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View Full Version : Feedback Request 05/30/2013 - Creatures (Test Server Only)



Xsyon
05-30-2013, 07:20 PM
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
05-30-2013, 09:01 PM
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
05-31-2013, 01:11 PM
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
05-31-2013, 01:27 PM
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
05-31-2013, 11:56 PM
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
06-01-2013, 01:12 AM
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
06-01-2013, 06:35 AM
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
06-01-2013, 07:05 AM
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
06-01-2013, 08:10 AM
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
06-01-2013, 02:32 PM
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!

MrDDT
06-01-2013, 04:00 PM
Major issues I see so far:
Lack of mutants of all types
Of the mutants major lack of larger mutants (bear, deer, coyote, coons etc)
Larger animals seem to attack further than expected (not aggression but reach)
Small animals (like rabbits chickens etc) have too many hit points I've seen a rabbit with 100HP rabbits are one of the weakest types of animals
To hard to out run aggressive animals or animals after you started combat.


Minor issues:
Animals do not seem to be zoned well. Eg. Few mutants in EXTREME areas, Med Danger level areas with aggressive animals like bear and coyote
The # of cats and dogs seems to be very out of place (way to high)
Larger animals seem to have to much of a varied range of HP (Bears with 50HP up til 400HP) I believe this should be a little more tighter. Babies could have say 50% max HP, instead of 20% to 25%
Unable to tell which direction animals are attacking to parry correctly. (Animations do not match the attacks)
Deer are to aggressive in my opinion
Babies should be much less aggressive
Animals that are aggressive should be called to a battle more often. (If someone is fighting an animal other aggressive animals should hear it and join the fight more often)
Small animals seem to still hit to hard. New players with 30 to 70HP have nothing to fight if they cant kill cats, rats, chickens etc. These animals have 50HP or more and hit for 3+ damage per second or 2.


Unable to check breeding/spawn rate after areas have been killed.
Unable to check growth, as you explained.


Comments on some things about animals I would like.
Growth:
There is many ways you have animals growing. I would like to see over time greatly sped up from live server. Slow down growth from killing players (easy to exploit, I would rather see it used for legendary options for animals), and improve how combat growth worked on leveling up animals again. I believe a year ago when this was in (animals going in and out of combat would level them up quickly) was much to fast. However, I think this could be tweaked to be useful in a growth type.
Breeding/Spawning:
Breeding system sounds great but I'm not a fan of "nature" breeding. Because it forces hunters/players to not kill animals which they can't stop others from killing them the next day or so. I would rather see breeding when using captured animals (like we do with cows, pigs, chickens etc in real life). And use a spawning system out in the wild. If I kill a bear in the wild a short time later another should spawn or free up for other animal types to spawn. This would cut down the need for so many animals in the world and still limit hunters from wanting to clear the areas of all animals as they would all be babies.
Resources:
Hunting/Skinning is a resource and I believe hunting babies should yield less resources, hunting very old animals should yield more. This would help hunters feel rewarded for passing up babies, and rewarded for defeating a great beast of an animal.

I do love the changes so far, I really like that the world on test server feels alive now. (not counting players) I run around and it feels like its moving and not just trees and grass.

Xsyon
06-04-2013, 12:12 PM
The Test Server is being restarted for a final round of stability testing before I patch the migration and creature changes to the Main Server.

Notes:


Further revisions will continue after this patch. Some things require more investigation and testing before I make changes.
Creature aging seems correct now if not a bit too fast (most creatures in the world have reached maximum age).
Currently there is a lack of young small critters but they will breed once more small critters are killed. We are nearly at the 'balance' level for this to happen on the main server.
Creature size and power increase through experience in combat is too slow and will be adjusted.
With the revised migration, more creatures (especially large creatures) are becoming mutants. I will keep my eye on this.
Aggression needs more investigation (for example some players have commented on deer being equally aggressive as bears though their aggression values are very different.)


For now my focus is on stability and finding any critical issues (creatures attacking but not visible would be a critical issue). If you find any critical issues please report them.

Thanks!

MrDDT
06-04-2013, 03:02 PM
I don't like the changes.
If you want to know more just ask. Just a waste of my time posting details.

