Animal/pve content seems sparse

[blunderwell]

Its very possible that being so new to the game I am just not going to where I should be, but having spent hours trying to find a consistent spawn area or area type that I can recognize and coming up with nothing I am wondering if the stated 6000 animals is enough, or if I am just not going to the right areas...comments? A lil help maybe if they are actually ingame..

[Crokus]

I don't have a problem spotting critters when I travel, but I'm not "hunting" for them either so maybe it seems like a lot to me. I've noticed many get corralled (due to the AI's pathing?) in rivers with the high cliff sides and for some reason they also like crawling over the unfinished tera-formed area of my construction site. Very weird. This has declined as I add more walls though.

/shrug

[thurgond]

There is no spawn area. Critters "breed" (it's more like Parthenogenesis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parthenogenesis)) from another critter. There is a fixed number server wide, but the breeding is also server wide.

Immediately after a server reset the critters are fairly evenly spread, but this is quickly skewed as they are killed. Say there are four critters in your area and you kill one. That reduces the chances of another critter spawning in your area by 25%.

Unpopulated (by players) areas are where you will find more critters. Try looking near or in the mist.

The scarcity of something to hunt is a long standing complaint. Potential solutions:

resetting spawns daily
increasing the total number of critters
forcing respawns in same zone
increasing the proportions of large critters (bears, coyotes, deer, raccoons)


Ravelli

[blunderwell]

Great responses and Info guys..I have taken to going further to the mist areas and so far am having better luck..thanks!

[MrDDT]

Rav, problem is still there isn't remotely enough to allow even just hunter per 3 or 4 zones to stay active. There needs to be a major change.

1)10 to 20x more animals needed
2)animals need to yield lowered to 1/10th of what it is now to work with more animals.
3)much harder animals to make it dangerous, and make a pecking order. So that animals and players need each type to live on.
4)tracking is much needed. How are players to hunt without tracking? Just random luck to find something

[Crokus]

Remember not to kill them all. They need to reproduce.

[MrDDT]

Remember not to kill them all. They need to reproduce.

That works ok if we could breed and release. Problem is, I goto your area instead of mine and kill everything. You goto someone elses to hunt. They goto mine to hunt. Now none have anything.

Its more than "don't over kill" because NO area has enough. Plus breeding isn't working well at all. Areas with few or no one hunting are not breeding much. Just look at trees. The anount of animals would be much higher than trees if it were. Trees only grow once a game year, animals breed more. Do the math.

[thurgond]

Rav, problem is still there isn't remotely enough to allow even just hunter per 3 or 4 zones to stay active. There needs to be a major change.

1)10 to 20x more animals needed
2)animals need to yield lowered to 1/10th of what it is now to work with more animals.
3)much harder animals to make it dangerous, and make a pecking order. So that animals and players need each type to live on.
4)tracking is much needed. How are players to hunt without tracking? Just random luck to find something

1) I too would like more critters, but 10-20 more might be too many. I like having to search for something to kill instead of picking off a straggler from the hordes of mobs in most MMO's. The current maximum may be set because that's all the server marmots can handle.

2) I disagree. The amount and weight of resources makes hunting in groups a good strategy since you may need several people to carry back the kill.

3) I agree and Jooky says this is in the works. I'd rather see tougher critters than carts and zombies.

4) I disagree. Humans are sight hunters and I can see the things I want (raccoons and coyotes) from a fair distance.

One other partial solution would be for a critter to stop and repath if it encounters the mist. Just like they do now when they can't climb up a cliff.

Ravelli

[MrDDT]

1) I too would like more critters, but 10-20 more might be too many. I like having to search for something to kill instead of picking off a straggler from the hordes of mobs in most MMO's. The current maximum may be set because that's all the server marmots can handle.

2) I disagree. The amount and weight of resources makes hunting in groups a good strategy since you may need several people to carry back the kill.

3) I agree and Jooky says this is in the works. I'd rather see tougher critters than carts and zombies.

