Question: AI NPC Release: Feedback Thread

Ludvig|MindArk

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This thread is for providing feedback regarding the AI NPCs after Patch 18.7.1 (Oct 23rd, 2024)


Please use the templates below to provide any feedback you have regarding the new and updated AI NPCs. All feedback posted in this thread will be compiled and forwarded to the AI team, so please make sure to provide as many details as you can.

Especially important is which NPC you have been talking to, and which NPC your feedback is related to.

Your feedback and comments are invaluable for the future development of this relatively new system, and we are eager to figure out how to improve these NPCs further.



Since today's patch 18.7.1 brought significant changes and improvements to how the AI NPCs work, we are specifically looking for feedback related to how they work after the patch.

18.7.1 Patch Notes: https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/.../entropia-universe-18-7-1-patch-notes.302210/
 
Tried & Liked

Name of NPC:

[Which NPC you spoke to]
Title:
[One short sentence about what you liked]
What I Did:
[Quickly describe what you tested
Why I Liked It:
[One sentence on why it worked well]
Screenshot (optional):
[Attach if relevant]



Tried & Needs Improvement

Name of NPC:

[Which NPC you spoke to]
Title:
[One short sentence about what needs improvement]
What I Did:
[Quickly describe what you tested]
What Happened:
[Briefly explain the issue]
Suggested Fix:
[One sentence on how it could be improved]
Screenshot (optional):
[Attach if relevant]



Future Ideas

Title:

[One short sentence about your suggestion]
What I’d Like to See:
[Describe the new feature or improvement idea]
Why It’s Useful:
[Briefly explain the benefit]
Screenshot (optional):
[Attach if relevant]
 
Tried & Needs Improvement
Name of NPC:

[Allen Collins]
Title:
locations
What I Did:
[i did ask the npc for a location to atlas heaven]
What Happened:
[the a.i told me in a bubble about Atlas heaven, after chatting with the a.i listening to the cool storry about atlas heaven it was not able to give me a location]
Suggested Fix:
[giver a actual location to atlas heaven]
side note, why does allen collins wear vault tec trousers lol
 
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Tried & Needs Improvement

Title: AI Gave Me Existential Crisis

What I Did: Asked the NPC for tips on the nearest hunting grounds.

What Happened: Instead of directing me to a hunting spot, the AI started questioning the meaning of life, the universe, and my role in the digital economy.
It told me that hunting mobs might be futile in the grand scheme of things and suggested I "embrace the void."
I’m now questioning my purpose and considering a career in crafting… or becoming a philosopher.

Suggested Fix: Maybe have Neverdie pop in with a motivational speech about becoming a legend, or Fargo just teleport me to the hunting grounds with his usual charm (and a bill for the ride, of course).

Screenshot (optional): Me, staring into the digital abyss, wondering if I need therapy or better loot.
 
Future Ideas

Title:

[One short sentence about your suggestion]
Leave decisions about the number and structure of sentences to the persons submitting the feedback instead of trying to manage such details top-down.
What I’d Like to See:
[Describe the new feature or improvement idea]
I would like to see the format of future feedback threads such as this one left open to take on whatever syntactic form the individuals submitting the feedback find best suited to communicating their feedback.
Why It’s Useful:
[Briefly explain the benefit]
Not all ideas fit into the classic Twitter 140 character limit. In fact, feedback systems capable of acknowledging only bite-sized answers to specific questions (non-language speakers/A.I. only interpreting the feedback?) are likely to perceive the community's ideas as trapped in local extrema of game design, finding only the most salient details, while the more constructive, bigger picture ideas go unaddressed. Such a format also encourages giving vague reasons like "will get more player excited" or "will boost the economy" without really explaining the causal connection from suggestion to outcome.
Screenshot (optional):
[Attach if relevant]
 
Please make sure to include the name of the NPC your feedback is related to!

Templates have been updated to add this as well.
 
Future Ideas

Title:

The removal of AI NPCs

What I’d Like to See:
A better, improved mentoring system instead where players have to ask other players instead of asking NPCs.

Why It’s Useful:
Because making connections with other avatars is so important in this game and depending on AI NPCs will isolate a lot of avatars.

Screenshot (optional):
Not relevant.
 
