Mount system

[Raziel]

I think of a mount system. Let me explain you my point of view:

My system will work for mounts, pets and all the world animals... Actually in my system both are the same. You can notice that in real life too…

- The world should start with a predefine number of animals (by animals I include all the fauna). They will be able to reproduce themselves. Programmers will have to find a good ratio of birth and death to create a natural regulation. This ratio could be found during the beta testing, this if they do a massive one … This ratio will have to take the players population of the server has a variable to regulate the birth of animals – more people will mean more birth^^ - (programmers won’t be forced to implement the reproduction cycle as a visual effect).
As in real world, if you kill an animal he won’t respawn, but every day some new ones born (For example: the animals population grows of a 10%, using has basis the initial population and not counting the dead ones of the weak). First they appear as young for …some weeks, days or whatever… and, at the beginning, they stay with there respective mothers or group. As soon has they reach adult age they start living by them self. This system will be much more interesting if mobs attack themselves.

- All the mobs could be killed or captured (at least must of them... for sure some animal aren’t adapted to became a pet. For example: you won’t be able to capture a giant dragon unless you capture him during his childhood or when he is still in the egg). All animals that you can own and use as pets have to be found in the world. It would be much more interesting to track your horse around the world to found the one you like much (all of them should have random skills, like that you could find, for the same race, an infinity of different ones). You could have hunting/capturing abilities that increase with your experience in pet capture. At the end you can imagine that in some desolated parts of the world you could find an ancient beast that, with a lot of skills from your side, you could capture and keep as a pet.

- I reed some where in the forum that MO won’t be an MMORPG where you’ll be force to kill thousands of Mobs stupidly for quests. So, I hope that the world won’t be as unreal as the ones in all the other MMORPGs, a world where you always found the same mob at the same place. He just keeps going up and down from one point to other and he keeps respawning when you kill him.

- All pets and mounts should have skill and abilities than can be increase with time an experience. A horse will gain stamina while you use it...




I hope that you've liked point of view…


Sorry for my English… It’s not my mother tongue ^^

[Lachrymose]

i was hoping they would implement something like that for creature spawns. it would sure seem much more realistic, and MO shouldn't be a grinding/farming game, so there's no need to have respawns in the typical sense.

as far as the taming goes, i'm still opposed to taming for the obvious reasons. auto-attacking pets diminishe the player skill involved in pvp, but several other threads have mentioned some good alternatives to pet use, in which case i wouldn't be opposed.

[Kaoy]

The problem with this is that they would need a full time data analyst to keep the world from over flowing with any number of animals. The analyst would have to constantly tinker with all sorts of numbers and keep a eye on all sorts of variables to be able to sustain such a system. And gods forbid they ever went on a 2 week vacation, because then there would be rabbits everywhere.

[Lachrymose]

Originally Posted by Kaoy

The problem with this is that they would need a full time data analyst to keep the world from over flowing with any number of animals. The analyst would have to constantly tinker with all sorts of numbers and keep a eye on all sorts of variables to be able to sustain such a system. And gods forbid they ever went on a 2 week vacation, because then there would be rabbits everywhere.

well, not exactly. they could just implement a formula that would take into account the number of people on the server (affecting the amount the creatures would be hunted) as well as the current number of animals.

if the formula was scaled by the number of that creature currently in existence, then when the population was sparse, the artificial "birth rate" would increase and perhaps "death rate" would decrease, but when the population is high death rate would increase and birth rate would decrease drastically. there could also be a cap on the population, so for example, if there were 1200 bears, the bear birth rate would be set to zero, so there would never be more than 1200 bears alive in the world.

[Shinzon]

Playing with forumals in an MMO is trucky buissnes; as you never know what might happen, I don't think it would be a good idea if a server suddenely killed of it's supply of "Fox Pelts", becuase everyone went on a killing spree.

In the past I talked about a "Migration Node System" which works around a constant population, but let me explain the trick:

Each species occupies a certain geographic area, but it also migrates from one "Node" to another within the said area. Theese nodes would be places where the Mobs experience their typical behaviour of standing around and grasing. The nodes themselves tend to move away from areas with high player activity. That means that the migration routes of different species will slowly change over time, and ensure that a castle suddenly doesn't get overun with deers.

This way, most animal locations are going to be dynamic, requiring some tracking in order to be "Farmed", and the more players move to an area, the less populous that area becomes in regards to animals.

