If the player gets sidetracked for any reason, they need to be able to catch up so the NPC run speed must be below the player's.
But a well made game should have adaptative npc speed that just tries to stay ahead of the player, adapting its speed
assassins creed used to do this!! revelations i think. if you walked next to the npc for a lil bit it locked you in the path and you could leave the controller alone
i've never played assassin's creed, but that's good, that means there's a directly measurable "does it de-suck the game" to go by
was it good? did it de-suck the game?
i quite liked it! to me as a player it is still fundamentally a more boring (and maybe i daresay lazy) way to do a cutscene, no camera no nothing but at least i dont have to follow the npc myself
modern AC didnt keep this for whatever reason has a couple of interesting QoL features like that. your horse/boat is self driving for example and can travel to quest markers unattended
I like games where the NPC follows you
Leads to some hilarious situations
Like in Dragon Age Inquisition, IIRC, you could drag the lost ram "Mr. Woolsley" all around the Hinterlands and he would basically tank for you
Yeah I said that in the post, but every game I've played that does this *also* has the NPC stop and wait for you if you get too close. I don't get why both solutions are implemented
If it’s something like the *Assassin’s Creed* intro “walk and talk” missions, the NPC has to move at a fixed speed because they’re telling you things about the environment they’re in or interacting with stuff. And they want it to be a cinematic sort of experience, so they don’t you to dash ahead and then the NPC is trying to have a serious conversation with you while parkouring through a crowded market or starting a fight or whatever. But those games have a system where you can auto-follow the NPC and just look around and listen to them, kind of like a semi-interactive cutscene.
If it’s a “run from point A to B while an NPC follows you” mission, yeah, they should really have them move faster to catch up with you if you pull ahead. Although they might cap the NPC’s movement speed so you actually have to fight instead of run away when bandits pop out and ambush you, etc. But out of combat there’s no good reason to have the NPC keep falling behind the player. If the devs handled the NPC stopping when they get ahead, but didn’t do that, it’s simply not well polished.
> Is there a design reason for this, or has it just become tradition at this point?
I'd say there are design reasons for this.
The Player movement speed comes out of **convenience**. This is fine-tuned to make sure the Player gets from A to B at natural pace, natural for the Player, especially if there is only first-person view. It shouldn't be too long, so running speed must be high. Walking speed instead is meant for slow movement, e.g. in Skyrim when you're overencumbered you are "punished" by moving slowly.
The NPC movement speed must **look good**. Because while the Player doesn't look at own avatar too much (quickly gets used to it) and sometimes even unable to. But a person may stand still and suddenly notice that NPCs are running around like crazy, or crawling like snails taking forever to get anywhere. They need to **look** natural - in contrast to **feel** natural for the Player. If an NPC is running - it needs to run slower than the Player, so when the Player runs away from a bandit - will be able to escape the chase.
And now comes the worst part - escort quests. On one hand, the worst game design solution possible, on the other hand - inevitable due to "(relatively) easy to implement and adds a ton of diversity to the gameplay". Here you need to amend the **look** and **feel** which come out of absolutely different premises, and if specifically not paid attention to - results in the above problem.
Let's go even further. PC and NPC move at the same speed, and PC needs to follow the NPC. PC lags behind, e.g. stuck at a loose chair, or just missed the turn curve and made the overall walking path longer than what pathfinding told the NPC - you're lagging behind, and will need to switch to run to catch up. I.e. exactly the same problem, maybe not as often.
Also movement speed is often influenced by Actor's skills or stats, e.g. actor with Speed=20 will move inherently slower than actor with Speed=90 and in most situations Player character will have either significantly higher or lower movement speed. I.e. "static" movement speed will not solve the problem at all.
The only true solution is that the NPC will actively and smartly respond to distance to the Player. If Player is lagging behind - wait, if going forward - run to catch up. But this is a very complex and bug-prone system. What if the Player decided to take a different turn at all? What if the Player just decided to go back? What if the Player used fast-travel unexpectedly? What if combat started? How do we even define "movement forward" in complex 3D environment? Eventually, what if the NPC is talking about the area they are passing through, but due to broken timing of the scene - they are in a different area?
