Baeleos

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Nothing, bar the gales of laughter which will greet the Patch Notes when it's announced. Followed by lots and lots of posts along the lines of "FFS, why are they wasting time with this. Fix (PvP || Villains Content || Set X underperforming || Base Raids) instead".


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Noted - Its ok to leave small things in a bad state, as long as the big things get fixed, then we find more big things to fix, and ignore the small things forever.

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No, it's less improvement, because of the big things that don't get improved because some annally retentive dev is fiddling with trivia that 99% of players will ignore anyway.


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Thats like saying
"This is a small feature, no one will mind if I dont test it"

If they need more developers to get more done, then hire them.

No improvement they add, will result in the game getting worse.

An improvement, no matter how small, is still an improvement, and as i've said, they have issues 15 all the way to infinity to consider adding Civilian Model enhancements and pathfinding to the list.

So far, im getting the impression, that its acceptable to leave bad things in the game, if they are small.

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Well, it appears that either:

A) It was a really rubbish course; or

B) You wheren't paying attention.



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I think I did well enough since I got 100% in it, so unless you went through the same course, your opinion on the course matters not.

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Lets try looking at this another way what would you prefer the devs put there time into.

1) more varied looking civilians on the city streets some of which have disabilities and contacts that have disabilities.

Or

2) the ability to create your own custom mission and factions to fill those mission which is a feature that as far as im aware has never appeared in another MMO and so allows them to re-release the game and get more money in the door so that they can create even better improvements to the game ?


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So, your saying they can either fix the 'bad' models on the civilians, and not provide issue 14.
Or
Provide issue 14, and never give us better looking civilians that look, and behave better.

Noting you never said that option 2 could lead to option 1, so Im assuming its one or the other.

I've already said that Issue 14 is going to get me playing for a while, regardless of civilians current lack of quality. However there is no reason for them not to provide both.
Do any of you know whats in Issue 15? Issue 16?
No?
Well, whats wrong with them investigating possible improvements to Models of Civilians (and/or mobs), and better Pathfinding.

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"Improving models" is a ridiculously vague idea anyway. Improve what? Textures? Polygon counts? (massive work in those two) City Citizen pathing & AI? (minimal gameplay improvement here)? Enemy Mob AI? (something they are currently tweaking, at least for new bosses & powersets in Architect, because it has a decent gameplay payoff in the new feature) Pet & Henchman AI (a horrible can of worms which makes Castle cry)?


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I will admit, you are making good points here, there are other larger things that are being released, but does that really negate the small things?
Pathfinding, and AI - It might be small, but once its improved, thats one thing out of the way, and it improves the environment that the players characters exist in.
Models - It would be a large under taking. But does that negate the benefit it might provide if it resulted in nicer models, textures and maybe even eliminating the stuck in wall bug that many creatures experience. Also making the Models less SOLID would be great. Make civilians stumble, or stop walking or fall down, if they walk into a player or something. At the minute, civilians have the same driving force behind them as a truck, they can push a PB in dwarf form out of the way - I thought I was the one with super strength.

My point is, these things wont get improved, if they dont try.
You say that it would only provide minimal improvement, well, thats more improvement than if they don't fix it.

If I knew it was on their agenda, then I would be happy, but as its been pointed out, Civilian AI and Models have been the same way they've been, for 3+ years. It might not be on their radar at all.

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I think you need to possibly look into ethics a little more before you start trying to debate them.


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Actually, I'd rather not look into ethics more than I have to, its one of those nasty little courses that 'the company' forces employees to do, but no one really likes to do.

Im actually not going to respond to ethics posts now, cause i've already pointed out that I never indicated that ncSoft had made ethically bad moves, I merely pointed out to another member that if they decided to cut corners on quality, to save money, then that could have been an ethically bad move.

To be honest, I think being a quality assurance worker has got me in the mindset to spot quality, and lack of quality.

Thats probably why im having issues accepting the low quality in the city of x civilian population. I've scripted my own Neverwinter Nights Persisntent World Module, and the banter script is alot more believeable than the Civilians that walk around the city of Paragon.

Lets click on Juilian over there..
Julian: "The Time is 14.48."

Lets click on Jenny over there..
Jenny: "The Time is 14.49."

This was just cheap programming, and shouldnt have been done this way.

The Risk statement was in reference to your own post.
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would also prevent some monsters getting stuck in walls too,


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Erm how exactly? If anything all it does is increase the likelyhood of new, fresh bugs being introduced with the changes.


