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

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.

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!

I don't like the changes.
If you want to know more just ask. Just a waste of my time posting details.

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

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.

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

Just a quick question.

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

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MrDDT

Just a quick question.

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

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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.

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

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.