"Living Breathing Ecosystem"

[jjavier]

...really? Obviously that is not what I mean.

Obviously is not what you mean. The point is: it is arbitrary where you (or me) stop asking features/complexity/dynamism to accept the world as a "Living Breathing Ecosystem". There are not such thing as an official definition of "Living Breathing Ecosystem" in video-games emitted by a competent authority.
May be some other person wouldn't accept a game as a "Living Breathing Ecosystem" unless it had the absurd level of detail I stated previously.

I am simply asking for the complex and organic AI interaction system they promised. It isn't super impossible. RDR did it. You see coyotes chasing down and killing things all the time. You see hunters roaming the land shooting down birds and fending off predators.

Dynamic doesn't necessarily mean complex. There are interactions in TW3. They are trivial so the complexity doesn't scale.

Wolves hunt dears and hares.
If other creatures did fight with each other you will need to solve:

• The loot from kills in this fight. They drop any if are killed by another monster?
  • If they do, you need balance this easy loot. There are plenty of people in this forum complaining about the loot.
  • If they don't and ...
    • ... in the fight anybody can go against any body. What you think it should happen if you are fighting a big enemy and near the end of the fight comes a wolf an deals the finishing blow?
    • ... in the fight monsters team against you as soon as you appear. You could join to a fight of 2 half dead enemies and deal the finishing blow for both. You may be cool with it (I would) but a lot of people will cry: exploit! balancing issue!.

NPCs get scared from predators and monsters. Why I think NPCs react (get scared) to predators and monsters but never get attacked? So nobody involved in a quest ends dead. Or get its conversation partner killed and ends having a conversation to nobody.

So, the problem is not just add some AI so monsters fight with each other. You also has to deal with the aftermath.

Been RDR a Xbox exclusive, I didn't play it but I heard only good things about it.

 

[weaponspervert]

A lot of the stuff said during trailers, interviews and previews is marketing. It sounds good so that customers are drawn in. We can't judge the developers because of that, it's just the way our society works. As for the simulation part, they could probably create a pretty advanced simulation, but the question is which computer is going to run it. The majority of the customer base doesn't just have a server farm idling at home. The developers want the game to reach as many people as possible, not just for monetary reasons - if just 5 people on the planet are able to play your game, what's the point investing all your effort and talent into it. So it's all about balance, to create a game world as realistically as possible given certain hardware limitations. I think they did a pretty good job with that.

 

[OptoNick]

I saw a group of drowners take out a bandit camp next to the sea. Got myself some free treasure.

Yep, seen that one, too.

Also have encountered cyclop who fought with elemental near the Gedyneith forest - it was a totally random one, because didn't see such scene there nor before, nor after that.

So, the ecosystem is not dead. There's another problem: habitation areas of different monsters do not intersect with each other. But when it does it generates such interesting situations. I hope it could be tweaked, and someday we will see wyvern hunting down the nekkers from the air or arachas fighting with bear.

 

[Dude27]

Name me one game that has everything OP has mentioned.

 

[Tuco]

The amount of crap i got from fanboys a few weeks ago for suggesting that witcher 3 should have been like skyrim..
.

Well, that's probably because you chose the most awful possible model to imitate?

 

[HarelMor]

When I was fighting a gryphon a pack of wolf came to the combat location and the gryphon shifted its focus to the wolves and killed them.
seen a fiend kill a bear. nekkers walk from the river to a different location. After releasing the forest spirit downwaren area was populated with fiends and lashens that didn't guarded anything (seen few in different areas of the game). Even in nature every animal have its hunting zone some intersect with other animals some don't, if a pack of wolf will see a bear in nature thy most likely avoid it. from what i gather gryphons and wyvern are not common monsters.
In my opinion the flying monster zone should be a lot bigger. cant wait to see what modders will be able to add to the game, skyrim is bland without mods and i think you are comparing a moded skyrim to an unmoded witcher.

 

[Setari]

Lol, yeah we're not there in technology yet.