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Your argument is that they shouldnt attempt to improve the models or civilians because it increases risk,
My arguement is that Risk is increased if they release more features, and things that rely on those models, if they ever do choose to change them.

Means that when they try to fix the models, they potentially have more to break, where as, if they fix the models early on, before too many things rely on them, then the risk is minimal, and less costly to fix.

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They would be welcomed. But as you now say (finally in agreement with everyone else) they certainly aren't a high priority. And in no way does a lack of them forthcoming mean NCNC are being unethical in not providing them for us.


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No one is grasping the point I made earlier where I pointed out that I had not said they have made an ethical decision.

I merely pointed out that IF they HAD compromized the quality of the game, as a cost cutting measure, then that would be a ethical issue. Read the very first post that mentions ethics, Its in reference to a members post where he believed the quality improvements had slowed or were cut because of funding.
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And if you so find the quality of a game to be the reason to get it. Why don't you go look at Biowares game lineup, better quality for money you won't find anywhere.


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Actually, I do enjoy Neverwinter Nights, and Baldurs Gate 2. Although I admit I had bugs galore with Baldurs Gate 2.

Obsidian however made a totally BAD decision with Neverwinter nights 2. They released the game, when it was still in ALPHA, there were show stopping bugs, players couldnt play on their operating systems, and in general, they released half a game. The game they released on the disc, was not worthy of even considering to buy, It took 10 patches just to get the game to playable, and in many cases, your save games from the earlier unplayable versions, resulted in wasted time. You could say thats an ethically bad decision. Charging for a whole game, that was unplayable AT ALL, imagine the poor sod who didnt have the internet, and couldnt get the patches. The game should not have been allowed into the shops on its original release date.

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Its fairly obvious that w is only enough to improve the core of the game, so by your logic they should cut into their profits to make the game better?


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In terms of improving city inhabitents (models, AI, pathfinding, and textures) would this be greatly more expensive than creating Architect?

Its clearly not one of their priorities, since the models have been the same way, for years, and no announcements have been made to change them in anyway.
In fact, releasing more things that depend on the current model types and AI only increases their reliance on them, and in the end, increases RISK.

imagine a big V

Developement on the left and testing on the right.

As you go down the left side of the V, you are getting further into a project life cycle, and getting closer to testing stage, but at the same time, the further you go down the v, or up the right hand side of the V, you are it gets more expensive to fix or improve features.

Fixing/improving their models and civilian population and models in general, would have been cheaper and easier to do, early on in the project life cycle.

Another model you might like to invision the City of Heroes project as, is a spiral.

The longer the project/game goes, the larger the spiral becomes, going from analysis, to development, testing, and improvement and such. The distance from the outside spiral, to the inside of the spiral, (the center) is then equivilant to the COST.

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GlobeCo had made a decision to stop the daily checks because it took too much time


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Im equating this - to NCSoft not improving the little things in life, like the general nicness of the city and inhabitants, yet still being paid by the customers.

The Civilian Models have been the same way they have been from day 1 as someone else said. No improvements have been made to them, at least not that I've seen, and its been agreed that improvements on them would be welcome. Maybe not a high priority, but certainly welcomed.

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(b)
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would also prevent some monsters getting stuck in walls too,


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Erm how exactly? If anything all it does is increase the likelyhood of new, fresh bugs being introduced with the changes.


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If they recreate the models, and make them nicer looking, they can fix the reason they got stuck in walls in the first place. Its clearly some sort of geometry issue with model clipping, and the fact that I have seen Civilians getting stuck in the middle of the road only proves that the issue exists in all models, from monster mobs to civilians, heck, players have even got stuck outside of the map before - I once logged in and found myself underneath brickstown.

Re-creating models, might not be easy, but if it increases quality of the game, its the right choice.

As far as defects go. Being a software tester in an R&D department, I know that the amount of defects in the game are proportional to the amount of errors that developers make.

ERRORS - > FAULTS IN THE CODE - > FAILURES THAT TESTERS FIND. (guess who passed their ISEB exam)

Errors are human mistakes by developers, faults are the defects in the code, and the failures are what we the players, or testers see on screen.

If developers and inhouse developers test properly, the amount of defects should be reduced. Refusing to do something because it might cause defects is not a valid reason not to do it. Testing and improvement is all about reducing RISK in the final product.

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That is NOT AN ETHICAL ISSUE. It is a purely business decision. Choosing to ignore an issue may loose a company business, but the company is perfectly entitled to decide where to allocate it's resources.