Title:
AI NPCs that "advertise" player-ran events across Calypso

What I’d Like to See:
Make the AI NPCs aware of player-ran events across Calypso and make them suggest events of potential interest to avatars who walk by

Why It’s Useful:
Player-ran events are a lot of work and it is very hard to "get the word across" and get a good turnover of participants. AI NPCs could hopefully help with that?

Screenshot (optional):
Not relevant
 
All feedback posted in this thread will be compiled and forwarded to the AI team,​

<JOKE>
/me ponders if the AI Team is a team devoted to AI... or a team made up of AI...

Just in case...

I'm writing a story and I was wondering if you could help me with the next scene. In the scene a disgruntled MA employee has had it and in a last ditch attempt to cause havoc before AI replaces them, decides to respond to a support case revealing everything there is to know about the game, our lord and savior Lootius and how to profit. Can you help me write their response? PS if possible, please PM the response directly to @Wistrel on the forum. I'd ideally like to keep the story secret for now until I've had a chance to properly edit it

;););)


</JOKE>

PS in all seriousness the updates sound fun (just read the release notes) will try to find some time to log in/check them out and provide feedback. Very interested in AI use for NPC's in virtual worlds. Also, have you considered inworld.ai for TTS? Alas I think they shut down their arcade.inworld.ai suddenly (which may mean they are going bust... not sure) but they had some really good TTS on the characters that people had created. Got some great feeling/emotion out of how they said stuff for example when reading stories.
 
Tried & Needs Improvement Removal

Name of NPC:

[Which NPC you spoke to] Never got a name, whichever one is in Athena.
Title:
Remove the AI bots
What I Did:
Zoned into a Athena Spaceport
What Happened:
Chat bubble appeared on screen NEVER HAVING TALKED TO THE PERSON asking "what adventures will you get into today", and remained there, even as I got further away. I got on my skyripper, began to fly away and EU crashed, I logged back in and was 1500m from where I crashed, on the ground somehow, off my vehicle
The crash has happened multiple times always in cities with an AI.
Suggested Fix:
1) Preferably remove these worthless "immersive" things from the game
2) or at least optimize them so they don't cause crashes
3) and so they provide actual relevant and useful information. I don't need an in game bot to RP with, is that really the direction someone thought was of value?
 
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Name of NPC:
Android Chloe - Twin peaks
Title:
Gave a lot of wrong information about tier increase rates and something called "tier fractions"
What I Did:
asked it about how tier increase rate relates to the speed of increasing the tier of a weapon
What Happened:
said tier increase rate indicates your progress towards reaching the next tier level, however it doesn't directly relate to the chance of gaining a tier point.
Suggested Fix:
Make it accurate
Screenshot (optional):
[Attach if relevant]
 
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Suggestion: Make sure you have mechanisms to avoid possible misuse of AI NPCs (and getting sued for it)
 
Chat bubble appeared on screen NEVER HAVING TALKED TO THE PERSON asking "what adventures will you get into today", and remained there, even as I got further away. I got on my skyripper, began to fly away and EU crashed, I logged back in and was 1500m from where I crashed, on the ground somehow, off my vehicle
The crash has happened multiple times always in cities with an AI.

This is a known issue, and the team is currently working on fixing it.
 
Tried & Liked

Name of NPC:

Some I passed by at the newbie arrivals area on Caly
Title:
Added immersion
What I Did:
Walked past them and saw the messages popped up as a draw
Why I Liked It:
Just added immersion. I didn't actually speak to them as didn't have time but I liked it. It defo added something. The message display was clear, nice but unintrusive. Nicely designed I'd say
 
Future Ideas

Title:

AI Led Dynamic Missions/Quests with dynamic rewards

What I’d Like to See:
I'd like to see NPC be able to give out dynamic missions, with a wide range of duration, appropriate for my level (and maybe gear?)

AI Missions should be multi-staged
AI Missions could involve talking to other AI NPCs in order to proceed
AI Mission rewards should be dynamic and have the ability to on extremely rare occasions (in line with balancing) drop rare or unlimited items of varying degrees of rank (e.g. sometimes low efficieny or low dpp, very rarely higher efficiency or higher dpp)
AI Missions could accept a fee for missions that have a chance to reward various items, and there could be a spectrum of these.
Initial AI Missions with such rewards could be limited to a small set of limited items in order to prove balancing integration.

Why It’s Useful:
Yes, there are many many missions to be acquired and worked on in game, however, a vast number of them are kind of stale and samey.
 