 

[Jinal]

i have seen some things CDPR mentioned before Release.

- once i fought some bandits in the wood, and there was a wolf pack nearby (i could hear the howling, and using my witcher senses, i was able to tell where they are), as soon as i killed the 3 Bandits, suddenly the wolves appeared and attacked me, as if they were attracted by the fighting.

- Often saw wolves attacking small villages and people working in the fields, from time to time they even killed some NPCs. I also saw wolf packs hunting.

- Once i killed all the cannibals in velen, their respawn rate was lowered. there is a small village with a waypoint in it, i used this to travel there, sometimes meditated there. before clearing out the last cannibal camp, at least 2-3 cannibals respawned during meditation. after it was just one. i don't know if they repopulate, i might want to check and see the actual cannibal infestation there.

- i also somehow saw that some of my actions changed the type of monsters spawning in a certain area. Now this was rather unfortunate, because i saw "wandering monsters" (monsters that travel along a path, ignoring you). Once it was in Velen, where you might come across a bridge guarded by some bandits. I told them to leave me be, and they wandered off. After a short time, i saw 4 drowners marching there, ignoring me. They wandered there, and suddenly after they reached the spot they became aggressive. It was like "oh yeah, now that the bandits are gone, the drowners come back".

But yes, in the end it is not as visible. In DA:I for example, your actions change the re-spawing of certain enemies quite noticeable (even that noticeable that you might find yourself searching the whole map for some foes you need to fulfill those stupid Orders..... >.<), but it is maybe that noticeable because you stay in a certain area for quite a while before you move on to a different zone. In Witcher 3, you mostly encounter enemies while travelling trough the wild, the wolf packs are not involved in any quest (mostly), you go by, kill them and move on, and you might never come back to that particular location once you have completed the related quests and POIs. Thus you don't see your influence on the wildlife, and if you come back much later to check, you might find the area repopulated.
Also at many locations i saw the wildlife attacking something, i had to ask myself wheter i am just encountering a bug/glitch, or a real scenery improvement. There is a small camp in white Orchard that you can liberate (population returns), but then in the nearby woods lives a quite big wolf pack that starts attacking those villagers, especially the ones wandering away a bit. They just stand there and the wolves attack and kill them. Many times i came by, the villagers were crying and screaming, covered somewhere, just because of another wolf attack, and i was like "oh, not this again", because i was quite sure to encounter a bug, where the villagers are simply moving too far away from the camp.

The day/night cycle was also somehow weird, until i reached Novigrad, where i think it is done quite well (during the day, the streets are really populated, during the evening/night, you see a lot of drunk people, or people going out, later during the night, the streets become empty and you might even get attacked by bandits), but again it was less noticeable than in different games. A skyrim comparison again (sorry!): every NPC has his/her house, a workplace, a place to hang out. I am quite sure this is also the case in Witcher 3, but less noticeable, because it simply does not really matter to you, you don't have to identify the exact house of a certain NPC, then study his daily life to identify the very best time to sneak into his house to steal his stuff, for example. Except for some quest-related NPCs or Merchants, i never had to wait until a certain time of the day in Witcher 3. And some merchants seem not to be affected by day/night cycle at all, also some quest-NPCs. Others then have the weirdest cycle and habits (that goddamn Weaponsmith in Kaer Trolde, for example).

 

[cloolvl]

Name me one game that has everything OP has mentioned.

it hasnt been done so it cant be done, right?

 

[deadlift]

What you are looking for is a procedural generated environment, that does react and adapt even it's own algorythms to choice.

We are about to open up that box just now, check "No Mans Sky" for that, also search for their "probes" system.

I think in basic it is possible to pull this off, even to weave a good narrative into that, to still be able to present you a great story, and give you freedom and choice while the world reacts to you dynamically.
Honestly I don't think currently any dev can pull this off, or they'd need to be way smarter than my limited mind. xD

Interesting question is this: what budget would you need to create this, and what machines do the customers need in the end to handle this.