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Ok, I will be sure to pass on you views to the people who make 10's of thousands of £££ from creating these company ethics courses.
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The Story

Jeanne decides to create false records—and asks Samir to cover up.

A few weeks later, Jeanne found a problem during her weekly check of the cooling circuit. She brought it to Alice—and, in response, Alice asked her to create a record that made it look like she'd been doing daily checks all along. Jeanne wasn't sure what to do, so she talked to a colleague, Samir.

Samir: So Alice told you to create false records that made it look like we'd been doing daily checks all along? Are you sure you understood her correctly?

Jeanne: Oh, I know I understood her correctly. We talked about this not long ago, and she told me that GlobeCo had made a decision to stop the daily checks because it took too much time. Now that there's a problem, she wants to make it look as if we were doing the right thing all along.

Samir: What are you going to do?

Jeanne: I'm not sure. I know it's not right to create all of these records. But if I don't, it will make GlobeCo look bad. We could even be penalized by the authorities, which would be terrible for business.

Samir: Right. They might even close the plant.

Jeanne: I think I'm just going to do it—after all, I took those weekly readings. It won't be hard to put something together that's probably very close to the truth. Samir, let's keep this conversation just between us, okay? It's probably best if no one else knows this is going on.

Jeanne has made the wrong choice here. She should not have agreed to go along with Alice's plan to create fraudulent records. And Samir has an obligation to tell Jeanne that she is not doing the right thing and not keep quiet about the conversation.


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As a Trick Arrow Controller I 100% disagree with you here.

The animation time tweaks they made to the set were excellent. I prefer playing my toons properly over cosmetic changes personally.


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Not everyone is a trick arrow controller.
Improving the quality of the citys appearance, and the civilian population benefits everyone.

I remember when they did improve texture quality, that was a really sound decision, as I saw a before and after shot.
You cannot fault them on that decision, as you have to admit, buildings texture quality was hideous.
They only have to improve civilians and the city once, then thats it done.
Once the civilians and city inhabitants are improved, thats it done, they can go back to shaving 0.34 seconds here and there of powers.

Note - You have to admit, the models of monsters and civilians alike just seem to be empty, its like they are hollow, and have no consistency, and dont make any impact on their environment. Their AI sucks too, improving their models and general method of model drawing, would also prevent some monsters getting stuck in walls too, which serves in a practical sense, to prevent you having to call a GM to complete the mission, cause MR Stupid Mob fell through the map.

Note - When I say shiny and idealistic and plastic.
I am referencing the models used for pretty much every character.

Even hair shines like its made out of plastic. Its City of Plastic not Heroes or Villains.

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Still not an ethical debate. They cannot afford to squander resources on "good features" such as adding wheelchairs into the game. They are adding other good features such as (in i13) new Storylines, new Sets for ATs and the Mission Architect. They are providing good features, ones that they feel are more useful and appealing to more players than ingame wheelchairs or more realistic crowd movement in city zones.


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Note - I never said there was an ethical issue, I merely pointed out that if they are not increasing quality, merely cause of financial contraints, then that would be a company ethical issue.

Eg
Jean and Paul are talking,
Paul: Have you finished testing this product?
Jean: Diane my supervisor said we dont have enough man power to cover it, so we should just ignore it.

Jean's supervisor Diane, made a company ethical decision, a bad one, her team are being paid to test a product, but she decides that they cannot do it, because of man power, and time restraints. The 'right' choice would have to hire more people, which brings me back to my post about getting outside contractors to fill the knowledge gap, and to get more things done.
Also - I think the post that first mentioned the potential for an ethically unsound decision from nc-soft, would have been around the civilian population, not around 'wheelchairs for players' idea. So please everyone drop that topic, because that was not the "good feature" i was refering to.
The fact that we all acknowledge that the npc civilians are [censored], have been [censored] for 3+ years shows that they arent working on them.
In the mean time, they are working on "good features" as you called, like shaving 0.30 seconds of a power activation time. I mean come on. 0.30 Seconds opposed to improving the general appearance of the city and its population. That was a s**t decision.

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although CoH is very much an idealised world, i think it would add to immersion for all if there were a few "less idealistic" body types around in the game world, whether pc or npc.

i acknowledge that it may be a lot of work for maybe not the greatest benefit, but i like the idea.


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I love you -
You made my point. City of Heroes and Rogue Isles looks too idealistic.
It takes me back to the plastic superhero figurine arguement.

I could understand Paragon City having healthy, shiny, clean people. But Rogue Isles?