Xsyon
06-04-2013, 06:18 PM
The main visible change is the additional increment to the power levels on creature parts. If this is a big deal it can be reverted. I added the extra level to better differentiate between parts from children and young adults and give more value to the legendary creature parts.

I also reset migration with the current data from the main server and creatures have not fully migrated yet and I ensured that creatures were being updated visibly as they grew in size and power.

If there is a problem with 5 instead of 4 power increments I need to know. If there are other problems I also need to know.

Thanks

MrDDT
06-04-2013, 06:43 PM
Maybe its just caused by things that were just listed and not seen that I thought would have been changed.

Here are some of the effects of those changes that I've seen and information I've noticed.

*Fewer animals outside of high spawn areas (these areas are well known areas on live server that have 100s if not 1000s of animals in them like zone 1060, 1020, 1061, 1059 to list a couple) This I didnt know was changed and maybe it will take time but again something we can't test if you planning on putting into a patch tonight/tomorrow.

*0 animals with .2, .8 or 1.0 powers. I killed around 100 animals on test none were .2 which means breeding is not working correctly. Also none like you said most should be that are high powers (you said max which would be 1.0). You say that most animals on the test server should be max meaning they were growing correctly and clearly this is not the case.

*Again no mutants of any type. I saw none after running at least 21 zones, all types of zone danger levels I went through.

I'm not sure what you want with animals but I believe this will do nothing for anyone. This is besides the fact that it looks like none of the other feedback was put into place I already listed. If it was put into place its not working correctly. Still see marmots with 100+ HP and only .6 power. Which means they likely to be 150+ at max size for a rat like animal.

About the 5 instead of 4 powers. I mostly agree with that change, already know my thoughts on the power system as a whole. But if we going to have powers I guess splitting them up into 5 groups if better than 4. Because as you said it would help with the value of legendary vs young adults.


Major issues I see with animals even after these changes.

*Lack of animals to fight, not spread out in the world, no known level areas to find the level you are looking for.
*Growth/Age is likely broken or way to slow and going to cause people to kill everything anyways.
*Lack of mutants finding something you want as a resource is next to, or impossible.


As a hunter I'm very tired of wandering around trying to find something to fight. It makes me upset. I have to pass up things to let "grow" or "breed" only to come back a week or two later to either find the animal gone, or still a baby.

Xsyon
06-04-2013, 07:25 PM
From this feedback it sounds like the major issue is simply that I reset the data and restarted the migration process. I will simply run the migration process sped up for about 30 minutes to balance out the world which is what I plan to do when I patch the Main Server.

Regarding creatures at max age: The problem with small critters is that they still exceed population limits so about 90% of creature are at max age. They won't breed until more creatures are killed (which is the same if there would be a direct spawning system in place). These creatures are at max age, but not max power, so if you are finding many creatures with 0.6 power, this is correct. As stated in my earlier post, I do see that creatures are not gaining power from combat easy enough and this will be revised.

If players do not kill enough creatures to get below the limits, I will implement a system where creatures can die naturally to make way for new young creatures.

There are 2000 mutants on the Test Server wandering around on the edges of extreme danger areas. If these areas are too difficult for players to explore (hence the apparent lack of mutants) I will include mutants in the migration system as right now mutants stick to the area near where they mutate.

As posted above, I will continue with other changes but I want to get the current migration changes patched out first. This will fill the world with creatures (as it was on the test server before I reset the data this morning) and also provides much needed memory optimizations to both the client and server that I am anxious to make public.

I will post again after the Test Server has been restarted after running a sped up first round of migration.

Thanks

MrDDT
06-04-2013, 07:30 PM
Just a quick question.

Animals only go above .6 power from killing/Combat? Do you expect this to happen often naturally?

Xsyon
06-04-2013, 11:14 PM
Just a quick question.

Animals only go above .6 power from killing/Combat? Do you expect this to happen often naturally?

Currently, yes. This is not a recent change with this update. It's been the same since stat bonuses were applied to creature parts.

With the current combat tracking, I don't expect many creatures to be above 0.6 power.