So I'd say in theory this should already be doable, but practically I doubt anyone can handle this, not only saying development but from a Game Designer standpoint.
You end up with a dilemma, how do you control your "living environment" to the point you can still deliver on the game experience you want.

A small example: a beast or monster finds its way to an encampment and completely eradicates all live in there, maybe because you lead them there, or just by chance.
Now you do need a certain NPC or item or checkpoint to progress your story.
So the game designer would have to forsee any circumstance that could alter his route he projects for you through the game, and still give you a means to continue what you'd expect.
And that was an easy example, if an NPC dies you could just find the info in the belly of said monster that you'd have to track etc.
But think of something like an NPC being carried off to a den, or being flow away into a nest.

As you can't project what could all happen, to forsee any possibility a procedurally generated environment could come up with, you'd probably go nuts, or you'd have to say: ah well ah pitty, better luck next time dear player.

 

[KingKnee]

I saw a band of nekkers run wild through a small town (the one right next to the sacred tree) killing all the inhabitants who were just merrily doing their chores until they got ate. The minimap still identified them as traders and such but in reality it was just a small town of corpses. Not exactly immersive but surprising at least.

 

[Soylent.876]

I think the "abandoned area" sites are half baked. You clear out a few monsters, then a cutscene of 3 people walking into the village. Cut back to Geralt, who just stands there, silently watching the peasants walking in. Then you return the the village and it's still all messed up looking, except now there are people doing "work" like sawing a board forever or sitting on a porch.

It must have been a late game feature or something they almost cut from the game, but it's a bit immersion breaking for me. Why does Geralt stand there silently watching people walk in? Why doesn't anyone say anything to him, like a simple "Thank you, we can finally return home" or something?

 

[Rudlee]

I have seen several packs of wolves killing deer and horses, well until I stopped them. I found a bunch of rabbit corpses in an area, which I think were killed by nekkers, although I did not witness it like the wolves, but the nekkers were in the same area roaming around. One of the issues with a dynamic world is that things happen sometimes when you are not there to see them. How many of these things need to happen before the "promise" is not broken?

Another issue is the game is so big I rarely get back to an area a few days or weeks later to see any impact I may have had by killing things.

I thought CDRed said no enhanced edition this time, only continuous patches on the core game? They change this plan?

it's called speculation, I don't have an insight on the further dev process, I'm just guessing... and yes, I saw the scenarios you speak of as well, but that's hardly what you call a "living breathing ecosystem" I rather call it "here, have some of the scraps of the initial ideas we had"

 

[warbaby2]

I think the "abandoned area" sites are half baked. You clear out a few monsters, then a cutscene of 3 people walking into the village. Cut back to Geralt, who just stands there, silently watching the peasants walking in. Then you return the the village and it's still all messed up looking, except now there are people doing "work" like sawing a board forever or sitting on a porch.

It must have been a late game feature or something they almost cut from the game, but it's a bit immersion breaking for me. Why does Geralt stand there silently watching people walk in? Why doesn't anyone say anything to him, like a simple "Thank you, we can finally return home" or something?

I think the feature wasn't really implemented like CDPR wanted to... due to technical or time constrains, I don't know. i the interviews, it did sound more along the lines of: Villagers move in and rebuild BUT could also get chased out again in the future. Now the abandoned sites are a one off thing,

Fact is, if the background simulation was indeed more dynamic, the game would have more longevity, and exploring already visited regions would be more fun.

 

[Mr_Walker]

I understand where the OP is coming from. Red Dead is hypnotic in the way it spawns random encounters and any open world game can benefit from that. But then again, it becomes the same predictable encounters being spawned and we're kinda back at square one..

At a certain point it's reflective of the amount of hours you spend "in-game". Yes, some of the civvies are a little repetitive, but as with Skyrim, and Red Dead, you look up and realise you've played for over a hundred hours. In the case of Skyrim I put over 500 hours into various playthroughs over the years. At that point you really have to think of course you're going to notice repetition.

