Hunting and animal behavior ideas

[Brian]

Good day to you, fellow hearthlings. I wanted to share some ideas on hunting mechanics and animal behavior, though those ideas obviously doesn't have much weight on their own maybe something interesting can occur in discussion.

First of all, right now, in general hunting feels much like farming random monsters in other mmos, which is not that great for a game like H&H, in my opinion. I would rather see it in mechanics that are completely different from pvp fights (or even big pve stuff like dragon fights if those ever implemented), tho devs probably going in that direction anyway.

So, animal behavior, i think it would be pretty awesome if every animal type had it's own more complicated behavior patterns as well as more advanced, and more obvious, ways of spotting player. For instance, let's say there is a rabbit, he has a 180 degree (or something) sight with fixed range, forming a cone like sight line in front of him, if player is in that zone the rabbit will spot him and will try to escape, but player can use "blind zone" to sneak on the rabbit and catch him easily. Rabbit also have a "hearing" radius with animal being the center. Rabbit can hear player walking and detect him in such matter, so player must use crawling (or something) to keep hes walking noises down (maybe stepping on an object will produce loud noise, making a set up for classic scene with branch crunch ). Of course this detection suggestion goes for all animals, but when player is spotted they would behave differently.

Fox would stop all it's activities and start starring at the player, waiting for something to happen, if player starts moving towards it than fox will try to escape, if player walks away from it then, after some time, fox will return to it's unstartled state. If player is trying to attack the fox, then it will think about attacking player back or running away (say it can be based on how "menacing" player looks, guy in an steel armor with a sword looks menacing, guy in a linen shirt with a sling looks not menacing and so on).

Boar would also stare at the player (maybe will initiate a sound) but unlike the fox if a player isn't backing out slowly (or if this particular boar feels like it) it will attack. That may not only help some of the players who step into a ninja boar hiding behind an tree to potentially survive, if they know how to handle the situation, but will provide a little of a set up for funny stories "How i've met a boar and lived" as well. And, of course, if player steps right onto a boar, who wasn't able to detect him earlier, fight is most likely to occur.

Pretty much the same goes for a bear, though i'm not sure about that, cause bear plays a role of a big creepy thing in a forest you have to be afraid of, at the moment, so making bears more peaceful might be delayed till there are more scary things out there.

About animals escaping, fox will try to escape one it received significant amount of damage in fight, no matter other factors (exactly like it does now), boars and bears would do the same unless they enraged, both of them have a chance to enrage during the fight, in which case they will fight to the end (a little tweaked for how it is now).

Oh, and if animal is attacked but cannot for some time find a way to strike an attacker back it will try to escape (sup boat hunters ) if an man-made obstacle is blocking the way animal will try to destroy it, using it's strength characteristic(or, you know). So, let's say, signs can be destroyed by any animal, foxes, for instance cannot destroy branch fence while it's no problem for bears or boars (bears probably shouldn't be able to take down palisades tho lol). If animal is unhappy with damage it deals to an obstacle it will try to change tactic (mostly to escaping or escaping thru another route). Obstacle thing goes for situation when animal wants to hit an attacker as well as when it wants to escape (so poor poor fox trapped in a branch fence will be running around like a trapped animal, unfunny pun intended).

Generally the saddest situation in the game i've encountered so far is when animal is just starring at it's killer for half an hour doing nothing while getting sling shots from 10 mm player (actually just writing this post to kill some time while boat hunting my first bear lol). In my opinion this situation should never occur and it's a pretty important aspect of the game. I'l write some of ideas on the hunting in the following post, but i would love to see a discussion, since devs probably won't use any of those ideas, best we can do is generate something thru the discussion that would give them a worthy idea of their own. (Manny sorries for how strong my engrish is)

[Brian]

So, on the hunting. Jorb actually stated that ranged weapon should dominate hunting and this is great since any pure melee hunting is basically a grinding fest, so, as before, just wanted to share some ideas on that.

Hunting bunnies can be arranged with sneaking up on them and shooting them down, that's obvious. Player also have an option to sneak to the bunny directly and catch it alive, if player's stealth or bunny stupidity allows it, and player is not that good with ranged weapons. Maybe would be a good idea to add "high quality" bunnies who are more hard to sneak on to. Complete newbs have neither of those options to have a lunch so they have to cooperate in a two - three man group in order to force a rabbit into some kind of corner. I think player should not be able to chase a bunny on feet.

