Hunting = bow

[Zepar72]

The (almost, save for dungeons) complete lack of PvE should be finally adressed. As it is now, unless you're a sprucecap, "hunting" is either punching / sweeping weak stuff into oblivion or harvesting stronger animals from a boat. The boat cheese makes "hunting" no different than foraging and as fun and engaging as farming. I'm not even gonna comment on the situation with Mammoths.
To fix it, especially with how Hunter and Strider credos complement that perfectly, would be to make hunting associated with bows. How? The answer is quality drops - any animal (except those from dungeons) killed by melee weapon has its quality reduced by half , -1 for each hit taken, down to 10. That way you can still farm low Q stuff should you need it (hides for leather, bones for glue), but to get the good Q stuff you'd have to actually hunt and not afk mash buttons off a boat.
In that manner, i'd disable shooting from the dugout and rowboat, if not we'd just trade one PvE exploit for other.
If you ask me "what's the point of this change?", as it is now "hunting" is so unengaging that would a new person ask me if this game has PvE elements, i'd probably just lie and say "no" not to crush their hopes. And that's sad.

[Sevenless]

Concept is fine (bows get pve benefits), suggested implementation sounds annoying unfortunately.

Many animals are extremely dangerous, and the current combat system/ai they use make hitting them with a bow possibly a death sentence without a proper escape. Chasing an animal inland is dangerous for quite a long time stats wise, and you will often be forced to melee defensively and destroy animal quality. So we're in another situation where cheesing is now not just beneficial but required like mammoths, but for any large animal at all. Large animals like bears/walrus/mammoth become unhuntable.

You genuinely need to rework how range interacts with animals, not just a bandaid of making melee bad, to make this idea work. Focus around buffing the bow vs animals, and changing how ranged attacks interact with npc aggro imo. IF that works, then you nerf melee once the bow system is fully fleshed out and people are happy with it.

[Zepar72]

No idea about mammoths, as i've never hunted them (maybe a tank and few shooters?), but bears and walruses are perfectly killable using rangers bow and a proper horse, i did it a lot before. It's not without risk, but that's what hunting should be about! What before you get those? You dont hunt such a big game, of course. Stuff being softlocked behind certain technologies should be alright, makes you feel the progress you're making unlocks new things, rather than boat spear unlocking everything.

[Sevenless]

No idea about mammoths, as i've never hunted them (maybe a tank and few shooters?), but bears and walruses are perfectly killable using rangers bow and a proper horse, i did it a lot before. It's not without risk, but that's what hunting should be about! What before you get those? You dont hunt such a big game, of course. Stuff being softlocked behind certain technologies should be alright, makes you feel the progress you're making unlocks new things, rather than boat spear unlocking everything.

"Don't cheese off boats, cheese off horses" "It's not without risk"

Problem still exists, you haven't fixed it just added a requirement for horse domestication.

[Massa]

in real life neolithic hunters 1v1d the animals with their fists in an honorable duel

[Dawidio123]

God no, making arrows is a tedious task especially if ALL hunting had to be done that way. Not to mention as sevenless pointed out, you aren't fixing anything, instead of hitting with a sword from a safe spot you'll hit with a bow from a safe spot. If you think boat is the only way to cheese, buddy do i have some bad news for you.
Also how is bow combat (click shoot click shoot click shoot) with no risk more engaging than actually 1v1ing the animal in melee where you actually need to defend yourself appropriately and manage to hit it at the same time (i'm not saying this is particularly engaging either when you do it 1000s of times but it's way better than ranged combat). Is the risk you talk about when it comes to ranged combat fucking up clicking while on horse and running into the animal instead of away from it?

[bananenmarmelade]

you could also make hunt-cheesing harder (which is a good idea) by animals immediately fleeing, when they cannot make melee combat / path towards you. ideally even with and x seconds buff (flight not fight) added to them which makes it so they cannot be reaggroed. if the period is medium long (say 10 seconds) you can also try and following the animal (inland, away from the boat) and try to reaggro for some thrills and potenially some kills. mayber some variance on the duration would be nice.