Make NPC's dangerous again.
Passive aggressive NPC's are lame.

I might get the whole playerbase ganging up on my views of the game, but while the discussions about Sindome being soft arises over and over again, why not make it dangerous again. We have some NPC's within the city that are aggressive upon contact, which to me seems validated and themely, even if the worst are disabled from spawning at the moment. My only real frustration is that the BADLANDS are supposed to be DANGEROUS. That's been stated in multiple occasion in multiple sources, but for as long as I can remember, NPC critters out in the sands have been passive and require initiative from players to get in a fight with. This, in my opinion shouldn't be while badlands are supposed to be deadly dangerous to everyone. The same grain of thought should be applied to aggressive NPC's within the city as well. Fact is that only conflict being generated is through PC interactions or NPC's being puppeted by GM's. This in my opinion shouldn't be the only way for random hostility and aggression happening on the streets. Let NPC's try to mug PC's on random as well.

An afterthought, this would create more RP, lessen smallworlding and generate coded income if the outcome favors the PC.

My pain is constant and sharp, and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact, I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape.

― Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho

What NPC levels in town are we thinking here?

Is the point that noncombat players should be even more afraid to walk the streets, but combat ones get a payout?

I mean, the levels can and should be random. Somewhere between a giant rats and midbie NPC's, the point is not to make players lose their shit every time they leave their pads, but add realistic threat of aggression into the streets. From crazed vee fiends to angry/drunk factory workers letting out steam to bullying gangers. Nothing too hard, but nothing too soft either.

I'm a bit sad that the worst ones are gone - was wondering what happened there.

It was fun to wander the wrong way and have a story about that later.

I mean, that's what I am trying to guess here, is the point to mess with noncombat characters primarily, or should most of those muggers be a threat to even someone putting 6 months since gate into combat. This greatly changes how I think about this idea, because combat characters already have great ways to make coded flash.

Aida, maybe the NPCs can dynamically scale to how skilled the person they're attacking is. Or they could be programmed to have certain NPCs pick certain types of PC targets.

> what stops a ganger PC from bullying and taking hostile actions towards said PC's?

Repercussions. Random memento NPC mugging you is just that, maybe you go kill the npc but it doesn't mean another memento won't mug you again. If a pc attacks someone very wrong, there is a big chance of serious backlash.

Not trying to hate on the idea, just maybe refine what's the ultimate goal to achieve from it, that at the same time is not just another disadvantage to non-com characters.

I get that themely that makes perfect sense, so would NPCs just bursting mix-rich players homes and emptying them. But do you see how in that shape it just punishes non-combat characters and gives even more coded perks to combat ones?

Don't think this would solve the dogpiling/white knighting issue either, you get rolled by npc, you rage, you rave, life goes on as PCs still won't touch you.

I am nowhere near experienced enough with baddies to have informed opinion, surely someone will chime in soon! On general note I dislike coded ways to die that discourage doing things unless you have big enough muscles with you.

I can't say much with experience but I recall hearing noncom people can be a bit averse to conflict and I don't imagine adding npcs specifically designed to kick their ass will make them want to go outside, I get not everything is about what people want, but this is how they would likely react

"On general note I dislike coded ways to die that discourage doing things unless you have big enough muscles with you."

The badlands are not supposed to be for happy frolics through the sand or to go have picnics with your besties. They could stand to at least be marginally more dangerous, and creating more excuses for others to hire combat PCs for something other than murder can only ever be a good thing.

The badlands are not supposed to be for happy frolics through the sand or to go have picnics with your besties. They could stand to at least be marginally more dangerous, and creating more excuses for others to hire combat PCs for something other than murder can only ever be a good thing.

OOOOH I like this idea. I mean, at the moment it is kinda a fun get-away destination.

Eh. It's still pretty dangerous no matter where you go. I'm not sure just spawning in more 'aggressive' NPCs is the solution to the problem because I just see weaker players getting trounced with no real way to do anything about it and stronger characters just getting free loot, essentially. Not to say that ANY random npc wouldn't be interesting, I'm just saying automating it would require some caveats and make sure it doesn't become a reoccuring problem, and also make it worth coding.

When it comes to city life, it's up to the players to push conflict in clever ways beyond 'Gives me that'. I would be down for the odd random echo of something bad happening out of control the way NPC pickpocketing is automated and let conflict naturally arise as a result of the world being alive.

Maybe a road is blocked off due to a bad accident or construction work and now the routes through the Mix are limited, meaning you can force people into traps.

Now that WCS has actual access to firefighting equipment, random fires in public areas could be an uncommon thing as something WCS can possibly handle, and could cause significant conflict or hurt a lot of people.

Very rarely, spawn a cyberpsycho having a PDS attack somewhere in the mix and make it broadcast that he's going psychotic and killing people. Load them up with random bits of chrome to give roleplay to ripperdocs and fixers.

Have a dog somehow sneak out of the park once in a while. Maybe it's hostile. Maybe it's not.

Flesh out the bounty system so that NPCs who have bounties on them should be suitably paranoid.

These are not just things that should be effecting players, these should also be impacting NPCs, too.

When it comes to the Badlands, the Badlands is underdeveloped, and while in an ideal world the Badlands NPCs should be hostile to anyone on foot, it's also unrealistic that you'd end up wandering into one with how insanely huge and large the Badlands is. Unless you are specifically wandering into it's territory, or den, it would probably give you warning echoes to 'fuck off or die' before instantly launching into 'alright time to fucking die idiot' scripts.

They obviously wouldn't attack cars, either because cars aren't edible, or you wouldn't be able to really attack a passing car as a wild animal.

The Badlands also isn't the focus point of the game and while it does exist to fill some niches and to promote some concepts and has some neat secrets and quirks, it's probably the lowest thing on the development totem pole when there's tons of other things to work on.

Honestly, that's part of why I would love to see Red revamped in general. There's supposed to be 96 million, almost 97 million people living in the city, and for the amount of overcrowded, filthy, slum that Red is supposed to be there's just too many one-two storey buildings.

Judge Dredd style megatowers and Kowloon narrow alleyways, haphazard shacks built on top of places that may have originally only been intended to be a few storeys tall, all in the name of more room. It's hard to feel like a faceless number lost among the seething masses sometimes when the proliferation of massive buildings to house those seething masses feels absent.

I'm fine with auto aggro on certain badlands animals.

Adding mugger NPCs just sounds like it will eventually become commonplace to dunk on them and move on like nothing happened.

Because what else can you do when it's a daily coded occurrence? Sorry for the blood on my clothes, had to shoot someone on my way here. It will be treated like PDS outbreaks and addiction scripts, which is to say, more or less ignored. Not sure if anyone has tried to roleplay in an MMO and accidentally pulled aggro from some mobs, but the outcome is usually just killing them as quickly as possible and resuming like nothing happened, which is exactly how people would treat this in my view.

In the Badlands and other specific locations there's the learned threat of this happening, and in some places there's consequences for just blazing through the hostile NPCs mindlessly. That take cares of some of the problem. If hostile NPCs were everywhere and there were no consequences for taking them down, the effect would be cheapened and it would boil down to just aggroing low tier mobs on your path through the game. If there were consequences for defending yourself against muggers, though, that would also be bad, because it's just forcing players into unwinnable situations for the crime of moving around Red.