Animal behavior

This idea just came up while I was reading a post below, 'Pack Animals'
If animals on the field have specific behaviors, it could be very fun and exciting to watch.
I saw some deers running away from me whenever I get close, that's a nice one, I think.
For example, wolves usually move in pack, if you find one, that means others might be close. When you attack that wolf, he/she will howl, so others can come to its aid.
It can be applied to other animals ; bears, spiders and so on.
Creating animals life-like behavior will make SotA's world more alive and flourishing.

 

Yep, it seems there's some basic AI around this. I've noticed these behaviors:

Aggressive:
- Runs at you when you get within a certain distance
- Examples: spiders, kobolds, satyrs, skeletons, elves, liche

Defensive:
- Stands their ground until you get pretty close, then they'll get aggressive
- Examples: wolves, bears

Neutral:
- Doesn't care if you're near it
- Examples: rabbits, goats, chickens, cows, horses

Flee:
- Continually moves away from you to maintain some minimum safe distance
- Examples: deers

I did notice that some wolves I encountered in one scene were near each other, but did not really observe any group dynamics, as I didn't engage them.

 

Remember the planned on ecosystem for UO - which had to be ditched because basically, the players decimated everything?

Does it become viable with todays hardware, distributed resources and instancing?

 

Additional to what smack experienced I saw animals attacking other animals in prev. releases. In R7 I watched a skeleton fighting a wolf.