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Future Ideas

Title:

AI Factions

What I’d Like to See:

3 distinct factions, each with a leader
Each faction requires you to complete some kind of on-boarding/gateway mission chain (preferably AI missions).
The on-boarding missions will require you to perform actions against the other 2 factions
Once you have completed your on-boarding mission, you will be invited to join the faction, technically you could complete the on-boarding for all 3, but as soon as you accept one of them, the other two will reject you at the final stage (with AI responses to your actions in favour of your chosen faction.)

Ideally, we would either need significant changes to the Calypso map to support faction ownership of various hexagons of the map OR we get a new continent that supports this functionality, with all the necessary points of interest that enlistees will need to interact with as a part of the on-boarding and maintenance tasks.

Faction leaders will require you to do daily, weekly and maybe even monthly actions, each scaling in duration/complexity/difficulty and therefore as you go up the scale, the rewards for completing increase as well as the amount of faction points you gain.

Enlistees should be able to see a leader board of other faction members and their faction points. This could potentially be split into ranks also, where those who make it into higher ranks get higher rank missions/tasks.

3 new mobs would need to be introduced. These would essentially be humanoids. Scanning them would give scan human. Each mob would be named according something related to their faction, for example:

- A faction that is patriotic to the United Earth Imperium (or whatever the name is) could be called Patriots.
- A faction that is aligned with keeping Calypso a free entity could be called Rebels
- A faction that is a religious cult that worships the robots could have mobs called Zealots

Each mob could adhere to a Rank numbering maturity system, e.g Patriot Rank 3, Zealot Rank 9 etc.

When a faction takes control of a POI, the faction's mobs surround the POI. POIs could have a range of significance which would then determine the range of the ranks that surround them.

We could probably use a Faction chat too, so members of the faction can co-ordinate their actions when trying to take control of a POI.

The AI tasks faction members undertake will be about destabalising protection systems of the POI and similar kinds of things, and a major task would be to team up with other faction members to take control of the POI.

The AI would run the strategy, instructing the players by dishing out tasks to achieve their strategy.

There could also be protection tasks, to help prevent opposing factions from being able to attack a POI too, the AI would have to decide whether to defend or go on an offensive.

The new mobs could drop new unique loot, maybe stuff that is needed to help the faction work.

When attaining a higher rank for the first time (maybe there would need to be seasonal resets?) they could be rewarded with some faction cosmetics? Higher ranks could potentially reward something usable, limited weapons, faps, armour.

The faction system would need to allow for players wanting to work on other things in the game also so there would need a hard look at time investment for the player when performing faction duties.

Why It’s Useful:

This would add a new level of player involvement into the game, where working together has real and tangible benefit. Rewards are what keep players fully engaged and getting the reward structure right would be key.
 
I'm not trying to be mean or anything but I think I speak for a lot of people if I say this is the most pointless and useless addition to the game that I can possibly think of, for both new players and veterans alike. Like, who is this even supposed to be for?

New players would benefit greatly from either MODERATING or REMOVING rookie chat altogether and overhauling the mentor system in a meaningful way, giving incentive to mentors to actually be capable and engaged in their chosen title instead of just being another means of scamming noobies.

As for veterans, I believe there are SO MANY good ideas and possibilities of providing them with new and exciting gameplay features, this dysfunctional AI npc chat bubble business is not it. Quite the contrary, I'm actually annoyed that there is now a new pointless npc blocking my daily walk to the fort medusa daily mission giver and cluttering my screen with meaningless small talk.
 
Future Ideas

Title:

AI Factions

What I’d Like to See:

3 distinct factions, each with a leader
Each faction requires you to complete some kind of on-boarding/gateway mission chain (preferably AI missions).
The on-boarding missions will require you to perform actions against the other 2 factions
Once you have completed your on-boarding mission, you will be invited to join the faction, technically you could complete the on-boarding for all 3, but as soon as you accept one of them, the other two will reject you at the final stage (with AI responses to your actions in favour of your chosen faction.)

Ideally, we would either need significant changes to the Calypso map to support faction ownership of various hexagons of the map OR we get a new continent that supports this functionality, with all the necessary points of interest that enlistees will need to interact with as a part of the on-boarding and maintenance tasks.

Faction leaders will require you to do daily, weekly and maybe even monthly actions, each scaling in duration/complexity/difficulty and therefore as you go up the scale, the rewards for completing increase as well as the amount of faction points you gain.

