Hunting needs to be brought back to the levels it used to be, for all the general stuff it lost in downpour of tunes. All that those tunes have managed to accomplish is to make hunting a mundane, obscure, and generally, of little casual interest sleep-fest.
Has anyone even seen hunting in groups now? No, because it generally does not happen unless there's some poor newbie who's now discovered how fun "you become the hunt leader" message is.
Hunting was supposed to be "fun", not the mud cash/exp cow, and for the most part it accomplished that diversion factor from running the same areas over, and over again. Just because people have abused it doesn't mean we should leave it out from the unique experience Icesus used to be in that category.
I have to mention, if something as established as "hunting" gets tuned after many years, what exactly is it being compared with? Shouldn't it have been the standard quo since it was the oldest?
Whoever messed with it, congrats for making a great system obsolete, and that's speaking for almost all of the tunes. Now we have overcrowded areas, higher pk rates from player collision and overall tedium in playing any guild since there is no escape factor to serve as an alternative medium. Yes, it should be comparable. Player time = exp, no matter what you choose to do, unless you're doing preparation (ie potion-making), of course.
Official bring back old hunting thread.
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solar
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Echcua made some changes to hunting (added more species, afaik)... He might have disrupted the balance by adding more small animals than larger ones, which resulted in lower average hunting rate (xp and money: small animals give less exp and yield fewer skins)
Of course, his 'realistic' animal weights did bring the weights down, too... but that shouldn't affect xp-rate.
Of course, I haven't thoroughly tested it after the changes, but I did try hunting at swamp during a hunting event... wasn't worth the effort: only frogs, ravens, snakes, beavers and so on: didn't catch a single caiman/alligator/python during that 2h time.
(While my skills might have been low, it doesn't change the fact that small animals are not worth the effort. And before 'tune', swampland was an above average hunting ground)
Of course, his 'realistic' animal weights did bring the weights down, too... but that shouldn't affect xp-rate.
Of course, I haven't thoroughly tested it after the changes, but I did try hunting at swamp during a hunting event... wasn't worth the effort: only frogs, ravens, snakes, beavers and so on: didn't catch a single caiman/alligator/python during that 2h time.
(While my skills might have been low, it doesn't change the fact that small animals are not worth the effort. And before 'tune', swampland was an above average hunting ground)
Internet tough guy
Icesus is not just my life - it's the lack of it.
Icesus is not just my life - it's the lack of it.
Just driving home the point while I was browsing through some reviews, http://www.topmudsites.com/cgi-bin/revi ... y&num=3920 came up..
I'm not sure adding more high bracket mobs will fix hunting as it is.. Shouldn't reinvent the wheel, if it ain't broke, don't fix it!
And I haven't seen the hunting event in ages, I'm not sure it would be a mud-wide event anymore, considering its current status.
Not anymore.."Archery contest, gambling, HUNTING (is the best!!), fishing, ratting, questing, hunting contests..etc are run at a daily basis, so there is plenty of things to do."
I'm not sure adding more high bracket mobs will fix hunting as it is.. Shouldn't reinvent the wheel, if it ain't broke, don't fix it!
And I haven't seen the hunting event in ages, I'm not sure it would be a mud-wide event anymore, considering its current status.
The wimpy levels are:
off, very very low, very low, low, normal, high and very high.
Wimpy level doesn't work well for hunting: The possible animals should be grouped in one and only one of the possible wimpy levels and then you get what you hunt for size-wise by setting your wimpy level. It is boring to hunt 15 rooms then get a rat, then 5 more rooms to get a mink with 65% hunting/camouflage and with wimpy on 'very low'. If you want to hunt moose, then figure out what level the moose is in and get it or something comparable, and if it takes 50 rooms to get the moose, then so be it.
off, very very low, very low, low, normal, high and very high.
Wimpy level doesn't work well for hunting: The possible animals should be grouped in one and only one of the possible wimpy levels and then you get what you hunt for size-wise by setting your wimpy level. It is boring to hunt 15 rooms then get a rat, then 5 more rooms to get a mink with 65% hunting/camouflage and with wimpy on 'very low'. If you want to hunt moose, then figure out what level the moose is in and get it or something comparable, and if it takes 50 rooms to get the moose, then so be it.