Before the current combat tracking was implemented creatures did naturally gain power up to max legendary power often, typically faster than they could reach maximum age. The original system was easily exploitable but the system was changed and things have been as they are now I believe for at least the past year.

Currently only 20% of all creatures have combat kills and 10% have noticeable combat power. It's not enough and as stated above will be increased and improved.

Xsyon
06-04-2013, 11:19 PM
The Test Server is back up after a sped up run of the migration system.

This reflects what I intend to patch to the Main Server this week. Improvements to creatures will continue after this patch. Creatures should be distributed throughout the world. They do not currently adhere to the danger zones as strictly as on the Main Server. This will continue to be worked on.

I would like feedback on any critical issues (for example invisible creatures attacking) and the general population of creatures.

Thanks

MrDDT
06-05-2013, 04:55 AM
After spending 2.5 hours running around the map, I checked the South, and West extreme areas. I found 3 mutants. (Looking in 15 zones that were extreme traveling 17 zones in total)

I checked the north and I found over 75 mutants. (I only looked in 2 zones in the north)

I'm not sure what ratio you would like for these animals to be spread out but just giving you my info.

Also I found 0 animals to have .2, .8, or 1.0 powers. Pretty even mix of .4 and .6 powers. (I killed about 50 animals, I stopped killing after a while because I could tell by the HP)

Normal animals seem to be spread ok, but still the north has at least 10x more animals, I even saw a pack of about 10 squirrels in the north, and many other packs of animals of 2 to 5. In the south, I rarely saw more than 1 animal in a group.

My path was 739, straight south to 699 once hitting the mist I followed it around the SW edge until I goto 894, I killed myself and swam straight north to 980, then ran north to 1020 and cut over to 1061 (I saw 15+ mutants in 1061 zone), then into 1060 where I saw at least 60 mutants, I started losing count once I had to run from packs of animals over and over.

I didnt find any major issues with inviso animals or lag. I never crashed. Good luck.

wastelandstoic
06-05-2013, 07:31 AM
I have not had as much time as DDT to test and look around but I did start in 736 headed north and west till i hit the green and then north and east to 1059. What I saw confirms with DDT's assessment and all previous observations about the north of the map --still seems to be a magnet for creatures both mutant and normal --much more so than the south. While I'm very happy to see so many more animals in the south on test server than usual I don't believe it is yet balanced. Please patch what you have worked on to main and keep observing and improving. Also since there seems to be such a magnet in the north I wonder how migration will flow over time? Will we end up with the same problem again, no creatures in south and all in north? Thanks for your continued attention.

GreenSpade
06-09-2013, 04:02 PM
I got a mixxed review about this new patch with the animals.

Good:
~More animals everywhere overall, seems to be tons of things everywhere.
~Finding bears in the far east and far west (previously very hard to find any, seems to be a sure thing now)
~Speeds of animals like cats, dogs, coons, squirrels, hamsters, rats, chickens, coyotes seem to be alot better now, even tho they have been slown, with the added ageing it rounds it out to where it "feels" it should be.
~Health of some things like hamsters and chickens and coyotes seem to have more "what they should" amounts of health
~I like the new power system, having things that are like .24 and .27 and stacking them together to make a .25 or something didnt really seem exactly right.. So its good to have like a grading system where things are this grade or they're that grade. I found most of my hunting harvests to be .40 and .60 and the upgrade in power on materals is really great for someone like me whos a bonecrafter, this means that when I make something I can see a real upgrade in stats, verse putting on something with next to nothing for stat upgrade, this makes me feel like my armour is actually worth putting on, so good job here.


