Thoughts and suggestions on NPC behavior after patch 1.1

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I've been taking notes and have some thoughts on the pedestrians and general NPCs in the game. I’m not talking about the enemy AI or driver behavior here, as you’ve got plenty of that feedback, just the cities many pedestrians, their appearance and behavior. And this is after the 1.1 patch, spending time walking around the city. Hope this is a helpful list.

This is the single biggest immersion breaker in the game from my experience. The city itself is so impeccably designed that it deserves to be inspected, explored, and paid attention to and these NPC behavior issues really limit how much one is allowed to do that. I really hope CDPR (if you're reading these) prioritizes and we see it improve significantly. I've attached screenshots to illustrate.

1. Duplicate NPCs still appear very often. I'm walking down one side of the street, see a guy in a plaid shirt and a mohawk - I look across the street and it's the same exact guy walking in the opposite direction. Happens frequently, like every minute or so in heavily trafficked areas. Even shows up in the Street Kid opening: (img 20210122234101_1)

2. NPCs will appear out of nowhere, sometimes on screen, but more often just around corners or when your back is turned. If you’re paying even an iota of attention to the screen it is off-putting and it happens constantly.

3. Items NPCs are holding will stick in the air when animation changes. Eg: guy talking on his cell phone, guy puts his hand down but the phone is left floating in air. This happens when NPCs walk or run away as well. Seen this happen with Johnny’s cigarettes and other items. This guy’s guitar just plain disappeared when I pointed a gun at him, and the guitar SFX continue to play. (20210122222855_1, 20210122223008_1)

4. Walking NPCs are aimless. There is no illusion that they have a destination in mind because if you watch one for more than a few seconds, often they will walk to a point, stop, then turn around and go back.

5. NPCs will transform into other NPCs when your back is turned. Very strange.

6. Some NPC’s lips don’t move when they speak. I am noticing this less after patch 1.1, but it still occurs frequently.

7. I wonder if there is any method in place for assigning which NPCs say which dialogue, or which types of NPCs spawn in which areas. From what I have seen there is a basket of dialogue lines, male or female, that any NPC has a chance to speak when you interact with them, and the same goes for types of NPCs. Obviously, gangs are different and are specific to certain areas, but the pedestrians I often find distracting – a corpo-looking woman in a suit walking like a drunk homeless person and when I interact with her says, “What do you want, friend?” and her lips don’t move. Adds to the feeling that all these people are hollow, random robots.

8. When I accidently (or even purposefully) dodge into, or jump on or into, an NPC, this person and the entire local population runs screaming. BUT when I pull a gun and aim it at an NPC’s head, they put their hands up and people in the area just walk away quickly (which I think is much more immersive than the former, a totally disproportionate response. I guess to the NPCs a dodge-into = an attack?) Would be great to have a stumble animation, as if when you bump into someone on the street. Not a screaming panic that makes my next civilian homicide even more necessary…