And a fully functional ecosystem is a little more complicated than I think a lot of people here comprehend.

Though that dude who keeps farting and laughing about it... see a doctor. It's not healthy, that sort of gas.

 

[Domhnallaich]

I am a HUGE fan of this game. And since CDP is so receptive to their fans I thought this would be the perfect thing to bring to their attention.

Because for the most part these issues can be solved with a few AI tweaks and spawning efficiencies in the world. Nothing more.

Things like more advanced encounters are things modders can take care of easily, there are plenty of skyrim mods like that.

SO....here we go:

This article points out the fatal flaws in Skyrim’s open world (in addition to other mechanics)

http://mygodwhathassciencedone.blogspot.com/2013/02/great-games-that-actually-suck-elder.html

The gist of it is that the game world is not actually open ended. Wild animals spawn for the purpose of attacking you. Most little encounters are just time wasters between point A and B. The world doesn’t feel dynamic.


This..unfortunately..is basically the Witcher’s “dynamic” world.


what happened to: rotting corpses will attract monsters and killing all the wolves in the arena will increase population of deers etc, if blacksmiths wife is killed he will move to other village and what not.

^Havent seen anything even remotely close to that. All the people in the villages are hardest in their roles for eternity. How can a wife be killed if no enemies attack the settlements?

Nekkers spawn in large groups in ONE spot. A bear has a specific spawn point. Drowners spawn in specific locations.

There is a point where enemy spawn locations become less about “they are there because that is the type of region they live in” and more about “the programmer make them spawn in the SAME SPOT every time"


Civillians have no “day and night cycle”. Certain spots in the game map are populated with specific NPCs who say the same thing over and over again. The children playing “burn the witch” in Novigrad continue playing it for eternity in the same spot. The guards guarding the entrance to The bloody Baron’s fort constantly talk about how they encountered a witcher one time or something. I mean sure, at night all the kids in the city just..walk away and then despawn, but they hardly have any sort of actual routine.

The world becomes bland once you get through the “hand crafted ‘random encounters’ that dot the land. Every time you complete a mission, it makes you feel like you made the world more empty. Because you did.


Monsters, who “populate the world naturally” are 99 percent of the time confined to “guarded treasures” and monster dens, and as I said before..incredibly specific spawn points. A bear always spawns near a certain tree. Nekkers always spawn near this specific ruined cart.


The game, unfortunately, aims to be so big that you only need to visit every part once. Because if you revisit any parts, you are doomed to witness the same enemy spawning, the same conversation occurring, a spot once occupied by a “random bandit camp encounter” disappointingly empty and meaningless.


So what is the solution?



Could it be as simple as tweaking the NPC spawning in the open world? Make griffin and wyvern and cyclops encounters more common and wolf packs and deer families more common? Program more instances of predators chasing down deer. This could give the illusion that the world is just as dangerous around “guarded treasures” as it is in the general open world. Granted, there have been a few times where I came across a random group of bandits by a fire, or a random wvyern. But only VERY. VERY. VERY rarely. Like once a play through of 2 hours consisting of just roaming the world.

Or could a solution be programming more RDR style encounters on the game that TRULY spawn randomly in the environment, like a duel between two noblemen, a woman being chased by dogs, a horse thief, a man robbing a traveler, or just coming across the remains of a battle that dynamically spawns in the world.


I think both. The problem is that, while the first one is easy enough to do with mods, the second one is much more difficult, and would likely require devs’ help.


The witcher 3 seems to be caught between being be a narrative set in a big map, and trying to be an actual systemic open world.

I am not saying that the style of the witcher world is “bad”.

It is just not dynamic, nor does it have much replay ability.

Trailers said that monsters don't just "spawn artificially; they react with each other and NPCs...the world is populated with animals monsters and humans interacting with each other, and you are merely a spectator"

Well I have yet to see a cyclops fighting some harpies that are RIGHT NEXT TO HIM, or even some endregas (I have once fought some endregas, came across a guarded treasure with a cyclops, and there were harpies floating right there THEY ALL GANGED UP ON ME AND DIDNT NOTICE EACH OTHER)

And as for "artificial spawning"..well..like I said, 99 percent of all the encounters are predesigned spawn locations that either never occur again because they are limited bandit camps or something, or only ever occur in the same spot with the same enemies over and over again.