Also you can start to have fun with this system; in which the node rules are reveresed; in that they are now actualy attracted to large amount of players, so you can simulate the wilderness going crazy, or zombies slowly making their way to villages and such; dynamicaly without any developer interaction after setting the inital rules of each "Node"

[Lachrymose]

Originally Posted by Shinzon

Playing with forumals in an MMO is trucky buissnes; as you never know what might happen, I don't think it would be a good idea if a server suddenely killed of it's supply of "Fox Pelts", becuase everyone went on a killing spree.

well, that's why i mentioned that as the population dropped, the birth rate would increase, but the death rate would drop drastically. that way if there were a lot of people killing foxes for their pelts, the birth/death rates would be adjusted to compensate for the increased amount being killed (when i say birth rate, it's really just sort of a spawn rate, but as the OP mentioned they would spawn as young animals and eventually become adults).

now, if somehow the population of a species reached zero, then one of two things could happen (i would imagine that as the population closed in on the zero mark, the birth rate would be rather fast, so this would probably be very improbable). either some young versions of the animals could just spawn out of thin air OR the species could become extinct! i sort of like the idea of a species becoming extinct, as it would force people to be mindful of their effects on the environment, as well as discourage people from farming/grinding, which, as i mentioned before, should be deterred in MO. then there's also the option to just never let the population reach 0 by just spawning new creatures if the population reached some lower bound limit.

i would also like the idea of animals migrating and such or "migration node systems" as you called it, maybe even hibernating (it would be cool if seasons were implemented in MO, but that may be asking for too much). darkfall plans on doing this. when species are over hunted in one area, they'll move to another location and you won't see them there anymore. i'm not sure how it's implemented, but i would imagine there is some sort of "node" that the creatures would move to rather than arbitrarily migrate somewhere. again, this is done to discourage farming/grinding.

[Ravenwoods]

What if nobody takes environmental action though? I mean I like that idea but people act in unpredictable ways often. Or the predictability is very hard to calculate. So, species becoming extinct would be very harsh thing. Rather thinning of certain species should endanger the balance in a way that we will have to take action. But by a species becoming exctinct we get no second chance.

[Sorjak]

Psychohistory is the answer to all of this, so we can predict what the players will do

Seriously, though, why would extinction be such a bad thing? Extinction or the mere possibility of it creates the need for careful handling of resources, and makes item made by a suddenly extinct species far more unique and rare than they would be if the species was alive. It brings about the scenario of people fighting for the last "fox hide cloak" or something. Obvioiusly, though, creatures couldn't just be going extinct all the time, but I can't really think of a way besides Shinzon's node migration idea right now. I do believe that having the possibility of extinction is a great idea, though.

[Raziel]

The only problem with extinction is that we can't control stupid young kids on the server. If you have a bunch of kids, who, just for fun, try to kill all the animals of one species at the time you won't be able to stop them... (I have seen AOC who was suppose to be a mature game, finally it became the game with the more retarded kids...)

But, if you have thousands of animals and if the birth ratio increase when animal population decrease, you don't have to make the ratio increase on a linear basis but exponentially, when you will reach a very low population the ratio will became very high, so it won't be possible for a race to extinct. Example: if you reach even 50 survivors(I think that is impossible, if you find a good ratio, to reach less than even 500 if you start with thousands of them) the birth rate will probably be higher than 1/sec, i don't know if you can be a Super-Saian in MO so it will be hard to follow.

I forgot to talk about it but I was thinking of a migration system to. I like that idea, it could be fun and make the world more realistic. For sure, migration will have a sense only if seasons and climatic changes are integrated into MO.

[Raziel]

The only problem with extinction is that we can't control stupid young kids on the server. If you have a bunch of kids, who, just for fun, try to kill all the animals of one species at the time you won't be able to stop them...

But, if you have thousands of animals and if the birth ratio increase when animal population decrease, you don't have to make the ratio increase on a linear basis but exponentially, when you will reach a very low population the ratio will became very high, so it won't be possible for a race to extinct. Example: if you reach even 50 survivors(I think that is impossible, if you find a good ratio, to reach less than even 500 if you start with thousands of them) the birth rate will probably be higher than 1/sec, i don't know if you can be a Super-Saian in MO so it will be hard to follow.

