Not sure how common this is in the game, but I’m assuming it’s a product of the Random NPCs option and the RNGs wrath.
I was starting up a new character after dying quite a few times due to ineptitude. I got lucky and spawned in an evac shelter that I had stocked food and tools in with a previous character. Good times were had as I trained diligently through the day with construction and the general skill of scowling at rain.
Once night came I was greeted with the sound of a large group of mobs rustling about outside. I decided to wait them out and see if whatever they were would just go away. They did, and at that time i decided on a night raid on the town. When I got on the road those groups of mobs came back at force and followed my jog toward the town. I finally found out what they were when they caught up.
[size=18pt]NPCs.[/size]
I was accosted by a flood of demands to drop my weapon and to help them kill their mothers before I apparently angered one of them and they decided to promptly pump me full of lead. What even.
I remember once, when i was sleeping in a cave, next to a lava crack. It would have been the perfect place -it was near a town with big buildings and near dead scientist and stuff- if like 4 different NPCs appeared while i was asleep. The first one angered at me, then bugged and stood still. The second stole my stuff and stood still too. The third one hanged around yelling at me and left, and the fourth one tried to attack me and woke me up. I killed her and the thief, and left running. Never ever more.
I hope they get more intelligent and lifelike as time goes on. I do feel kind of lonely sometimes when I play Cataclysm (I keep 'em off to avoid the problems they cause).
It’d be really epic if we could establish some kind of online connection thingy, sort of like the online world-sharing, allowing people who play to save their survivor’s data at some point and insert their own quotes based on NPC chat inputs so they could actually create an individual. Then said individual could be found and utilized as an NPC by someone else playing their own game.
I, for one, would love to create a badass gentleman.
Ask to join “Why, that certainly sounds agreeable. Let us go, then, and show these abominations what for!”
I love NPCs, they present a threat to my character that is not easy to circumvent. Just yesterday I was happily returning from a mine and an NPC who wanted me to gtfo or die spawned between me and the exit. A couple of shotgun rounds later I was making a new character.
They also have highly variable threat levels. Some are walking meat delivery service. Some can be convinced to make me even more badass first. And others will wtfpwn me unless I am very well prepared. Since NPCs can have very powerful guns, you are never safe from them.
There was another thread where someone suggested getting missions from radios and other communication devices. That’d make the game more interesting and feel less lonely without having to fix NPCs.