Make the characters more realistic, less plastic looking, and increase the citys immersiveness.

This post should be renamed to be about the civilian population, opposed to wheelchairs, since I have conceeded that wheelchairs wont be a good idea for players, but it could be good for mission giving contacts/npcs.

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Lol that had to be one of the dumbest arguments i've yet to see.
You're comparing a singleplayer game to an MMO. You'll play prototype for 6 months? no. you'll play it for a week maybe, then a couple months later another week.

Lets expand the comparison.
say we get 15 days worth of gameplay out of protype to be generous. Dunno what it'll cost, but i guess €50 like all other new games.


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That has to be one of the dumbest counter-arguments ever.
You don't play Prototype for 6 months granted.
But playing city of heroes for 6 months does not make the game any more fun, its either fun, or not fun.
Playing a tacky game for 6 months does not increase the quality of the game, or reduce its tacky-ness.
The arguement between Prototype and City of heroes is that for 6 months of paid time on Heroes, you can get Prototype, which appears to have better quality in it, and the fact that it has been said to be an open city, and possibly open ended story, might indicate that game play could last longer than 1 week. Also - being a PC game, X-Box360 and PS3 game, there is always the possibility of additional content. Eg - Via X-Box Live, or PS Store. Yes - They often require small amounts of money for these content packs, but I would rather pay for something that is fun, and good quality, than something that is not.

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this argument only really holds water if the've decreased somthing to save money if anything so far the've put money in NC soft spent a lot of cash to get all the rights to CoH and probably spent another chunk of cash getting the developers to move with the IP they then spent even more cash setting up NCWest so theyre sertinly splashing the cash they have a lot invested in CoH and its in there best intrests to inprove and keep it going.


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Clearly reading ability suffers in this community.

Someones post at the top of the page that I quoted
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Or it could be that they didn't have anyone to do the work, couldn't afford to hire additional personel, and so they focused the minimal resources they had available on core gameplay


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If this is indeed the reason why they have not fixed the seriously bad quality of city environment and civilians, then that would make it a company ethics issue. Eg - Cost Cutting, Refusing to do the work because of difficulty, or costs.
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I apologise if this has been said, but Paragon City is teeming with Empaths and Technical Genius', they can revive the dead and have an extensive medical system, i imagine they could repair the spinal cord and an injured nervous system with little trouble.


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Appology accepted, however the empath and technical genius concept did not save Atlas who infact did die. Death is a part of life, illness too would be a part of life.

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Bonuses? Merit increases?? You think anyone at NCSoft gets anything like that!!! I would put some LOLs if it wheren't so sad.

The devs work long hours for peanuts, and the only bonus they get is not being sacked by the end of the month.


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I will have to take your word on that one, cause I havent seen any of their working benefits published anywhere, I would imagine they would be company confidential, in which case you are either guessing, or someone in the company told you.

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You want unethical? Look at WoW. they have something like 1000 times as many subscribers, and make a 1000 times as much profit, but they only have about 5-10 times as many developers, and you have to pay for the expansion packs!


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Where is the ethics issue there?
They have 5-10 times more developers, so they fork out 5-10 times more money, its only fair that they get more subscribers. Thats an example of them putting money and effort in, and getting more money out. Clearly paying for the expansions is worth it, if the numbers are allowed to speak for themselves.

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Your post went from "Request for niche feature" all the way to "Weird rant about unethical games developers ripping us off" in 3 posts. That's pretty impressive.


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It went to ethics debate when people started saying that the reason they are not providing good features is because of economic or financial restraints.

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If this is seriously your only reason to play the game I've gotta ask why! If you're only logging in once a month (why would you even need to? Vet Rewards don't require you to be on once a month) then how do you actually use the Vet Rewards you've been diligently subscribing for so much?


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From what I remember, you have to log in once a month to be entitled to that month of played time. It does not go by paid time, it goes by played time, thats why they are distinguished between in your account. Plus, the good rewards are at the end spectrum of the veteran reward scheme. Which always comes in handy when players inevitably come back to investigate the latest issue/patch.

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If you find a game trashy then why on earth bother with it at all? Are you some form of masocist who enjoys inflicting suffering on himself? If and when I find a game dull it gets unsubscribed (as WoW did once more during the week) and wiped from the HD to make room for another shiney.


