Animal Aggression and diets

[Booker42]

I would be interested in seeing some variation in the animal aggression level depending on how hungry they were (or based on weight as that is already in game). A low weight wolf or bear might be more keen to attack than a good weight one who might choose to flee. 

I would also like to see bears eating the berries of the bushes (and fishing when that becomes more of a thing) as they are omnivores and most of their diet can be fish and berries. 

I would also like to see wolf aggression be effected by the number of wolves in their pack, a single wolf would be more likely to flee than 6. And having them flank/circle their prey would be a nice touch too.

 

Edited June 2 by Booker42

[LadyWYT]

I could've sworn I saw a bear eating berries from a bush in-game once, though I could also be mistaken. The suggestions sound really cool though and would help polish the animal AI a bit more. As it currently stands, they don't really do a whole lot, although some of them have some neat idle animations(like the roosters crowing).

[Maelstrom]

Whatever happened in the past changed the behavior of animals to make them (for the most part) more aggressive.  It seems to me that they are sensitive to the dimensional shenanigans that have been played and they aren't too fond of them.

[vimasa]

I would really love there to be more variation to animal aggression! I'm really new to the game, but just from the get-go it seems really weird that all the predators are SO on sight with you. Black bears are nowhere near as aggressive as brown bears, for example!

It would make a lot of sense for bears to be REALLY AGGRESSIVE in the Spring (just woke up, cranky, hungry), mostly ignore the player unless provoked in the Summer, and get focus heavily on foraging in the Fall. Maybe even a mechanic where the bears try to get into player food storage, if it's not in a cellar or stored properly? I also heavily agree with the berries comment - bears are definitely omnivores, they have a very diverse diet.

This might tie into larger animal overhaul, but I think it would be very cool for wolves and other creatures to have clear "dens," where they sleep and the pups spawn. Their aggression could be toned down towards the player unless they stumbled within range of a den. And again, seasonal variation would be good too - in the winter, wolves tend to be more well fed, so maybe they'd be less aggressive towards the player? Wolves go hungry in the summer, so maybe they could be more willing to take the chance? Since I'm new to this game, I'm not sure if this is a mechanic yet, but - are wolves willing to attack players alone? It would make sense to me for them to only attack a player in a group, too. 
 

[tickfleato]

Number 1 thing I wanted to suggest for this game would be better animal behavior! It's extremely disappointing to me when games have this concept of predators just attacking loudly and indiscriminately, acting like Video Game Monsters, especially something scary and unfamiliar like the player. (At least the herbivores aren't uniformly passive...) I do get there might be lore reasons (I'm quite new to the game so I haven't gotten very far into that aspect) but it's just something that always makes me a little sad haha especially in something meant to be more realistic. Predators in real life don't just randomly attack anything that walks by them, they need to consider energy use very carefully considering how much effort hunting is.

I really like the idea of seasonal changes in behavior & territory mechanics that vimasa mentioned. It'd add a nice bit of depth to the game, I think.

Edited July 30 by tickfleato

[seraph of candles]

I think it would be really cool if predators could enter a secondary hostility mode called "stalking", where they'd follow the player at a healthy distance but keep aggro on them for longer, even if they can't continuously see the player or pathfind to them. Maybe it'd trigger if they initially attacked but got hit/spooked by fire, and it would reset when you spent a certain duration out of sight.

I 100% agree that the "pure aggro" wolves and bears feel a little uncomfortable, as someone who lives in a region where wolves enjoy an extremely mixed, cynical reputation. Predator animals are complicated, but they're not Tartakovsky-style murder machines bent on the destruction of all life. I think it would work if wolves and bears started out normal and became more aggressive during Rift Activity/the leadup to temporal storms. Actually, weird animal behavior could be a neat storm indicator, if they ever wanted to replace the text dialogue with more immersive feedback.

[Lollard]

I actually like hyper aggressive bears. Knowing one can be hiding in a bush somewhere ahead makes exploration so much more tense and exciting and forces you to be alert. It's scary, raises the stakes and makes the gameplay more memorable.

Edited September 23 by Lollard

[seraph of candles]

I absent-mindedly wrote up a thread about this and forgot that a thread already exists. XD Still, I wrote it up all nice, so I'll repost it here.

A big problem with the heavy aggression of wild animals is that it promotes a very "man vs. nature" mindset in the game that I personally don't really click with. IRL, wolves don't consider humans prey, and generally only attack when threatened/conditioned to associate us with food/very hungry. Aside from polar bears (who take what they can get), bears are similar! Wolves and bears are about as dangerous as mooses, which is to say, very very dangerous, but not murder machines.

I'm a little worried about this, too, because the upcoming 1.20 update is likely to make wolves and bears much scarier. It's gonna be harder to kill them from a distance, and they're gonna become much better swimmers. Those are realistic changes, but the unrealistic aggression is going to create a toxic mismatch.

I really think wolf and bear aggression should be dialed way back by default, closer to where boars and mooses are now. Then, you have it go up under very specific conditions, like their Weight being low, multiple other wolves being detected nearby the player, and most importantly, an incoming Temporal Storm. The latter condition would also create a cool in-universe signal for players! Animals becoming way more aggressive than normal? Raccoons charging at you like they're rabid? Wolves suddenly turning and chasing you from halfway across the map? Better get inside and batten down the hatches, there's a storm a-coming.

In my opinion, this game's true danger should always be from unnatural threats. If anything, "man+nature vs. the Rifts" feels a little closer to what I would personally like to see. I think this change would maintain a good amount of tension with hostile animals, especially in the hungry months, without inadvertently spreading (sorry, my annoying environmentalist hat is coming on) damaging anti-wolf propaganda about wolves being pure evil monsters.

I live in the American West. Wolves have a very complicated place among us. I'd like a little more of that complexity to be reflected here.