I forgot to talk about it but I was thinking of a migration system to. I like that idea, it could be fun and make the world more realistic. For sure, migration will have a sense only if seasons and climatic changes are integrated into MO.

[Lachrymose]

Originally Posted by Raziel

But, if you have thousands of animals and if the birth ratio increase when animal population decrease, you don't have to make the ratio increase on a linear basis but exponentially, when you will reach a very low population the ratio will became very high, so it won't be possible for a race to extinct. Example: if you reach even 50 survivors(I think that is impossible, if you find a good ratio, to reach less than even 500 if you start with thousands of them) the birth rate will probably be higher than 1/sec, i don't know if you can be a Super-Saian in MO so it will be hard to follow.

yea, i had an exponential formula in mind (scaled with the server population ofc), which is why i assumed the extinction of a species would be very improbable. if somehow every location with these creatures was being farmed at the same time, and everyone killed the last one in that area at the same time or something, it could potentially happen.

Originally Posted by Ravenwoods

But by a species becoming exctinct we get no second chance.

exactly. everyone knows the consequences, so we shouldn't need a second chance should we? it's like in real life, it's possible for species to become extinct, and once it happens there's no undoing it. that being said, not many species have gone extinct, so there must be someone watching out for the endangered species.

if the extinct species provided some resource, we'll have to just find a substitute. that's how things happen in real life, and so far it hasn't been much of a problem. by adding extreme consequences like extinction, not only would people be a little more conscious of their actions and the ramifications on the environment, but it would spur people to take action in preserving the environment.

who knows? maybe someone (or a guild) would purchase a large house and create a sort of animal reserve (if it was somehow possible to tame the animals and lead them back to a cage to be released).

[SkirmCard]

The ideas for controlling the population of animals could become quite intense and I'm afraid if they were to get too complicated it could really load down the servers.

Shinzon's proposal of the migrating node system with a (more often than not) constant population sounds like a simple but effective and dynamic solution.

Have the dev's answered anything close to this? I can't remember reading anything about mob/creature spawns....

[Lachrymose]

Originally Posted by SkirmCard

The ideas for controlling the population of animals could become quite intense and I'm afraid if they were to get too complicated it could really load down the servers.

Shinzon's proposal of the migrating node system with a (more often than not) constant population sounds like a simple but effective and dynamic solution.

Have the dev's answered anything close to this? I can't remember reading anything about mob/creature spawns....

if darkfall comes out in 2008, i have a hunch we'll see how it works for them and MO can improve on any problems they ran into (assuming aventurine didn't strip this feature). i certainly hope there are "nodes" or population or some combination of the two. i'd be very disappointed if creatures simply spawned at some constant rate in a specific location like every other game out there...

[MMORPG_Fun2008]

If you can some how make it work, fine tuning etc. I would like it again it would make it alot more different than the rest in yet another aspect of the game.

[auutumn]

Controlling how animals respawn for a real life feel is important. I'm considering animals as non mobs to be clear. In this case, if I wipe out most of a herd, then ya over time they reproduce and I can see the infants and watch they grow, if I'm that bored.

For mobs, I do hate when they're tied to quests so we have to be careful. If it's given that any mob anywhere qualifies for completion of a quest, then how do we go through a respawn sequence? I was thinking that more mobs can simlpy come out of their holes, running down a mountain, etc.

Perhaps mobs could try to overrun an area if there are alot of players hunting them.

[Kaoy]

I'm gonna be honest, extinction is a really bad idea for a MMO. Single player game, MUD, or LAN based game? Sure, why not? That could be an intresting element. In an MMO, with hundreds of thousands of players being normal, it would be impossible to control. Imagine, there is a leather armor that can be made by anyone with 2nd level leather working. For people making a proffesion in crafting, it's a easy item to get some practice on. Imagine there are 2,000 such individuals at any time wanting to get some practice in. Each one calls for 4 peices of Boar Hide, as well as a couple of other mundane items. To get the Boar Hide, you obvioulsy have to kill boars.

These craftors aren't only goting to make one each, but make 10-20 of them a day for great practice. That an average 30,000 Boar Hides being used a day. 30,000 boars killed each day to fuel thier practice. If thier was an extincion system, they would be gone by the end of a couple weeks, even with migration and excelerated birth rates.