I would think that hunting with reasonable skills should be more productive than just walking around the outworld and shooting things.
In days of old (maybe something like 20 months ago?) my little air priest self would go out hunting when not in a party. I could earn enough in skins to cover my training costs and sac some for DF (always a problem for 30-50 level air priest, lots of party exp but hard to make cash and df). SP regen and the time to find a gator more or less worked out with the 4 or so lightning bolts it took me to kill them and all the healing and life boosting to stay alive most of the time. Three hours of partying would take about two hours of hunting to make enough cash and DF.
Then the tune came.
On the low side of current hunting, with 50% hunting, and sagacious wisdom, I have hunted for an hour and made a two digit exp/min with maybe 10k of skins in the hour. That's not useful. (didn't stick anything but frogs, toads, and ravens)
Its much easier to just walk along in the outworld, pick animals of appropriate size and kill them. Many times more exp and cash plus you don't screw around sticking toads or things too large to kill.
As I understand it, the problem with the old hunting was that you could make better exp and cash off hunting alone than partying and thats not good. There were a couple of reasons...
1) Huge damage bonus for spears
2) Big exp bonus for one shot kills
3) Frequent enough targets to provide one whenever you were regened.
The one shot kill exp bonus was nice. It gave you a reason to celebrate a clean kill, but may have been too big. It certainly made the over exp situation worse.
The huge damage bonus was a big imbalancer. As a little gnome air priest with no combat skills to speak of I could once in a while oneshot a 10k alligator. I could count on getting them to 'nigs'. That couples with target frequency.
When the targets are frequent enough that you can have a target whenever you are regened enough to take it, and you can knock half the target's HP off with the first throw you have just doubled your exp/min.
As I recall there were a series of tunes involving turning down the one-shot kill bonus, turning down the spear damage, and the final one (there may have been more, but the this one stopped me from hunting) turning down the frequency of finding animals.
It strikes me that trying to control hunting productivity with the frequency of finding animals is hard. Players are tuned so the balance comes from our need to regen. Anything that moves the balance to some other factor (like say easy kills, but goverened by some 'find the animal' time factor in hunting) is going to require that factor be carefully tuned to work with many different guilds and player sizes and will be a collasal nusiance.
So...
1) Turn up the frequency of animals so with good skills it more or less, on average, provides one whenever you are regened.
2) Turn down the first-hit damage... whatever bonus you get here is essentially an exp and cash multiplier for hunting when your productivity is limited by your regens.
3) Keep the one-shot kill bonus small... maybe it should be a skin value bonus instead of exp. Heck, maybe it is, what do I know?
In days of old (maybe something like 20 months ago?) my little air priest self would go out hunting when not in a party. I could earn enough in skins to cover my training costs and sac some for DF (always a problem for 30-50 level air priest, lots of party exp but hard to make cash and df). SP regen and the time to find a gator more or less worked out with the 4 or so lightning bolts it took me to kill them and all the healing and life boosting to stay alive most of the time. Three hours of partying would take about two hours of hunting to make enough cash and DF.
Then the tune came.
On the low side of current hunting, with 50% hunting, and sagacious wisdom, I have hunted for an hour and made a two digit exp/min with maybe 10k of skins in the hour. That's not useful. (didn't stick anything but frogs, toads, and ravens)
Its much easier to just walk along in the outworld, pick animals of appropriate size and kill them. Many times more exp and cash plus you don't screw around sticking toads or things too large to kill.
As I understand it, the problem with the old hunting was that you could make better exp and cash off hunting alone than partying and thats not good. There were a couple of reasons...
1) Huge damage bonus for spears
2) Big exp bonus for one shot kills
3) Frequent enough targets to provide one whenever you were regened.
The one shot kill exp bonus was nice. It gave you a reason to celebrate a clean kill, but may have been too big. It certainly made the over exp situation worse.
