Suggestion: Fixing Bears

tobiasisahawk · 2020-04-24 20:33:09

Currently, bears solely exist as a tool for griefers. And they function very well in this role. They auto target anyone they see, are very hard to kill, and they target people from off-screen.

First, why bears are good tools for griefers:
Bears caves are everywhere, it takes just a few minutes to build a large bear entourage. Bears auto target anyone they see. Bears kill in a single action, but it takes three actions to kill a bear. Bears can target people from offscreen. There isn't a good way to counter bear griefing. If the town stockpiles bows and arrows, the griefer will hide the arrows and turn the bows into hatchets before he leads the bears into town. If the town builds safe-houses with food, the griefer will remove the food from the safe-house before leading bears into town. If the town builds walls, the griefer blocks the exits. If there's lots of exits, the griefer will lead the bears through one of them (its a lot easier to get bears into a walled off town then out. On the way in, you are the only person around so bears follow you. Once they are through the fence, there's a lot of people around so their movement is chaotic. Now your walls to protect you from bears are a cage trapping you in with the bears. Finally, its hard to curse bear griefers. A bear griefer just needs to lead the bears to the outskirts of town and after than can run away. The bears will do all the work for them. Because of the limited FOV in the game and the very small time window where the griefer has to be near the town, it is difficult to curse them. I checked this out in the logs. Looking at account hashes that awakened bears without killing them. Of the 5 players who woke the most bears, only one of them had any curses. One account woke over 60 bears in a single day without receiving any curses.

Third, why empowering griefers is a problem in this game:
Jason wants the game to have tension. In order to achieve that tension, he needs a careful balance of the ability to survive. If conditions are too harsh, towns just die off without creating tension. If conditions are too easy, there is no tension. Griefers seek to completely destroy the balance. Because griefing is somewhat infrequent, that means either conditions have to normally be too easy with no tension for towns to survive griefers, or conditions can be tough but griefers are able to easily destroy everything. An example showing the very extreme of this arose with the food changes and well tapout grief. Jason reduced the value of food on the server to see how that would affect tension. At the same time someone orchestrated a massive grief making it very difficult for towns to get enough water to grow crops. That means any data Jason collected around the food change is completely useless. That is a rare example showcasing an extreme of the issue, but griefers contribute to this effect on a small scale all the time. If the effect is small enough, its possible to maintain the balance. The more empowered griefers are, the more they break the balance and ruin the tension. To illustrate the power of bear griefing, think back to before the posse changes. Griefer serial killers would run around trying to kill off as many people as they could but they very rarely actually took out an entire town. Most of the recent families who managed to transition to the newcomen pump are dying out because of a bear griefer. Bear griefing is incredibly powerful and it is impossible to balance the game around.

**If there were no griefers in this game, there would be no bears in this game. Bears currently exist solely for griefers.**

Now, with that said, how can bears be fixed?
Make it so bears spawn on their own without being poked. Make it so each bear cave has a probability to spawn a bear. To keep the server from getting inundated with bears over time, make bears die of natural causes over time. An example with numbers to illustrate how to balance this: caves on average spawn a bear once every 24 hours and bears die after two hours. This makes it so bears are a threat villages have to deal with on their own without griefer intervention. This threat is regular allowing for the danger to be balanced creating tension. It also significantly weakens bear griefing because a griefer only has access to one bear for every twelve caves.

Legs · 2020-04-24 21:03:27

Make more quivers and fill them with arrows. Distribute them to interested parties. This keeps arrows safe in their inventory. Without food storage, they must stay close to town. Even if the player is low-skill, having them hold the items and linger in town is effective bear defense. They might die fighting the bear, but the bow and arrows are still right there. Or, they might kill the bear and have a fun, thrilling experience that leaves them feeling fulfilled. It's a win-win.

DestinyCall · 2020-04-24 21:06:26

I like your suggestion, tobias. Sounds good.

pein · 2020-04-24 22:21:43

they should walk back to cave after killing one person, since they not hungry anymore

StrongForce · 2020-04-24 22:44:43

Lol sit on a horse and lure them out of town
Problem solved. I actually like when that action happen also if you lure them away the griefer will try to lure them back and that's where you uncover him.

DestinyCall · 2020-04-24 22:48:57

Also, by luring them away, it is no longer necessary to kill the innocent bears. They do not deserve to die.

They just feel grumpy because they were woken up too early and Jason hasn't added coffee yet.

StrongForce · 2020-04-24 22:51:26

Is feeding bears still a thing?

fug · 2020-04-24 22:54:40

StrongForce wrote:

Is feeding bears still a thing?

Feeding them just makes them stand still for 30 seconds before turning hungry again.

miskas · 2020-04-24 22:54:58

the auto spawning bears would actually make them a controlled Natural threat instead of a griefer exploit.
Very nice I like it!

(try underscore your important part of your text using [u ] text [/u ] so it is quickly readable.)