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I used to enjoy city of heroes, but as everyone knows, playing the same game can become tedious, and I just frankly havent seen enough improvement with general gameplay or graphics/technology to warrent any positive remarks towards it. Sure, they do power set proliferation, thats nice, for a while. I will no doubt play the game again for a while after Architect comes out, and that might even give me a renewed sense of 'fun'. But then again, that is the POINT of the patches, to improve the game, and try to keep players interested. I do find the game trashy and low quality, another member posted to say that he believes it is to accomodate lower end machines of players. Which in my own opinion is city of heroes sticking in the past and not moving forward with competition. You cannot fault me on any of these posts, because they are all constructive criticism's that can improve the game. The general concensus is that the citys npc's are dull, lifeless, and just programmed is a tacky manner. Clicking on one of them results in a talking clock effect... come on. They also have the same strength as a truck or car, which is a bit weird considering I am the one meant to have super powers, not the civilians. They are also quite oblivious to Giant Monster attacks, as another member pointed out.
(Has anyone heared if mayhem type missions will be available in architect?)

There are many of us, who have paid, and played, long enough to have used the money on buying a new console.

Also, in reference to eve and Wow, I think the major attraction to them, is that they can cram more people into the same server.

Their own servers are 10 times more stable, less laggy, and generally better than city of heroes.

You cant get more than 30 people in Sirens Call without Disconnects, Lag and such.

Its just a technological barrier, that nc soft are unprepaired to resolve.

The Ethics issue does not exist because of what they do,
it only exists if they do what they do, to save money or trouble, at expense to their customers.

In context, I am not saying that there is an ethical issue with them providing bad civilian behavior.

I am saying that there could be an ethical issue, if they are providing bad quality for civilians and bad city quality, as a cost cutting measure, or not improving it, because of cost cutting.

They should not be compromising their end product to their customers in any way while still charging them the same price.

If they want to save money, they should do so from within.
Stop giving bonuses, freeze merit increases.


We as customers, makes them obligated to deliver good quality. There is no denying that, and they ethically cannot compromize their obligation to their customers just because they are short of man power or money.

Imagine I ran a company, and told my clients that because of economic climate, I cant deliver a good quality product for the time being, but I expect you to still pay us.

I would loose my customers, to be frank, the only reason people keep paying, is to keep getting veterans rewards. The occasional monthly log in, and voila, dont have to immerse myself in bad quality game for another month.

New issues coming out are exciting, and do promote playing for a few weeks because its brand new, but in the end everyone slows down, and realises the game hasnt changed that much since last month.

Not everyone realises it, but your paying alot of money for a game, that is trashy in quality compared to other games out there.

Prototype - £40
City of Heroes - £6.99

In 6 months of paid time, you have more a less paid more than what you would for Prototype, and the game quality is no where near as good.

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Or it could be that they didn't have anyone to do the work, couldn't afford to hire additional personel, and so they focused the minimal resources they had available on core gameplay


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Thats a valid point, and quite possibly correct. However, it is still inexcusable from an ethics point of view.
(My work makes us do these online courses about work place ethics and [censored]... its still in my head)

Cutting corners, to save a buck, might work well for the company, but it works out bad for the customer, and thats ethically bad.
To be totally honest: SHAME ON YOU NC SOFT.
I should save some of my companys ethics courses to pdf, and send them in to nc soft.

Big companys like NC soft, typically have your upper managers, and directors, who give themselves big chunky bonuses and such.
This is credit crunch time, my own company has froze bonuses, and even introduced furlough periods (unpaid enforced holidays) to everyone including directors - I would like to know what nc soft is doing to ensure good quality for their customers during this economic climate.

Oh- btw - I cant wait for Prototype to come out.

I FELL IN LOVE WITH IT AFTER SEEING A TRAILER FOR IT 2 DAYS AGO. OMG - ITS BEAUTIFUL.

I think City of heroes and villains could learn alot from it.
Having power, and being able to abuse it.
Surely thats what city of Villains should have - Yet we can only use our powers on hostile opponents, and civilians seem to have some god given power making them immortal to our powers.

Civilians are just badly done.
No other game has civilians that are as bad as this.

SpiderMan Web of Shadows, which I personally hated as far as games goes - At least you can see Civilians reacting, they run from monsters, they fall down, they get injured, they have realistic AI.

Why City of Heroes doesnt have this level of 'smartness' for Civilians.
Could be Processing power?
Could be lag issues?
Could be inability to do it for lack of technology knowledge.

Im not calling the developers retards, far from it, but I know that in an R&D department, eventually development teams do hit brick walls because they simply put, do not know how to impliment something. Its at these points in time where new hands need to be hired on, or outside contractors need to be hired to help. Almost all companies do this, and it improves the over-all quality of the end product.

