Will monster lockers be used to "fake it" in the long run? What about Quantum?asked by Cintara
TL;DRThe developer says spawn lockers will remain part of the long-term solution, but important NPCs will be virtually simulated and a character archetype system will track and reuse entities, so not every NPC seen is just probabilistic.
The spawn lockers are indeed going to be part of the long term solution of the game, but there are some key details you may not be aware of. First, there is an assumption here that the entities spawned by these lockers are completely blank slates and when they despawn will never be seen again. This isn't going to be the case for all of the NPCs as there's at least two mechanism we are going to use to which would result in a similar behavior to what you are looking for. First, there will be a class of NPCs of higher importance that will have some amount of virtual simulation even when no players around. These NPCs could be part of a mission for example, and their schedules and movement through the verse will be simulated in the backend. When you encounter once of these they may spawn or leave an area via a spawn locker depending on the circumstance, and you will likely see them again later.
Another case is that the backend will actually track entities that have been created via a character archtype creation service, and each of these entities will have various properties and tags that can be used to pattern match against future requests. That means for example if you possibly steal something from a shop or try to mug somebody and security gets called in dynamically, there's a chance the same security officer may bust you later or get called in for back up at a traffic stop.
Given the scope of the world we are trying to create it would be actually impossibly to simulate all their schedules and every detail of their life, but we can split the difference by using a combination of dynamic creation, virtual simulation, and pattern matched reuse to bring the kind of gameplay you are looking for.
Spawn closets/spawn lockers are simply a way to get entities into/out a place, but they aren't the progenitus of that entity in our game world, instead the character archetype system is what will track these, so their scheduler may have them board a train, go to work, come back, get dinner, go to sleep etc.. and yes in some of those movement points there maybe be a spawn locker involved, but it doesn't mean that every NPC you see is only probabilistic. The idea is that quanta and the other systems like the dynamic mission system will be able to use spawn lockers to facilitate to help move entities throughout the world, and when there are surges necessary (security backup etc...) have a way to get NPCs in the necessary areas without breaking immersion.
Also keep in mind the spawn lockers won't be the only way this can happen, as when you're out in the middle of space or in a random area on a planet other mechnisms can be used, like QT spawned NPCs or drop ships.