Consequences to Combat & Value to Life

[Why Watt]

Broadly speaking the game has none of the above, as it currently stands and I feel it leads to most of the problems players will encounter.

A large swathe of the playerbase gets frustrated when others just kill for the sake of killing, complaining they're deathmatching... but with the above two truths the game is effectively a deathmatch with a cooldown.

The first post in this thread will be a TL : DR. Read all of the OP if you want to see the thought process and logic behind all of what I go over, and you'll also probably enjoy the read. Cheers to any and all who read this beast!

How common or viable a dinosaur is on official servers is largely dictated by how easy it is to obtain, how fast you get to 1.0, how sustainable it is at 1.0 and how much you can beat at 1.0

There needs to be greater consequences to combat to bring out the merit of the other side of the equation... running away. And there needs to be a desire to keep living as well lol
And these consequences cannot be necessarily fatal because it doesn't solve anything.
For instance, bleeding to death regardless of sitting - as it used to be - could be seen as a good thing, because it punished reckless play with, well, death. However, being "sent back to the beach" even if you won isn't fun, it's also frustrating to sometimes be sitting there biting your nails for 5-10min only to implode just as you thought you'd live.

This isn't me saying 'fix X behavior', it's a broad stroke at making combat more about necessity and encouraging things with the tools to avoid combat... to do so. So no, this isn't meant to stop herbivores from killing your little juvenile or stopping carnivores from creating a hoard of kills. I feel combat should favor those that are cautious, plan ahead, and punish those who take needless risks / bite off more than they can chew.

Step 1: Massively reduce HP regen for ALL playables - with a handful of exceptions- but make the 'injured screen effects' less intrusive.

For any of those who frequently dabble in Utahraptor gameplay, you'd all be well aware of the consequences to any mistakes you make. Your either dead, or extremely injured for a long period of time.
Inversely, when playing as Dilophosauurs, Allosaurus or Maiasaura, you often feel empowered to play incredibly recklessly because only a few minutes resting and you have healed well enough to make Deadpool blush.
To do this properly, the following must be done:

a) Broadly speaking the HP regen of dinosaurs would fall under one of the following timetables to fully-recover HP
Poor - 60 min to full HP (ex Trike, Giga)
Bad - 45 min to full HP (ex Carno, Maia)
Average - 30 min to full HP (Ex Pachy, Sucho)
Good - 20 min to full HP (ex Rex, Diablo)
Stellar - 15 min to full HP (ex Galli, Dilo)

b) HP recovered per minute would be the same, regardless if you are resting or standing.
This would stop your gameplay, post-fight, from being reduced to resting for the next ten thousand years. You'd gain nothing doing that: you got injured, now you're going to have to engage the world differently because of that, not sit around melting your brain.

c) Set the severity of 'injured screens' back one step each, and halve the opacity of the blood on your screen.
The purpose of doing this is so that your injuries do not get in the way of gameplay. You are still harmed, and your dinosaur's scarring allows the world to see that. But your ability to actually react to the world around you shouldn't be impaired, especially if your injuries will follow you for a lot more time, more frequently. As you often will be hunting, migrating or escaping danger while already injured, given my changes to passive HP regen, this would be really annoying if your screen is a red eyesore.

Intended Results of Step 1:

The three changes that make up this step would strive to make encounters versus injured, and thus, more vulnerable, foes much more frequent, and also adding a lasting 'target' on your back for your actions. If a Triceratops herd decided to gangbang a lone Trex that wanted nothing to do with them, that's fine, let them do that... but those Trikes will have the markings to show they are reckless and as such will present a more appealing target to a Trex who may be able to 1v1 a Trike, but doesn't want to spend as long of a time regretting that choice.
Seeing an injured member of your species might also give away they may be less skilled or prone to picking fights, thus giving a visual cue that this person might not be the best to team with.
However Step 1 does not seek to hinder your gameplay. Resting would only serve to mend immediate bloodloss and recover stamina, so thankfully you can actually do other things aside being a sitting duck watching Netflix. Furthermore given injuries will haunt you with legitimate increased risk of death your injured screen will no longer be a cheap way to screw you.

