Make Hunting Intuitive

[MachineLegend]

Hunting is un-intuitive and difficult to teach new players. More than half of the pve experience in Haven and Hearth involves exploiting and cheesing enemy ai or terrain so that there is no real battle. When you just spawn in you are literally vulnerable to every conceivable creature in the game. If bunnies could fight back, you'd probably lose.

It just sucks to have to explain to people over and over that "oh no you need to spend at least 10 hours before you even think of engaging with combat. Probably more."

I think at the bare minimum, enemy stats like bats and ants need to be brought down such that they can be hunted somewhat consistently by a brand new player without cheesing with a boat or cave entrance. New players need a slower and less risky way to engage with the combat system without a Sherpa telling them all the ways they don't have to engage with the combat system.

A wide sweeping Hunting rework should also involve removing boat sweet-spot hunting and and fine-tuning the fighting between all enemies big and small. Larger enemies could rawhide stun your horse for a second or two, more ranged attacks or even just for animals to start running if they cannot path-find to you. I don't have all the answers, nor are these changes anywhere near as necessary as fine-tuning the early-game experience.

Finally, animal quality should be outwardly telegraphed by gob size.

Thanks for coming to my Ted talk.

[Sevenless]

I don't like how unintuitive hunting is, but your modifications will really screw the interaction with the food system. Lowering the bulk of incoming meat would skew mining progression notably and it's in a good spot right now I feel (for generic villages, I'm sure faction grade boys have managed to make their lives miserable somehow). As for the land based stuff: Bears already can rawhide horses, moose already can outrun horses enough that you don't risk it.

I'd rather see a buff to ranged specifically for hunting. Most beginners intuitively go to ranged weapons to hunt. I've been suggesting infinite ammo pouches to reduce the burden of crafting ammunition.

[MachineLegend]

I feel the core of my critique lies with early game hunting which has almost nothing to do with village/faction level meat volume.

Perhaps the other tweaks I mentioned would lower to a certain degree the ability to mass-gather hunting materials for later game creatures like bears, mammoths, etc. I would opinion however that the existing meta of haven and hearth should not be treated as a golden calf (on a purely ideological level given any shift in the meta would be indirect). I feel some balance needs to be found between lowering cheesiness and exploits vs ease of consistent, intuitive hunting/fighting.

I do respect ranged hunting as a good avenue to direct development time especially for newer players to hunt. I feel there could be a compromise found between existing, inefficient arrows and infinite quivers. Perhaps multiple arrows per craft would be a good starting point. However, given lackluster damage, aiming difficulties with ranged, and animal ai heavily favoring fist fighting, I feel other significant changes would be welcomed.

[The_Lich_King]

I feel the core of my critique lies with early game hunting which has almost nothing to do with village/faction level meat volume.

Perhaps the other tweaks I mentioned would lower to a certain degree the ability to mass-gather hunting materials for later game creatures like bears, mammoths, etc. I would opinion however that the existing meta of haven and hearth should not be treated as a golden calf (on a purely ideological level given any shift in the meta would be indirect). I feel some balance needs to be found between lowering cheesiness and exploits vs ease of consistent, intuitive hunting/fighting.

I do respect ranged hunting as a good avenue to direct development time especially for newer players to hunt. I feel there could be a compromise found between existing, inefficient arrows and infinite quivers. Perhaps multiple arrows per craft would be a good starting point. However, given lackluster damage, aiming difficulties with ranged, and animal ai heavily favoring fist fighting, I feel other significant changes would be welcomed.

Firstly your original suggestion will heavily favor large villages and realms and will seriously screw over new players because without cheese, ranged becomes worthless. This isn't just true of your game it is true irl. As a Hunter and Gun Owner what do I do when hunting? I hide in a tree or in a blind where the animal can't get me and shoot it. Just like I Haven... I camouflage, I stealth, i cheese IRL. If an animal could run up and kill me after I shoot it..... well then nobody would hunt with ranged weapons. The same is true of Haven. Ranged hunting relies on cheese to exist. I do agree that cheese needs to be toned down however and I've had ideas in the past on how to do that and all of them are crap.

My most recent one is based on how our earliest ancestors hunted.

