City Guard NPC Dialogue - Directions

[Feronius]

When you are lost or have just arrived in a new city, who do you tend to ask for directions? The nearest city guard.

I thought it would be a good idea and incredibly helpful to new players if the City Guard NPCs were able to share some basic information and directions with you(r character) through a simple conversation menu.
The server is pretty huge, so this may help new players get a better sense of where to find what stuff.

Some examples of what you could possibly ask a city guard:

• Directions to inns and other places where you are able to rest
• Directions on where to purchase (healing) supplies or find priests
• General words of warning, which regions to avoid and to keep your eyes open (Hinting at the visual cues dungeons use?)
• Some rumors pointing you in the direction of the (easy, lowest level) dungeon areas (Generic rumors with minimal spoilers)

I am hoping the City Guard NPCs are 'linked', in the sense that giving one City Guard NPC a conversation menu will automatically give the same dialogue to all of the other guards on the server? So that it is not loads of work to implement something like this.

If anyone has any thoughts or more suggestions on what to ask a city guard I encourage you to share them.

[Feronius]

Instead of city guards giving you directions, there are other NPCs that could provide players with this same type of information.

• Retired Adventurer NPCs placed at the popular taverns
• A Town Crier NPC in the city square (only during the day?)
• A City Guide (or a Beggar) NPC near the city gates

I purposely left out the obvious suggestion of Innkeeper, as they are typically a unique NPC in TER. This would probably mean more work for the dev team if they were to implement this suggestion. You would have to write unique dialogue for each character.
Regardless of the NPC(s) used for this (even the Town Crier), I would suggest the dialogue is in the form of a conversation menu. There is less of a character limit, but more importantly the messages do not interfere with on-going RP by appearing in the local chat.


What does everyone else think of this suggestion? What sort of NPC would make the most sense? Or do you not like this suggestion?