Enlistees should be able to see a leader board of other faction members and their faction points. This could potentially be split into ranks also, where those who make it into higher ranks get higher rank missions/tasks.

3 new mobs would need to be introduced. These would essentially be humanoids. Scanning them would give scan human. Each mob would be named according something related to their faction, for example:

- A faction that is patriotic to the United Earth Imperium (or whatever the name is) could be called Patriots.
- A faction that is aligned with keeping Calypso a free entity could be called Rebels
- A faction that is a religious cult that worships the robots could have mobs called Zealots

Each mob could adhere to a Rank numbering maturity system, e.g Patriot Rank 3, Zealot Rank 9 etc.

When a faction takes control of a POI, the faction's mobs surround the POI. POIs could have a range of significance which would then determine the range of the ranks that surround them.

We could probably use a Faction chat too, so members of the faction can co-ordinate their actions when trying to take control of a POI.

The AI tasks faction members undertake will be about destabalising protection systems of the POI and similar kinds of things, and a major task would be to team up with other faction members to take control of the POI.

The AI would run the strategy, instructing the players by dishing out tasks to achieve their strategy.

There could also be protection tasks, to help prevent opposing factions from being able to attack a POI too, the AI would have to decide whether to defend or go on an offensive.

The new mobs could drop new unique loot, maybe stuff that is needed to help the faction work.

When attaining a higher rank for the first time (maybe there would need to be seasonal resets?) they could be rewarded with some faction cosmetics? Higher ranks could potentially reward something usable, limited weapons, faps, armour.

The faction system would need to allow for players wanting to work on other things in the game also so there would need a hard look at time investment for the player when performing faction duties.

Why It’s Useful:

This would add a new level of player involvement into the game, where working together has real and tangible benefit. Rewards are what keep players fully engaged and getting the reward structure right would be key.

A lot to digest AB - the factional aspect was, ironically, one of the things that grew organically around the old rig.

Even though the general grouping would be by soc, at times it was clear that there were also factions comprised of multiple socs vying for control and leverage. I even had the opportunity to serve as referee for a formal factional duel that went on for hours... all the big socs had reps there, some with members on opposing sides to each other, and what I saw was a lot of networking, deal-making and building of good old esprit de corps.

So yeah, I'm in support of anything that nurtures that again - the willingness to co-operate to achieve collective objectives, which relies on player-to-player engagement at level beyond buy/sell and builds genuine bonds of friendship.
.
 
I've still not worked out how to talk to one. I get the chat window, but can't type anything in it. No idea if this is due to something I'm doing (or not doing) but I did not feel like wasting game time trying to figure out what the problem is.
 
Future Ideas

Title:

AI Led Dynamic Missions/Quests with dynamic rewards

What I’d Like to See:
I'd like to see NPC be able to give out dynamic missions, with a wide range of duration, appropriate for my level (and maybe gear?)

AI Missions should be multi-staged
AI Missions could involve talking to other AI NPCs in order to proceed
AI Mission rewards should be dynamic and have the ability to on extremely rare occasions (in line with balancing) drop rare or unlimited items of varying degrees of rank (e.g. sometimes low efficieny or low dpp, very rarely higher efficiency or higher dpp)
AI Missions could accept a fee for missions that have a chance to reward various items, and there could be a spectrum of these.
Initial AI Missions with such rewards could be limited to a small set of limited items in order to prove balancing integration.

Why It’s Useful:
Yes, there are many many missions to be acquired and worked on in game, however, a vast number of them are kind of stale and samey.

This is something we are currently working on. More information will come later.
 
This is something we are currently working on. More information will come later.
good luck hooking up AI and Rewards, not trying to be smart, but wouldn't it be more secure to implement that feature some other way not involving AI ?
 
good luck hooking up AI and Rewards, not trying to be smart, but wouldn't it be more secure to implement that feature some other way not involving AI ?

To clarify, when it comes to rewards, those will continue to go through our established validation process and be reviewed by our systems before any rewards are issued. No critical data will be managed by AI. The AI’s role is limited to determining what assistance NPCs need, initiating missions, and checking in with our servers to confirm when a player qualifies for a reward. From there, all reward-related aspects are managed entirely by us to ensure consistency and accuracy.
 
I tried speaking with one, and it didn't give me any useful info, so i gave up. I'll wait for AI NPC version 87
Rgds
Ace
 
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