Hunting overhaul

[Linkbro]

first time making a forum post, so bear with me if it's a little crap

Right, so, as a guy who's new to the game and an aspiring nomad/explorer, I quite looked forward to being a hunter, half because it's cool, and half because it makes sense
imagine my annoyance when i shot at a deer, and instead of it freaking out, running into the undergrowth and leaving a trail for me to follow, it charged me and knocked me out.
"alright, I'm just a bit under powered, I'll try again with a better bow, arrows, and skills." I assumed, and worked for a couple of days buffing up my character and getting better equipped
the day came, I hid behind a tree and shot another deer perfectly, for a not too shabby amount of damage, this time though, it didn't attack back, It took off at full speed, leaving no trace that it ever even existed.
"maybe I'm not skilled enough for big game?" I thought, aiming at a rabbit that just so happened to appear, which i then managed to shoot and kill
and it instantly just died, with my arrow dissipating into the aether alongside it's soul.

my point hinges on the fact that hunting doesn't really make much sense atm, and shouldn't be a clear-cut toggle between 'you will instantly kill this animal if you hit' and 'you cannot kill this animal with a bow', the current meta hunting tactic is to fistfight the deer to death, which is imo not very in keeping with a game so focused on accuracy that you need to pick leeches off of your body every time you walk into a swamp

my suggestions are (ranked in order of most needed):

1. a lot of creatures get their 'heavily damaged' AI to switch from turning aggro to running the hell away
2. said running away creatures get a debuff (with intensity based on the damage that it took) that slows it down and damages it over time, which also leaves a trackable trail (possibly easier to see according to perception?) allowing you to follow the animal, eventually leading you to where it died/decided to rest and heal whatever damage you hit it with for collection/another shot, this would mean it still takes a lot of arrows to kill a deer with lowq equipment, but it wouldn't be impossible, only taking a skilled hunter/a man with a lot of patience
3. flaying an animal shot with an arrow gives a high chance of returning the arrow, or at least some of the materials at lower skill levels
4. stealth becomes a factor in how close you can get to animals without them instantly activating the 'run away' behaviour, this gives stealth a use outside of being an asshole.
5. new materials from animals to add further incentive to hunting, such as sinew that work as string material and teeth that work for arrow points (carnivores only)
6. possibly removing the ability to muhammad ali a deer to death, given the ridiculousness of the concept
7. better arrow types, such as adding fletching to give an immediate buff to accuracy, maybe even some 'fantasy' arrow types for sieges and pvp

these changes would make hunting an actual viable profession for someone in a village, both making it require more skill and also more know-how, something worthy of it's own credo.

welp, that's my most-likely-more-than-two-cents of opinions, this would most likely be too much effort to implement for such a small subset of the community, but we can all have dreams, eh?

tl;dr: I think hunting isn't very well implemented, and various changes would make it much more enjoyable and worthwhile, as well as cool and thematic.

[loleznub]

The system already does many of the things you've listed, you just have to RP it out in that way.

Some of the suggestions are based off of "isn't realistic", but unfortunately this game isn't very realistic in the first place.

Addition of new materials, especially when it's simple to "RP" them (carnivores dropping teeth for arrowheads = a bone from the animal you killed OR bear claws? sinew = taking the hide and cutting it up or some shit) makes the game bloated, especially when there's a way of getting such things from the animal.

I don't really see what this would add past the need to use more of my time hunting (2-3+ minutes per animal from your proposed changes? in comparison to 5-30 seconds for the majority of animals). Hunting becomes less about killing the creature, and more about finding ones that are worth killing (i.e high q) the longer the game goes on. Hunting is already a dedicated role in most villages because of the need of 400+ survival and even higher combat skills. It also has like 5 or 6 credos that affect hunting in some way when you take into account what is useful for creating realms and realm buffs.

[Linkbro]

there's a reason why I ranked my ideas from best to worst, and a reason why the new materials thing was 5 out of 7.
but even then, I don't see what's wrong with the idea, it's simply another source of string, the point of view of 'rp'ing these things does not make sense, as it doesn't make sense for half of the animals hide to dissapear if you were to take sinew from the animal. teeth just being bone material makes sense though, fair point.
I do not understand how adding atleast the sinew would 'bloat' the game, considering all the other 'natural' forms of string, unless having both spindly taproot and stinging nettles are bloating the game by both being string?

your argument from efficiency shows that you haven't really gotten the point of what I was saying, the point of these changes is not for efficiency, but for fun. the concept of hunting being about 'who can punch the most animals the fastest' as opposed to being smart enough to track and kill something efficiently baffles me.
the current system might be good for people who run this game like a spreadsheet, but not for people in it for fun.

