Do you think that the NPCs that were created as cannon fodder for a plot (not the reoccuring ones) should be as fleshed out as the reoccurring, permanent NPCs or as the played characters?
Somebody said : "We stop treating them like human characters by admitting that they are only temporary characters not worth being fully fledged. That does create very one dimensional characters who are just here to die. They were made to be evil and their good qualities were never even considered because the plot didn't need a family man who sought to earn a living for his children by doing bad deeds. Our plot needed one dimensional villains whom no one would feel bad about murdering. What if they were just doing this because their bosses had them under control via blackmail? How then would our characters have felt killing them or voting in favour of killing them? How many of our writers would have been in favour of going down this path if the lives that were taken were more than just an evil figure with no personality or significant history?"
Do you agree with this opinion? Or do you think that cannon fodder characters are needed too (on both sides) besides fleshed characters? And that this deep digging into the villains' personalities would have been worth for writing a different story, one from the villains' perspectives, but not the ongoing one, where they weren't the subject of the story but more... the flavour of the quest?