Why Include Offline Player Characters?
"Aging and dying in a world where characters pop in and out of existence creates a world of inconsistency. It makes no sense that two characters born at the same time would somehow be decades apart in age, solely because one player isn’t online as much as the other. At the same time, it’s impossible to create a single, cohesive story in a multiplayer world if the actors of the story disappear in the middle of an important scene. To solve these problems, Chronicles of Elyria employs a truly persistent world.
Your character maintains their place in the world even when you sign off, and aging happens whether you’re online or not. But this creates another problem. In a game where your character ages and dies, you want to get as much life out of them as you can."[1]
What are Offline Player Characters?
"To remedy this problem, CoE introduces the concept of Offline Player Characters (OPCs). Whenever you sign off, Artificial Intelligence takes over and plays your character for you. But, we all know AI is never as good as the real thing, so we’re working on a system that allows you to create and trade scripted behaviors for your characters."[1]
What are OPC scripts?
"These behaviors will let you do things like train character skills, run a storefront, perform weekly trade routes, do some gardening, and many other things. While we plan to provide a lot of pre-canned behaviors at launch, we’re really excited to see what the community can come up with, and plan to provide a lot of support to those players interested in expanding the game in this way."[1]
Can OPCs Die?
"As to the final question… Yes, it’s possible for your character to die while you’re offline. We recommend either signing off in a safe place, utilizing behaviors that know how to respond effectively to danger, or hiring other OPCs to act as guards."[1] Building strong defenses in the form of seclusion, walls, guards, and traps results in player created dungeons.
You can incapacitate but not force an OPC to walk the astral plane.[2]
PCs can drag OPC bodies a short distance.[2]
If an OPC is 'dead' for long enough, it will permadie. a players soul will be separated from its body.[2]