I like idea of bleeding for a bigger animals, that was suggested here countless times. Let's say animal will start to bleed after some amount of damage received or after critical hit has been landed, bleeding can range, and means that wounded animal will leave blood trace (as consistent as bad is the bleeding) and will suffer overtime damage (again based on how bad the bleeding is) for some time, animal speed will drop with damage taken, so, say, a landed critical hit will send fox running (since enough damage has been dealt) but since bleeding occures fox will die soon after, providing the player with a nice blood trail to follow and claim the corpse, sure most impatient players can use the fact that animal is slowing over time and finish it before that. Though that would be an unwanted scenario, i think it's not a bad idea to connect the quality of the hide got from an animal to a number of blows in which it were killed. So, say, master-hunter who was able to one shot fox (we can imagine a shot went in the animal eye) get's an awesome quality hide. A newbie who just killed a bear in 100 sling shots gets a poop quality hide (we can imagine it's covered in a little stone made holes lol). Using melee weapon on an animal would also drastically lower the hide quality (since, you know, if you hit an animal with an axe the hide will probably be spoiled a little). Hunting knife, was suggested earlier i believe, which would provide a hunter relatively easy way of defending himself, if hunt goes wrong and hunter is facing a raged animal in melee, would, of course, also suffer from that flaw, but hey, if that is the case then it's best for the hunter to live thru the hunt than to not spoil the animal's hide.

Ultimately this would result in a hunt of this scenario - hunter spots an animal, he sneaks as close to it as he think he can without being detected. Waits till his aim is ready and shots, if he is interested in a really good leather he must sneak as close as he can, to, hopefully, end the fight in one blow. Animal receives a hit, starts to bleed and trying to escape (because, for the sake of this example, hit dealt a ton of damage) leaving the blood trail. Hunter follows it, on some distance until damage over time kills the animal, and claims his prize. If hit wasn't powerful enough then hunter must rush to the animal, using the fact that animal is getting slower, and try to land another one until animal gets away (which will happen if there is too much distance between the hunter and the victim, probably animal will despawn anyway), or until bleeding stops and animal regains it's full speed. Needless to say it's crucial that it that scenario hunter must gain full lp bonus, even if animal has gotten pretty far but wasn't able to get away, not sure if this can be implemented though.

If lp bonus will be based on a quality of the hide of the animal killed, much like lp gain form objects are based on object created quality, i think that may solve the problem of "sling poking a bear" as well as melee grinding the cows, making both of those useless and forcing players trying to execute an ideal hunt scenario.

Animals leaving trails would be awesome with that, but that idea was also suggested countless times and i guess if it's not implemented sooner or later that means devs doesn't want that. Anyhow, that's all i've got, thanks for reading, would be glad to see a discussion, sorry again for baad engrish.

[OvShit]

Bunch of awesome, yet somewhat hard to implement ideas. If they were implemented, though, hunting`d be way funnier.
+1

[Colten]

Awesome ideas

[sabinati]

very nice

[Granger]

Very nice suggestions.

[TrooPeRZz]

Bunch of awesome, yet somewhat hard to implement ideas. If they were implemented, though, hunting`d be way funnier.
+1

Totally agree, although it would be a difficult update but as we know.

J&L are the Gods, I'm sure it would be nothing to them

[Brian]

I don't think that those would be too much trouble to implement, but obviously i didn't saw the code so i might very well be wrong.

Some more bragging about numerously suggested animal scents. Even though i play since world 2 i wasn't able to completely understand mechanics of animal spawning so some of suggestion may sound stupid. On to the topic.

Granted, animals in world 4 are much more rare that they once were, hunting is more of a search process than anything else, which is, in my opinion, definitely a good thing, the downside is search process relies on time-consuming/blind-luck too much, while first can be lived with, the second, i think, would best stay minimized. So, suggestion on animal scents - let's say we have two type of scents first one is created at the same time the animal is spawned, they are located in some radius, with animal initial location is being the center, after animal they are "associated to" despawn they despawn as well. Second one is left by the animal itself from time to time, or maybe when the animal is leaving it's initial spawn radius (again i'm not sure what radius in tiles to suggest exactly).

