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[Rolan7]

Or main quest NPCs
And yeah, I think there's a reason so many of us hoard in video games...  Been burned.
I did really like how Might and Magic VI handled it, with a mysterious Oracle NPC near the second town.  If you tell them "I lost it", usually they say "You never found it".  Unless you've dropped a quest item.  I think they magically have it, and tell you to be more careful

[itisnotlogical]

I end up doing it to myself in any game that has crafting where crafting isn't the main focus. I tossed tons of alchemy ingredients on my first Skyrim game, essentially throwing away free money and levels because I can't stand the tedium of Skyrim crafting.

Meanwhile, every Minecraft world I create or join will soon have five or more double-chests overflowing with cobblestone and a machine solely dedicated to generating more. Cobblestone is the most common, useless, unwanted material in the entire game. Yet I can't make myself throw it away, because maybe someday I'll have the patience to see a megaproject through.

[Krevsin]

I once had a situation where I didn't have enough cobblestone in Minecraft. Had to set up quarries just to get more.

Of course the fact that I was building a 10k block transcontinental railway with two lines and many stops might have had something to do with it.

[SeriousConcentrate]

I admire the people who can do megaprojects like that, but I have no idea how they have the patience and creativity for it. @_@

[Ghills]

I admire the people who can do megaprojects like that, but I have no idea how they have the patience and creativity for it. @_@

It's almost meditative for me. Nice, relaxing, good break material.  Not something I want to do with all of my gaming time, but a significant part of it.

One of my pet peeves is games that enable this sort of gameplay, and then make you deal with interruptions on top of it. It breaks me out of my groove and is jarring. I love DF because I can disable invasions and carry on building. Terraria's more irritating because of the night spawns.

[itisnotlogical]

About the most complicated thing I've built in Minecraft was a piston drydock for easy boat docking. Boats still exploded for no reason sometimes when you hit the switch, but it made a nice conversation piece on the server. Redstone circuitry balloons quickly due to the way segments auto-connect with eachother, so I had to build it underwater. That meant it got flooded and destroyed a few times.

[Iceblaster]

Any enemy chatter at all

I like it. A lot. I don't care if they repeat things. It makes the world feel so much more alive. Because hey, there's people talking about things. Those people aren't just standing around waiting to be killed by the hero[/b] because they're living loot bags! Sure, it doesn't add anything to the story or make you feel bad for them, but I mean. Come on. There'd be more complaints if there wasn't enemy chatter. Hell, people are complaining that Gordon Freeman still has no voice, even if it'll be just a few lines to establish a character.

tbh, i like fallout 4's ambient dialogue a lot. feels a lot more dynamic, at least when it's mooks like the gunners or raiders. better than just a few lines at least.

[itisnotlogical]

For me it's an uncanny valley situation. They feel less alive to me because they repeat a few ambient lines ad nauseam, NPCs in town often having repetitive conversations or making the same remarks to you every time you pass by. A robot like Spot (or any of the Big Dog-inspired robots) might be cute because it stumbles like a real animal yet isn't, but this dude's ScarJo bot is deeply unpleasant despite having more of the superficial characteristics of a living thing.

On a much, much smaller and less dramatic scale, that's my beef with enemy chatter. The random human enemies in (fuck, I was trying so hard not to bring this back to Bethesda) Skyrim or Fallout (any 3D, pick one) or Morrowind ultimately have no more characterization than the Nazi guards in Wolf3D, they're just noisier and have more animation. Yet the Wolf3D enemies are a lot more memorable (in my opinion) due to being cute human-like game pieces as opposed to a not-quite-there attempt at realism.

[Iceblaster]

Meh. I can see how you feel about that, but to me ambient dialogue has always been a big plus for me. Makes things feel more than just a setpiece for a game. More like an actual world. Like, I mean. If Diamond City Market didn't have the vendors shouting slogans while you're walking around, it'd feel much less like an actual market and more like a place for the player to dump stuff off at. Even if it is essentially the latter, it's still important to me to get a sense of 'hey this place actually has stuff happen while you're not here.'

but meh. whatever~

[wierd]

Give it time.

Eventually, the enemy dialog will be a combination of a sanity checked markov chain, and realtime voice synth (that is actually worth a shit).  After that, it will have some rudimentary neural net ai running behind it so that the NPCs actually CAN, Actually banter. (semi-randomness from the markov generator feedstock, coupled with a NN AI that can determine meaning, and use that meaning to weight its own markov chain output before sending it to the sanitizer for proper gramatical and sentence structure.) Such AIs would have some "personality" variables for things they are programmed to like, dislike, know about, etc, that would dramatically shape their output streams and interaction with other NPCs.  (Think something on par with IBM Watson, coupled with some preset personality profile data)

It will still have plenty of warts, but would be better than the Russian stalkers shouting "A Nu! CHeeky breeky!" at you every time they see you in stalker.

[Rolan7]

Give it time.

It is inevitable.

[muldrake]

For me it's an uncanny valley situation. They feel less alive to me because they repeat a few ambient lines ad nauseam, NPCs in town often having repetitive conversations or making the same remarks to you every time you pass by. A robot like Spot (or any of the Big Dog-inspired robots) might be cute because it stumbles like a real animal yet isn't, but this dude's ScarJo bot is deeply unpleasant despite having more of the superficial characteristics of a living thing.

The robot is endearing enough it actually seems sadistic to kick it.

The humanoid robot is creepy mostly in context because I'm pretty sure that weirdo made that bot just so he could fuck it.

[MrRoboto75]

Give it time.

It is inevitable.

At least it doesn't rain down here.

[AlStar]

Give it time.

Eventually, the enemy dialog will be a combination of a sanity checked markov chain, and realtime voice synth (that is actually worth a shit).

While having an AI that can intelligently chat with itself is the endgame, honestly all we need to see a massive improvement is the second one of those. Making it so that you don't need to have an actual voice actor record every inane bit of gossip and chatter for NPCs, just a writer to put it all down and have a computer magic up a voice for it should drastically reduce the number of times you have to hear "Stay a while and listen!" over and over again.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

Give it time.

Eventually, the enemy dialog will be a combination of a sanity checked markov chain, and realtime voice synth (that is actually worth a shit).

While having an AI that can intelligently chat with itself is the endgame, honestly all we need to see a massive improvement is the second one of those. Making it so that you don't need to have an actual voice actor record every inane bit of gossip and chatter for NPCs, just a writer to put it all down and have a computer magic up a voice for it should drastically reduce the number of times you have to hear "Stay a while and listen!" over and over again.

Curious, has anyone tried to do this using existing ones and the excuse of making the setting only inhabited by robots?