will always be Cain, and there will always be Tyrael. But what if each relevant NPC (shop owners, quest givers, merc sellers) had different names and different 'toons'? These don't have to be tied into the quests at all. But lets say instead of just charsi, each time you started a new game you could get the Big Innocent Charsi, Overweight Empathetic Josa, or the Tan Sarcastic Ysaba.

I think that'd add a lot of replayability and make the town seem more diverse. I feel bad every time Charsi asks me to go get her hammer, because I look at her and think "Seriously, again? You forgot it again? I'm going to nail that hammer to your naive little face and you'll never lose it again! DO YOU HEAR ME!"

Different people spouting different quests (that aren't determined by the people) would be really cool.

 

[Mizantrop]

Re: Busier towns

One of the things I never got in the Diablo world is the monster/human ratio. D1 was ok. you had a little town with 6(?) people because all the rest are dead or ran away. And then you have a the full package 16 levels of demons to kill before you get to the big boss. That make sense with the lore of the game, all the undeads are ex-humans from ages past and the demons are summoned by Diablo.
But in D2 it get confusing. In act 1 you start in a pathetic camp with barly 12 ppl in it, counting the none talking npcs. In the same time you have a gazillion corrupted rogues outside. Can the rogues really hold on for some much time in that power balance?
Act 2 is slightly better (atleast they have normal walls). But then again the city is so small and the armies of vipers/cats/scarabs are so vast. Can they really stay safe? The mummiesare also a problem lore-wise. Mummies are undead horadrim mages. How many mages did they have when all population on Sanctuary seems like maybe 1000 people.
I can't even start to complain about act 3 and it's used-to-be-paladins-zealots in thier used-to-be-a-good-neighborhood city of Kurast.
Act 5 is not much better when you have more people outside of town (50% of them in cages) fighting brainlessly 1 vs 5-14 demons when they can try to work together.

So to sum up my rant, YES I do want to see busier towns with more npcs to chat with and trade with. I wan to feel like I am fighting for the people of Sancuary and not for the Epeen value of my items.

 

[mince pies]

Re: Busier towns

I think the reason why it was like this the last time was because Hell had a pretty strong foothold on Sanctuary (Diablo in Tristram in DI and the three Prime Evils in DII) so considering this is twenty years after the events in DII, I expect things will have more of a social feel

But in D2 it get confusing. In act 1 you start in a pathetic camp with barly 12 ppl in it, counting the none talking npcs. In the same time you have a gazillion corrupted rogues outside. Can the rogues really hold on for some much time in that power balance?
Act 2 is slightly better (atleast they have normal walls). But then again the city is so small and the armies of vipers/cats/scarabs are so vast. Can they really stay safe? The mummiesare also a problem lore-wise. Mummies are undead horadrim mages. How many mages did they have when all population on Sanctuary seems like maybe 1000 people.
I can't even start to complain about act 3 and it's used-to-be-paladins-zealots in thier used-to-be-a-good-neighborhood city of Kurast.

In Act I the Sisters of the Sightless Eye (whatever that is) watched over the camp. Act II the mercs guarded the town, hired by Jerhyn. Act III the Iron Wolves guard the town until you find the Gidbinn. Act IV is supposed to be Heaven also it has Tyrael in, so that's self-explanatory. Act V Nihlathak made a deal with Baal that he would give him the thing that would allow him to pass through Mount Arreat unhindered by the Ancients in exchange for the safety of Harrogath. Hope I helped

 

[rolandk10]

Re: Busier towns

Random merchants would be interesting, but I fear that would simply end with.. merchant runs! Like MF but even worse as they're in town..

That could be solved by not spawning a random merchant until the game has bee running for a certain amonut of time or a certain amonut of monsters have been killed before this could randomly happen. If it took 25 minutes before the possibility came up, runs would be slowed down a bit.

 

[rolandk10]

Re: Busier towns

I think that'd add a lot of replayability and make the town seem more diverse. I feel bad every time Charsi asks me to go get her hammer, because I look at her and think "Seriously, again? You forgot it again? I'm going to nail that hammer to your naive little face and you'll never lose it again! DO YOU HEAR ME!"

Kinda like when you watch Titannic, you keep thinking that maybe one of these times the captain will miss that iceburg but no. The hit it EVERY TIME!

 

[Artimedes]

Re: Busier towns

I think the reason why it was like this the last time was because Hell had a pretty strong foothold on Sanctuary (Diablo in Tristram in DI and the three Prime Evils in DII) so considering this is twenty years after the events in DII, I expect things will have more of a social feel



In Act I the Sisters of the Sightless Eye (whatever that is) watched over the camp. Act II the mercs guarded the town, hired by Jerhyn. Act III the Iron Wolves guard the town until you find the Gidbinn. Act IV is supposed to be Heaven also it has Tyrael in, so that's self-explanatory. Act V Nihlathak made a deal with Baal that he would give him the thing that would allow him to pass through Mount Arreat unhindered by the Ancients in exchange for the safety of Harrogath. Hope I helped

His point isnt that there isnt a town population in the Diablo story, but that it isnt shown in the actual game. It just doesnt make sense that commerce and trade can go on as usual when there are only 10 people per town. There are about 3 rogue archers in the camp, Flavie, and what other rogue guards? Even in Act 5 when Harragoth is supposed to be at war you see a barbarian every 50-100 feet fighting ALONE in the bloody foothills and thats it. The game just makes it feel like the total world population is in the low thousands, which in turn makes the game feel very very small.

 

[Blascid]

Re: Busier towns

I feel bad every time Charsi asks me to go get her hammer, because I look at her and think "Seriously, again? You forgot it again? I'm going to nail that hammer to your naive little face and you'll never lose it again! DO YOU HEAR ME!"

LOL! That's for sure in the top five funnest things I've ever read on these forums (been reading for about 6 years). Just great man, just great :-D.