Bad:
~The mass majority of the added animals are cats and dogs.
~Bears are twice to tripple as strong now, *MAINLY DUE TO THEIR RANGE GAINED FROM AGEING* (Cant stress that point enough) dealing 22-38 damage at 3.6 to 4+ meters range 250-300+hps (impossible to deal with solo for the mass majority of players, or even stupidly harder then it should be for a group of people when they die in 3-4 hits for most 100hp or under players who havent been grinding hps for a year+) I think the "health" is justifyed, it should take alot of hits. However I feel that the added range from Ageing is much more then it should be, seeing how we have Zero Bows n Arrows, no Throwing sticks, no Lances, no Javs or Pikes, so to ask someone to fight something that deals 2-3 times more damage then you, that ALSO has more range then you, is just insane, even for a small group of 2-3 players.
~Most things in general have massively unbalanced health at the moment (aside of bears, they seem about right on hp) When most new players cant spawn a guy over 85hps and the mass majority of new fresh players has more around 50-70hps. I've seen chickens with more hps then this. With the added faster ageging, this means EVERYTHING gains more ~Range~ and more Health. Notice how I didnt really talk about the damage? If you get hit, it should hurt, I feel most of the damages for things aside of coons to be balanced. Coons shouldnt be dealing 16-22+ damage and having 160health, the low speed off-sets this, but it makes this again a common animal seen in the low danger zone that will hunt random new players and walk into towns that a solo new player would have a hard time dealing with, or two crafters with low health, they would have a fieldday, I know Lazula commonly gets mob'd by like 2-4 coons out of nowhere and jokes about how its just a respawn. With the current stats, these coons can takeout people like lazula in 2-4 hits, where it would take lazula a total of 17+ hits to kill one of them since she prob wouldnt even do 10 damage per hit with a shovel.
~Animals are still spider man'n at mock 15 up sheer cliff walls. I understand this is to prevent pit traps ect and to insure they can roam the map, but I would really like to see some kind of penalty to climbing up like that, slowed movement by 25-30% would even make me feel like "yeah okay hes climbing and not sprinting" Or hell, give us a "skill" called climbing, let me climb that shear cliff after that bugger and then I would no longer care, its just when it runs up a cliff, does a spiderman, then you cant even chase it anymore, most times with zero hps on them, it robs you of your work and your hunt.

Guess my biggest thing here is that with the added ageing, it makes all of this roaming animails twice to tripple as strong as they used to be, plus most of them are in groups now, so this makes for a even bigger added risk. For example, dogs in packs now randomly attack people, where as before dogs used to be a "only if you attack them but even then they'll prob run" kind of situation.

Same can be said about bears. All fine and dandy to give a bear 250-300+hps, but when you also give him 3.8-4 meters range and 22-38+ damage, this turns it into a unfightable beast, that before the patch, used to be fightable at 150-225hps at around 3 meters range. Now when you also make these bear mobs so there is 3-6 of them together, littorally you die in a second, even with a bunch of people with you, if you atempt to fight multiples of these monsters at once. My point is 1 bear verse 3 -4 100hpish tribe guys and the bear is still gona prob win due to the range it has and the range that the tribe doesnt have, it means that for each atempted you try to hit it, you or someone in your tribe is going to be hit for 25% to 40% of their health. When you also stack 1-2 other bears with that guy, a mob of 2-3 bears with 250-300hps and 4meters range of 30 or more damage, you cant even take this out with a small army unless your talking about players that have been playing for yeeaaars and grinded massively, even then you would need multiple year or older grinders just to grab a couple bears? Seems massively unbalanced due to the range and the damage at range. If the range was reduced, the health and damage would be more deal-able, if you get hit, its your own fault and you take a heavy damage hit to learn, thats perfectly fine, but the problem is that there is no way to out-range or hit a bear without being massively smacked back, it means the 9-12 damage you or your tribe mates are doing with 80 vhq shovels is a joke when the bear can heal at 2-3 times the rate we can heal, any damage we could do over time, would just be healed/buffed out so we will always take more damage then is manageable or avoidable, since theres no dodge and the bear out ranges us, this makes the bear a unhuntable animal now.. this kinda makes me sad since I used to hunt alot of bears, even alone I could take anything from 150-225 solo, but the added ageging is making things from 250 to 300+ with too much "range" and since "everything" ages faster now, you cant even find 150-200hp bears anymore, they're all 250hp at least, most are around the 290hp range (4meters 38dmg at 290hp)



TL;DR
Moar animals great
Ageing needs to be taken a look at, makes some animals insanely more powerful then used to be, making previously unthreatning things monsters and previously huntable animals like bears, unhuntable.

Nezdar
06-09-2013, 07:11 PM
All of my feedback is from the East South-East map edge (zone 743 and surrounding).