the fact that the reason 'hunter' is a job because you need a particular stat and 'combat skills' shows the underlying problem, what you've described is a fighter, not a hunter.
it's also about what's most fun, would you prefer to be like, 2 minutes more efficient in exchange for spamming 1 repeatedly? or having hunting be a thing that actually requires any amount of thought?

i think that at the very least arrow recovery should become a thing alongside massive buffs to archery to make bow hunting an actual thing again, if not the changes I recommended before

[loleznub]

there's a reason why I ranked my ideas from best to worst, and a reason why the new materials thing was 5 out of 7.
but even then, I don't see what's wrong with the idea, it's simply another source of string, the point of view of 'rp'ing these things does not make sense, as it doesn't make sense for half of the animals hide to dissapear if you were to take sinew from the animal. teeth just being bone material makes sense though, fair point.
I do not understand how adding atleast the sinew would 'bloat' the game, considering all the other 'natural' forms of string, unless having both spindly taproot and stinging nettles are bloating the game by both being string?

Because if one useless thing gets added, it only adds a precident for more useless items to get added in the future. Some examples: here and here

your argument from efficiency shows that you haven't really gotten the point of what I was saying, the point of these changes is not for efficiency, but for fun. the concept of hunting being about 'who can punch the most animals the fastest' as opposed to being smart enough to track and kill something efficiently baffles me.
the current system might be good for people who run this game like a spreadsheet, but not for people in it for fun.

You must have missed my point, but allow me to highlight it for you:

Your argument of "doesnt make much sense atm" is invalid because the game isn't based around realism.

See here, here, and here for a few examples.

In addition to this, if your counter-argument is because you think it is "fun" is really holding that much weight then it's safe to assume me saying "This wouldn't be fun" holds just as much weight.

Sorry, but increasing the time to do something by 20-30 times the amount just isn't want I consider "fun" and I would be willing to bet the majority of the community here would agree with me. Sure, maybe for the first 3-4 times you would hunt under your proposed system it would probably be fun. But what about after the 100th hunt? the 1000th? No thanks, there's already plenty to do in Haven and Hearth than for me to stalk around the bushes, lay traps around the forest, wait for the prey to come in range, and then strike.

You may be more interested in this game.

the fact that the reason 'hunter' is a job because you need a particular stat and 'combat skills' shows the underlying problem, what you've described is a fighter, not a hunter.
it's also about what's most fun, would you prefer to be like, 2 minutes more efficient in exchange for spamming 1 repeatedly? or having hunting be a thing that actually requires any amount of thought?

Sorry, but increasing the time to do something by 20-30 times the amount just isn't want I consider "fun" and I would be willing to bet the majority of the community here would agree with me. Sure, maybe for the first 3-4 times you would hunt under your proposed system it would probably be fun. But what about after the 100th hunt? the 1000th? No thanks, there's already plenty to do in Haven and Hearth than for me to stalk around the bushes, lay traps around the forest, wait for the prey to come in range, and then strike.

Marksmanship is a combat skill. It's just a useless one, both for PvP and PvE. PvP they don't even deal HHP damage or give wounds. PvE they ruin quality, take resources that are difficult to grind upwards in comparison to UA/MC combat, and is scrappy at best. Because of this "combat" characters just end up also being hunters because it makes sense.

What would you propose people do when it comes to fighting trolls? Set their twine-traps down behind the nearby boulder, wait for the creature to walk through it, shoot your first arrow, and then watch as it doesn't give a flying fuckerino about your arrows as it tosses you down the abyssal chasm that is just down the corridor? Same could be said for a bear and a mammoth.

i think that at the very least arrow recovery should become a thing alongside massive buffs to archery to make bow hunting an actual thing again, if not the changes I recommended before

Archery for sure needs to be looked at because it's absolutely worthless. I'd rather see that fixed, than the devs add in arrow recovery for a currently broken system.

[Linkbro]

tbh I'd probably be fine with just bows doing more damage and arrows being retrievable, honestly.

[Granger]

Good first post.

Don't let yourself be discouraged from expressing your fresh player experience by certain naysayers.

[loleznub]

tbh I'd probably be fine with just bows doing more damage and arrows being retrievable, honestly.

That would indeed be nice.

[DDDsDD999]

Arrows already appear on the ground sometimes after shooting though.

[Linkbro]

yeah, but they should do that more, maybe have the chance scale with arrow quality?

[Linkbro]

an example of why arrows need to be more retrievable, is that early game it's super inefficient to use bone points. because more often than not, the arrows dissapears with the kill, and as rabbits only give one bone material, it's a neutral result in terms of bone material, and that's even if you hit, if you miss and your arrow goes into a lake or something, then you've just practically lost a bone material with no hopes of getting it back