Their hunts involved hurting the creature then chasing it until it became so exhausted it could not run anymore, then dying. I think haven should take this approach with a system which goes as follow.

You hit a creature with a ranged weapon causing it to flee. It will have a stamina bar and when its out of stamina it moves at move speed 1 for hearthlings so a ranged user can just kite and kill it, and a melee user could do so in the same way... it would leave a blood scent which works like a crime scent so you can track it while running. Make animals give more meat and intestines to componsate hunts taking longer.

This system would also tutorialize new players on pvp since it also is about long chases and stamina versus the current hunting system which does nothing to help tutorialize about PVP.

[MachineLegend]

Again, the core of my argument lies in making hunting more accessible for new players. Tune down early game enemies like ants and bats and make them easier to approach for newer players. Nothing about that "heavily favors factions" because faction players could already cheese kill those enemies en masse the way the game is currently on day 1 (though I seriously doubt factions care very much about their ability to kill bats outside of getting easy combat moves).

The wider sweeping Hunting rework I mentioned was more to open up the conversation that cheese needs to be toned down, though in hindsight I shouldve simply ommitted those comments and put them in a different post to avoid losing track of the main idea.

I respect your point that IRL hunting is done primarily through stealth/"cheese". Ranged combat could certainly use some reworks. I feel personally that sweet-spotting a bear with my sword on a rowboat doesn't feel particularly rewarding or novel in the way the rest of the game does, nor do I feel that way about mammoth traps, troll mineholes, standing outside of an anglers range, etc. Most of the enemies are simply overtly strong to the point that it is near suicide to combat them head to head, but yet we require their materials much much sooner than we can be reasonably expected to be able to combat them. Some balance needs to be found between the convenience of hunting animals and the actual experience of hunting animals, but I also suspect that the root fear of messing with "hunting output" is a symptom of the greater
disproportionate need for meats to support mining and industry.

[The_Lich_King]

Again, the core of my argument lies in making hunting more accessible for new players. Tune down early game enemies like ants and bats and make them easier to approach for newer players. Nothing about that "heavily favors factions" because faction players could already cheese kill those enemies en masse the way the game is currently on day 1 (though I seriously doubt factions care very much about their ability to kill bats outside of getting easy combat moves).

The wider sweeping Hunting rework I mentioned was more to open up the conversation that cheese needs to be toned down, though in hindsight I shouldve simply ommitted those comments and put them in a different post to avoid losing track of the main idea.

I respect your point that IRL hunting is done primarily through stealth/"cheese". Ranged combat could certainly use some reworks. I feel personally that sweet-spotting a bear with my sword on a rowboat doesn't feel particularly rewarding or novel in the way the rest of the game does, nor do I feel that way about mammoth traps, troll mineholes, standing outside of an anglers range, etc. Most of the enemies are simply overtly strong to the point that it is near suicide to combat them head to head, but yet we require their materials much much sooner than we can be reasonably expected to be able to combat them. Some balance needs to be found between the convenience of hunting animals and the actual experience of hunting animals, but I also suspect that the root fear of messing with "hunting output" is a symptom of the greater
disproportionate need for meats to support mining and industry.

We don't need to change bats and ants, you can literally face tank ants with 10 str and 5 UA with minimal damage to myself and outrun them with movespeed 2 except the fast ones... same with batt, you can literally face tank them with 10 str and 15 UA, I did it this world. They don't need ro be altered.

Likewise changing hunting so its just a battle of stat checking is fundamentally less dynamic and worse than hunting is currently. Earlier this world i proposed making hunting just a stat check game and people pointen out how much worse that would be and they were right. Reflecting upon it, the only thing it would change is making it so you don't have to learn AI mechanics and instead you just stand there with no mechanic.

As for its accessibility... I hunted foxes and bagers in w7 (it was way worse then) i figured it out without guides back when animals actually killed you. It is far more accessible now so I really think we just got to wait for new players to get bows and then they will figure it out and we won't see anyone blocked from hunting.

[Kaios]

Tune down early game enemies like ants and bats and make them easier to approach for newer players.

