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+--- Thread: Animal Behavioral Change Suggestions (/showthread.php?tid=2555)
Animal Behavioral Change Suggestions - Deantwo - 01-16-2021
Animals as they are right now are just scary monsters that will appear out of nowhere and kill you before you can react.
Safe to say that the old Animal wiki article makes them sound a little more interesting than that.
So I got a number of suggestions to make them just a little more real and less instant killers. I know animals aren't always that important, especially after you got your first city established, but it is still the first couple of hours any player has with the game and its AI and combat. If anyone else got ideas, do share them here and lets discuss this a bit.
Animal Sounds and Behavior
Currently the sounds that animals make are few. They make sound when walking, and they might make a sound when they use some sort of puke attack on you. Subterranean animals makes sounds while walking under ground and are invisible to the player, which is really confusing most of the times.
Their behaviors seems mostly random to the player. Some times they attack you when you get too close or they run away. Either they run away from you after being attacked, or they attack you back. There is no indication that it will attack you if you get close, or a warning that it is about to kill you.
I suggest that animals get some basic roars and growls. Territorial animals would start to growl when you get too close, if you don't leave before some time limit or get even closer, they attack you. Big animals might make some display of power and roar before actively attacking, giving the player a moment to run away. This will give the player warnings about imminent attacks.
The only one I don't have a good idea about would be the flying animals, since they dive attack you or shoot you with ranged attacks, maybe they can have some loud hawk screech before beginning to attack.
Subterranean animals sound probably stop making sounds while they are underground and inviable. They should make a roar or something when they emerge from the ground, and maybe they should be stuck during some 2 second animation as dirt and dust blow up around them. That way they don't just appear out of no where and kill the player after making loud sounds from nowhere.
A small side note, subterranean animals show up on the helmet's radar as if they were there like normal animals. Maybe a new icon for subterranean entities would be useful.
Animal Territories and Nests
Currently as far as I know, all animal encounters are technically just scripted events that happen when an avatar is in the wilderness of a world with wildlife. But they always seem to just be randomly walking around and hunting the avatar that triggered it.
I would love to see some form of actual animal nests and dens appear on worlds. Such as a wolf den that will cause wolves to appear in the surrounding area and attack other animals and avatars that come near. maybe they could even affect cities that are in their area, giving the game some minor pest control to deal with. Then you could go destroy the wolf den, or even get missions from a city to do it. (Same could be done with bandit camps I guess.)
On the smaller scale of things, just adding a small nest to some animal encounters would make it more interesting and show where animals might be territorial. Just some eggs on the ground with animals around it would be the most basic neat I can think of.
Animal Repellents
Currently animals will chase you forever, or ignore you when you are near a campfire or tent. This has caused some players to make long roads of campfires while scouting.
I have always liked the idea of making smaller animals leave you alone if you have a lit torch selected. Bigger animals might not care unless you attack them with the torch. Loud sounds, like the sound of gunfire or a laser rifle could also scare away animals.