"gamekitten;15503141" wrote:
I have always called them NPCs.. -shrugs- I do not play any of them. And what I meant that lived in houses (Goths, Pancake, etc, etc..). Sorry I didn't explain myself better. So, as not to be the odd duck out, I will start calling them townie background noise (NPC was just easier). And I do know what an NPC is as an avid MMOer and RPGer. Do I have to give examples of what a NPC is next?
They're still NPCs, but so are the ones who live in houses. "Townie" has been a Sims term for non-resident randomly-generated background NPCs, to differentiate them from preset, resident NPCs. For which I have no real idea what to call them aside from "unplayed household NPCs".
I can kind of see the logic on both sides of the argument here. To be fair, this GP is 100% exclusively
about vampires, so getting it while not wanting any vampires at all is a bit silly. But a glut of undead would cause its own crop of problems. What I think should be done is to impose an upper bound on "townie" vampires - we know this game can cull townies, and we also know it can immunize some from culling (special relationship flags).
For purposes of this theoretical exercise, let's assume the following rules are established:
- Pregenerated vampire townies cannot exceed 15% of townie population (this will still mean a fair amount of vampires - nearly one in six - but any lower and I fear we'd be "stiffing" the vampire lovers). I allow it to go that low because, let's be honest, they should only be out at night, AND vampirism really shouldn't be a global epidemic. (For one thing, the vampires need their food supply.)
- Second, we will have certain "flags" that will exclude a vampire townie from counting toward this limit. The most obvious would be that the master vampire cannot be culled, and any vampire turned by a played Sim shouldn't be culled OR counted toward the limit on pregenerated vamps. This way, if you want a veritable army of vampires, you can make your own. (The special relationship flags that prevent culling probably don't need to stop them from counting as vampire townies, although any that get promoted out of towniehood would obviously no longer count then.)
I'll admit, this idea could probably use some refining, but it would serve to keep vampires a rarity, as they properly ought be (if they were ubiquitous, they'd be natural, not supernatural), unless you go out of your way to build them up.
Lastly, as the number of life states increases, I can actually see a growing importance to some sort of customization menu allowing simmers to choose which ones they favor - especially if any are from packs which have other things (like GTW wasn't just "Aliens"). Perhaps even some sort of "world content control" where you can set such settings on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis. (Forgotten Hollow? 90% vampires, 10% normal. Oasis Springs? 20% aliens, 5% vampires, 75% normal. San Myshuno? 10% aliens, 10% vampires, 80% normal. And so on, and so on.) Of course, it'd be way too complicated and would probably require more rearranging code than I can imagine. I'm well aware this is wishful thinking.
