Dev Diary: Mad ramblings

[loftar]

Just as a headsup for those who haven't seen it, I've described the suggested archery implementation in more detail here.

[Machenoid]

squirrels

"Squirrel" is all that's necessary here. Adjectives relating to disease shouldn't happen until diseases actually exist, and even then, shouldn't be named after actual diseases otherwise confusion might set in and a player may think "I know there's a disease system in this game, and this NPC is apparently suffering from [fatal real-life disease of your choice here] based on it's name, so i should avoid this creature at all costs"

So for example, a "Mad cow" NPC: What does "mad" mean? Is it angry, or is it insane/confused, or is it suffering from the ultra-deadly prion brain disease? In all those cases, those words should be used intead of "mad" and in the last case, the name should be remade in H&H style (eg: not so scientific) so it has minimal chances of confusing it's level of hazard to the player [with a real-life hazard]

[Alamarian]

Other than the poison ivy, which sounds ridiculous, I'm down wit dis G.

[Jackard]

poison ivy would be more interesting as walkable plant clusters that you either avoid or take a debuff

more undergrowth in general for forests would be cool - you could do the same sort of debuff with brambles, or have thickets forming weak natural walls that you can hack apart

[Nemu]

yay add more scenery sprites so that my 4 year old pc comes to a grinding halt.

[Igglebert]

yay add more scenery sprites so that my 4 year old pc comes to a grinding halt.

I ran HnH on a 9 year old PC just fine, right now im running it on a 5-6 year old laptop. Other than the fact that it needs to be wiped sometime soon I do just fine with it.

[theTrav]

Sounds like there's still no deliberate thought being put towards encouraging / forcing players to hunt in groups (there may be benefits from doing so, but nothing in your post says "I want that to be the way it happens")

At first glance hearing you talk about just upping the damage from archery and letting a noob with only 50 skill kill bears sounds pretty damned awful to me for several reasons
1 - 50 skill isn't noob, it's a reasonable time investment for a new player (I don't need to hear from you old timers who can grind up 500k in a day, how long did it take you your first time)
2 - Having stats that affect ability to hunt just seems like it's going to be a grinding engine, especially as a barrier for entry (make 100 kuska's before you ride the bear hunt)
3 - If you can solo hunt then why would you bother hunting in a group?

The talk about climbing the ladder of beasties is also something that I find pretty distasteful and gamey. Why do you need a linear progression of animal opponents? Why do you need to divide content into low level content and high level content?
See my thread in the critique forum on different strokes for ideas on making hunting each animal a unique experience.

Bleeding and tracking of animals sounds good, it would be nice if you could have the animals slowed by their wounds as well.


As with everyone else it seems I dislike the ivy idea... Maybe you should only be able to attack them with your wind blades, and perhaps you could collect sun beams to forge into a shield of light which protects you from the living plants... (sarcasm alert)


I like the idea of crafting and civilization being worth more, I dislike the idea of troll hunting being only high level content and yielding massive LP bonus. Primarily because it means you're still focusing on LP as the reward mechanic and not thinking about real gameplay/environment impacting changes, which are harder to implement but far more fun.

Peaceful taming would make me more likely to try it, so far I haven't bothered.

I also quite like your idea of putting the majority of danger on the boundaries between civ and nature.


No comment at all on PvP, far too many unknowns at this stage

[Jackard]

yay add more scenery sprites so that my 4 year old pc comes to a grinding halt.

devs have stated performance is unaffected by frogs, rats, chicken and rabbits... so i doubt any of the above would have an effect. maybe thickets and pathfinding

The talk about climbing the ladder of beasties is also something that I find pretty distasteful and gamey. Why do you need a linear progression of animal opponents? Why do you need to divide content into low level content and high level content? See my thread in the critique forum on different strokes for ideas on making hunting each animal a unique experience.

i agree, prey should be weaker than predators but aside from that animals should be made different by behavior and weaknesses not simple stat boosts. like how you would hunt boar/bear with spears or chase them down with dogs

also just setting all predators to level 10 sounds dubious - shunting people into archery, grinding up melee, trivial/impossible combat

[sonerohi]

When you say archers lose aim, does that interrupt their ability to fire at the targeted spot, or just mean that the arrow is no longer going to hit what had been there? Also, do arrows move to the target, or just appear and cause damage if possible?

[Alamarian]

3 - If you can solo hunt then why would you bother hunting in a group?

I can see group hunting to kill dangerous animals, like bears, but I don't want to hunt in a group for garden variety animals. Semi-loners should still be able to hunt things on their own.