Feedback Request 05/30/2013 - Creatures (Test Server Only)

[Xsyon]

The Test Server is open to the public and I would like your feedback regarding the current state of creatures.

Changes

• Migration system completely redone to ensure a better balance and spread of creatures throughout the Xsyon world.

• Creatures age faster.
• Creatures run slower in general, especially small critters.
• Creature speed is variable based on the creature's age and power.
• Creatures hp balanced and reduced for small critters.
• Creature damage slightly revised.
• Small mutant critters are more aggressive.
• The Power factor on animal parts is now in 5 increments: 0.2, 0.4, 0.4, 0.8, 1.0.

In particular I would like to get a feel again from players regarding:

Speed: Are creatures too fast or too slow?
Behavior: Are creatures too aggressive or too passive?
HP: Do creatures have too much or too little health?
Power: Are creatures too strong or too weak? Do they hit too hard?

Is a specific creature out of balance?

Please keep your comments to creatures as they are on the Test Server only.

I will post additional changes as they are patched out.

Update 06/01/2013

The Test Server has been restarted with a fix for the incremental power factor on creature parts.

Update 06/04/2013

The Test Server is being restarted with a change to the incremental power factor on creature parts. Parts exists now with the following power increments: 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8 and 1.0.

[MrDDT]

After playing on test for about 1.5 hours I've killed about 20 animals and seen over 50.

I've killed 2 mutants, few coyotes, deer, dogs, squirrels, cats, bears, etc

All animals are skinning for 1.00 power. So no real way to see what "age" they are, as I'm not sure of the HP anymore for age due to the changes.

One of the mutants I killed was a mutant shadow deer near the mist down south, so I like how animals are a lot more spread out and seems to be better on how they look accorss zones. I didnt see any zone that was just bare of animals some had more than others.

The shadow deer only had 300HP. I'm not sure if that was low or high or normal because it skinned for 1.00 power which I believe is bugged.

I did notice that animals AI seem to be a bit better, they don't always run and they don't always fight. Some are more aggressive some are the same. They seem to fight more often when attacked but not all did.
Their speed running is much better, I would say its at a pretty good speed. Coyotes seem to be very fast at moving. Not sure this is planned but seems ok if a few are faster than others and some are slower than others.

This is only in 1.5 hours of testing. After changes to the skinned power I can give better feedback on strengths of animals and how hard/easy they are to kill. Right now I just can't tell their age.

Growth factors its almost impossible for me to tell in 1.5 hours, so maybe a guide can help by spawning some in the area and I can lock them up to see how long it takes them to grow or something.

I will be posting more after skinning changes.

[Weebeastie]

Migration system completely redone to ensure a better balance and spread of creatures throughout the Xsyon world.

Much improved they now seem to run around in packs usually 2 or 3 of the same ones like small family grps.
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Speed: Are creatures too fast or too slow?

Speed is a lot better even for newish players, however the ability to still scale vertical cliffs with ease makes it still hard to kill critters often.
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Behavior: Are creatures too aggressive or too passive?

I think the critters should have a bit more agression once hit in combat to limit their outstanding skill at climbing
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HP: Do creatures have too much or too little health?

The critters and smaller animal seem about right .. didn't even try the larger ones i not totally suicidal.
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Power: Are creatures too strong or too weak? Do they hit too hard?

Again smaller ones are about right.
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Overall a good improvement for lower level players makes hunting a lot more fun and engaging. A little tweek to the ability to scale vertical cliffs or some more agression so they at least do not run away up the cliffs (as much) would complete an otherwise well worked update to hunting. Thanks for your work on this issue.

Weeb

[Kakinski]

Speed: Are creatures too fast or too slow?
Speed looks ok for me. Much more fun to go after the small ones now.

Behavior: Are creatures too aggressive or too passive?
Bear and Mule Deer seemed agressive in the same way. Should be slightly different. Bear is ok, but a Mule Deer should become aggressive later than a bear.

HP: Do creatures have too much or too little health?
I like the animals i have seen as they are. Just hunted "normal" ones, no mutants.

[COLOR=#333333]Power: Are creatures too strong or too weak? Do they hit too hard?
The racoon made too much damage imo. I mean, its quite a small animal, but it made more damage than a deer to me. Deer made 8-9 damage, racoon made upto 18.

