Release Note discussion!

[Brokkr]

If you mean upping the damage so you can one-shot more stuff....no?

Sitting there shooting multiple arrows at something with no reaction was sort of....meh.  And one of the contributors to archery being so easy.

[X-D]

I am not arguing against the npcs doing "something". It has always seemed odd that they did not. Still, the skill itself is still based on when they did nothing. Which makes this a major nerf and unrealistic going the other direction now.

And I am not thinking nearly so one dimension as upping damage...would it be more realistic...sure, but also rather game breaking, specially on the PVP side, ranged is plenty strong there.

No, I am asking that it not simply be a "this causes that 100% of the time".

You have any number of options...most should be rather easy.

For instance, Throw at least has an affect that can prevent the auto-charge, assuming high enough skill/damage. Why not give archery/crossbow and sling something as well? It could be as in depth as having npcs react differently depending on where hit+ damage taken. Middle skill/damage shot to the head from bow/crossbow, animal runs randomly for x# rooms. Body/neck gets the flee if it sees you even 2 rooms away, any other spot CHARGE.

Sling middle skill/damage shot to the head, npc is addled, put in intoxication code...it still comes after you but can fall down and not gonna fight very well.

OR

On less in depth solutions....normally not agro simply GTFO and agro notice you and come to munch. If damage greater then x%hp they all run and become autoflee when in sight or some other status affect.

Many things possible other then making the skill(s) worthless outside PVP.

(edit) And I would apply such to NPC only...at least in the beginning

[Bebop]

I like the dart change.  Darts doing like 30 - 40 hp was a bit ridiculous. 

I will say having tregil and skeet chase you for like 15 - 20 squares is a little much and almost worse than the stalk code.  I've had creatures that I've completely lost sight of continue to chase.  I think it needs to be toned down a bit.

[ScramblesForPurchase]

The point of hunting with a bow seems to be moot following the change. If everything I shoot insta-chases me... I might as well just melee the thing. I have also had a kagor follow me for 30 room tiles and just.. yeah it feels a bit extreme. Some variance would be nice. A chance to charge and a chance to flee or move to a difference tile. So it feels like you are 'hunting' and being evaded perhaps.

[Bebop]

The point of hunting with a bow seems to be moot following the change. If everything I shoot insta-chases me... I might as well just melee the thing. I have also had a kagor follow me for 30 room tiles and just.. yeah it feels a bit extreme. Some variance would be nice. A chance to charge and a chance to flee or move to a difference tile. So it feels like you are 'hunting' and being evaded perhaps.

Yeah I was going to say 30 too but I was like... am I imagining it but I don't think I am.  It also may not seem like much but it makes even like a tandu deadly.  If you realize you're beat at 70 hp and they get an attack on you and you're trying to get on a mount or they get an attack adjacent to another tandu and now you have two and they're chasing you until you and your mount are tired.  Like... it's a little much.  I think the current chasing is just way way too much.  Like 5 squares okay.  Maybe ten.  But 30?  Even after they've lost sight of you?  It's a bit much, and I was referring to melee combat.

[Erythil]

Compromise suggestions:

1.  Mobs do not aggro from being shot with arrows until they reach a set % of HP.

2.  Mobs have a perception check roll dependent on species-dependent factors as to whether or not they will charge, making some races more dangerous to hunt with bows. 

3.  Perhaps herbivores will seek to flee in the opposite direction of the arrows instead of engaging, making archery useful for taking down certain types of less violent creature.

Is it just me, though, or are mobs generally doing more melee damage now too?

[X-D]

Also....(and I have not fully tested yet) Throw seems rather buggy now.

I have been getting this.

throw dagger tregil east
You throw and hit the tregil in the foot.
l e
A tregil is sitting here, profusely wounded.
throw dagger tregil e
It hits him in the head
l e
A tregil is sitting here, profusely wounded.
throw dagger tregil e
It hits him in the torso.
l e
A tregil is sitting here, profusely wounded.

Now, if the tregil stands up and I throw it dies.

And I have had this happen more then once on different animals. And we are not talking low skill here either....6 knives at turaal after the first put it on the ground and near death.

[ScramblesForPurchase]

Is it just me, though, or are mobs generally doing more melee damage now too?

At least one mid-level mob has started punching through my defense and landing hits for notably higher damage, to the degree that I felt I lost 5-10 days played worth of ability to fight when I started encountering it. Three separate times so not just a random uber stat roll.

[roughneck]

For wild animals fleeing/hiding seems like it makes more sense than attacking from a realism standpoint.

From a game standpoint, it still makes the skill harder to train, but still makes it a useful hunting skill for hunting classes. It also then dovetails nicely with the other skills the hunting classes get, like hunt and scan. It turns hunting into actually hunting.

Otherwise, you might as well stick with the top two tiers of combat classes when making a hunting character, because it's more melee combat than stalking prey. 

Also, with this change, delay for aiming should be reduced. This change means that kiting is a necessary tactic for ranged oriented hunters which is near impossible with the aim-lag.

Another reasonable change that would keep archery useful is a 'cripple' type effect that slows movement down after you've been shot or wounded. This would be fun for PvP as well.

[kahuna]

The archery changes are fantastic. Makes it way more dangerous (as it should be). The idea that you can sit back and just shoot anything and have it sit there like a robot and die was very unrealistic.

[roughneck]

The archery changes are fantastic. Makes it way more dangerous (as it should be). The idea that you can sit back and just shoot anything and have it sit there like a robot and die was very unrealistic.

Yes, but shooting a bear with an arrow should make more hunting sense than charging it with a spear. A one-arrow solution, as shooting a bear works in RL, doesn't make sense game-wise, but something that reflects the idea.