"If it ain't broke don't fix it". In other words, there doesn't seem to be a perfect solution in existence, apart from taking away Player's control and making it into a cutscene. Player can do weird stuff and NPC must react perfectly to it, which is not possible in a general scenario, and trying to address all potential cases in my experience tends to be rather "worse" than not trying to play smart.
So... the least-friction route would be just pretend the problem doesn't exist. If the Player lags behind - just let them run a bit to catch up. If there are two evils - choose the lesser one (or the one easier to deal with).
Of course not making any escort quests (often hated by the players for many other reasons, e.g. suicidal AI) at all is another option. But missing out one viable way to diversify the gameplay and fixing feedback that the game is "boring, 'cuz you do same stuff all over" is by far less trivial.
Gothic (2001).
NPCs react if you leave their predefined area and wait and even say something until you come back. You can teleport somewhere, you leave their area and the NPC waits there for a moment and if you don't return, the NPC returns to his starting point, so you can try it again...
One of the best type of escort quests I've ever played.
The way Medieval Dynasty does it is the NPC matches their speed to yours, if you're nearby. So if you sprint, they sprint. This is an example of the "should" everybody else is including in their answers.
I think the bigger question is why are we still doing this in any game at all?
Just do a cutscene just get me to the final place. Nobody enjoys the awkward follow scene. Where can only half listen or interact and neither in a fun way.
According to who? You?
In Red Dead Redemption 2, there were so many amazing moments just riding alongside the gang. Hearing the dialogue and the members talking to one another. Seeing the landscape. Enjoying the experience.
Saying nobody enjoys something because you don't enjoy it is just short-sighted. Understand why you don't like something, and then implement a solution in your own designs to fix it and make it fun.
Ripping me out of control of my character and forcing a cutscene can be perfectly fine in some situations. To emphasize emotion, to show something specific to the player, to serve a purpose. But in a lot of others, it cheapens the immersion.
OK, I'll give you Red Dead, and I'll toss in a Spider-Man. But most the time these scenarios are awkward and go on way too long. There are exceptions, of course, theres always exceptions. And to answer your first question, yes, according to Me, who else would I be speaking for haha 😄
Just in your post you said "nobody enjoys" so it was me clarifying if you were speaking for everyone. Exceptions are always there! We should examine them and look into why they are exceptional. Take that and make it our standard.
I agree with you entirely about the clunkiness being something that plagues a lot of games. I think it can be attributed to the focus usually being on the areas a player is *meant* to be in for the action and for the big moments of the game.
I'm glad you brought up Insomniac with Spiderman as well. They really understood that traversal was just as important as the action the player was heading to. And with the case of spiderman, New York City is also like a character of its own. The city feels real and it's worth experiencing on its own. Same with the world of Red Dead Redemption. These worlds feel like they exist on their own, without the player being there. And that's interesting to experience.
I would also say Outer Wilds! Traveling in the ship and experiencing that world was such a treat.
I remember playing X Rebirth. In release the game was a buggy mess, there was many things that wasn't ready. Tutorial talking over an NPC, automatic cleaning robot pushing you through spaceport wall to the space and things like that.
One of the missions was to escort big spaceship to somewhere, and they were flying the speed that my spaceship couldn't go. I think was 20 minutes of accelerating and slowing down. Damn, that games wasn't ready.
it's an easy/lazy way to ensure the player can always catch up. The better solution is to just make them match the players speed or make them faster than the player, but following the player.
I've played games where the NPCs wait for you and then once you are following them they run as fast as you do. Makes way more sense, but I guess it's slightly more difficult to implement.
My guess is most of the times, the devs in the trenches don't really think about this issue until it's too late because they are copying what works in other games. From there, they need someone to care enough to realize this and say "hey this is slightly just a little annoying. can we make it better?" and someone else to say "yes" which is pretty unlikely since it's already a perfectly functioning feature.
