And Josh spake, saying, Let there be economic activity. And there were asks and bids generated dynamically, and it was good.
I see now Josh's true goal: he is trying to ruin all other games for us forever.
He may succeed.
This was indeed the best update so far, because it's the first glimpse of a universe that's really doing something. NPCs can now perform value exchanges. That generates emergent behaviors with which players can interact. Without that activity, it's the dead corpse of a universe. With it, when the player pushes on some piece of the universe,
the universe can push back.
That action/consequence/re-action loop is gameplay. It's what distinguishes a game from a book or movie or painting. And now Limit Theory can have it. The moment the player can interact with this new economy, it becomes a real game.
Yes. That is cool. It's the most critical moment that the development of this game has seen so far, and that is completely worth all the enthusiasm that Josh has expressed for it.
I would suggest that economic activity is just one form of what NPCs can do. NPC personality and goals and delegation and faction are, IMO, together the most important thing for making the LT universe come alive. Economic activity is just the expression of NPCs interested in commercial action, which is just one form of expression. It seems reasonable to expect that there will be other expressions of other interests such as exploration and research (for knowledge) and combat (for power).
That said, economic action is an important form because it helps supply the other gameplay activities. (But I want the other gameplay activities, combat and commerce and research and exploration, to support economic activity, and for them to support each other.)
I am really, really happy with this update. I expect there's some more macro work to do, and I have a hunch that we're about to see combat start to get some love. But what a phenomenal leap forward this time! Now is when we can start to see what all those subsystems that Josh has been producing can do when they're given the ability to affect the universe.
And it gets even better from here.
All this said, I do have some thoughts on Update #15.
1. VARYING NPC ACTIVITY LEVEL
I want to see lots of systems with even more NPCs than we saw here. Activity is beautiful.
2. OMNISCIENT NODE VIEW
It's worth noting that we're getting to see the node view of a system. I love this view. I will want to spend all my time in this view. That said... is this just for the demo, or will players (and NPCs) have this kind of perfect knowledge of all objects -- including ships -- in a star system? Are we omniscient on a per-system basis? Alternately, if knowledge of some objects will be hidden, what should the rules for that be? What should not be displayed by default in the system node view, and why?
3. ASCENDING LINES FROM SHIPS IN NODE VIEW
What are the dim lines ascending from ships in the node view? If color indicates what kind of thing an object is, are the ascending lines mostly for making the node view more interesting? Or is there a practical function that I'm just not understanding from watching a video?
4. MARKET CHART UI TIME SCALE
On the various market activity screens, will we be able to change the period of the time axis through some zoom-in/zoom-out affordance?
5. PERSONALITY-BASED DECISION-MAKING QUALITY
Telc wrote:please make sure that you don't make too many "rational" assumptions (e.g. perfect forecasting, optimal bell-curve). In real life we DO see spikes/shocks crisis etc. even if the "leading" economic models (DSGE stuff) or Nobel Price winners (Fama) say that crashs/bubbles don't exist...
So what I'm saying: it would be awesome to see how all this interacts with "personality" of the NPCs!
As a player I will go for trading because I like trading! (and it also gives me money). But if I had enough of trading I go out and explore the world, maybe building a structure here, maybe settling down in one system, building up my empire in the way I like. I would not like to fly around being the only real "individual" driven by intrinsic motivations while everyone else is just going to maximize wealth.. (that would feel too generic imo)
I think I
agree.
Seriously; it's important that not all NPCs want to do commerce, and that not all NPCs who do commerce do it perfectly or even well. Perfection is boring. (Yes, even in a universe of incomplete information that causes lack of perfect knowledge, NPCs should not all have perfect decision-making processes.)
6. FREEDOM VERSUS CONTROL
Listening to the video, I found myself wondering: who really gets to choose what NPCs are doing?
Early in the video, we heard about NPCs that "they're all doing their own thing" (1:15) and "NPCs are allowed to choose what they want to do" (8:40). But later, we heard "these people who are actually working right now ... they are not the ones making the decisions" (13:09) and "every person that you see trading, and every person that you see mining, has actually been ordered to do that by a superior officer" (14:41).
Is there a conflict here? On the one hand, NPCs are said to be free to choose; on the other hand, they're being told what to do by The Man. So which is it? Or is it both? (I can imagine how it might be both, but I'd rather not assume things.)
7. NPC CHATTER
I am hoping (as I mentioned in the
most recent Fligher Podcast) that there'll be some "chatter" in the universe. I wouldn't mind being able to turn it off to enjoy the peace and quiet. But I also hope that it will be possible to hear occasional bursts of communication from an NPC that gives some insight into what they're doing and why they're doing it. Most of the time it should be possible to figure that out from their observed actions. But a simple broadcast message that explains what they're doing would, I think, significantly increase the feeling of being in a living universe where people do things for reasons. It really doesn't have to be frequent at all -- just a little bit of chatter would make a big difference in adding to the feeling of life and purpose. (I'm not sure what form that chatter might/should take, though.)