My solution? Migration is a good idea, but simply for realism. For monster spawns, just make a set number. If a cluster of boars were to have 50 boars, you kill one, wait 2 minutes and it respawns. Kill half of them? Spawn rate drops to 4 minutes. Kill them all? Wait 30 minutes, then its 10 minutes per untill it gets back to 10% or so. Has consequences for over farming yet nothing to strict.

[Lachrymose]

kaoy, what you described just now is exactly what i don't think should happen in MO. the game becoming a huge farm/grind fest. and 30,000 boars killed in a single day is what i would call way over-farming (although i suppose it would depend on the server population). yea, extinction is probably a little too extreme, i was just kinda throwing that out on the spot, but there needs to be some other consequences to over farming.

again, using nodes is a good idea, as it would deter people from farming for a specific resource, particularily a high-valued resource (as long as good money can be made, there will be farmers). as soon as the boars in one area are all gone, they'd have to go track them down again which would take enough time for farming be a far less effective source of income.

[Ravenwoods]

You guys are thinking with common sense. Think of the extremists please. I don't want the game to simulate real life. I want it to be fun and different. i want it to be a game. I am sick of policing things in real life enough because so many idiots exist, I can't put all my energy to trying stop people!

[Raziel]

Originally Posted by Ravenwoods

You guys are thinking with common sense. Think of the extremists please. I don't want the game to simulate real life. I want it to be fun and different. i want it to be a game. I am sick of policing things in real life enough because so many idiots exist, I can't put all my energy to trying stop people!

Does that means that the system I was thinking of isn't fun?

I am sorry but I don't see the point that you don't like. We are not trying to imagine a boring system that works like real life. We were arguing on how a system could be fun, nice, realistic but playable. The implementation of animal grow and migration won't make the game boring.

Originally Posted by Ravenwoods

I want it to be fun and different.

The Game will still be fun, and he will be different. You still have animals, there number will never be to low, the only change will be that you would be able to see them grow. Does that is a real problem for you?

With what I was thinking it is impossible to extinct a race by killing all is members (if that was the thing who scared you).

[Ravenwoods]

I was talking about 'animal care' thing because I want to adventure around rather than trying to protect the environement. But environment and animals are compeltely destroyable then I will have nowwhere to adventure in and every time I log on for an hour or two(I am a casual gamer), I don't want to see the world in ruins in that two hours and trying to correct it. I am an escapist, I shouln't be fussing around with extremists that ruin everythign for everyone in a game world where I am trying to relax. I have a life and gaming is not it, it is my sparetime activity that i want to get enjoyment out of, not fuss about it. That was my argument. Like griefers (particularly spawn point campers)..they are dick heads.

[IamBlood]

i think every mount u should have 2 capertuer yourself or buy from another player and all mounts should be able 2 be kiled

[Lachrymose]

Originally Posted by Ravenwoods

I was talking about 'animal care' thing because I want to adventure around rather than trying to protect the environement. But environment and animals are compeltely destroyable then I will have nowwhere to adventure in and every time I log on for an hour or two(I am a casual gamer), I don't want to see the world in ruins in that two hours and trying to correct it. I am an escapist, I shouln't be fussing around with extremists that ruin everythign for everyone in a game world where I am trying to relax. I have a life and gaming is not it, it is my sparetime activity that i want to get enjoyment out of, not fuss about it. That was my argument. Like griefers (particularly spawn point campers)..they are dick heads.

i'll admit the extinction thing was very overboard.. but anyways, the point of it was there should be consequences to over-farming/grinding. i suppose migration would be good enough since it would make farming a specific mob very difficult since you'd eventually have to search for the new spawn location. i liked the OP's idea of a birth/death rate though, and i was trying to build off of that.

granted, i wouldn't want to be some animal rights advocate either, but you know there's gonna be some PETA players who'll want to save the boars, etc. i read a post on the DF forums from some guy who wanted to set up his elven (mirdain, w/e) guild in the forest with patrolling guards to keep people from killing the woodland creatures. it sounds crazy to me too, but apparently there are people willing to do this.

[lazyasian224]

-a way to counteract extinction could be that as the numbers of a species begins to dwindle, only the strongest of that species remain. Given, these elite animals wouldn't drop anything different, they would just be harder to kill, eventually become too tough to defeat even for the most experienced of players

-fighting and killing massive amounts of animals in the first place shouldn't even occur in this game anyway. if this game is built off of skill and experience, you should have to face death every time you unsheath your sword, each encounter and fight should put you in a position of kill or be killed