Bears

Bears were too weak before, I can't tell a huge difference but these end game animals should not be hunted by players with less than 6 months of playtime in groups smaller than 2 or 3. I struggled to kill bears solo before the patch as I do not use the traditional slope or trap in rocks methods to fight them. I was also very put off that players were soloing bears with less than 3 months of playtime. If they are stronger now because of aging then I think they are perfect. I think this is a good thing in the long run as nerfing creatures like bears is unnecessary. If you don't want to die, don't feed the bears.

Raccoons
Raccoons are still easy for me to fight so I have no ability to provide good feedback there. However, I don't see why one animal that patrols medium difficulty areas being powerful enough to kill new players is a problem. The game needs some elements of danger.

Cats and Dogs
It is raining cats and dogs in the east. I kill more than I care to in a day and that's just to keep the groups from forming packs and hunting me. I love that they are slower, I can kill them without chasing them 100 meters for the last hit.

Coyotes
Coyotes in the east ARE forming packs and hunting me. I have had as many as 8 chasing me though my camp as I don't have completed walls and prefer not too. But I may have to if attendance doesn't improve.

Mutants
There are a fair number of mutants near me. Please don't take that as an invitation to come and hunt my area. But I kill a few mutant small game each week and I see larger mutants that I can't solo without exploiting. If I see newbs near me hunting, I will assume you exploit and hunt you.

Aging
I love the aging changes, as DDT has reported, animals are quickly reaching middle age (.4 to .6) and then stopping. That's fine with me.

Server Crashes
The last three or four play sessions for me have all ended due to server crashes. IMO that's too many even for Xsyon and I've reduced my playtime because of it. Not sure if this is being addresses, but I would have to assume that you are already working on this.

Overall
I think the changes are just about what the server needed. There are locations reporting poor game populations so that will still need tweaking.

But overall I can't express enough my thanks. My close tribe friends (Meep, Qronos, Erineyes) all quit the game due to the animal issues so I am now solo with occasional help from a couple members. But I think that even though the fixes came too late, they will be happy if I can talk them into playing again. I know that time is valuable and I hope that you will soon be able to move on to other aspects of development. This patch has fixed the gaping holes but you will never make everyone happy. I would love to see tribe decay, cooking and farming rather than micromanagement of animals hit points or aging.

GreenSpade
06-11-2013, 11:17 AM
^Nezdar your coyote problem is other peoples coon problem, the one 160+ hp isnt so bad but when you get 3-5 of them its kinda overpowering for some tribes I've trading with. The coyotes pose more of a threat as they can actually run at a decent speed, as they should. For sure the thing to note here is the gang factor added WITH the ageing is making the overall experience alot harder since things are rarely alone and they're much stronger(hit/range) then before due to ageing.

I watched a new hunter I brought with me attack a marmot and he got mob'd by 5 of them. When you add stupid range and damage into the mix with some of the larger ones it makes a hunters job kinda hard if you want anything serious, your main targets become forced at the small to mid ones, dogs and cats for infinity.

Now if we had some "Food" or some "Medicine" that greatly speeds up healing over time, or healed in x amount of large "ticks" over x time, or even a instant heal, fighting one of these monster 300hp bears with 4 meters range wouldnt seem bad anymore, since we would have a way to cope with the damage it was outputting, verse just eating hits and being forced to rest over time. A Medicine man skill could be cool too, could have it as an active to heal someone, and/or you could have it as a new craft that makes medical items. This would alow us to fight things like these shadow bears of 400-800 hps, without it being in the center of your base, or near your base, so you can just repeatedly throw yourself up agenst it and die with your tribemates till it is dead... the komakazi methoid doesnt seem like the way you should do it.

Another idea would be to give us some new weapons. Like a pike/lance/jav/sharpstick or even bow and arrows. Now I understand bows and arrows may be a bit far in a leap for you guys atm with projectiles, but a higher ranged weapon would alow us to fight these larger monsters without dying multiple times to do, since I feel that dying repeatedly isnt the way you should be hunting animals

Xsyon
06-22-2013, 12:47 PM
Thread locked for now. I will open a new Creature Feedback thread with the next round of changes on the Test Server.