Will AoC use a virtual ecology?

ArchivedUser

What that means is this in a nut shell. You have small animals like rabbits and deer eat the grass and plants, then you have the predator types like a wolf or bear eat the smaller animals. Then you have we the players hunt the bigger animals to get what we need.

This was used before in other games like UO, (see the Link)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFNxJVTJleE

It didn't workout to well in the older game. why? because the players didn't follow the rule of law of a virtual ecology, and they killed everything in site. There by unbalancing the system, that is turn give the DEV team fits trying to fit the system to keep up.

I am not sure if this type of system can work, I see what past games tried to do, but really can it work with a game like AoC? One of the past issues was you gained small amounts of fur, hides and food off the smaller animals too, even though the larger ones gave you more, but people still hunted the smaller animals. This in turn made it an issue, and it didn't work in the past games.

So, do we really need/ want a Virtual Ecology in AoC?

Lets talk about it.

ArchivedUser

UO's ecology was flawed, not because the players were bloodthirsty, but because their was value from killing anything. Animals would all drop the same universal items: pelt and meat for crafting and cooking; additionally, you'd level up your weapon skill by using that weapon on everything.

The players were being practical when they engaged in genocide.

ArchivedUser

Just make things lower on the food chain less useful as things on top, rabbit should not give the same quality/amount of leather as a deer, or a bear, ect... want tuffer armor take down something bigger/tuffer

ArchivedUser

@Ninja Shadow, exactly right, lowering or diminishing the value of continuing to kill herbivores once your strong enough to kill the carnivores (and/or increasing the value and difficulty) is an excellent first step in regulating the virtual ecology.

ArchivedUser

ArchivedUser

As long as they drop resources players will engage them.
They could have a "fake" system in place that auto-regulates at the end each winter. That would help keep everything in balance every 4 weeks, but players will likely off set the balance well before then. So maybe at the beginning of each season the server could do an auto-eval of the circle of life and set everything to a base level based on the season.

I don't think having a realistic ecology is meaningful, I find it hard to believe that even the most devout explorers, hunters, observers would be able to tell the difference between a well mapped ecology and a well mapped spawn table.

ArchivedUser

ArchivedUser

I just have one request. No killer bunnies!

ArchivedUser

Granthor said:

I just have one request. No killer bunnies!

One more request.. loot be relevant to what you're killing. Like when you kill a bear in some games you get a piece of plate mail, like whut?

ArchivedUser

I guarantee you even if an animal doesn't drop anything of value some players will find value in killing them for the sheer joy of using their skills/feel of combat/boredom/trolling. Maybe if you make them populous enough that trolling-killing wouldn't impact on their function it might work.

To the OP's other point I do like the idea of any system that makes a world feel more alive and dynamic. A working ecology would be pretty cool as long as there as safeguards to ensure it can't be tampered with/affect the economy beyond a certain point.

ArchivedUser

It will not work for the players will kill everything....look at the real world and tell me how well humans behave LOL. I would rather AoC work towards some serious AI for humanoids and such and skip the circle of life thing.