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Task Description
Currently when an NPC doesn't have a quest for player, they essentially ignore the player. This can be bad because:
1) Sometimes (e.g. the circle way quests) this comes across as a bug since the player has been directed to talk to the NPC by another.
2) It's not always (in fact generally not) a realistic behaviour from a charactization PoV.
3) The chain quests are now very long and not obvious, so players have no idea what to do next.
4) It may be something else besides more quests that is necessary. How are players to know?
I think this should be changed, and propose the following dynamic as a possibility:
A "sociability" metric would be calculated for each interaction between player and NPC based on:
factions, prerequisites required for quests, and a base number assigned to each NPC. This metric will indicate how well-disposed the NPC is towards giving quest info the player at this time. Depending on this metric (lets say a number from 0-5) the NPC could say something (or ignore the player if the number is 0). The higher the number, the more useful and specific is the response.
Some characters are grumpy by nature and will almost always ignore people or give gruff responses (like now). Many are just typical and will offer canned default responses, expect that for the higher metrics these will hint that they will have something for you later. Ideally the highest metric will look up who gives the pre-requisite quest and direct you there.
Each quest could specify overrides for any of the responses.
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