"Dragon chasing"

The devs have discussed the possibility moving some of the mobs (wolves, bears, etc) on time-of-day schedules like the fish.

For a boss like dragons, what they could do is have a dragon move from scene to scene; so, for instance, he might move out from his nest at a certain time to hunt for food, then retire to his nest later on. The players would have to figure out his path and do "dragon chasing", sort of along the likes of "storm chasing."

 

You’ll never catch that dragon FYI..

 

Honestly in a first step I would suggest to change the behavior of monsters within a scene and not across multiple scenes. E.g. if there is a dragon in the scene he is sleeping during the day in his lair and during the night he is walking a circle through the scene to eat some animals. (Maybe even his stats change, in his lair he knows the surrounding well and is that way more protective while during his hunting route he is more aggressive.
But all other animals could act similar. Like bears sleep during the night in small caves while the wolves roam in the area. During dawn light wolves and bears fight each other as during this time of the day they both hunt in the same areas and finally during the day the wolves sleep in caves while the bears roam in the area.
Maybe skeletons and zombies could sleep in their graves breaking free to roam in the area as the sun disappears or if some intruder is disturbing their sleep by stepping on their grave. Skeletons without a grave could maybe again lay as a bone stack during the day. A lich might be even just available during the night without a possibility to fight him during the day and only at special areas like ruins the skeleton and lich are bound to (e.g. summoned as eternal guardians) they patrol all day long.

I guess if this mechanic is working the devs could start to extend this mechanic to work across scenes. E.g. with a wolves pack hunting in one scene while sleeping and living with their whelp in another or the mentioned dragon by @redfish or traveling vendors/quest givers/… who move from scene to scene and depending on the day and daytime can be found at different locations.

 

Nice idea but folks would start to complain that they went to farm a scene and there were no wolves, Bears, skeletons, etc and they had to wait for ages for them to spawn and they don't have all day to wait!!! /ragequit

 

A possible solution would be to create quests that explain these mechanics. E.g. in each outskirt you are asked to kill 5 wolves and the quest giver is explaining that during the day the wolves can be found in a cave but that it would be difficult to fight all wolves at a time and that you might better wait till night to fight them in the fields while they are hunting solo.
And as in my example with bear and wolf it would be possible to always have switching enemy types. E.g. during the day there are elves while during the night ghost roam the area or bandits during the day and skeletons during the night or …
There would be always enemies to fight but to find a specific enemy you would sometimes need a little bit knowledge.

 

A benefit of having a system like that would be that you could use it as an excuse to have dragons in the skies above scenes/towns. Even just flying past. The chance to see one in the sky would be awesome. Some Train simulators have "portals" where train consists enter the scene at a tunnel say and exit the scene at another portal at the other end of the map.

Such a system could also bring features like seeing ships on the horizons, airships moving in the sky etc.

Tracking them on the day night cycle would be interesting knowing the dragon is away and trying to set up an ambush of sorts when it returns.

 

Yea, the time of day behavior is something I referenced, and I did a thread on it a long time ago: here . Wolves normally in the real world will come out in twilight hours, not really as much night time.

Well in the Pokemon games, the appearance of various pokemon are influenced by time of day, and its part of what makes the game fun. Honestly, sometimes I think people ask for the most boring mechanics, just so they can farm stuff, which is boring. But yea as Lars mentioned there might be alternate ways to find them during the day, for instance going into caves, and at some point this could be explained to players in a quest. They might also be present, but in smaller numbers, in day time. The twilight or night hours might just be peak hours.

 

Don't get me wrong, I like the idea. I'm just relating that there are lots of folks who play SOTA (or post on the forums at least) who are vehemently anti complexity and anti time sinks.

 

Yeah but luckily we are on novia and that way their behavior do not have to be exactly as it is on earth.

 

Something for the devs to think about, though. Sometimes they have to make decisions about game mechanics, and sometimes there are compromises (some suggestions made in this thread), but making the game about farming for farming's sake just makes the game pretty boring.

 

Could be a new skill for tamers? Or quest for a magic item that will help find the dragons.