Hunting grounds

Animal AI is broken and spawn rate is miserable. How about introducing hunting grounds for different types of animals? Mountains - bears, woods - deer etc. It should not be allowed to build homesteads or anything else there (I know it wrecks the sandbox a bit but who in the right mind would settle in bears cave? Animals would ransack through a camp over night anyway), just allow that area to be for animals. And make it a bit further away from starting area (prelude map) so that going hunting is fun and time consuming. Also allow full pvp in that area so that hunting parties make sense and wannabe pvpers can get some action they have been moaning about (after combat rehaul of course).

No junkyards in that area to allow focus on the hunt. Logging would be allowed but what would be the point with being so far from your home. Basketry would be allowed but animals should be allowed to attack and destroy unattended baskets (baskets should have hitpoints in that case).

Make it so that animals would spawn at high rate, packs of coyotee would roam and hunters would be facing a challenge and not just single animals every 10 minutes. This would make hunting a profession and crafters would be forced to trade with hunters and hunters would be forced to focus on combat skills since someone with blades 5 and armed combat 25 should not be able to solo 5 animals. Hunting should be a profession and not a sidejob.

Also make several hunting areas, preferably at same distance from the center of the map to prevent camping and blockage of one area. Maybe one big hunting area each in the south and in the north of the map?

Imho.

How about this instead... FIX THE DAMNED ANIMAL AI AND SPAWN RATE.

Instead of, well this is broken.. so instead, lets spend a ton of time on creating brand new perameters in the game, changing the mechanics of animal logic and having them do stuff they never did before, oh yeah... create a whole new area where you can only do this... etc.. etc.. etc...

Quote:

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.Artificial Life Engine

Starr Long, Ultima Online's associate producer, explained in 1996:


Nearly everything in the world, from grass to goblins, has a purpose, and not just as cannon fodder either. The 'virtual ecology' affects nearly every aspect of the game world, from the very small to the very large. If the rabbit population suddenly drops (because some gung-ho adventurer was trying out his new mace) then wolves may have to find different food sources (e.g., deer). When the deer population drops as a result, the local dragon, unable to find the food he’s accustomed to, may head into a local village and attack. Since all of this happens automatically, it generates numerous adventure possibilities.

However, this feature never made it beyond the game's beta stage. As Richard Garriott explained:


We thought it was fantastic. We'd spent an enormous amount of time and effort on it. But what happened was all the players went in and just killed everything; so fast that the game couldn't spawn them fast enough to make the simulation even begin. And so, this thing that we'd spent all this time on, literally no-one ever noticed – ever – and we eventually just ripped it out of the game, you know, with some sadness.[10]

Thus, the whole artificial life idea was considered a boondoggle.
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Ultima online and countless others games couldn't make this type of system work. Mainly because games had such a great amount of people killing the AI. They never could figure out how to implement this system. Although I think it is a great idea concept wise I think it will be vary hard to do. If you put to many animals in the game they will be in the way and uneeded...
If you don't have enough then people bitch. If it takes a long time to "re-populate the herd" people would quickly slaughter the animals to extintion.

Animals should roam alot more then they currently do. Animals should thrive in disolate areas. If there was other types of animals to kill it would also relive some of the stress of the animals we needed.

Perhaps killing for food as well instead of only skin and bones would be a good option. It would work with cooking. I think that also upping the number of animals but lowering the skin to one or two bone types each kill would help as well to make you "accomplish something"

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Originally Posted by coca

what happened was all the players went in and just killed everything; so fast that the game couldn't spawn them fast enough to make the simulation even begin

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Because this is how players are, They cut down all the trees even if they dont need them, they kill all the animals just to stock pile the resources, the scavange an entire mound more than one player ever could.

players are greedy pigs with a hungar that wont ever be filled.

Did anyone really expect anything different with an open sandbox world? The first thing most people do when they move into an area in this game is cut everything down. Only natural that as soon as someone sees a critter they kill it. I am up in the hills and actually do the unthinkable, I let critters live. I had a bear in my area three days ago drinking from a stream and as I do not do bonecraft or anything I did not attack him. At this point we are all cluttered around the lake, but once they open the whole map up perhaps the population will thin out and allow for more critters. In the real world, the more you press into the wild the further the critters retreat, except the damn deer and raccoons! Perhaps leaving fish in a bin should attract critters like bait... after all bins in the wild already attract players from a distance :)

knowing this.. the dev should be looking to alternate systems and things to slow us down or distract us. if it is the only thing in the game to kill ofcource it will be hunted down..

I have traveled several miles in-game and have not seen a single animal (about 8 hours of travel). I guess we need to make hunting parties as suggested above and go further(4-5 hour treks). I like the fact that life is challenging and that you are forced to scape an existence for yourself, but I do think that the animal AI spawn rate needs some upward adjustment at least until the next stage of animal taming and agriculture arrives.
Would be interesting to know if the AI is breeding animals in unpopulated areas and forcing them to expand their territories back toward populated areas.

animals should breed in the mist and come out from there.

there should be legendary animals that are breed from the mist, if it doesn't kill them it should do something to them.

make a bear that is 2-3x's larger than it normally is, give it red eyes and a silver back.

Make animals social and travel in packs, ESP Bears and deers.

The gods are pissed at us for destroying the world why don't they do something from repeating our mistakes.

from the legendary creatures spawn lower level normal animals of same type that dont follow them. the animal population should slowly increase with time.

Make those legendary creatures impossible to kill by one player or even 3. something that makes you scared to go near the mist not because you die but because something might come out.

be afraid of this thing: http://www.fun-film-talk.com/images/...t-21466052.jpg

Or what should be done is a system where players can go tame animals or lead them back to there home have fenced in area trap them in it drop male and female in the fence let them breed. In the game wurm breeding is just one of the cool things it has the ability to go in the wild tame a wild horse orbear pig cow chicken or deer bring it back lock it in fence and feed it tame it and breed them. You can breed pigs and use them for source of food. This would help cut down the need for every one to have to slaughter every animal in game also opens up a new trade. Animal trading. Calfs grow up become cows or bulls cows for milk bulls for pulling stuff or breeding. Chickens eggs and chicken to eat and so forth.

I like Arkonick's idea, have to say i had hoped they implemented this in one way or another, as well as the ability to plant trees/flowers/crops.