A change to mob hunting.

[zanzibar]

Eventually, there will be ballance between hunting gladiators and hunting animals.  The way things are right now, you have a bunch of trepors or tefusang in one place.  You know exactly where they'll appear, and they'll be close to one another.  To make a lot of money, you kill a whole bunch of tefusang or trepors by camping a particular location.

Here's my idea:

- Make encounters with valuable animals to be rare.  You do this by spreading them out and having them spawn in semi-random changing locations which are not close to one another.  This will make it so that hunters will actually have to hunt for their prey, rather than just camp a certain location.

- Make kills more valuable than they presently are, so people will have to kill fewer tefusang etcetera to make the same amount of money.  More effort will have to go into each kill, and kills will be much rarer, but the pay off will be much more significant.

This will dramatically change the flavour of play.  People who were playing the game before gladiators and rogues dropped loot will probably understand this better than others.  Both styles of play will call for equal effort, but I think the kind of work you're doing in my proposed system is more enjoyable and less tedius and repetitive.

It would also help the realism of the game.  The way animals can be killed in the game by a single player lead one to believe that the entire population of a particular species is likely to go extinct unless there's a huge population of the animal with herds much much larger than those seen in the game.  So instead of coming back from a hunt with thirty kills under your belt, you might come away with merely three kills - but the reward for each kill is ten times as much.

Also, it would mean a lesser chance observe mobs spawning / appearing out of no where.



To recap:

Present system:

Camp an area.  Kill dozens and dozens of animals.  Bring back hundreds of pounds of items to make money.


Proposed system:

Scout an area.  Kill the few rare beasts you encounter.  Bring back a smaller number of items for equal coin.




This is not to say that I think animals should be rare in Planeshift.  If anything, I think there should be far more animals than there are.  I'm merely speaking of animals people are likely to kill for money.

[Nikodemus]

there is an option to add to this a tracking skill, so you won't have to run around with luck you find your prey, but rather follow some tracks.
How? well, this may work like a compass to a nearest animal, but not on straight line, but rather a path, which you may slowly find out as you walk.

And i see a mayor problem with you idea. Everybody does, but you could learn till now..
When you are going to increase value of something, it is always because something else was raised before. Always So instead proposing to increase value of some animal parts, propose value of what should be decreased, so thet your idea will work.
If not, soon we shall pay 10,000,000,000,000 for a crafted short sword.

[zanzibar]

Uh, no.  If something becomes ten times as rare, then why wouldn't it be ok to make it worth ten times as much?

[Nikodemus]

Because of the Always rule. And the rule is because the practice show that as new features are added and old tweaked, you always  increase the inflation, no matter how much you try. And it is also because devs forget about it in the rush of implementing features.
I doubt devs suddently think, lets decrease everything to 1/1000 of its current value. Maybe they will, but problms arise, what about items worth below 1000.... so messing with rarity instead... In fact building whole economy from start. Why not do it now, when it isn't screwed much yet?

[zanzibar]

I really think you're out to lunch on this one.  If tefusang are ten times rarer to find and kill, then if their stuff is worth ten times as much, ballance is maintained.

[Nikodemus]

Nah i'm serious. It will really increase inflation. In fact when i said it, maybe someone will try to keep ir in mind.

[Araye]

I like the idea.  Especially the mention of "herd".  A herd of aggressive "super" tefu's would be insane.   

I would also like the wild animals to be more difficult to kill.  Where it will require several people to kill a single animal (like Ulber), but as Zanzi said, the payoff must be there.

Some of the best times I've had in PS was killing an Ulber in a large organized party.  If spawn randomness was included, life in the wilds would be pretty fun.  People could then hire "hunters" to help them cross the terrain between cities.

I'm sure the devs plan this anyway...  Rats, more waisted keystrokes.

Araye

[zanzibar]

People are only able to kill ulbernaughts by themselves because of hit and run attacks.  It's an exploit that needs to be taken out of the game.

[Narure]

whats wrong with that? The man is faster than the beast, slowly hacking away at the ulber seems fair enough to me.

[zanzibar]

whats wrong with that? The man is faster than the beast, slowly hacking away at the ulber seems fair enough to me.

You're kidding, right?  Try doing that with a gorilla or lion and see how slow they are.  Hit and run attacks are nothing more than an exploitation of the game's mechanics.

[Narure]

lions and gorillas aren't ulbers, i think hit and runs should be implemented properly, such as simply making mobs attack quiker or have some way of them telling if you are running at them so they can attack.. some how.. i dont know... whatever! Narure doesnt like thinking, hurts his head.

[Araye]

Yeah, I can't see a man being faster than an animal - well not faster than an animal designed to run anyway.  Maybe an ulber is inherently slow?

The hunting party I was refering to was  group range attacks followed by the group running in for the kill.  It can be done without the "hit and run" technique.

And there are too many things in PS at the moment that need to be changed.  I'm not sure the first one I'd pick is "hit and run".  I'm not really opposed to "hit and run" as in real life there is nothing stopping me from trying it (other than the lack of wild animals to attack), just that my prey would run me down and trample, bite, claw me before I was able to turn around and attack a second time.  So maybe ulbers just need to be a lot faster?  

You have to look at hunting ulbers like early man hunted mammoths - even if that means tricking a mammoth to fall into a pit or off a cliff.  You can't go toe to toe with a mammoth, but you can do any number of other things.  For example, split the party into several groups.  Group A attacking from a distance to the right in a volley getting the mammoth's attention.  Then as the mammoth prepares to attack A, B attacks from the left gaining the animal's attention yet again.  Back an forth until the animal is wore down.  Then run in for the kill.

I have employed this technique to ulber hunting as well.  Again, this is not OOC or an exploit of game mechanics in my opinion.  

Araye

EDITED TO ADD:  If you talk to one of the npc's outside the tavern in Hydlaa, he will tell you that he races a giant worm.  This would give an indication of an animal that is faster than our races.  I assume one would want to race something that was faster than we could go ourselves.  But then again, I have participated in slug races....

[Rioth]

The former idea is very well thought out. Got one question though.. Why would the spawning locations be necessarily not close to eachothers? I mean.. This could be random too, with a lower probability of having them spawn nearer.

People are only able to kill ulbernaughts by themselves because of hit and run attacks.

It's still possible to use magic and stay out of melee range.

[Kerol]

Zanzibar is right in his original post.

Ulbers are supposed to be the most intelligent monsters from all available ones implemented so far. They also are supposed to be able to run, but they don't because the
scripts are screwed.
The way NPCs fight now is definitely not the way they are meant to.

I can tell that random spawning points are taken into consideration, as well as "hords". Also the economy won't stay that way as it is now.

NPC fighting will become considerably more difficult in future as we want to encourage people to group up.
It should be about impossible to fight an ulber alone, but to achieve that it will take some changes in NPC behaviour and game engine, not only a simple change of stats.

We are working on improving all that, but it isn't as trivial as it looks like, so it will take some time to get it working properly.

That's all I can say from my side. All you can do for now is either to help improving things and/or enjoy the game as it is 

[Karyuu]

This thread developed a one-page tangent that was removed to prevent losing sight of the original topic. Whether certain game mechanics mean cheating or what the speed is of PlaneShift animals as dictated by the settings is best carried out in separate threads, or PMs.

I second Kerol's post, too