Add NPC Party members?

[PrinceOfJudah]

I orginally posted this on the steam forum. This game looks so good that I decided to make an account here to follow development.
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Grindea looks unsually HIGH quality for being indie developed. It reminds me of the Mana games which I have a great love for. However, does Secret of Grindea feature NPC party members? This is a big deal for me. I am an enthusiast for npc part members. To be fair, coop is a more important feature. But I always feel more engrossed in a game when I have one or more AI partners. I am seriously considering buying this game, ESPECIALLY if it goes on sale soon. If the sale is good enough (50% or more, finances are rough for me) I would buy 2 copies right now, since I have a close friend who would love to play it with me.
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[The G-Meister]

I am seriously considering buying this game, ESPECIALLY if it goes on sale soon.

Sadly, the game won't be going on sale until after release according to the devs, and that's quite a while away (we're talking at least a couple years.) In case you want a scale, I've put over 520 hours into the game, ~2/3 of that into story mode alone. If you're anything like me, I'm sure you'll have a lot of fun with it

In terms of NPC party members, not currently, if at all. You can get pets which you can feed to give you percentage increases in stats, but they won't attack for you. There are two skills which do however - Frosty Friend and Cloud Strike. These are both minions who follow you around and will fight alongside/for you, and you can command at least the Frosty with certain actions.

The problem with actual NPCs grinding with you is that they require a whole new AI system the game doesn't really have. It's very much based around being skillful and memorising attack patterns if you play on hard difficulty, and making that work with NPCs would be a bit of a fluster. How dumb should they be? Should they gradually get more skillful the more you grind in an area? What skills do they use? It would be nice to go on a single quest with a fellow collector who you can fight alongside, and that would alleviate a lot of those issues. I'd love NPC party members, don't get me wrong, but at this point in the games development, it's a whole new thing to consider.

If you go and watch iHeartPie on YouTube, I'm sure some of his footage of this game contains one of the two skill-based sidekicks so you can get an idea of what they're like.

I hope that doesn't put you off

 

[GarlicJelly]

It does not have NPC party members and I don't think it ever will since the story is build around you (the player) as the only main character. Maybe we could have some of the collectors joining us after we've beaten the story but I wouldn't count on it. It would be cool having some NPC friends to have your back though.

 

[Ardeof]

The AI pathing and battle movements etc are already in the game, as part of the enemy AI. All that'd have to be done is copying that over to an NPC, and changing the labels of what is considered an "Enemy/Ally". Only time or devs will tell if such a thing will be added to SoG.

 

[The G-Meister]

Should they only be able to move in the same directions as you (north, east, south, west and diagonals?) How strongly to they keep by your side? The AI might be in the game but it's gonna require a lot of modification and reasoning. How often do they hit? How well do they hit? If you've got long term partners, they're gonna have to have some sort of progression system. It's just a little too complicated for a game like this in my opinion, unless it's only a 1 quest thing.

 

[Ardeof]

Should they only be able to move in the same directions as you (north, east, south, west and diagonals?) How strongly to they keep by your side? The AI might be in the game but it's gonna require a lot of modification and reasoning. How often do they hit? How well do they hit? If you've got long term partners, they're gonna have to have some sort of progression system. It's just a little too complicated for a game like this in my opinion, unless it's only a 1 quest thing.

Toggle two modes. AI stays within screen distance (or closer), battles enemies. Once char reaches border, AI moves to character. The Pet system works close to how an NPC could work, only being able to move around a certain distance then having to move forward once "out of bounds". Except instead of rubber-banding, it'd use pathing to follow the character.

Very simple thing to add, but it'd introduce more bug squashing.

 

[The G-Meister]

Navigating around objects is surprisingly difficult for AI. That's why currently Marino, Luke and any Fae you happen to have with you often phase through walls. If that gets changed then I'm sure this might be a bit more in reach. You've also completely neglected the skill paths.

 

[Ardeof]

Navigating around objects is surprisingly difficult for AI. That's why currently Marino, Luke and any Fae you happen to have with you often phase through walls. If that gets changed then I'm sure this might be a bit more in reach. You've also completely neglected the skill paths.

[charSkillDash] added to NPC.

Yeah, still easy to code in. Too bad I despise actionscript, mainly because something that easy becomes 10x more difficult. XD

 

[The G-Meister]

I'm not saying it would be hard to implement, I'm saying how do they go about choosing which skill they use? Do they do it by themselves? Do you do it for them? How often do they get skills points? Do they gain their own EXP or do they share yours? Do the kills they get count as yours and you get EXP from them? Does it scale like multiplayer or is it slightly different?

It seems like a whole load of unecessary hassle to me. It's very easy to bash something together. It's much harder to bash something together and make it a balanced mechanic that's worth putting time into. I don't want them ending up like another Frosty Friend.

 

[Ardeof]

Frosty Friend is balanced, though. It has a reasonable health pool, reasonable damage output, and punishes weak AI by having a strong AoE attack. Not all maps are effective with Frosty Friend, and often it's more of a slight damage increase at a cost of not using other more powerful spells, and having more utility by using spells such as Ice Spikes.

Compared to Heroic Slam or Flamethrower, Frosty Friend is what the dev team should be striving for when it comes to companion spells. A spell where you can "Set it, and sometimes forget it" and it'll still be doing ~1/4 of your damage output. Unless of course it happens to miss all the time. Frosty Friend also has to defend itself once in a while, so the output of damage is lowered over time.

The time when Frosty Friend is as OP as Whirlslash/Heroic Slam/Dash, or those Plants is when it's a very compact room and it is able to 1 hit all of the enemies on the map within a couple of seconds. Then, at that point Frosty Friend is farming as much and doing as much damage as the other high end skills. Once skills have a bit better scaling/purpose, the question should be: "Should x skill(s) be able to 1 hit common enemies"? and in Hard Mode, that should be an easy "No". Perhaps there'll be another tier of difficulty though, and that'd make sense as it'll allow for those powerful skills to feel much less effective.

 

[The G-Meister]

To be fair, I haven't actually used Frosty myself so I can't really refute any of your points. In Arcade however, I've seen it take a lot of damage for people while giving them the option of 1 on 1 combat, which is much easier to take care of, compared to almost all enemies in a room flinging themselves at you because you're the only target. I personally see that as a cheap way out, and is why I like to take and make all the hits myself, without using a skill that does a lot of the work for me (other examples include Summon Plant, Cloud Strike and even Warrior Spirit.)

Perhaps there'll be another tier of difficulty though, and that'd make sense as it'll allow for those powerful skills to feel much less effective.

Beastmode does that at the moment. However, it's far from perfect, as rabbys and slimes do end up requiring less and less hits as you level up, but the quantity of hits needed is so high in the first place it still fulfils its objective. They start as a 7/8 hit kill and at level 17 it's a 3/4 hit kill. There is eventually a point where it goes over the top though, and they start getting harder again.

 

[Own]

I wouldn't mind seeing low-involvement NPC allies you can invite to join you, one only. Like, Naniva. After she becomes Spring you can invite her to join you, and rarely she'll throw a stream of leaves at a nearby enemy while following you. She takes too much damage and she withdraws back to Santa Fae, and you can't invite her back for a period of time.

I can't think of any other character who would be easy to add like this, though. NPCs bigger than a fairy would require a lot more work.

 

[The G-Meister]

I was only thinking about player-like NPCs. I guess something like that would be cool, as well as being pretty easy to implement, seen as the Fae already have a movement system implemented.