Suggestions

  • I’d like to see pedestrians never spawn or despawn close to the player so that it is never noticeable. Having them be out of sight and at a certain distance for at least 10 seconds would do the trick.
  • Different types of NPCs should be tethered to certain areas; Corpos in downtown, rockers in Japantown, homeless in the industrial area, etc. There is a lack of tailored NPC placement, something the Witcher 3 has in spades. Why does this guitar player change into a totally different NPC every time I come to this area? Maybe the procedural generation system in place was easier/faster to implement than a tailored system, but it's done the world you’ve tailored so beautifully a disservice. I don’t even need as much variety of NPCs as you have! I just want to see their placement, and their very existence have meaning in the context of the Cyberpunk world.
  • NPC’s dialogue bits (I wish there were more of a variety) should be more tailored to their speaker as well. A homeless lady throwing up says, “What do you need, friend?” (I seem to hear this line a lot that’s why I’m thinking about it.)
  • NPCs behavior should be more varied, and also be tailored to their type. If I punch a jacked-looking guy he should try to fight me, but a fat lady would try to run. Would be much more immersive and fun to play with. And I could practice my boxing skills with big dudes on the street!
  • There needs to be more nuance to the way NPCs react to violence. Not everyone needs to run and scream at the first sign, and there should probably be several states of panic. Also, why does this guy run and crouch indefinitely, instead of seeing that he’s gotten to a safe place and go about his business? The level of NPC panic has been toned down since 1.1 I believe, but it could be more nuanced. (20201213051450_1)
  • Overall, the population density is higher in this game than any other I’ve seen. I wonder if this is an effort to hide the shallowness of the crowd behavior, because I found it often overcrowded, or not realistically crowded. I don’t need to see 20 bodies walking around everywhere I see. I would much rather have less of them, but each has a bit of depth. I’m going to bring up GTAV, which I know has been a source of endless comparison and Cyberpunk is doing something much different (and in many ways, BETTER) than GTA, but I noted what felt good about the NPCs was not that they were particularly clever or smart, but that they did not draw attention to themselves. They were unobtrusive. They reacted the way you would expect an NPC to react, and there is enough tailored NPC placement and tailored voice-work that the experience feels consistent. The effect is not a successful illusion of dealing with real people, in all their variety and unpredictability, but actually a predictability that adds to the smoothness of the immersion of the game. This is not a small fix, I know, but I have never seen crowd behavior that is this… distracting – and in contrast with such a well told story and impeccably designed world. It deserves an extensive rewrite.
 

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On patch 1.1, I have seen your points 1, 2, 3, 7, and 8. The others will no doubt also be things I notice in further play, and have seen frequently in the past.

Very much agree on your suggestion that NPCs should have some sort of at least partial placement. The builder cooking noodles when this play through's V met Jackie downstairs was definitely a surprise (and a first to be fair), while I'd also suggest there's more appropriate clothing for many of the pole dancers in the city too.

Something I've noticed in particular with this current patch 1.1 is that it's not just identical NPCs spawning in the same area but spawning repeatedly in short order as I walk through the city. Obviously there's going to be limitations to what can be done but certainly seeing the same NPC over and over again wouldn't seem to be an intended thing.
 
Yeah the pedestrians are just for ambiance for me now, I used to like talking to them in games, in this game they just insult you and make you feel like a criminal.
 
But there weren't going to be any AI NPC fixes in this patch. Here is a screen from version 1.06:

Cyberpunk2077 2021-01-28 14-53-26.png
 
I wonder if CDPR is even thinking about improving (rebuilding) NPC behavior system in this game. There are thousands of discussions about AI issues in CP2077 all over the Internet. It would be great if the developers addressed this problem in any official statement, so that we know what to expect in the future.
 
Maybe it's the mod I downloaded but my NPC's do a number of things now.
They will do the following...

Give you a stink eye if you stare at them in their car
walk away quickly if you do something aggressive around them or hold dead/KO'ed bodies
Their comments will correspond to what you're doing
They will change what they are doing sometimes if you wait long enough
Rarely see more than one NPC type in a given area
If you hit them they will run away or cower and ask you to end them quickly
If you shoot a unsilenced gun anyone in ear shot will run screaming away from you
 
I think, that there could be something like a slider, for at what distance npc's disappear, so everyone can find a sweet spot between immersion and performance.
Also, I play on an entry level system (GTX 1050ti lp) and thus have crowd density set to low. Duplicate npc's are much less common (this is kinda obvious, just wanted to share)
 
Yeah, honestly NPC's changed quite a bit since patch 1.1 for me. But I'm running on a pretty high end PC so maybe I'm getting
different results? IDK, people say they act like zombies but all I can say is they don't act this way in my game. Again, not sure if it's the mods or what but I doubt it as I never noticed this behavior until the patch.

Before they had two responses. Cower or run.

Also, fire up Witcher. The NPC's don't react to you at all.
 
If any of them insult me in the street, they seem to suddenly acquire a terminal case of lead poisoning o_O
And then the police spawns in your back and you remember "Oh jeah, this is why I don't shoot the civiians" and sigh cause it's not fun at all getting away from them.
Post automatically merged:

Jeah, it also differs from place to place how bad it is, it's never GOOD but it ranges from meh to god awful, close by the ripperdoc in "downtown" (left to "corporate plaza") there is this street where there's a whole bunch of npc's and they literally all just...walk down a straight line, slowly chugging along till they reach a point where they return, it's so bad.
 