4) I disagree. Humans are sight hunters and I can see the things I want (raccoons and coyotes) from a fair distance.

One other partial solution would be for a critter to stop and repath if it encounters the mist. Just like they do now when they can't climb up a cliff.

Ravelli


1) This is why tracking is important. You are likely one of the few people that would rather walk around looking than fighting something. I would like to see a poll on who likes to walk around in hopes of finding something vs people that like to fight something most of the time.

2) I agree on the weight, I'm not saying change it. I'm saying if they added 10x more animals to balance out resources they should cut down how MUCH each animal gives (IE Bear gives 1 leather, 8 round bones, 8 ribs, 4 flat, 12 small, 1 head, 4 paws) instead of giving all those it would give 1/10th that. This would allow more animals to be killed without increasing the # of resources in the game.

3) What Jordi says and what is, isnt always the same. Animals are weak, and they do NOT get stronger. Breeding isnt working either. Animals still spawn from no where. Ive killed many many animals and I can kill 1, and another pops up out of thin air. That's not breeding thats spawning.

4) Yes humans do aim and find things by sight, however hunting is a LOT more than the last part of finding the target. Its a lot of prep work. Knowing your area, where to look etc. If they put all this stuff in the game I would be more than happy to forget following tracks.
When I said "tracking" Im not talking about looking down at a set of tracks. I'm talking about the art of finding the target. Knowing where good feeding holes are, watering places, tracks, wind directions, prey and other animals in the area. Are all just parts of the whole. These things are unlikely to be in the game, and very unlikely to be up to snuff in the game when they are in as they are in real life. Your senses as a human (you know you have 5, and really 6 if you believe in that which I do) go a LONG way in helping you find your target. You cant put all 5 into the game and even what you do put into the game is very very very limited.
Coded tracking helps account for whats missing.
You can want all day to have smells and feeling of the wind on your skin, but its not going to happen. Understanding its not going to happen is the key to thinking of other ways to get the job done. Tracking is an art in real life, and it should be more in the game because of the other things that are missing in the game you cant do.

[banden]

Tracking should be fairly simple to simulate tbh. Make it an action with a range that shows you the direction of the nearest animal, as you improve your skill with succesfull tracking you will have a greater range and therefore an easier time finding animals. It could work with the minimap or it could have its own feature.

Realism shouldnt be a hinderance for good game design, it irks me to no end when people turn down good and fun features simply for the reason that its not realistic. As long as it fits of the games world and lore realism can take a running jump imo.

[simple69]

I agree, I think tracking is a really good idea. I have walked for miles and miles only to find a squirrel here and there. I don't mind walking for miles and miles but a tracking system would be good, if only it points you in a direction of were a animal might be or were one was. The least it would do is make it a bit more interactive.. Right now the squinting at the monitor and running toward every odd shaped pixel gets tedious sometimes. :)

[goodayve]

I'm pretty sure there are still bugs with animal pathing and movement also. This could lead to it looking like there are less animals then there are.

I found this pretty large raccoon near my camp, and it was on a pretty flat surface. It was not moving, but if I got close to it, it would attack me. I attacked it some and tried to get it to follow me, but it would not move.

When I got the raccoon close to death though it started to try to get away from me. It ran away toward a downhill and when it got to where it started to go downhill the animal fell underground and was stuck there.(I still kind of had it targeted with a circle around it so I could see it was not moving)

This was before the last 2 patches, but after the patches that mentioned animal ai. (though its possible they tweak it alittle every patch and dont mention it, so maybe this is fixed)

Im pretty sure animal pathing still needs work though.

[Rudder]

I was almost killed by a Marmot since I could target, but not hit the little critter. So I took off running. That critter followed me across 3 creeks until I stopped on a flat area to fight again. this time I was able to finally kill it.

I have seen lot's of rats and ground squirrels swimming in the lake.

BTW, there are tree's spawning on the bottom of the lake.....