Mercenary? Recruitment? If it is a stranger, he may have interesting information from its previous location …An envious neighbor who suddenly has power …?
If you recruit from the villagers, then there should be less villagers.
True, but there are in every town tramp or people with whom you can do nothing - as a guard there will be enough 
It’s a design decision driven by logic and necessity.
Gothic was a closed system. The gameworld was a prison colony with a magical barrier all around no one could leave and only some could enter under very limiting conditions (convicts). Also the world was very static and the guards were all situated in large hubs separated from the ‘dangerous wilderness’ in between and from one another. The only danger to the world was the player. So it was logical that it behaved that way. Gothic 2 was the same. It was a tiny island with no contact with the mainland… at the time.
BTW this is something Piranha Bytes struggled with during development of Gothic 3. They wanted to create a dynamic world where NPC travel the roads and animals and NPC hunt one another. However it lead to situations where they were unable to control the system and it very often ended up with villages tidied up by wandering monsters. They scrapped the whole system and got back to the static world with limited or not existent respawn (I am not sure about this one). The very idea of dynamic world opposed their goal of maximal if not total persistence. They chose the latter.
The map of KC: D is a tiny but not separated part a of a big kingdom. The borders we create are non-existent in the real world counterpart and the in-game world behaves as such. You can’t leave but there are very vital contacts to the “outter world” including visitors, travellers, caravans… even armies of a sort. As such the gameworld should behave as a normal part of civilized world - it should be able slowly recover from any harm. On the other hand it should not react to one-time and enduring threats the same way (here I point to our crime system). Additionally our world is highly dynamic and as such there are many threats not only to the player but also to all the NPC. I admit that there is no perfect and 100% accurate solution to this and our solution might feel a bit artificial. But I believe that multi-state dynamic recoverable systems are much better in the case of our game than finite resources static systems considering the whole context.
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That sounds wonderful. So you’re saying is something happens to the town baker, he will be replaced by a new baker at some point… This is good, but would the new one have the same lines as the old? I doubt you could prepare a tone of altered lines in case of an NPC replacement, even so, it’s better then the world going without a baker forever, like some games… (skyrim!) ಠ_ಠ
I won’t say anything more 
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Okay then… (ಥ﹏ಥ)
“‘Gothic’ was a closed system. The game world was a prison colony…”
Hmm, yes, I was expecting an answer along those lines, that the game world was a prison colony/an isolated island – thus with limited resources and manpower.
“Also the world was very static…”
Also true. But it had Chapters. At least in the first two games.
“…and the guards were all situated in large hubs separated from the ‘dangerous wilderness’…”
Yes. But there were no loading screens / transitions in-between!
“However it led to situations where they were unable to control the system and it very often ended up with villages tidied up by wandering monsters.”
Or just by a couple of wild boars. (Insider joke.)
“The map of ‘KC: D’ is a tiny but not separated part of a big kingdom. […] As such the game world should behave as a normal part of a civilized world – it should be able to slowly recover from any harm.”
Keyword: slowly – “to slowly recover from any harm.” (Maybe the neighboring cities cannot spare any fighting men at the moment…?)
Anyway, thanks for the clarification!
I really hope you can pull this of. This is the game world people wished to have for a long time.
From what I seen about your AI you have really good start and you have people who are capable of creating recovering system. Although to create such system in believable way is still a challenge.
I am looking forward to emergent gameplay that will certainly be a result of such system.
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“I admit that there is no perfect and 100% accurate solution to this and our solution might feel a bit artificial.”
"New media are new languages, their grammar and syntax yet unknown." –Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980)In a closed system like our earth all living in displacement processes (watch carefully the nature). Our planet and we are always surrounded by various types of pressure arises at one point an open space = vacuum, the corresponding mass shifts and fills this place out. Conversely create events space, intelligent events focus on this process of displacement at a target and fill this space immediately. Something abstract but based, inter alia, for successful marketing.
To stay with the baker: The people want bread = vacuum. Anyone can learn baking. A baker has built a regulated oven (= integral projection) and the procurement of raw materials and distribution. The sale is running, there is a need = pressure equality.
One thinks he can just bake well and does the same. With the same amount of demand created competition = pressure. Baker 1 kills Baker 2 (and not get caught) = pressure equality.
Bakers one disappears without replacement = vacuum = chance for bakers 2 (does not even need in this case, a separate oven = vaccum = ownerless oven) etc.
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While I do agree with the overly complication… I can tell you, as a player, that I enjoyed enormously that (most of) the (old camp) guards in Gothic were named. My brother, me and several friends who played it discussed long time about which one would be more badass in a fight, what an asshole was that other one, pushing us poor peasants around. Of course about half of them said non-generic dialog, but most of the time it was just oen or two one-liners.
Do you expect such high mortality ratios among the guards that you can’t give them a personalized line each? I mean it’s not like “dragons could swoop down at any moment”.
edit: I see that in fact Gothic has already been mentioned ^^’ oh well
Well, the initial garrison still maybe composed of unique NPC, that’s not a conflicting solution.
to stick to the original threadquestion, is there an answer how the problems with the names will be solved?
I think to ask the people works for the small area of the alpha, but if the worlds opens and you come to a bigger city it might be a problem finding people, if they are not that important as a bailiff or such.
It might be more realistic without names, but if a quest says find a farmer and there are many people that have a dayly routine, how should you find the correct person without runnig to every farmer an ask them about their names? I think, this might cause even more trouble to the realism than names above the npcs
Realistically, someone would have given you more of a description, than “he is a farmer, find him”
Morrwind style. “He has a red shirt, brown hair, and works in the wheat fields.”
That narrows it down pretty well, without needing names floating above heads.
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With the (quest)markers on compass and map it´s easy to find somebody. It´s too easy… 
I would prefer only a description of the person.
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That might be an issue in Act 2 or Act 3, but I would guess very hardly so in Act 1. All the locations are quite small with not that many NPCs. I grew up in a municipality of some 5.000 people and if you’d asked around, you would always find whom you are looking for. Especially if you asked some older lady, you would probably get your answer on the first attempt.
Haha, even in larger cities, I doubt their will be 5000 npcs. So we’re fine right?
Baron Blacksmith, you got likes for what I just said!XD I LOVE IT!!!
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Non-familiar NPC until you first meet and greet them.
I hope it is understandable though.
I’ve always disliked how NPC are presented in other games. Their name is always known to the player prior to conversation and it is usually shown above their heads BEFORE the player has actually acquainted them. For example I can point out Skyrim, where Idolaf Battle-Born asks you right away the famous question “Gray-mane or Battle-born” and you are already seeing his name without having met before.
Let’s say @warhorse goes for realism with KC:Deliverance. So this little change is a must-to-do IMO. Nothing hard to implement - my suggestion would be that no names or professions are known for any character until Henry actually talks to the NPC and ask about whatever he wants to know. They exchange names and become familiar, so from this point Henry would know who the NPC is. If the player wants to know NPC profession or some other detail, he should ask about it also.
Thank you for reading!
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When you say “any character” are you including the folks in his home village? Because that would indicate that Henry recently underwent a traumatic lobotomy.
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