Animal power levels suggestion.

I would like to suggest that Animal Power level system is currently a broken system. As I understand it for animals to reach full power (1.0) they have to kill players. This would be great if the player base were huge, but as it is I have found 1 animal at 1.0 power in over a year of play. Willowhawk had a great idea in that animals naturally progress to 1.0 but then die of old age so that zones aren't full of superpowerful animals. The current system encourages players to trap animals or run back and forth allowing them to kill you to get 1.0. If you are a good hunter you won't die to current animals. The system is flawed in that you have to die to get good animal power level. Am I the only one having trouble finding 1.0 power animals without having to farm them up to 1.0?

just my 2 cents.

Prim.

I agree that the current system of animal growth is horrible. It would be great if the player base was bigger but as that simply will not happen until the game is promoted better, it leaves the high end bone and leather crafters with second rate materials to craft with. I have not yet found any power 1.00 creature since the "rebirth" of them and implementation of the new growth system, and it has put me off hunting for quite some time now. Simply because there is no reason for me to do so... other than cooking, but since that doesn't have any "power" requirement that can be disregarded.

I really like this idea of the animals growing similar to how they did previously (although it was rather fast) maybe slowing that rate down a bit and then having them die after a certain lifespan would absolutely thin them out as well as make the materials somewhat rare to find. Most importantly though, it would give a reason to actually spare animals and let them grow up. Hunting would actually mean something again instead of the meaningless massacre of animals just to leave their low power corpses behind while you go scavenge or forage.

I would like to see something along the lines of Willowhawk's suggestion be implemented to the animals in the future, it would definitely help with immersion as well as overall hunting.

~ Tefached

I will address this issue in more detail in a feedback thread after the next update.

Before this gets out of hand with incorrect information. Creature power currently increases two ways:

1) Creatures killing a player.

2) Naturally over time.

The second method was running at too fast of a pace creating too many full power creatures. It was slowed down and is too slow of a pace right now. It needs to be revised with proper testing and is on my list for before launching on Steam.

1.0 power creatures are supposedly to be rare legendary creatures (imagine a raid boss in a theme park game). I do agree that they are too rare at the moment. A full grown adult creature without 'legendary bonus' is a 0.5 power creature.

The code for creatures dying of old age is in place but currently commented out as it hasn't been tested. It will be turned on when I have time to change the growth settings and run proper tests.

Note: The original system had creatures gaining power only when killing players and other creatures. Originally creatures did fight and kill each other, but this was using too many resources on the server.

I hope that clears things up for now. The real issue is that the pace of 'legendary bonus' gain is currently too slow and there needs to be a system to eliminate the old creatures if left alive or too many creatures will reach max power. I will deal with this and other issues after the Free Play revisions.

Thank you for the response and clarification on this topic. I can understand that the creatures of power 1.00 should be considered legendary and definitely should be a rare find. However, in a sandbox open world map as large as Xsyon prelude is I am sure that this "rare" aspect will need to be tweaked in a pendulum of ways in order to get it right. I am glad that this is an issue that you have been considering a fix for and also glad that an "old age" system was in line, as it is a really good idea.

Again, thank you for taking time to address this issue and give us some very useful information.


~ Tefached

Back after a few months.

Last I played, I found creatures had matured since first I started nagging about animal power. I found out that only males acquire power 1.00 (which wasen't the case before and caused me quite abit of grief before figuring it out). In effect, it made tracking bucks with the right level of HP more deliberate (more fun/challenging). Having not played for a while, I can't speak for others, but I found it adequate before I last stopped playing.

One thought on "too many animals have power 1.00" would be as simple as simply setting a cap (e.g. 200 or whatever logical number of each species can attain power 1.00 worldwide). Essentially, I don't care, aslong as it's worthwhile.

Having crafted full sets of armor from power 1.00 mutant materials, I consider anything less hopelessly inferior. From the perspective that the game is in development and balancing stuff, I suppose it's allright.

Pretty much from my perceptive, is that the current combat system promotes NOT to do combat. If you let them grow normally, others will kill them. Being there is nothing to challenge the players that do combat, we are left with either killing easy prey for resources we do not need, or just not doing combat.

Having said that, even if all the animals were 1.00 power I would likely still not do combat as I don't see a challenge currently with my toon, plus no rewards other than breaking my current gear which is all made from 1.00, and no economy to build on, I would literally use up more resources finding/training/killing the 1.00 animals than it would take to make it. So I would have to wear crappier gear just so I don't break my good gear in fighting the "hardest animals". Assuming I didn't exploit the animals by using a tactic I like to call moving out of range, and not get hit at all.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MrDDT

Assuming I didn't exploit the animals by using a tactic I like to call moving out of range, and not get hit at all.

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Dodging? Impressive exploit.


Anyway, an increase in the amount of power 1.00 animals would be nothing but a benefit... it improves quality of crafting indirectly by giving players the opportunity to make "Crafting armors" with the ideal stat bonuses instead of, as RosenBlod stated, Inferior materials which I agree completely with.

Having said all that, Xsyon has already stated that this "was an issue" and that he intends to deal with it. That's pretty much all that matters here.