Opinion about using Facesets for NPCs

[cabfe]

I use busts for all my characters, even one-line NPCs.

They also all have a name.

I did that because it's an important part of the story. People, even a random enemy soldier, have names and faces. They live in the same world and have feelings too (love your NPCs!).

If the player has to protect people, he must see them.

If he has to kill, he must feel that he's taking a life.

I must add that I'm doing it because I've spent a lot of time creating face parts to be used in a generator so that I can avoid the "clone effect".

It also allows me to have matching pairs of sprites/busts.

Had I got only the basic RTP faces/busts, the game would have been very different. Maybe I'd not even begin making it in the first place.

 

[Kes]

For me, it varies.

In the game that's about to be released, there are about 50 NPC faces because of a strand in the story and a running gag.  Other NPCs have no face.  In the game I'm working on, only 2 have them because they are important characters for plot developments and keep reappearing.

If it weren't for the cost, I'd like to have all NPCs with faces, but it's just not possible.

 

[EternalShadow]

My thought is if you do that, then your towns will probably have to be empty or you have to repeat the facesets many times in one town. That's probably why most don't put facesets on every character, just not enough of them to go around without repeats or empty towns.

Nope. None repeated. Granted, my cities are quite small, but it is hard to make a good, lively city map anyway.

 

[Oddball]

I guess it really depends on if you want to appeal to introverts or extroverts. Extroverts will want to see a face for each person they talk to, because they enjoy people. while introverts, might find this slightly annoying, because they don't try to make/try to make friends with everyone they meet. It could also depend on if your game is charecter centric. if it is, a face for each npc gives good apnesphere to the game. if not, try looking at other critirea to see if it's needed or not

For me, it varies.

In the game that's about to be released, there are about 50 NPC faces because of a strand in the story and a running gag.  Other NPCs have no face.  In the game I'm working on, only 2 have them because they are important characters for plot developments and keep reappearing.

If it weren't for the cost, I'd like to have all NPCs with faces, but it's just not possible.

two words: Charecter generator

 

[Sharm]

I guess it really depends on if you want to appeal to introverts or extroverts. Extroverts will want to see a face for each person they talk to, because they enjoy people. while introverts, might find this slightly annoying, because they don't try to make/try to make friends with everyone they meet.

That's not what extrovert and introvert means. An introvert is someone feels recharged by being alone and is worn out by big gatherings where they don't know most of the people, and an extrovert is the opposite. Liking people has nothing to do with it. I'm an introvert and I'd prefer to see all the faces. I don't think the analysis works anyway, for me no faces makes it impersonal to me and I don't like shallow relationships.

two words: Charecter generator

This isn't as straightforward of an option as it sounds. Using a generator, RTP or not, is simply a way to trade quality for quantity. If you're making a commercial game it's much more important to have a few matching high quality faces than it is to have a face for everyone.

 

[whitesphere]

I prefer making only the party members have faces.  Why?  Well, unless I'm going to create a unique look for every minor NPC, the faces will have to repeat.  To me a face signifies someone unique, so it kind of defeats the purpose to have clone faces in the game.  Unless the NPCs are literal clones (or alternates from other universes, etc).

Also, I have plenty of work in creating the rest of the game without also creating a large number of unique faces for NPCs the party may encounter once or twice.  Granted, the Game Character Hub makes it fairly straightforward if you do want a ton of unique faces.

In terms of commercial games, Chrono Trigger took the "Use character names plus make the sprite move when character is talking" approach which works well.  But I think FFIV (minus the video cutscenes) only showed faces for the party members. 

So it's really a style choice more than anything else.    As long as it's always clear to the player who's speaking, it's not a problem.

 

[Ralpf]

That's not what extrovert and introvert means. An introvert is someone feels recharged by being alone and is worn out by big gatherings where they don't know most of the people, and an extrovert is the opposite. Liking people has nothing to do with it. I'm an introvert and I'd prefer to see all the faces. I don't think the analysis works anyway, for me no faces makes it impersonal to me and I don't like shallow relationships.

This isn't as straightforward of an option as it sounds. Using a generator, RTP or not, is simply a way to trade quality for quantity. If you're making a commercial game it's much more important to have a few matching high quality faces than it is to have a face for everyone.

Exactly, I'm an introvert and I would rather see faces, too. Though actually large crowds don't bother me as much as medium sized crowds, if the crowd is so large (like say at a concert or convention) that no one is likely to notice me I'm fine. But that's another discussion.