I have yet to see a griffin attack an NPC settlement.


I have yet to see a non scripted more than 1 time only instance of humans "interacting with each other, trying to survive"




I’ve been told that “this game isn’t supposed to be like skyrim”

but then I hear and see in trailers and demos how the world is..well..described like skyrim, with a “living breathing ecosystem”.

I dont wanna sound like one of those people who try to say this game sucks because it isn't like skyrim. In fact it is one of the best games I have ever played. But I am confused between what the devs said and what is actually playing in my PC.




Okay, the kids playing thing I can understand. There is only so much dialogue I suppose. Would still be nice if maybe that event happened in different parts of the city.



But the animal thing is not as "complex" as you think it is.

@jjavier
"What happens when they wander inside a village, get in the area of guarded treasure or coincide in time and place with the player in the middle of a scripted quest?"

That is exactly what a dynamic world addresses. NPCs should ward off the animals or fight them. If they are near a guarded treasure, that would give the player a second thought of trying to take them and the guardian on.

And I am not talking about scripted quests, in which devs always simply essentially "shut off" certain parts to avoid getting in the way. Thats why there are no "dynamic encounters" during missions in RDR for example. I am talking about the open world.

Also, obviously I am not trying to be the one who is all "oh it has to be so realistic with geralt having hunger and plants growing and animals reproducing based on Darwinian principles"

I am simply asking for the complex and organic AI interaction system they promised. It isn't super impossible. RDR did it. You see coyotes chasing down and killing things all the time. You see hunters roaming the land shooting down birds and fending off predators.


In witcher 3, the only hunter I've seen is safely in the confines of a village looking at...the side of a cliff.

"The problem with that is the complexity grows exponentially because of interactions between the elements of the simulation."

Not really. I am not asking for "world simulator". But for the next gen complex ecosystem they promised. This is next generation, isn't it? It has been done before.

"To fully simulate children playing, the developer would need to script the same children NPC playing in different groups, different games and with different partners. Each NPC should some times win the game, some time lose, from time to time fight, leave in rage, suffer accidents, get sick and the list keep going to the infinite."

...really? Obviously that is not what I mean. I was talking how instead of maybe that conversation occurring organically in different parts of the city, it only spawns in the same spot outside that one tavern.
(bolded cuz a few of you guys mentioned my comment about the kids)

"I think limiting "enemies" to areas and periodical respaws is a reasonable option for a quite complex problem."

And that is my point. I am not condemning them for having this sort of gameplay..I don't like it when they..echem..say one thing and give another. Because that^ is not a living breathing ecosystem. They said "they aren't spawned artificially" and look at that..they are spawned forever and beyond in a single location.



You all have arguments that this sort of programming is hard. But this is next gen, and this game promised to deliver this sort of living breathing ecosystem. This game is supposed to be a breath of fresh air, a step in a new direction, a new height for open world games, remember? So you can imagine my confusion when the game fails to do the things many last generation open world games have been able to achieve.

I have to agree to a certain extent. TW3 is aweosme but it has regressed in some ways. I can remember when playing TW1, you got different things happening at different parts of the day (cycle was also longer). Going out at night was quite tense because monsters such as vampires suddenly dropped on your head in the dead of night. Drowners started to appear by riverbanks or Bargheists would suddenly start to attack you. You got different types of monsters during the day, people went to their beds at night and when you went into their homes, you saw them sleep. In some ways TW1 feels like it has a better living,breathing ecosystem,

TW3 doesn't employ these same things, at least not to the same level. I still love the game but I was expecting more in this regard.

