Game Development: World 4

[fallout]

To the great people of Haven, I bring you Candle Berries!!!

[partinez]

I like the fact that you keep us on our toes, but why not make our behavior "intended" design? Let us make spike traps, pits etc. and instead of trying to find a way to prevent us exploiting the AI, focus on reducing the need to repeat the same grindy hunting action.

This is certainly a good point, and one that we've considered a couple of times already. I've considered adding to the census system information to keep track of general game and wildlife information, so that animal trapping would be mostly a game of resource management, making it possible to "deplete" an area of certain animals by overhunting them, but perhaps being able to manipulate the population by putting out feed and such things. (It might even be possible to make the system even more advanced, so that one can increase the local population of rabbits by hunting fox, for instance.) That would turn direct hunting of animals into something one does either for LP and/or just to enjoy the fight, hopefully.

Making a functional ecosystem in H&H would be awesome. It could lead to people killing the animals on the enemy's village area to break the nutritional cycle and transform the area into a desert. I would need a lot of work, anyway. But it would be cool to experiment with xD

[cobaltjones]

But yeah, there is a difference to challenge and tedium. You've added tedium.

Well, let me phrase the following question, then -- do you think that animals should really go back to being completely harmless? Is there any point in that? Even if I were to go on improving their AI so as to not be 'sploitable, that still wouldn't change their being harmless. Would that be a good thing? Where's the fun in challenging a wilderness that isn't wild? What do you suggest in order to turn the supposed tedium into challenge? Why is it that you don't consider it a challenge in the first place? The 'sploitable AI?

You seem to be under the impression that everyone that voices concerns about the new animal system wants it to go back to the old boring way. Literally no one has said that animals shouldn't be able to kill you, nor is anyone saying that they thought the old knockout system was more fun. The problem is that the way the system is currently implemented the risk/penalty for randomly stumbling across a wild animal in the vast wilderness is just too great to be worth it to anything less than the most hardcore of players.

Also you keep asking for "suggestions" as a sort of defense mechanism, but if you'd pay attention there have been dozens of suggestions in the very posts you're quoting to keep the excitement/danger of wild animals all while making the actual experience of exploration more enjoyable and less tedious. Open your fucking eyes man.

[jgudge]

Open your fucking eyes man.

Nobody?
Everyone's raging about this, but only in the new players, and this one particular rage quit because of it. Personally, and being a new-er player, I think it's a great addition, but only because i know what it's like to trap a BRUTAL ONE HIT GORE BOAR behind a damned stick fence. That wasn't right.

[cobaltjones]

Open your fucking eyes man.

Nobody?
Everyone's raging about this, but only in the new players, and this one particular rage quit because of it. Personally, and being a new-er player, I think it's a great addition, but only because i know what it's like to trap a BRUTAL ONE HIT GORE BOAR behind a damned stick fence. That wasn't right.

Nowhere in that post does he say "Man you need to go back to the old ways!"

Lots of people, myself included, like the idea of adding challenge to the newbie survival aspect of the game. Just because we don't like the current system of random sudden deaths in the wild doesn't mean we automatically want to go back to the old system. I think loftar is getting offended that people are reacting so negatively to the change that he's getting defensive about it instead of actually looking at the argument. No one wants to go back to boring wussy wild animals, but the current system is severely flawed and people have even suggested many different ideas with how it could be tweaked to work better.

Also don't play the "new vs. veteran" card on me. I've played this game since world 2 and was quite active with world 3. I'm not complaining because I'm not good enough to survive with the new animals. I'm complaining because it adds an extreme level of tedium and risk to the game without any real positive benefits right now. Surely we can meet somewhere in the middle, no?

[Fratari]

There are benefits to it. Animals give much more lp than they used to.

[jgudge]

Also don't play the "new vs. veteran" card on me.

Chill, i said i'm new, I never said that I was more vet than anyone.

[burgingham]

Just for the record (too lazy to read all the comments here), making animals deadly is awesome and bug trapping them has always been stupid. Now let dears attack in packs too please (maybe they already do that).

[SevenBlade]

Honestly, I just don't get how anyone could enjoy the current system. Aside from the farming, which is an addition I like, every change has made it more tedius to survive. Not harder, tedius.

By this system Loft might aswell just make half of the newly created characters die due to "Birth defect" and everyone would defend it as a stunningly innovative system to weed out "LOLNOOBS". And it's not just the random, lethal boar encounters. I've been playing all goddamn day and I have not seen ONE rabbit despite traveling what seems like a supergrid. You know what that means? NO BONES! NO FISH HOOKS! NO BLOODY FOOD! NO LEATHER!

In theory the game is more challenging. IN THEORY. It's not, though. You've upped the ante to gain LP and not compensated by making skills cheap enough. You've made MINESHAFT SUPPORTS, the thing you need to MINE require metal! AND LEATHER, WHICH IS NOW RATHER HARD TO FIND CONSISTANTLY!

If this is just a test world to go nuts, then fine. But don't expect serious investment.

[jorb]

Needs moar caps.