[Dar]

It really depends on what the game designers want to achieve.

Do they want to make hunting more challenging for the rewards they gain? Then okey. Hunting by bow and arrow is too safe and things 'have' to be made more dangerous.

Do they want to make hunting more realistic? Then no. If an animal first reaction upon being shot is to instantly identify the shooter and charge towards them, it is the 'opposite' of realistic. You could say that the Mantis and Gith would do it. You could say that humanoids would do it in general. But other animals? Name an animal. Any animal on earth that upon being shot by an arrow from a hundred feet (A negligible distance really) would instantly identify the human to be the source of the arrow and charge "towards" them.  Standing still while peppered with arrows while entirely unrealistic, is 'more' realistic then charging towards the archer.


May I suggest a roll for every arrow shot? So the animal would have 70% of fleeing a room upon being shot. 20% of fleeing multiple rooms. And 10% of charging the attacker.

[valeria]

I'm so happy that it sounds like hunting is no longer an arrow plink fest. That said, I agree that it would make more sense if predators+carru charged but game animals has some sort of random flee script instituted for X amount of time.

As someone who has hunted deer, and has family that's hunted bear and moose, I can tell you we've had some very different experiences.

[ScramblesForPurchase]

I would also suggest that perhaps something as simple as making NPC's move more frequently might achieve the needed realism/difficulty for hunting, without changing anything else. If NPC's changed tiles more often shooting them would be far less safe (as was the case with certain animals already) and it would also make spotting something and just "going around it" less viable.

Barring that I like Dar's suggestion of establishing a % chance for reactions, like of they flee or charge.

You could also set it up that shooting an NPC just prompts them move to a random tile in any direction they can, to simulate that effect.

[Nameless Face]

I think that part of the issue might be to make archery not so darn easy to skill up.

Instant fleeing a bit isn't enough of a deterrent.  PCs would just ride it down and plink again after a couple of minutes.

A prey animal, instead of charging, could just go on alert.  It would randomly move to an adjacent room half-a-tick sooner than the archery pre-delay would take.  It's wary now, for the next 15 RL minutes.  You are just not going to be able to get a bead on it, when it's this spooked.   

This might solve the issue of a tregil going suddenly rabid pyscho and charging a warparty.  It would also limit the easy target practice unless you wanted to wait that long delay out for it to settle down again to try your next shot.

[Dar]

Also. Whatever script is governing this whole feature. Delay needs to be looked at. I had a creature try to flee 5 times within less then a second. That in itself is not horrible, but if their charging also ignores delay, that may be ... very scary.

[titansfan]

What about reintroducing trap skill. Being able to make a snare type trap of some sort.  Or a spike trap (small thorn like damage)?

This would allow hunters to stop prey for short periods or protect against bigger things atleast a little bit?

[Olafson]

With the change with archery, and the resulting charge of the beasts, why would anyone use a bow anymore?

By the time you have removed the bow, the beast is upon you and you're defending with a bow.

In game, if someone shoots me, I have to decide which way the arrow came from, look, then decide to run.  I don't get to instant chase the shooter.  Why do the npcs?  Definitely need a random roll to decide, and then roll each room they've moved.

The result will be that noone will hunt alone anymore, but maybe that is the point?

Archery just doesn't make sense with this change.  Probably a lot of dead hunters after the weekend.

Olafson

[Brokkr]

My experience has been if you target has a normal speed, you have plenty of time to switch back to melee weapons.

If your target has a faster speed or is running, not so much.

Like anything, we'll continue to monitor the results of the change.  I'm actually surprised at comments around critters like tandu, as the change makes them much easier to kill, albeit not with arrows.

[Riev]

All I know, is I'm still all in on Crossbows. Once I actually find a PC I like, who has Crossbow use, and can afford them, and the expensive bolts...

Oh man am I going to be hunter extraordinaire. Fighter class, new top class 2020.

I'm actually surprised at comments around critters like tandu, as the change makes them much easier to kill, albeit not with arrows.

I think there will be more dead hunters once people realize that some creatures AREN'T as easy as you think!

[Brokkr]

I think there will be more dead hunters once people realize that some creatures AREN'T as easy as you think!

Mission accomplished? /jk

[roughneck]

Like anything, we'll continue to monitor the results of the change.  I'm actually surprised at comments around critters like tandu, as the change makes them much easier to kill, albeit not with arrows.

This was one of my main thoughts. The whole idea of stalking/sneaking/hiding/outsmarting your prey is made kind of moot and bland. half-giants can sling forage rocks at a jozhal until it charges them, where a creature like that should be running at first sight/scent/sound.

[Namino]

Also something to consider with the new NPC tracking as it's been described to me by other players, but 'killing x' becomes easier also turns into 'dying from x' becomes easier, which has already been touched on, but to elaborate:

If a novice fighter gets into a scrap with a bamuk or a skeet and starts to lose, and begins to run, previously if they built a two room lead they would be safe. Now, however, the animal will attempt to run them down over vast distances, potentially exhausting the player's stamina. This may be realistic and attractive behavior for, say, Rantarri, yompar, and other predators, but a primary/secondary consumer like a bamuk or a skeet wouldn't realistically decide to dog someone to death at all costs.

So not only will bamuk kill people more often due to this change, they'll be doing it in a way that flies in the face of normal ecology, which seriously hurts immersion, imo.

[Hauwke]

With the script that causes animals to charge after being shot, might it be time for a further update to general hunting?

An idea I had last night was to allow the use of hide to counter the charging animals.

[lostinspace]

Dat perraine decay.

Never used it and only have been hit by it from NPCs.
This seems like a good change, but a little vague.

Do knives already poisoned my perraine decay, or just the items used to poison, both, find out IC?