EverQuest Next’s NPCs have minds of their own (interview)

EverQuest Next’s designers would like to put role-playing game questgivers out of business.

Sony Online Entertainment is partnering with Storybricks, an A.I. company, for the next installment of EverQuest, the venerable massively multiplayer online fantasy RPG. This installment is a bit of a reboot for the series, so while traditional races, roles, and regions will return, the story is being written from scratch — and in some cases, on the fly by intelligent NPCs.

The idea is that rather than static questgivers with exclamation points over their heads, you’ll find areas full of NPCs spontaneously acting based on their own agendas. And instead of combat where groups of enemies use the same abilities in the same rotation in the same way, you’ll fight foes who change their tactics to match your strategies.

I interviewed Dave Georgeson, director of development for EverQuest Next; Darrin McPherson, the game’s lead designer; and Stéphane Bura, lead designer at Storybricks, to talk about how the A.I. system will work.

EverQuest Next’s sandbox system for player construction, EverQuest Next Landmark, is currently in closed beta; it’ll go to open beta, then EverQuest Next itself will go into beta. SOE hasn’t set a publication date yet.

“We had decided that we wanted really good A.I.,” McPherson said. “We wanted combat to be something that players could intuitively understand, but that would be challenging to master. We didn’t want them to be repeating actions. We wanted something more. That was the genesis of this relationship.”

NPCs who react spontaneously in combat

Instead of programming NPCs to cast spells or use abilities in a particular order, they’re programmed with goals, priorities, even emotions, Bura said: a “suite of things they care about.” Typically, each NPC will have 5-10 characteristics, though some have more.

That can include what is most important to them, but also traits related to their abilities. A goblin archer might dislike player characters from a particular faction and might prefer to attack from range, for example. Among your allies, you might find three elven guards with the same damage and abilities who like and dislike different things (from your race to your religion to your dancing), causing them to react differently.

In a fight, a soldier who found you beautiful might be more likely to follow you. Or if an enemy hates men, they might be more likely to attack your male character.

As combat progresses, what the NPC does will change based on what’s happening in the fight.

“The NPCs will adjust, based not on a script, but on what they want to do and the weighting of those things,” McPherson said. “Their highest priority things will always come into play.

You get truly dynamic combat.”

So if you have two knights, two controllers, and an artillery, they will all react differently in the fight, and may even choose to attack different targets in the player’s party.

“If they care about protecting someone, this need becomes more urgent if someone is in danger,” Bura explained. “If they are a tactician, they look for weak targets. They all have their own priorities, but they adapt to the context.”

A world that changes around you

On a larger level, all these NPCs with their own agendas will help shape conflict in the world, the men said. Instead of getting quests from static individuals whose life purpose is to send you out to kill five bad guys, you’ll consult a book that lists areas where conflicts are underway and possible options for assisting.

What you can do depends on your alignment, your race, and your reputation with various factions. Two players may be able to lend a hand in the same area, but in very different ways. And how the NPCs react to those characters will change based on how they fit in with what the NPCs want to accomplish.