Reply To: The Open World: What are your hopes?

[Dizzardy]

Really my biggest hope is something that seems fairly likely anyway. An open world life sim game like The Sims 3, but less buggy.

So far it seems like we’re going to get that at the bare minimum.

Beyond that…

I’d like to see Parafolk have more detailed AI governing where they are at certain times of the day. Humans are (usually) creatures of habit, so they can be expected to have some sort of rhythm to their daily lives. In the Sims 3 and 4, sims just show up on community lots randomly and you don’t get a sense that they have any reason to be there other than to act as set dressing for your own sims adventures.

I think it would be interesting if Parafolk in Paralives had a base “routine” of what their daily life looked like in the town and this would be altered by numerous factors over time. Altered by the personality of the parafolk, their memories, their mood/emotions, their career, their relationships (if their friend or partner likes a specific restaurant they become more likely to visit it with them) with a bit of randomness sprinkled in for good measure. Perhaps a parafolk just develops a liking for a specific coffee shop and they return to it on their lunch break on most days.

This would be placed over other concepts like lot, street or neighborhood/district traits….which would further influence where parafolk would visit. For example a parafolk might be pulled to visit a specific lot because of their personality but pushed away from visiting it because it’s located in a district with a shady or “crime hotspot” trait. On the other hand for some parafolk, it being in a downtrodden shady area might be part of the appeal.

I don’t expect something like this to be very likely as it seems complicated, but if we’re going into dreamer territory this is one idea that appeals to me a lot.

• This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by  Dizzardy.