 

[Indrah]

May be personal bias, but important characters and npc only. They become a big distraction and you get desensitized anwyay if you stick them to everyone. Plus its a big chunk of work/resources that has no real playoff for the player.

On a purely practical point: the player can't tell who is "important" at a glance if no one has special qualities (such as posessing a custom face to themselves, which is an excellent way of letting the player know that character is important). Players will naturally pay more attention and remember a npc more when they have something that sticks out. Same would go for having all "stock" sprites for npcs and then "custom" one for vital plot npcs. The more distinctive they are, the easier to remember and locate.

And if you use faces for EVERYONE the actual vital characters lose impact since the player stops looking at faces eventually. They cannot pay attention to constantly newly introduced faces, it's jsut not possible to remember everyone (unelss you have a small cast, of course).

Edit: Another thing to remember (i read some of the posts) is that while as a developer you may love every one of your npcs a vast majority of players will be thrown off if you give everyone names and faces. Players can love your game just fine, but asking them to remember EVERY SINGLE person in your game is overkill (unless the number is very small). Even in games where a lot of good npcs are there you rarely find out all their names. You usually don't have to. (I greatly enjoy listening to banter in Bioware names, and those don't use faces or names, just text. It's more than enough).

Tl;dr: in rpgs where a visual cue for characters, aka sprites, already exists (not like visual novels and such where a face MAY be added to anyone as a way to cue in anything that isn't the background), adding faces for everyone feels unnecessary and worse, distracting and lowers the value of the "vital" cast.

Unless you consider your cast to be ALL important (such as having very few interactable characters and npcs who remain important all thorough the game such as hub villagers and store keepers) I recommend against using faces for all but vital characters.

From a player perspective, it's easier to tell and recognise characters if onyl a few are given the "face" trait.

(I'm pretty sure this was most of the points are said somewhere in the topic already but its 5:30 am and I decided to post without reading anything but the opening post before collapsing to bed. Chalk up any repetitiveness to sleepiness)

 

[Tai_MT]

Sorry, Indrah, gonna have to disagree with you.  One simple reason:

If you have to use face sets in your dialogue to show your player which NPCs are important and which are not...  Well, let's just say you're not doing your job very well.  Likewise, if you're using them to make an NPC "memorable" in some way, you're also not doing your job.

How do you make a character memorable?  Make them interesting to talk to.  No, seriously, that's all you have to do.  It doesn't matter if you present them with unique sprites or faces in dialogue if their personality and what they say is memorable.

I'd also like to say that if you truly believe "the player stops looking at faces entirely at some point", then why include faces at all?  Even for your protagonists?  Or your villains?  Why not just revert to the old "Edgar:  This is how I talk!" dialogue?

I use faces for every NPC and every character because it's useful and important.  I don't have to type up the silly thing to indicate who is talking...  Or have random boxes come up for NPCs that are the same kind and style as "You got a potion!" or "Cecil has left the party!".  I easily determine who is talking by the portrait that shows up next to the dialogue.  I don't need "s because of that or even to put "Name:" in front of the dialogue.

My actual only gripe with the current system of showing a face for dialogue is that I cannot switch the sides.  Personally, I like the heroes to be on the left side when they talk and anyone they're chatting with to be on the right hand side.  It looks and feels more like a conversation then.

 

[Myst88]

Personally I find it quite a nice touch when NPC's have facesets. It's one of the things that stood out to me when I played Twice upon a hero and Star stealing prince. To me it makes NPC's less generic.

I would do it myself if I had the artistic ability, and I'm not a huge fan of the face generator in ACE.

 

[Oddball]

what if you want to have some npc's give subtle hints, and others might just say random jibberish that would sound like a hint? if you give important npc's faces, and nonimportant ones no faces, then when you want to give the player a clue about the game, it's blatently obvious, instead of having mystery...

I suppose then, it also depends on what type of game your making. If you want to hide subtle hints about alternative paths, but don't want to give them away for example, all npc's having faces is important. But if all npc's having faces doesn't have a practicle use, then i guess it's up to player preffrences/logic

 

[Matseb2611]

I personally like consistency, so either everyone has a face, or no-one. Though I'm not likely to quit the game altogether if that isn't the case, it's still kind of off-putting for me personally to see faces for some characters but not for others. It makes the game feel incomplete. This is even worse when the text for faceless characters starts where the picture would normally be. Now it's not only the presence of the face that is inconsistent, but also the text position during dialogue. It makes it hard to take the game seriously when you have a conversation in the game between a character who has a face and one who hasn't. It looks as though the text layout is jumping all over the place.