You're on the right track but in my opinion the issue you are describing applies to every PvE enemy, I think a lot of the trouble with hunting stems from the way damage is dealt with respect to openings. No matter how powerful or protected the player is, whether they are experienced or not in the way combat works, and regardless of how careful you are in keeping your openings lowered, you will ALWAYS take damage if you're performing combat normally rather than utilizing some method of cheesing. Damage leads to wounds, and wounds lead to the hassle of healing and the increased possibility of death depending on the overall wound damage in relation to one's total hit points.

It's a given that most players are going to choose the path that avoids the normal mechanics entirely, especially when it's beneficial to do so. There's really no good reason why ants (non-dungeon ants) or other low tier crap should continue to deal damage to someone past a certain point in terms of armor class or ua/mc level.

[MachineLegend]

I'm not sure where the "stat check" proposal is coming from. I haven't suggested such a change. In addition, the ability for a seasoned player to face tank a creature does not an intuitive combat system make. You already know how to fight that creature, and you clearly know what stats you need to fight them. Most people who start have no frame of reference for how many ua points you need to fight a fox, let alone what a UA point, is and what it does.

As for damage and wounds, yes of course I don't blame anyone for pursuing cheese over an actual fight. I cheese enemies in this game too.
I do think that yes, to a certain degree my suggestion could apply to every enemy, as I mentioned there looms over this post a wider rework of pve content, and there are infinite methods to make it a bit more dynamic.

But especially for early game enemies that new players are likely to get aggroed and knocked by in their first couple hours like bats or ants, I think there is a good argument to be made for making them easier to take on as a low statted player. I can't count the number of times I have tried to get some of my friends into haven and hearth and them getting frustrated by running into something as trivial as a bat and getting knocked out. God forbid two bats aggro you at once. There should be a crappy, low stat critter, that actually fights back slowly so that new players have a chance to try things out. Bats are the standout to me because intuitively, I (and I would posit, most other people I play with) think of them as weak, fragile creatures in games.

[The_Lich_King]

I'm not sure where the "stat check" proposal is coming from. I haven't suggested such a change. In addition, the ability for a seasoned player to face tank a creature does not an intuitive combat system make. You already know how to fight that creature, and you clearly know what stats you need to fight them. Most people who start have no frame of reference for how many ua points you need to fight a fox, let alone what a UA point, is and what it does.

As for damage and wounds, yes of course I don't blame anyone for pursuing cheese over an actual fight. I cheese enemies in this game too.
I do think that yes, to a certain degree my suggestion could apply to every enemy, as I mentioned there looms over this post a wider rework of pve content, and there are infinite methods to make it a bit more dynamic.

But especially for early game enemies that new players are likely to get aggroed and knocked by in their first couple hours like bats or ants, I think there is a good argument to be made for making them easier to take on as a low statted player. I can't count the number of times I have tried to get some of my friends into haven and hearth and them getting frustrated by running into something as trivial as a bat and getting knocked out. God forbid two bats aggro you at once. There should be a crappy, low stat critter, that actually fights back slowly so that new players have a chance to try things out. Bats are the standout to me because intuitively, I (and I would posit, most other people I play with) think of them as weak, fragile creatures in games.

What you have highlighted here is not the need for a low stat crappy creature... we already have those. You talked about tweaking bats because 2 aggro'd your friend, but regardless of if you tweak them or not that interaction will remain fundamentally the same. If a bat aggroes someone and they don't know what they are doing or they just run, they will KO regardless of how much you lower their stats. Likewise if someone KO'd to ants then it means they will KO to ants regardless if you make them fightable at 1 UA or not.

The stats of Bats and Ants aren't fundamentally the problem its that they don't understand how to fight.

So instead of the thread being "make hunting more intuitive" and it being about changing low lvl moms to be even lower, instead the focus of this thread should be "Make fighting more tutorialized"

Making fighting more tutorialized is something i fundamentally agree with, and would even like to see the option for a tutorial fight offered from your hearth fire after you purchase fighting... make it send you to a valhalla like place where you can be properly tutorialized.

[Halbertz]

You can literally ride horse and shoot animals with bow (OMG LIKE IRL. SO HISTORICAL! I GONNA CUM). Is it really how you want to spend you time? If yes, do it, who cares. Devs should address other things instead of this for sure (who cares new bird next patch).