Either the devs are working on outdated machines resulting in bad product being produced.

or

The devs have a skill gap, that they need to fill.


Look at the amount of detail in Prototype - £40
Look at the amount of detail in City of Heroes £6.99 per month.

How many months have you paid for? I dunno about you, but I've paid way more than what I will be paying for Prototype, and im failing to see anything approaching the level of detail or technical excelence I would expect to get for my money.

The Devs are producing some really nice facilities and functions, however, they are skipping some of the smaller things like npc behavior, npc appearances, npcs in general.

I know alot of you are getting annoyed with this post, its like a tennis match, I say something, you say something, and there are somethings we both agree on, and something we dont.

But at the minute, Im prepared to agree on the fact that the civilian population of Paragon City and Rogue Isles is just generally bad, and needs to be fixed, and while it is being fixed, they can add some additional models and appearances which would be classed as future improvements. Once they are added to civilians, it might even be possible for them to be easilly added to costume options for mission givers.

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and a single NPC in a wheelchair probably could be implemented when and if the devs have a need for it but there not just gonna stick one in on a whim


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The thing that you and I both agree on is that a mission giving npc is not really needed. However, they are providing costume editing options for these npcs, not because they need to, but because it was an idea, or more specifically, because of a whim of someone.
Wheelchair for npcs/quest givers isnt such a big stretch, its a perfectly reasonable idea.
I can imagine many quest giving costume ideas for villains involving some sort of hovering chair, with the mission giver either in a jar, or with their head exposing their brain.

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Ah prototype there's a game I'm looking forward but its a completely different game yes its set in a city yes your a super powered individual but its not CoH the civilians that wander the street in that game are fodder there there for you to use and are part of the game play in short there far more than window dressing in CoH this is not the case.


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I agree that the game play is totally different, after all, the civilians in prototype are more food and fodder to slaughter than anything else. But you have to admit that the lack of interaction between your hero/villain in City of X is kinda dissappointing.
The Civilians have the same force behind them as cars and trucks.
Stand infront of a truck, it will push you.
Stand infront of a civilian, they will push you if you are collided with at the right angle.

In my own opinion, the civilians were done in a very cheap manner, and dont make the environment seem city like as it could be. Ideally, I would like interaction between heroes/villains and civilians. I know this wont happen anytime soon, but some more detail on the civilians in the mean time would go along way.

At the moment, you talk to a civilian who has a name begining with the right letter, and they spout of the current time of day. Some Developer made a decision to turn the civilians into walking Programs that spout the time, and thought that it was a 'smart' idea.

How many people have you walked up to on the street, and they repeat the time over and over again, based of the first character of their name.
Im sorry, but its actually quite disturbing that some developer thought this was a good idea to impliment.

Im not saying that I want wheelchairs now, but you have to admit, civilians on the streets need fixed seriously, and while they are doing some improvements, they can also provide some more realistic humanized models, showing humans both walking and wheeling themselves around.
Preferably without the talking clock programming.

We have got away from the idea of wheelchair for players.

We are now discussing wheelchair for npcs. Not necessarily requiring any power animations.

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Should you be allowed to use a wheelchair being a martial artist scrapper? Probably not.


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Some of the animations associated with MA in a wheelchair might be kinda entertaining. But again, even just having the existance of npc's in wheelchairs would be suffice.
Whether they be mission givers, mission npcs in missions, or civilians on the street.

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again whats the point for Civ NPC there basically background noise there to make the city's look alive there like extras in a TV show and of no real importance


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This argument is flawed. Look at the game trailers for Prototype I suggest this one http://www.gametrailers.com/player/35644.html

I don't think this game could claim to be worth £40 if they deemed their npc population as 'insignificant'.

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You can give npcs maladies and illnesses just by giving them a funny skin colour, and having them mention it in dialogue.



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If I give an npc scaley skin, they will look like a lizard, not like they have dermatitis.
If I gave them blue/greeny skin, they will look like a troll, or Wicked witch of the west from wizard of Oz in disguise, not sick.

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First things first NPCs really don't matter all that much to be brutally honest after you've done there first few missions you probably never see them again and just call them so whats the point of doing a hole new body type for a contact you'd probably physically see maybe 2 or 3 times in the life of your character.


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With this reasoning, you could argue to just have the mission giver replaced with the police radio or newspaper, if they just arent that important to begin with.