Step 2: Allow Manual HP Recovery from Food Consumption 1:1 with intake

Of course, with what I did in Step 1, i;e castrating your passive, inert HP regen, and removing the means to accelerate it, I need to offer an alternative or you will generally feel powerless to potentially improve your condition. And my solution... is making food a very, very valuable commodity for more than just meeting your basic need. I also see a hidden layer of... potential to this.
In order to do this properly the following must be done:

a) The main system needs to be implemented... For every point of food you gain, you'd restore 1 HP.
Given the fact you cannot eat on a full stomach, this would directly translate to hungry animals = can heal more HP after they are injured, in a shorter period of time.
Warning the example below is math heavy, so I'm putting it as a spoiler

For example, 2 Rexes decide to each 1v1 a Trike and manage to kill the damn thing & both are heavily injured in the process and are left at 10% of their max HP, or 650.
Normally, this would mean, to recover the other 90%, they'd need to wait 18 minutes before they are both in peak condition, regaining 325 HP every min. (also for any who are screaming **REEE U NERFED TREX!!!! that's 25 less HP than current, chill yo♥♥♥♥♥♥

The difference is, one of these Trexes was full hunger... and the other barely had time to heal the bleed before their stomach hit 10% of it's max capacity.
The stomach volume of a Trex is 2150 Food and it loses 24 food every min.

The first Trex is♥♥♥♥♥♥out of luck and needs to sit beside that Trike nibbling away whenever his hunger drops. The second one gorges itself on it's well-deserved kill and restores 1935 HP in a few seconds.

So let's say 5min has passed since each Trex healed the bleed.
#1 has regained 1750 HP, so he now has 2400 HP ; 12.6min before full HP
#2 has regained 3685 HP, so he now has 4335 HP ; 6.7min before full HP
The one who hunted out of need for food is massively advantaged over the one who hunted for fun.

b) The value of Food provided from a Herbivore's corpse needs to be 1:1 with Weight mass.
ATM, the Food values offered by corpses are... ♥♥♥♥ing ridiculous, to put it mildly. A Dilophosauurs yields more food than a Triceratops. Wish I was pulling your leg, but I'm not. This all needs to be changed so that the prey you target makes sense for both how large you are / your hunger needs, but also with how much health you should be able to restore after said hunt.
This wuld also make herds a much more appealing target to risk yourself again... encouraging packing to bring some game down, and encouraging herbivores to group up out of fear of being singled out as a much more rewarding prey item.

c) The value of Food provided from a Carnivore's corpse needs to be 1:2 with Weight mass.
Why do this, you may ask? Well it's to further decrease the appeal of attacking your rival predators. Not ONLY are you likely to be seriously injured, but they are much more fatty and thus yield less than plumb succulent herbivores do.

d) Being at higher food % would cause you to benefit from "increased bleed resistance"
After receiving a DM about how starving yourself before a fight / hunt would penalize those that are successful in keeping their needs met / add an incentive to keep your dinosaur barely fed, I concluded offering superior bleed resistance on higher food % would be a good option.
So if, for instance, a herd are all well fed, it would be harder to bleed any members of the herd out. If a Trex is engaging with Gigas while near starving, sure he would restore HP faster... but that requires him to survive ;)
This further would add a benefit to hunting weakened or starving prey - and rekindle a favorite tactive of Utahraptor packs in preventing apexes from feeding.