The huge damage bonus was a big imbalancer. As a little gnome air priest with no combat skills to speak of I could once in a while oneshot a 10k alligator. I could count on getting them to 'nigs'. That couples with target frequency.
When the targets are frequent enough that you can have a target whenever you are regened enough to take it, and you can knock half the target's HP off with the first throw you have just doubled your exp/min.
As I recall there were a series of tunes involving turning down the one-shot kill bonus, turning down the spear damage, and the final one (there may have been more, but the this one stopped me from hunting) turning down the frequency of finding animals.
It strikes me that trying to control hunting productivity with the frequency of finding animals is hard. Players are tuned so the balance comes from our need to regen. Anything that moves the balance to some other factor (like say easy kills, but goverened by some 'find the animal' time factor in hunting) is going to require that factor be carefully tuned to work with many different guilds and player sizes and will be a collasal nusiance.
So...
1) Turn up the frequency of animals so with good skills it more or less, on average, provides one whenever you are regened.
2) Turn down the first-hit damage... whatever bonus you get here is essentially an exp and cash multiplier for hunting when your productivity is limited by your regens.
3) Keep the one-shot kill bonus small... maybe it should be a skin value bonus instead of exp. Heck, maybe it is, what do I know?
Animal Size: Using wimpy to control hunted animal size saved someone from adding a variable, but its just wrong, wrong, WRONG! It doesn't correlate to any animal size known to players and it only controls one side of a two sided issue.
Players know animal sizes from 'consider'. How about...
... there. It speaks in terms a player understands and allows both sides of the equation to specified. No frog sticking and I'm not losing yet another fang of the beast by sticking a lesser beholder when I know I can't handle them.
Players know animal sizes from 'consider'. How about...
Code: Select all
hunt from below average to somewhat strongBow Hunting: I know a handful of people in real life that hunt with bows. Just last month I found out about a "son of a friend of a friend" that went boar hunting with a spear, before that I would have said no one hunts with a spear.
Its been a while, but I'm fairly sure the damage a good archer does in hunting is less than he would do by just shooting at the critter, plus you are almost certain to lose a quiver of arrows an hour. It just doesn't make sense.
This probably falls into the 'hard to code' category since so many things affect an archer's damage, but as it is bow hunting, which is certainly a more effective method in real life, is nearly never used.
(And for the kid with the spear... Yes, he got a boar. They run it down with big assed pit bulls, the dogs hold the boar down, and then the spearer hops down from his horse and delivers the kill. Thats followed by 15 minutes of stitching up wounded dogs. Ah, life in Arkansas.)
Its been a while, but I'm fairly sure the damage a good archer does in hunting is less than he would do by just shooting at the critter, plus you are almost certain to lose a quiver of arrows an hour. It just doesn't make sense.
This probably falls into the 'hard to code' category since so many things affect an archer's damage, but as it is bow hunting, which is certainly a more effective method in real life, is nearly never used.
(And for the kid with the spear... Yes, he got a boar. They run it down with big assed pit bulls, the dogs hold the boar down, and then the spearer hops down from his horse and delivers the kill. Thats followed by 15 minutes of stitching up wounded dogs. Ah, life in Arkansas.)
A lot of potential newbie hunters are probably turned off from hunting because of the non working wimpy problem, losing their best spear or hunting weapon into a monster which is obviously too tough for them to handle is something which happens pretty often.
Perhaps Icesus needs a feature where you can hunt without shooting or throwing at the mob but just ambush it and attack it with your melee weapons, of course you'd sacrifice the initial damage but you wouldn't have the worry of losing a nice weapon or the annoying flee and wield.
Perhaps Icesus needs a feature where you can hunt without shooting or throwing at the mob but just ambush it and attack it with your melee weapons, of course you'd sacrifice the initial damage but you wouldn't have the worry of losing a nice weapon or the annoying flee and wield.
Being an ex-hunter I understand your concerns fully and would love to do something about them, but as it stands I probably wont have time until maybe christmas time (no joke I am that busy) so unless some other wizard wants to tackle it you will just have to be patient. The other drawback from memory is that you know who coded it hence it would take quite some time to decipher it. 