The lack of resources is understandable of course, but there are always ways around that, even if it's just a minor edit on an existing face that you might've used on another npc already, like adding some facial hair or changing the colour of skin or hair, etc. Alternatively, do we really need to have so many npcs in each city that don't say anything meaningful at all? Or does the city need to be so big that not having enough npcs makes it feel too empty? All these are in my opinion important questions to ask when designing any town/city.

Edit: Actually one easy get around I like to do is to simply have more guards. Guards all wear masks and use the same faceset. If you need to add more npcs to make the city feel more busy, just add more guards (so long as it makes sense in the context of the game).

 

[Sausage_Boi]

I am an all-in person. 
When I was a kid, I really did appreciate when the important characters had a face and a name, but I really like all of the characters to have a face these days. A name for the important ones, but a face is always nice.

 

[captainproton]

Faces for everyone!

Seriously, I think it looks kinda weird for some characters to get them and not others. Though for Random Villagers, I'll sometimes just tweak the faces in Shotofop so they don't all looke like the same people.

 

[HumanNinjaToo]

I prefer to use face sets for the main characters and important NPCs only. This, to me, helps the characters stand out in the player's mind. I do like to give every NPC a name though, not that it's really important to the story, I just want to give them a bit more character without raising them to 'important NPC' status. I also prefer the characters and NPC's to have emo facesets to give that little bit extra in a dialogue. It's hard enough to convey emotion through writing, so having the facial expressions can really help show the difference between an angry "Stop that!" and a jovial "Stop that!".

Also, someone mentioned Chrono Trigger using sprite movement when the said sprite is talking. I completely forgot that little bit of extra from the game. It was those kind of touches that made it epic.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

How do you make a character memorable? Make them interesting to talk to. No, seriously, that's all you have to do. It doesn't matter if you present them with unique sprites or faces in dialogue if their personality and what they say is memorable.

This is coming from my player-side point of view


I'm a lazy player, really. If all NPCs have faces, I would probably just press the skip button when talking to them or not talk to them at all after I realize that all of them have faces. Now if only important one uses it, then once I realize it, I won't do the skip thing if a face turns up when I talk to an npc. So, in the end, only those characters become memorable to me.


I like reading books, but when it comes to games, I just hate long useless texts. So if they do faces only for important ones, it helps lazy people like me to segragate

 

[Tai_MT]

What you're describing is your indifference that has been taught to you by every other low-rent RPG ever created.

Why do you skip the dialogue of NPCs?  Because you've been trained to.  How have you been trained to?  Because very few, if any, NPCs have anything interesting to say.  You've been trained to talk to them all, but to skip the text because it's largely unnecessary.  Because of this, story, setting, atmosphere mean very little to you.

I maintain that if you do characters well by giving them interesting things to say or do or even fun personalities that make players want to come back and talk to them often, then a player will appreciate the faces as a "bonus" to the character themselves.

Think about this the next time you're designing a town in your game.  In a real life town, do you run up and talk to everyone you see?  No, you don't.  Why?  Because it's weird and people find it socially awkward and disturbing.  So, in the land of RPGs, where this behavior is not only acceptable, but also usually greeted with smiling faces and random information, shouldn't it be more fun to do as the player?  What if every NPC had a piece of lore?  Or maybe information on the local monsters and hidden loot chests?  What if every NPC actually had interactions with your heroes or the people your hero is traveling with?  What if the conversations with NPCs weren't so one-sided (as they are in pretty much every RPG ever made these days)?

You're honestly stunting yourself as a writer and developer if you're not imagining that your NPCs have actual lives, thoughts, feelings, etcetera that could be just as interesting as your heroes.  Why shouldn't they have their own lives?  Why shouldn't they be any less interesting than anyone else you might meet in real life?

If all you're looking for in an NPC is some kind of marker to indicate the players which one are "mission critical", then your NPCs may as well not exist in the first place.  In fact, you could replace those NPCs with signposts or journal updates upon touching a specific square.

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

or I'm just too lazy. I've never yet found a game that makes me read whatever each NPC say.. I sometimes even skip even quest related stuff

 

[Tai_MT]

At that point I have to ask...  Then why play an RPG at all?  Why not play something like Diablo or Champions of Norrath?

 

[Engr. Adiktuzmiko]

Because of the story. I still read, on story cutscenes and such. Just not a fan of reading texts of NPCs.