[Whorlok]

same answer as Kakinski! I have not seen RATS?...
An Idea is RATS spawns with REVENANTS in Citys

Speed: Are creatures too fast or too slow?
Speed looks ok for me. Much more fun to go after the small ones now.

Behavior: Are creatures too aggressive or too passive?
Bear and Mule Deer seemed agressive in the same way. Should be slightly different. Bear is ok, but a Mule Deer should become aggressive later than a bear.

HP: Do creatures have too much or too little health?
I like the animals i have seen as they are. Just hunted "normal" ones, no mutants.

[COLOR=#333333]Power: Are creatures too strong or too weak? Do they hit too hard?
The racoon made too much damage imo. I mean, its quite a small animal, but it made more damage than a deer to me. Deer made 8-9 damage, racoon made upto 18.

[unclean666]

I tested small and large animals for about 2 hours one for small one for large.With the small stuff I rolled a noob toon but keep in mind im a vet and rolled a combat toon with 90s in str,fort,agil,spirit and charm.Not every new persons going to roll that.

Small game with a new toon as far as hp dmg ect seemed fine for how it is now but I think they spaz run away to much.I liked the way they used to run away back in the day after there about 30 or so % health then start to flee.If they dident spaz run so much the cliff thing wouldent be such a big issue as I understand why they have to go up cliffs like that.

But if its changed so they dident run so much I would have to check out there Dmg and hp again because the player would be taking more hits and wouldent be getting all the back shots from them running from every other hit like it is now.

Large animals all seem fine and spread out but only thing I noticed in a lot of areas was loads of small mutants and few large ones.I would like to see the ratio balanced a little more so the larger ones are a little less scarce.

[wastelandstoic]

Wow, just by the fact that I have not seen more than one or two animals roaming in 736 at any given time since I started playing the game 8 months ago and the changes now on test server where there was 2 packs of bear, 2 deer and one coyote plus lots of small game within a modest walk over the mountain range --I have to say Kudos! If this remains fairly consistent and makes it to live this will be the best improvement to the game thus far. Thanks for this attention. Excited about seeing this go live.

I see no problems with the stated particular questions and will try to spend some time interacting with specific animals for balance issues.

[GuideHael]

The balance is great so far. Small critters are plentiful in regions that used to have very few or none at all, larger game are few in numbers but that is ok, because of the value of mats that come from them. Balance seems fine as it is but small game could run away less often at times, maybe depending on power level they stand and fight more often as they progress and become stronger.

[MrDDT]

Wow, just by the fact that I have not seen more than one or two animals roaming in 736 at any given time since I started playing the game 8 months ago and the changes now on test server where there was 2 packs of bear, 2 deer and one coyote plus lots of small game within a modest walk over the mountain range --I have to say Kudos! If this remains fairly consistent and makes it to live this will be the best improvement to the game thus far. Thanks for this attention. Excited about seeing this go live.

I see no problems with the stated particular questions and will try to spend some time interacting with specific animals for balance issues.

Other than the animals that were spawned in your area with this new update on test. Did you see any of this.

Creatures age faster.
Creatures run slower in general, especially small critters.
Creature speed is variable based on the creature's age and power.
Creatures hp balanced and reduced for small critters.
Creature damage slightly revised.
Small mutant critters are more aggressive.
The Power factor on animal parts is now in 4 increments: 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, 1.0.

Out of the bolded questions, I've not been able to test because they are either not working or bugged in some way. Were you able to test this effectively?

[Xsyon]

The Test Server has been restarted with a fix for the incremental power factor on creature parts.

A few notes:

• Creature aging is difficult for the public to test but is easy for me to see over time in the server console. So far it looks good. I'll keep track of the balance between young and old creatures directly and adjust if needed.

• I like the idea of rats spawning or gravitating towards tribe lands, but I've put that on my suggestion list rather than try to add it now. The creature AI code was originally written by other coders so I don't want to make too many changes at once.

• I won't be able to adjust the ability of creatures to climb slopes right now. When creatures were limited on slopes earlier there were too many problems with creatures getting stuck. I will look into fixing this when I have more time after I get the current changes patched out to the Main Server.

For the most part it sounds like the current changes are almost ready to be patched to the Main Server. Most importantly I need to check the stability of some changes for at least 2-3 more days.

Thanks for all the feedback so far!