Intended Results of Step 2:

These changes all aim to change how players pick and choose their fights, for herbivores and carnivores alike. How does it impact herbivores, you may ask? Well remember, they can restore HP by eating too... which means injured herd mates = will eat more bushes to restore their HP = a drain on the herd's food supply.
An overly aggressive herd would peter out, not nearly as sustainable as one where they opt to flee instead of fight. They CAN fight, if push comes to shove, but they'll be forced to migrate sooner in search of food. And if you become known as the overly aggressive ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Maiasaura running around cucking Dilophosaurus and sauntering back after sustaining serious bleed... they might evict you for that :)

The intent on carnivores is pretty straightforwards and should encourage them to be more responsible, choosy about their hunts and less prone to be dip♥♥♥♥♥ as well. Killing for sport is your choice, go ahead and have fun, but the player who's actually hunting because they need to will be able to heal off it's injuries substantially faster than one who just kills for the hell of it. Furthermore the 'meta' of gangbanging other carnivores would collapse into unviability. Picture 5 Gigas going in and killing 3 Rexes. Great, now not only are they all really ♥♥♥♥ing injured, but the Trex bodies don't actually yield that much food to begin with, half of what a herbivore that size would.
However because bodies are more valuable they are worth fighting over, or contesting without resorting to bloodshed. If said group of 3 Gigas encounters a lone Giga standing triumphantly over a Parasaur corpse, none of them want to do this dance. The injured trio don't want to risk death, or having to spend another eternity healing, while the solo one doesn't need to risk death given he's unharmed.

*sniff sniff*
Smells like a lot less toxicity.

Step 3: Add aftereffects to different status ailments

So we all have our love / hate relationships with Bleed and Bonebreak. But I feel it's overall necessary to expand on them to, again, dissuade risky behavior.. but also just make♥♥♥♥♥♥more immersive and feel like you are tending to needs.

a) - Healing bleed would deplete thirst
This isn't me saying "bleed decreases thirst" or "while bleeding you get more thirsty". No this is saying, when you are healing off bleed some thirst gets chunked everytime some is removed.
Thankfully I'm a merciful person and it wouldn't be 1:1. No, it would only reduce thirst by say, 5 per healing of bleed... regardless of the bleed level.
That means if you have sustained a lotta bleed, and are a dinosaur with poor bleed heal... you're going to need to drink up after that, thus exposing yourself to more danger as you go to drink in a state with, presumably, low HP. It's also ♥♥♥♥ing immersive yo, gotta quench that thirst

b) - Bonebreak would stack, worsening with each consecutive application
If you look in the Character sheet, you normally see that, if your leg's broken, it shows 15 BB damage, recovering 4 every minute resting, 2 every minute standing.
However my change would be that once it's all healed, you'd gain one 'fractured' counter. Your sprint speed is reduced and your damage output is also reduced, say by 5%.

The fractured counter would heal off after an hour ingame time, given that BB is not a frequent occurrence, at least, it shouldn't be if you play it safe.
These counters would stack... resetting the timeframe before they are healed each time one is added. After said hour of no-broken legs, you'd heal all counters.
So let's say there's a Maiasaura that loves sprinting around in the mountains and keeps breaking it's damn legs and healing them off. It ends up and IDFK, 5 counters.

This Maia is does 25% less damage and is 25% slower, so when the herd ends up being ambushed by Allosaurus... guess who gets caught? ;)
There'd be a maximum counter of 10, because beyond that point things would end up fairly ridiculous.

Intended results of Step 3:

All of the above would strive create more consequence to your actions while also having an immersive impact on gameplay and punishing players for not using a dinosaur as intended, beyond the need for rules.

Now that I have added consequences to combat... I need to add value to life. And that's where you all come in, because I don't actually have many ideas as to how, in the Survival mode, create purpose in your continued existence

The devs have mentioned perks in the past, but I feel that players would need something with more gravitas for it to really matter. And I honestly can't think of anything, so please in the discussion below leave any ideas you come up with.

I hope you all have enjoyed the read, lmk what you agree with, what you disagree with and if you think it would steer the experience for everyone into a more positive direction.
Cheers!

Edit #1 - Added in a benefit to bleed resistance if you are high food & imposed a limit on fracture counter.

[Why Watt]

TL : DR of the OP

-HP Regeneration rates would be standardized for dinosaurs based on whether or not they should be about taking heavy risks or meant to avoid them unless absolutely necessary. Harsher times for passive HP recovery are, therefore, a must.
-Furthermore, passive HP regen would not be increased resting, so there wouldn't be an incentive to sit around, doing nothing. You'd gain zilch doing that past your bleed being healed. Go around and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ live.

