There's a thread in the Staff section about people commenting on the hunt code. I've always suspected those darn animals took the quickest route, so how much do you think this should be changed?
I think it should be changed a fair bit for SOME animals. Other animals I think SHOULD be able to take the quickest route, because they're not smelling your tracks most of the time, but smelling you.
What do other people think?
It's fair that few should be able to, mostly mammals...but being truly honest, even they should not chase you across the known world.
The code, as far as smelling goes, could take into account the direction that the tracks are leading, and the wind direction, to account for scents.
I've done much experimentation with the tracking npc's, and I'm sure at times what my pc was doing looked odd if any staff was watching (sorry).
And I'll leave it to staff to explain how they work exactly.
But to changes, It might be hard to make them do it in a manner different from current, if so, then a simple timer would help quite a bit to make them a bit more realistic, limit the amount of time they will hunt somebody, maybe with a reset for the timer if they come within view of the quarry.
But if possible, I would prefer if they actually had to use the hunting skill, maybe even with the ability to "smell" the quarry at three rooms distance.
One solution would be for NPCs to fail randomly. In other words, each time the NPC goes to do its scipted chasing, have it have a chance to give up. Some days that raptor might take two steps and decide it has had enough, other days it might chase you around the world, but at least you would know it will eventually give up.
Ideally of course they would use hunt and back tracking would confuse them. The obvious answer to the original question 'how much should it be changed' is 'as much as it can be to make it more realistic, taking into account the amount of time and effort put into it comapred to other things that could be done with that time'.