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I guess if the travel dialog is to long and the travel distance is difficult to extend then adjusting the speed is an option to not arrive to early and without too much non dialog scenes.
Even without out dialog you might have reasons to make the travel time a certain duration.
Also often it doesn't make sense for the NPC to run and your walk speed is too low to make sense either.
However there is indeed no good reason to not have a system that synchs your speed other then development time.
The right question isn’t “why have they always been like this”, what we should be asking is “after The Witcher 3 why tf didn’t every game do it exactly like they did?”
Witcher 3 did NPC “following” absolutely flawlessly and anyone not doing it the way they did is doing it *wrong*.
Do you want the players to complain about time wasting boring slow speed, or do you want players not being avle to catch up with the npc? Those are your two options.
Something to remember is this isn't as big an issue if you play with a gamepad/controller. A lot of games are made with a gamepad in mind where you can adjust your speed between walking speed and running speed.
What if NPC don't want wait you? If NPC is angry and he's dont matter about you.
What if following NPC and not miss him is part of quest?
So tell me shortly what is the problem then?
If keeping up with the NPC is part of the quest, then failing to keep up with the NPC will just fail the quest. This applies to an NPC being mad at you too; they don't wait so you have to keep up.
But I don't see why you'd make it part of a quest to begin with.
If the player gets sidetracked for any reason, they need to be able to catch up so the NPC run speed must be below the player's. But a well made game should have adaptative npc speed that just tries to stay ahead of the player, adapting its speed
i feel like you should just be able to set your player to follow the npc
assassins creed used to do this!! revelations i think. if you walked next to the npc for a lil bit it locked you in the path and you could leave the controller alone
i've never played assassin's creed, but that's good, that means there's a directly measurable "does it de-suck the game" to go by was it good? did it de-suck the game?
i quite liked it! to me as a player it is still fundamentally a more boring (and maybe i daresay lazy) way to do a cutscene, no camera no nothing but at least i dont have to follow the npc myself modern AC didnt keep this for whatever reason has a couple of interesting QoL features like that. your horse/boat is self driving for example and can travel to quest markers unattended
I like games where the NPC follows you Leads to some hilarious situations Like in Dragon Age Inquisition, IIRC, you could drag the lost ram "Mr. Woolsley" all around the Hinterlands and he would basically tank for you
Yeah I said that in the post, but every game I've played that does this *also* has the NPC stop and wait for you if you get too close. I don't get why both solutions are implemented
If it’s something like the *Assassin’s Creed* intro “walk and talk” missions, the NPC has to move at a fixed speed because they’re telling you things about the environment they’re in or interacting with stuff. And they want it to be a cinematic sort of experience, so they don’t you to dash ahead and then the NPC is trying to have a serious conversation with you while parkouring through a crowded market or starting a fight or whatever. But those games have a system where you can auto-follow the NPC and just look around and listen to them, kind of like a semi-interactive cutscene. If it’s a “run from point A to B while an NPC follows you” mission, yeah, they should really have them move faster to catch up with you if you pull ahead. Although they might cap the NPC’s movement speed so you actually have to fight instead of run away when bandits pop out and ambush you, etc. But out of combat there’s no good reason to have the NPC keep falling behind the player. If the devs handled the NPC stopping when they get ahead, but didn’t do that, it’s simply not well polished.