First type would point (degree pointer, just like a crime scent) to that animal spawn location, being pretty accurate, like the other pointers. Now, surely animal may have easily walked away by then (and we all hope it did) so hunter must search the area for the second type of scents, those, in turn, will not be able to be picked up but instead, on use, will show the direction of the nearest scents of the second type for this animal, if any, but, once again, not the animal itself. That pointer i think for the sake of the interest in it might be less accurate, meaning the fact that player got the scents doesn't mean he will find the next one. Maybe pointer will be more wide, i already mentioned that it should be impossible to pick those up, maybe the requirements for seeing scents will grow with the next scent and so on. Point of this is to get the actual searching work into following those scents, i know those ideas are pretty bad so i hope someone is able to come up with better ones.

Other than that it's pretty straight forward. Animal scents can be seen by hunters based on their, say, survival (since hunter generally should have a high survival) and int (since int doesn't getting much love, while per getting too much).

The scenario i think would be fun to see is this - hunter is following the river on a boat, he sees some deer scents (the ones described as a "first type") on a shore, figures out he can go for a deer and follow the scents with relative ease, he finds that particular deer spawning location (in mechanics therms, in game therms that would be more pretty ) and finds out that the scent he's got doesn't help anymore, so he searches around for some time and finds the scents of the second type, he is following them from first to second , then to third, then loosing track and unable to find the fourth comes back to the third and get's redirection, so after the fourth one show him nothing he know the deer is pretty close. He searches surrounding area, sees the deer and begins the hunt.

Also, might be fun to giving a little bonus lp to those who, while killing an animal, posses the initial scents of this animal. A little reward for those who actually tracked it down.

And yet also, while i'm here anyway, some thoughts on animals traps that are also being suggested hundreds of times. I think the actual working traps mechanic can be quite difficult and time-consuming to implement, so i wanted to suggest a simple substitute to see how it works and gather some info from it - Animal lures. Sure in time that should be replaced with a better mechanics.

It's also pretty simple, you build a construction from one branch and, let's say, a raw rabbit meat, which would look pretty much as a meat on a stick. Said construction sends the signal, let's say it's a "smell signal" around in some radius once in a while, if there is a fox in that radius, if fox doesn't chase rabbits or does something else that is fun there is a check, with successful chance being significantly lowered by large distance between the animal and the construction, while being closer increases it (maybe also based on a lure quality). If the check was successful fox will start heading that way, if something interrupts it while she is walking (someone is attacking, live rabbit in sight or just can't find a way to cross a river) the fox will forfeit it's crusade and will mind it's own business, but will be left vulnerable to the future lure checks. Of course lure shouldn't spam signals too often, and have to has a pretty high decay rate, let's say 1 irl day, with lure-meat being unusable after (probably player will not be able to retrieve the meat once lure is constructed). Chance of animal reacting to the lure should also not be very high.

If an animal is able to walk to the lure it will spend some time eating it, maybe 10 - 15 seconds, and then will go into the "usual" mode of behavior. Needless to say, different lures - different animals, say get a beetroot leaves to get a rabbit, a rabbit meat for a fox, a bream for a fox or a bear, sturgeon for mostly bear and so on and so on.

Obvious use - newbies can't catch a rabbit, but they see one jumping around, so they build a round pole fence, place the lure (some kind of a foraging plant, i'm not sure exactly what rabbits in H&H eat, but something can be arranged) inside and wait, since rabbit is just out there with a pretty hight chance he will react, while rabbit is eating happily, said newbies have a chance to lock the gates behind him and eventually make a catch.

Or, group of a hunter wants to kill a bear, they lure him onto the peninsula nearby to cut of his escape routs. Or you want to leave a lure in your hunting place to come back later and found that a fox, already feasted on the lure, hangs out nearby, since animal take quite a time to travel far, or even you lure the animal to later check if someone left any scents, from previous suggestion.

As a bonus you can play a cool prank on your neighboors placing a sturgeon meat lure in their back yard.

I think implementing this simple mechanics might give an overall look on how the traps would work, or should work.

Anyhow, that's all i've got. Thanks for reading. Discuss?

[Zamilpen]

A little thing to add is that if a fox is cornered with no where to run, they will turn around and fight for their lives. Also, any animals that is corner is fight more ferociously if backed into a corner.

Btw, was this ideal inspired by Unreal world?

[Goom]

I like the idea of animal scents tracking to the animal.

Perhaps rather than dropping the scents from animals it may be easier to implement as a player skill of tracking which works much like finding a well with the divining rod. A pulse every now and again pointing in the direction of the nearest animal? A very basic way to simulate they have seen some "sign" of the animal such as a broken twig or a big pile of bear poop and deduced the direction to go.

Obviously not as complete and realistic as you have suggested, but likely something that could be implemented easily?