NPC <Job Title> and cheddar cheese.

Using the example of a merchant - the Decorations Merchant in Owl's Head.

1. Instead of their name coming up as Decorations <Merchant>. I would rather see Decorations Merchant.

Edit - This is personal preference, I just prefer "Curt the Merchant" to "Curt <Merchant>".

2. Initial Dialogue shows as "Lord Andernut: (to Decorations) Hello."
This seems to imply "Decorations" is their first name, I would recommend if you don't give an NPC a name that you make their profession of two words all in the first name - wouldn't want people thinking I'm talking to the Decorations.

3. I tried talking to a few NPC's, this one included, when queried about name - the response is "I don't know about that." I think name, job, bye (and for many of you - health) should at least have a generic response for each NPC.

Amusingly, when queried about cheddar cheese, the Decorations Merchant did admit to liking cheddar.

 

The Decorations merchants are placeholders to allow you to buy housing decorations quickly and are not intended to be in the game world in any real sense.

 

Also, per Starr, we are removing the <Merchant> tag as it is antithetical to immersion.

 

Perfect, I was about to respond that this was the more jarring moment for me.

 

Why "Curt the Merchant" and not a more specific job title like "Curt the Greengrocer" or "Curt the Draper"

 

I removed the <Merchant> tag pretty much literally at the last minute before release, so didn't have time to do a naming pass.

For R12 Richard has asked that merchants with vendor UIs be seperate from people you can talk to and not launch convo mode; ie for Fire Lotus Tavern we'll add a barmaid that handles the sales chores that Thomas Strongbeard does now, but won't have any dialogue. Since you won't be able to talk to these merchants they will have their names already shown and be clearly designated as merchants with what they sell (Zangief the Blacksmith, etc.)

 

I await the spinning piledriver of awesomeness that may be the new blacksmithing merchant located... somewhere. Thanks for the info, Lum.

 

@Lum -- So we now have robot NPC vendors? I saw one in Braemar and thought you just didn't have time to add any dialog to him. Is this the future direction for the game, to have more non-talkative, single-purpose NPCs? Curious...

 

Or Roger The Shrubber...