-Of course, the screens showing you how damaged you are... too obstructive to your view. As such they could see to be made more transparent and less intense, all around, letting you see more of your screen when your injured as, with many dinosaurs, you'll expect to be damaged for a lot longer than current before returning to optimal condition.

-Given I nerfed the ever loving ♥♥♥♥ out of passive HP regen, I wanted to offer an alternative, active means to do so: eating. You would, thus, restore health 1:1 with food intake. This means dinosaurs with more maximum HP need more food to restore all of it, and dinosaurs with smaller stomachs cannot restore HP as quickly in one sitting. This both makes herbivore food bushes more valuable and any corpses far more precious. If you play aggro, expect to need more food. If you fight on a full stomach, you will deal with the consequences.

-Standardizing corpse sizes is a no brainer and if you have tested some of the values, you'd see how ridiculous they are! Juvie Utahs yield absurd amounts, Trikes yield pathetically little (to where hunting them is counterproductive to the risk when say, a Dilo gives more food)
Specifically making herbivore bodies worth as much as their weight, and carnivores be half of their weight, is to both make herbivores more appealing prey statistically and make fighting rival predators as a carnivore a pretty bad choice if you can simply drive them off.

-To avoid rewarding players that barely scrape by, and reward those who maintain their dinosaurs well, being on higher food % would leave you with superior bleed resistance. Starving animals would bleed out faster than one's in peak health. So ideally you want to balance that benefit with being able to restore HP. Half hunger or so.

-Every time you'd heal off any bleed that was inflicted, it would take a hit onto your thirst. Thus this would drive interesting behavior in players. If your herd all just warded off an Allosaurus pack's attack, you are now all going off to the waterhole to drink, thus exposing you to potential danger, and forcing tough choices of whether you eat food - to restore health - or have to risk being very low thirst.

-Last but not least, a change that isn't specifically combat oriented but more of an immersive af change: causing each consecutive broken limb within an hour's timeframe to worsen your speed and damage. If your Trex decides to have a cannibalistic streak, that's fine, you do you man, but you are going to be getting slower and weaker as you keep doing so, thus frequently doing this is a poor decision. Likewise taking dinosaurs into poor terrain choices, such as alpine escapades with a Sucho, leave you likely to really regret life choices. This counter's stack caps at 10.

And... I need help making your post-1.0 lives more valuable. I'm all ears :D

[Sable]

Sometimes I wonder why good ideas are not taken up on more often. This is one of those times.

[EggomyLeggo]

I really like the idea of eating=healing. This with the fact that healing all around would be reduced, makes it so carnis would be more inclined to target the weaker members in a herd. (realistic herd hunting?)

For the "fractured" counter, would you say that a limit on how many you can get should be imposed? Lets say you can get up to 10, so you are 50% slower/50% less damage; anything higher would give you no chance imo (even then good luck surviving at 50% speed for an hour)

[Why Watt]

Originally posted by Trumphasourjobs:

I really like the idea of eating=healing. This with the fact that healing all around would be reduced, makes it so carnis would be more inclined to target the weaker members in a herd. (realistic herd hunting?)

For the "fractured" counter, would you say that a limit on how many you can get should be imposed? Lets say you can get up to 10, so you are 50% slower/50% less damage; anything higher would give you no chance imo (even then good luck surviving at 50% speed for an hour)

Yeah a limit would be a good thing to implement

[bigmoe808]

Excuse me if I'm breaking this up a bit, wanted to make on the spot response.

So step 1 is to take a more direct control of your animal's metabolism as well as their health condition. Those whose physical needs are in more dire circumstances can receive the greater benefits, those who have those needs met on the regular basis are to retain their highest defenses.

[bigmoe808]

I do like this, it actually was an interesting couple of minutes of brain jamming.