I think the crowd density is as correct as we can do with hardware limitations, for a bustling city. Look at a street on Manhattan during business hours, it's 5x thicker than anywhere in NC.

The spawning, lack of variety, and AI issues are the biggest problems.
 
It's down right now, but Nexus mods has a great mod for NPC AI called "Better Crowd Behavior"
check it out, it will improve you experience on PC anyway.
 
And then the police spawns in your back and you remember "Oh jeah, this is why I don't shoot the civiians" and sigh cause it's not fun at all getting away from them.

With the amount of armor my character has on this (modded save) play-though (yes, you can mod Armadillos to Legendary status with a 270 rating on each) and the serious damage my weapons output (plus the burn stat is applied, so if i shoot them with the SMG more than twice they start burning)... killing the Police is actually a good laugh.. after about 12 officers you don't get anymore reinforcements and the wanted level goes from 4 back to 0... rinse and repeat as necessary.

if you struggle with police in game (ie. they chase you for more than a block), just find and interact with a shop vendor.. the level is automatically wiped.. :rolleyes:
Also don't try to escape in a vehicle if the automated defenses are activated.


this is probably the best case armor stat rating (in combat - which boosts the levels) - normally between 3200 - 5000
 
On patch 1.1, I have seen your points 1, 2, 3, 7, and 8. The others will no doubt also be things I notice in further play, and have seen frequently in the past.

Very much agree on your suggestion that NPCs should have some sort of at least partial placement. The builder cooking noodles when this play through's V met Jackie downstairs was definitely a surprise (and a first to be fair), while I'd also suggest there's more appropriate clothing for many of the pole dancers in the city too.

Something I've noticed in particular with this current patch 1.1 is that it's not just identical NPCs spawning in the same area but spawning repeatedly in short order as I walk through the city. Obviously there's going to be limitations to what can be done but certainly seeing the same NPC over and over again wouldn't seem to be an intended thing.



Agree with the 1st posts OP,and yours Zebedee7. Still.I love the game with over 190 Hours into my 2nd play through.
I think some of whats being seen and pointed out is possibly RAM limitations. Some of us have more then 16Gb of Ram CDPR in our computer systems,please allow for more variety,if the user has more memory and or a CPU with more then 4 or 6 Cores+8/12 Threads. My main system now has a Ryzen 5900X (12 Cores and 24 Threads) and my wife's gaming PC now has my older Ryzen 3600X,a 6 core twelve thread CPU.
 
Again, download better crowd behavior, it fixes spawning for NPC's. They stick around long enough not to break
immersion and they also come in more variety.
 
Just to credit the devs, on 1.2 while going about the city this seems to be much improved for me so far. I'm not seeing a number of the issues thegrownassman raised in their OP to anything like the same extent. Obviously not everything to the extent I'd love to see but there's certainly movement towards it and I really welcome that effort from the devs.
 
@Zebedee77
I agree there's some definite improvements to the NPC feel with this patch, but a number of things I am still noticing happening:

1. NPC's still spawn right in front of you, though I'm seeing less disappearing/appearing acts while your back is turned. Mostly what I'm still seeing is actors loading-in when walking or driving around.
2. Twins. Still so many twins. Its' gotten to the point where I'm like "oh hey that's a cool looking npc with a robot arm, where's her twin?" and sure enough it's right behind her or across the street or something. Still happening frequently.

But other than that (and I haven't played extensively, just for a couple hours messing around) it's a major improvement generally. Other people have brought up the continued NPC driver AI issues, cops, and all that so I'm just focusing on pedestrians. I'm sure CDPR are aware of it and it is heartening that they've taken the broad steps they have in this patch in only a few months. This shit has got to be programmer labor intensive and time consuming so I'm not angry that they've taken as long as they have to fix these issues. It's perfectly understandable (I mean it goes without saying they should have released in 2021, but their commitment to fixing it is showing.) Right now it's about as broken as Skyrim was it's first year of release :ROFLMAO:. But with a way better story!

Keep the fixes coming is all I have to say.
 
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