Making Things Better (Updated)

I hope you're having a fantastic Friday.

It's great to see you all again.

This week, I've continued focusing on improving autonomous behavior.

Our main goal this week has been to make it much clearer why a Zoi visits a particular location.

Until now, even when Zois visited places like cafés or bakeries, they often spent most of their time wandering around, chatting with others, checking their phones, or using the restroom instead of actually accomplishing the purpose of their visit. While these behaviors help make them feel more lifelike, they occurred so frequently that many players felt it became difficult to tell what they had come there to do.

To address this, we're changing the system so that Zois will prioritize fulfilling the purpose of their visit. For example, if a Zoi visits a bakery, they'll purchase bread, go through the necessary steps, sit down to eat it, and then return home. Of course, we still want them to feel like real people, so they'll occasionally have brief conversations or encounter unexpected situations along the way. The goal is to avoid making their behavior feel overly scripted or mechanical.

We're also rebalancing how Zois spend their time at each location. Most of their actions will now be directly related to their primary objective, while random behaviors—such as looking around or chatting—will occur much less frequently. At the moment, we're aiming for roughly 90% purpose-driven actions and 10% random behaviors.

That said, making the behavior sequence too rigid can introduce new problems. For example, if there are no available seats or a required condition isn't met, a Zoi could end up getting stuck. Because of this, we're also researching ways to strengthen purpose-driven behavior while still allowing Zois to adapt flexibly to changing situations.

Another important improvement we're currently working on is changing the logic that forces Zois to stay at a location for a fixed amount of time. Instead, once they have completed their intended objective, we want them to head back home naturally.

These improvements are currently being developed for standard lots such as cafés, bakeries, and parks. Business lots and schools already have their own development plans, so they are being worked on separately.

Since this feature is still under development, we're continuing to test and fine-tune it to ensure it feels natural during gameplay. Ultimately, our goal is for Zois to do more than simply wander around a location—we want players to clearly understand why each Zoi chose to visit a particular place.

That's all for this week. We hope you enjoy this week's development video from the inZOI team, and have a wonderful weekend!

–Kjun ※ For the video, please check it on Discord or the forum.

🔗 Discord: Link

🔗 Forum: Link

Kjun’s Reply to Your Comments

Hello everyone,

This is my first post of August. I hope you are all enjoying your summer vacations.

The heat in Korea has been especially intense lately, and I often find myself wishing I could escape to the beach or a swimming pool. For those of you planning a trip, I hope you have a wonderful and safe journey. At the same time, Korea has been so hot that I sometimes feel genuinely fortunate to be at the office under the cool air conditioning. (And I really do enjoy being in the development studio.

As I began writing this post, I thought it would also be a good opportunity to talk about some of the content I mentioned previously.

First, I would like to explain why summer was the only season left without a public holiday when we introduced the calendar and holiday features in the first anniversary update. This explanation is a little overdue. Although summer is hot, it is also a season when many people go on special trips, and we wanted that aspect of summer to be reflected naturally in the game, just as it is in real life.

Previously, the travel system was combined with the relocation feature, which made it confusing and inconvenient to use. This time, we are developing it with the goal of providing an experience that feels like actual travel rather than relocation.

We are preparing accommodations, various events throughout the cities, and a range of interesting places to visit. The development team and I have also spent a great deal of time thinking about how we can bring the meaningful experiences we have each had while travelling into the game’s content.

I imagine many of you are also looking forward to the accommodation feature. In my view, accommodation in inZOI should involve more than simply staying somewhere as a guest. Some of you will likely want to operate your own accommodations as well.

We will first introduce a feature that allows both players and NPCs to stay at accommodations. Later, through the business system, we plan to gradually provide the UI and features needed to create accommodations and configure individual guest rooms. I would love to show these features to you as soon as possible, but we will continue refining them with the development team so that we can deliver them at a high level of quality.

Another area we have recently been working on is improving the autonomy options.

Previously, the settings for the city, the player’s family, and the actively controlled Zoi were defined across several different layers, which likely made the system difficult to understand. Going forward, we plan to simplify this so that the most recently applied option will be the one reflected in that Zoi’s behaviour.

We are also preparing improvements that will allow autonomy settings to be applied not only to the character currently being played, but also to certain NPC families. At the same time, we hope to provide a broader and more flexible range of options.

As the hot weather continues, please take good care of your health and stay cool this summer. Every comment and piece of feedback you share gives us tremendous encouragement. We will return soon with further improvements.

Thank you.

kjun