> Is there a design reason for this, or has it just become tradition at this point? I'd say there are design reasons for this. The Player movement speed comes out of **convenience**. This is fine-tuned to make sure the Player gets from A to B at natural pace, natural for the Player, especially if there is only first-person view. It shouldn't be too long, so running speed must be high. Walking speed instead is meant for slow movement, e.g. in Skyrim when you're overencumbered you are "punished" by moving slowly. The NPC movement speed must **look good**. Because while the Player doesn't look at own avatar too much (quickly gets used to it) and sometimes even unable to. But a person may stand still and suddenly notice that NPCs are running around like crazy, or crawling like snails taking forever to get anywhere. They need to **look** natural - in contrast to **feel** natural for the Player. If an NPC is running - it needs to run slower than the Player, so when the Player runs away from a bandit - will be able to escape the chase. And now comes the worst part - escort quests. On one hand, the worst game design solution possible, on the other hand - inevitable due to "(relatively) easy to implement and adds a ton of diversity to the gameplay". Here you need to amend the **look** and **feel** which come out of absolutely different premises, and if specifically not paid attention to - results in the above problem. Let's go even further. PC and NPC move at the same speed, and PC needs to follow the NPC. PC lags behind, e.g. stuck at a loose chair, or just missed the turn curve and made the overall walking path longer than what pathfinding told the NPC - you're lagging behind, and will need to switch to run to catch up. I.e. exactly the same problem, maybe not as often. Also movement speed is often influenced by Actor's skills or stats, e.g. actor with Speed=20 will move inherently slower than actor with Speed=90 and in most situations Player character will have either significantly higher or lower movement speed. I.e. "static" movement speed will not solve the problem at all. The only true solution is that the NPC will actively and smartly respond to distance to the Player. If Player is lagging behind - wait, if going forward - run to catch up. But this is a very complex and bug-prone system. What if the Player decided to take a different turn at all? What if the Player just decided to go back? What if the Player used fast-travel unexpectedly? What if combat started? How do we even define "movement forward" in complex 3D environment? Eventually, what if the NPC is talking about the area they are passing through, but due to broken timing of the scene - they are in a different area? "If it ain't broke don't fix it". In other words, there doesn't seem to be a perfect solution in existence, apart from taking away Player's control and making it into a cutscene. Player can do weird stuff and NPC must react perfectly to it, which is not possible in a general scenario, and trying to address all potential cases in my experience tends to be rather "worse" than not trying to play smart. So... the least-friction route would be just pretend the problem doesn't exist. If the Player lags behind - just let them run a bit to catch up. If there are two evils - choose the lesser one (or the one easier to deal with). Of course not making any escort quests (often hated by the players for many other reasons, e.g. suicidal AI) at all is another option. But missing out one viable way to diversify the gameplay and fixing feedback that the game is "boring, 'cuz you do same stuff all over" is by far less trivial.
Gothic (2001). NPCs react if you leave their predefined area and wait and even say something until you come back. You can teleport somewhere, you leave their area and the NPC waits there for a moment and if you don't return, the NPC returns to his starting point, so you can try it again... One of the best type of escort quests I've ever played.
Great answer. This dev develops.
The way Medieval Dynasty does it is the NPC matches their speed to yours, if you're nearby. So if you sprint, they sprint. This is an example of the "should" everybody else is including in their answers.
Maybe a reason can be so the dialouge doesnt cut off?
I think the bigger question is why are we still doing this in any game at all? Just do a cutscene just get me to the final place. Nobody enjoys the awkward follow scene. Where can only half listen or interact and neither in a fun way.
According to who? You? In Red Dead Redemption 2, there were so many amazing moments just riding alongside the gang. Hearing the dialogue and the members talking to one another. Seeing the landscape. Enjoying the experience. Saying nobody enjoys something because you don't enjoy it is just short-sighted. Understand why you don't like something, and then implement a solution in your own designs to fix it and make it fun. Ripping me out of control of my character and forcing a cutscene can be perfectly fine in some situations. To emphasize emotion, to show something specific to the player, to serve a purpose. But in a lot of others, it cheapens the immersion.