DestinyCall · 2020-04-24 22:55:47

If you feed them a baby, their hunger becomes endless.

testo · 2020-04-24 23:31:08

Just stand still over an object lol, ez.

Starknight_One · 2020-04-25 00:38:54

testo wrote:

Just stand still over an object lol, ez.

... no? Jason changed that. Standing on a tile with an object no longer protects you from animal attacks.

AmberA · 2020-04-25 01:32:30

I completely agree, bears only purpose atm is a tool for griefers.

I'd LOVE to see more good benefits for bear killing to help balance it out. Ideas:
* 8 slot backpack that can be made from bear hides, or a jacket/baby sling. So that it keeps you warm but can also carry one baby (limited to only babies that are you gave birth to)
* Bear meat & fat used in a cooking recipe.
* Cave paintings could be added to the walls of empty caves which would cause bears to not return to that cave.

Spoonwood · 2020-04-25 01:47:39

AmberA wrote:

Cave paintings could be added to the walls of empty caves which would cause bears to not return to that cave.

Each bear cave has only one bear in it since sometime during The Rift period.

testo · 2020-04-25 03:33:24

Starknight_One wrote:

testo wrote:
Just stand still over an object lol, ez.
... no? Jason changed that. Standing on a tile with an object no longer protects you from animal attacks.

I am not gonna do the job for you. Just figure it out.

Alterior · 2020-04-27 16:47:37

I have bear suggestions.

Make them faster than players. Make leading bears an invalid option, you either run in circles or perish. Give horses a fear of bear caves, have them run far and fast the second a bear cave is activated.
Use the eating animation, so they spend a little while eating whoever they killed. 7 seconds maybe, have damage interrupt this.
If they finish eating, have them return to their cave. Now they're something to be feared.
Make them target whoever awoke them, relentlessly. Maybe switch targets on damage.

Once killing a bear is rare and difficult, make bear furs wearable the way wolf furs are. Maybe only by bear killers, now they're a badge of honour and skill.

I have some wolf suggestions too. For another thread though.

Dantox · 2020-04-27 19:03:19

Make it so you can gain sick loot from them too.

Maybe 6 pieces of food that can be cooked to gain lots of food pips.

Also you can use the fur to make some kind of jacket with pockets (we have a wolf hat, why not a bear jacket?) and even a belt so you can have your tools with you without having to waste 1 slot in your backpack!

I think with this it would be worth to try to hunt bears or at least to have a nice reward besides just living when you kill one bear.

DestinyCall · 2020-04-27 19:48:44

Yeah, it would be great to see a general overhaul of the wild animals to make them smarter and more interesting. Wolves and boars run over you by accident. They do not even hunt like bears. The only reason why any of the animals are a serious threat is because a lot of the player-base uses the vanilla client, so they can't zoom out to see an off-screen boar.

testo · 2020-04-27 20:15:43

DestinyCall wrote:

Yeah, it would be great to see a general overhaul of the wild animals to make them smarter and more interesting. Wolves and boars run over you by accident. They do not even hunt like bears. The only reason why any of the animals are a serious threat is because a lot of the player-base uses the vanilla client, so they can't zoom out to see an off-screen boar.

The only reason why animals are a threat in vanilla is because while running you are forced to keep your character in the center of the screen, thus making it virtually impossible to dodge an animal while moving north and south.

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2020-04-24 20:33:09

Suggestion: Fixing Bears

#2 2020-04-24 21:03:27

Re: Suggestion: Fixing Bears

#3 2020-04-24 21:06:26

Re: Suggestion: Fixing Bears

#4 2020-04-24 22:21:43

Re: Suggestion: Fixing Bears

#5 2020-04-24 22:44:43

Re: Suggestion: Fixing Bears

#6 2020-04-24 22:48:57

Re: Suggestion: Fixing Bears

#7 2020-04-24 22:51:26

Re: Suggestion: Fixing Bears

#8 2020-04-24 22:54:40

Re: Suggestion: Fixing Bears

#9 2020-04-24 22:54:58

Re: Suggestion: Fixing Bears

#10 2020-04-24 22:55:47

Re: Suggestion: Fixing Bears

#11 2020-04-24 23:31:08

Re: Suggestion: Fixing Bears

#12 2020-04-25 00:38:54

Re: Suggestion: Fixing Bears

#13 2020-04-25 01:32:30

Re: Suggestion: Fixing Bears

#14 2020-04-25 01:47:39

Re: Suggestion: Fixing Bears

#15 2020-04-25 03:33:24

Re: Suggestion: Fixing Bears

#16 2020-04-27 16:47:37

Re: Suggestion: Fixing Bears

#17 2020-04-27 19:03:19

Re: Suggestion: Fixing Bears

#18 2020-04-27 19:48:44

Re: Suggestion: Fixing Bears

#19 2020-04-27 20:15:43

Re: Suggestion: Fixing Bears

Board footer