To the end, I kind of had huge crush on the ideas of perks back in the olden days when someone first brought it up. The idea that if your animal survived past adulthood for a good amount of time, you could earn said perks and augmentations. Tell me, though, what do you think of this. I had originally considered this back when you discussed changes to juvi, the idea the juvi gameplay could factor in more important components of game besides afking for two hours.

To start, on a realistic note, everyone's youth is an incredibly important point in their life that will factor in latter. It's your foundation of the creature you'll eventually end up as, and legend you can inspire.

It is, after all, your legacy.

For purposes of gameplay, let's say that these things your juvi touched on set up hidden objectives and quests that you can only take on when progressing into an adult. Such as managing to kill another player-not ai-as a juvi, then doing so again as an adult will net you a perk like 'First Blood' which can give you a 10% dmg bonus. The only requirements is that these quest can only be gained in your juvi/sub phase, are available after you progress to adult, closed after you reach full adult, and the perks you manage to get earn appear later.

This might seem unrealistic, but honestly we're dealing in what-ifs right now. What if your animal were super special and stuper stwong kind of what-ifs. At the very least, I think this could give people an idea of what and how they want to play. At the very least, I don't think the player should be told what these objectives are-should be something discovered by the community.

[chagadiel]

No wonder everyone avoids my lone bull trike all the time if he supplies such small food.

[Why Watt]

Originally posted by chagadiel:

No wonder everyone avoids my lone bull trike all the time if he supplies such small food.

Yeah, attacking a Triceratops is inarguably a bad decision as any animal, even if you can kill it, the payoff is not worth it, period. By contrast a Tyrannosaurus - arguably easier to kill as most dinosaurs due to horrible turning and being a bigger target to land hits on - yields more food than anything else in the game.

[Why Watt]

Originally posted by bigmoe808:

Excuse me if I'm breaking this up a bit, wanted to make on the spot response.

So step 1 is to take a more direct control of your animal's metabolism as well as their health condition. Those whose physical needs are in more dire circumstances can receive the greater benefits, those who have those needs met on the regular basis are to retain their highest defenses.

Correct!

If someone needs food I feel that they should be able to gain more benefit out of taking risks than someone who's quite comfortable. Ideally this would result in things such as a predator not opting to attack something on-par with it if it's well fed, only going for lower risk targets that won't result in needing to spend a while healing, whereas a ravenous Allosaurus would be willing to hunt Carnotaurus or a Sub Trike, knowing full well it's going to get harmed in the process but being able to heal off the wounds.

[Diktatorpanda]

Overall I would like this to be implemented, escpecially changing bonebreak to a stack system insteed of a flat you are ♥♥♥♥♥♥ based on % chance that we currently have. The entire idea of making combat more dangerous in the long run is great, thou if this is implemented the game would really really need a reason to keep playing at 100% grown, other then just existence.

[Shot'em]

Maybe there could be achievements for increments of time spent alive as a single dinosaur? Idk how else to give incentives for staying alive.

[bigmoe808]

Spent some time thinking (or not) about the earlier made perk comment, and thought that I should give examples instead of jumbled mess.

So here are some perks I thought of for the animals (non specific in particular) in game:

Legacy- Bloodhound
Grants- Allows you to automatically see blood prints on the ground without scenting.
Appears- As a juvi when using your standing scent animation on X number blood prints.
Gained- When repeating the same process as (sub)adult on 2X number of blood prints.
Awakened- Scenting a blood print after maturation.

Legacy- Nocturnal
Grants- Improved range of night vision.
Appears- As juvi, you must go an entire night without toggling night vision.
Gained- As (sub)adult you must do the same.
Awakened- Toggle night vision after maturation.

Legacy- Prometheus Vulture
Grants- Makes all gore edible/gore pile one size down edible.
Appears- As juvi, use scenting ontop of gorepile while taking damage from starvation. You must be be suffering.
Gained- As (sub)adult, scent out gore piles that you cannot eat.
Awakened- When taking starvation damage after maturation.

I'm gonna stop there before I lose credibility. But this is how I want the system of legacy to work. Course I'm really curious to see the affinity system the devs are working on.