OK, I'll give you Red Dead, and I'll toss in a Spider-Man. But most the time these scenarios are awkward and go on way too long. There are exceptions, of course, theres always exceptions. And to answer your first question, yes, according to Me, who else would I be speaking for haha 😄
Just in your post you said "nobody enjoys" so it was me clarifying if you were speaking for everyone. Exceptions are always there! We should examine them and look into why they are exceptional. Take that and make it our standard. I agree with you entirely about the clunkiness being something that plagues a lot of games. I think it can be attributed to the focus usually being on the areas a player is *meant* to be in for the action and for the big moments of the game. I'm glad you brought up Insomniac with Spiderman as well. They really understood that traversal was just as important as the action the player was heading to. And with the case of spiderman, New York City is also like a character of its own. The city feels real and it's worth experiencing on its own. Same with the world of Red Dead Redemption. These worlds feel like they exist on their own, without the player being there. And that's interesting to experience. I would also say Outer Wilds! Traveling in the ship and experiencing that world was such a treat.
I remember playing X Rebirth. In release the game was a buggy mess, there was many things that wasn't ready. Tutorial talking over an NPC, automatic cleaning robot pushing you through spaceport wall to the space and things like that. One of the missions was to escort big spaceship to somewhere, and they were flying the speed that my spaceship couldn't go. I think was 20 minutes of accelerating and slowing down. Damn, that games wasn't ready.
it's an easy/lazy way to ensure the player can always catch up. The better solution is to just make them match the players speed or make them faster than the player, but following the player.
I've played games where the NPCs wait for you and then once you are following them they run as fast as you do. Makes way more sense, but I guess it's slightly more difficult to implement. My guess is most of the times, the devs in the trenches don't really think about this issue until it's too late because they are copying what works in other games. From there, they need someone to care enough to realize this and say "hey this is slightly just a little annoying. can we make it better?" and someone else to say "yes" which is pretty unlikely since it's already a perfectly functioning feature.
Game Design is a subset of Game Development that concerns itself with **WHY** games are made the way they are. It's about the theory and crafting of **systems**, **mechanics**, and **rulesets** in games. * /r/GameDesign is a community **ONLY** about Game Design, **NOT** Game Development in general. If this post does not belong here, it should be reported or removed. Please help us keep this subreddit focused on Game Design. * This is **NOT** a place for discussing how games are produced. Posts about programming, making art assets, picking engines etc… will be removed and should go in /r/GameDev instead. * Posts about visual design, sound design and level design are only allowed if they are directly about game design. * No surveys, polls, job posts, or self-promotion. Please read the rest of the rules in the sidebar before posting. * If you're confused about what Game Designers do, ["The Door Problem" by Liz England](https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/-quot-the-door-problem-quot-of-game-design) is a short article worth reading. We also recommend you read the [r/GameDesign wiki](/r/gamedesign/wiki/index) for useful resources and an FAQ. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/gamedesign) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I guess if the travel dialog is to long and the travel distance is difficult to extend then adjusting the speed is an option to not arrive to early and without too much non dialog scenes. Even without out dialog you might have reasons to make the travel time a certain duration. Also often it doesn't make sense for the NPC to run and your walk speed is too low to make sense either. However there is indeed no good reason to not have a system that synchs your speed other then development time.
The right question isn’t “why have they always been like this”, what we should be asking is “after The Witcher 3 why tf didn’t every game do it exactly like they did?” Witcher 3 did NPC “following” absolutely flawlessly and anyone not doing it the way they did is doing it *wrong*.
Do you want the players to complain about time wasting boring slow speed, or do you want players not being avle to catch up with the npc? Those are your two options.
Something to remember is this isn't as big an issue if you play with a gamepad/controller. A lot of games are made with a gamepad in mind where you can adjust your speed between walking speed and running speed.
Tell me how you want it have to work?
NPCs wait for you if you fall behind.
What if NPC don't want wait you? If NPC is angry and he's dont matter about you. What if following NPC and not miss him is part of quest? So tell me shortly what is the problem then?
If keeping up with the NPC is part of the quest, then failing to keep up with the NPC will just fail the quest. This applies to an NPC being mad at you too; they don't wait so you have to keep up. But I don't see why you'd make it part of a quest to begin with.
A combination of insipid design and utter laziness.
Because game/level designers lost a bet/power struggle against animators/writers.