 

[Smurfin]

How long then? Because this game was delayed like 3 times. It's had over 5 YEARS of development. Can't help thinking you would all say the same thing if this game was in development for 10 years. You'd think this is the sort of thing they would be working on. Instead, they give us tons of ideas of how "oh you'll come across bandits celebrating a robbery besides a burning house" "Oh if a certain wolf hunter dies the amount of dear will rise" "Oh monsters are attracted to rotting corpses" in early previews but frankly it seems like every delay was a marker of "we need more time to cut and then polish what we have left"

Every single delay made me think "You know what? It's okay. Because ever extra week of devtime they have means a bit more brilliance here, some better code there, some balancing here"

They released a basically bug free product that runs super well. But...what happened to the ecosystem they advertised? Damn, above all else I never thought the gameplay would ever be compromised by time.

Damn. I am working myself up. Hell this game is great. I even stuck by through all the graphics nonsense. Because I thought the gameplay would be something revolutionary. I don't know if I was right to think that now.

I guess we as end users will never know for sure, I think most of their times were spent on working on 5000 openable doors in Novigrad, since that was the official response CDPR gave when being interviewed regarding renderer or something, if there were things that's more noteworthy why should he pointed that one out. But if they want to double triple quadruple chatters/activities for npcs to make it less repetitive that surely need more recording time and implementation like I said earlier.

Just for comparison, total words in the bible are about 774,746 (old & new testament), The Witcher 3 has like 450,000 words, spoken by 950 speaking roles, taking more than two and a half years to record. The voice recording began at the end of 2012 and was finished earlier this year. If we want more variety and less repetitive line from the npcs, multiply them by 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 multiplier. But that's very unlikely, they even reuse the same models for NPCs. The game had already been made and released, I guess if we want more features or whatnot, it's via REDkit and by modders.

Btw you really are a HUGE fan, you noticed every little detail lol. This is an interesting topic.

 

[Liquidacid]

IMO the game's fine the way it is but a few dynamic events thrown in could have made the world feel a lot more like a living world because it does seem rather stagnant at times

 

[Smurfin]

I'd like to add if they really want to make living breathing ecosystem, perhaps they need to adopt a few systems from other games, like City Skylines for example, if NPCs are dead, new ones will replace, and they need to walk from the end road of the map toward the new city/village where the old ones were dead, and we can stalk them walking ;D, if they encounter bandits or animals or monsters, they will be replaced again, if night comes they camp, rinse and repeat, that'll be awesome.

I also have seen some random dead bodies of animals like others have stated, rabbits, bandits, even wolves, and etc. Sometimes I wonder when did I kill'em ? must be fighting by themselves and killed by other predator/stronger creatures.

 

[AVMC]

"To fully simulate children playing, the developer would need to script the same children NPC playing in different groups, different games and with different partners. Each NPC should some times win the game, some time lose, from time to time fight, leave in rage, suffer accidents, get sick and the list keep going to the infinite."

...really? Obviously that is not what I mean. I was talking how instead of maybe that conversation occurring organically in different parts of the city, it only spawns in the same spot outside that one tavern.

It makes me sad when pointing out how developers didn't quite hit the mark on certain aspects gets these kind of responses. I don't think people realize it, but this is what it sounds like.

Developer says X will be in game. [Pretty clear cut...]

Player notices X isn't in the game... [Again, pretty clear cut.]

Player says, "I love this game! Any plan on implementing X, since you said it was doable?" [Seems reasonable, right?]

Someone comes along and responds, "Uh, excuse me, but they can't do X because there's an entire sub-alphabet of X [Xsub1, Xsub2, adinf] and they can't just stop at X... in fact they'd have to work forever... FOR! EV! ER! Plus, it doesn't matter if they say it'll have X because no one has X."

Player scratches head... "......."

I'm joking around, of course, but it makes me chuckle pretty hard. Makes me wonder if devs are behind the scenes saying, "That poster has a good point, I wish we could just speak openly about why things aren't implemented without automagically pissing of 51% of our player base. There are real reasons linked to dev cost and time table."