Why is it so common for NPCs in games to have mismatched walking speeds?

I jumped back into Starfield a few days ago to prepare for the DLC, and it got me thinking about a specific issue that appears in so many games.

When you are walking alongside an NPC and listening to their dialogue, your character’s walking speed is too slow to keep up. If you try to move faster, you end up rushing ahead of them. This forces you to walk a few steps, then jog to catch up, repeating the process until you reach your destination.

This problem has existed for generations, although many games have found solutions. Some automatically match your walking speed, and I remember a few games having a “press to match speed” button.

Yet, it still pops up occasionally, and I can’t help but wonder why. It seems bizarre that such a common and obvious problem remains unsolved, especially since it should be easy to fix. Surely, they could just program the NPCs to walk a bit slower to match the player’s pace if they don’t want to implement something more dynamic.

I suspect there might be a quirk in programming or game development that causes this issue to be so difficult to avoid. I’m hoping someone with development experience can shed some light on why this happens so frequently.

11 Likes

Just implement it like in Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk, where NPCs adjust to your speed, but you can also match theirs.

11 Likes

The Witcher 3 is, in my opinion, the ideal illustration of how NPCs can’t keep up with Geralt’s pace. I remember becoming irritated quite a bit.

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It irritates me to no end when I play W3. The walking and running speeds of NPCs varies greatly from Geralt’s.

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I am playing Cyberpunk right now, and while the NPCs try to match your speed, it just doesn’t work well.

8 Likes

What topic are you discussing? They walk at your pace and begin sprinting if you do too.

7 Likes

Playing Cyberpunk, I am experiencing the exact opposite problem.

I would like to walk closer to them, but they usually keep up with me, keeping a distance of ten to fifteen feet.

Talking about our murder-heist with three people standing between us on a busy sidewalk is strange.

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Cyberpunk 2077 gave some NPCs a radius where, once you enter it, you automatically match their speed. It blew my mind the first time I saw it, and I wish more games would implement something similar.

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Yeah, it was super frustrating at launch because that circle feature didn’t exist back then. You could stack movement speed bonuses that affected sneaking, walking, scan-toggle walking, jogging, and sprinting differently.

With certain speed mods and perks active, trying to walk alongside an NPC never felt right you would gradually speed up and pull away from them. Then, you’d resort to toggling scan mode to slow down, but that turned your screen green, which was not ideal.

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If the NPCs walk as fast as you, people who are not sticking with them the whole time won’t be able to catch up. Some players might lose focus during an escort mission and glance at something else for a moment.

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Game designers typically set NPC walk speed to match the length of the dialogue and the distance you need to cover to reach the next location. This walk speed often doesn’t account for your character’s normal walk/run speed, as that’s determined for different reasons, like gameplay and player interaction. That’s why there’s often a mismatch.

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You would never catch up if they walked at your maximum speed, if they walked at your minimum speed, it would take an eternity. The answer is to never include bad quests in your game.

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It reminds me of escort quests in WoW. We must escape. But let me walk at a leisurely pace and attract every mob within a five-mile radius. I might be paraphrasing, but they are always too slow to run and too fast to walk truly painful.