Dynamic Animal Population System aka DAPS

Ok here is my idea:

The animals in the world have a specific population at any given time. They can be hunted by players (shot down, or trapped), and maybe even by other animals and mobs. But they do not just spawn back at a given interval. Players are responsible for keeping the population up via additional skills such as herding and breeding.

Players could obtain animals through multiple avenues. They could herd them in, trap them, or maybe even steal young from parent animals. Once obtained, they could keep them in some sort of ranch style enclosures, which could be available for your own private property or rented on a public farm (for those without houses). Players would feed, raise, and breed the animals. Breeding could be taken to a whole new level. Maybe players could experiment with breeding and create new variations of the parent animals. These animals could then be traded, killed, or released into the wild to conserve the population. A system would have to be in place that would reward players for releasing them into the wild, instead of selling them to other players, or killing them. Perhaps they could turn them in to an NPC run "conservation" group that is in charge of the maintaining of wildlife populations.

I think that this could lead to an interesting new dynamic in the game. It brings a little more immersion into the game, instead of allowing hunters to go to the same spots, kill the same animals, and wait a few minutes for a respawn. And if animals get hunted out faster than they are repopulated, they simply wouldn't be found in the wild for a while (week or two?). To prevent an all out extinction, that same NPC conservation group has stocked a few of each animal in the world for this very situation but it will take a while for them to start releasing them back into the wild.

What do you think?

 

This was actually a part of the system in Ultima Online but had to be scrapped. Markee talks with Dupre and the guy who implemented EA's "commercial" approach (aka ruined the game for his cushy job but someone else would have anyways).

You can watch the video here, great memories are shared: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=MOTVcrb-sOE#

 

Oh, even though I followed Markee for some time, I never stumbled upon this video. Thanks !

(Sorry for being out of the subject :O)

 

Ahh now that you point it out, I remember reading about this on the Wikipedia page some time ago. I guess I had one of those "Pinky and the Brain" moments where Pinky would mention a novel idea, The Brain would shut him down and then bring it up as his own idea shortly thereafter. Here I thought I had my own novel idea. Anyways, this is good news because it appears a system such as this is something RG has previously endorsed. With today's technology and improved capabilities, maybe it's time to try it again!

 

It should work now that its all one server. Any issues that player population causes will hopefully be solved by the new grouping system. If spawns are not group specific it will be a nightmare of mysteriously vanishing creatures as some unseen person steals your kill.

 

That being said I don't want players to be in charge of animal population because it seems like an unstable variable. Owning a plot of ground that could be maintained might work though.

 

Cryptomnesia is your ailment

I agree they should try again and this time let people know that it is happening! I never knew when I killed those cute little bunnies I was preventing 1,000 other bunnies from roaming the country side.

Speaking of protecting the animals...what if this is the way they appease some of the PK mentality? I mean PKs are literally wolves preying on the weakest sheep. People who decide to become shepherds protect the animals for some sort of reward but in doing so they make themselves open for combat. Don't get wrong I want an open PK system but I'd like as many factions as possible within the game to pool like-minded people and those whose are available for combat.

 

I don't know how the spawning should work.
But I love the idea here.
Instead of buying horses from a shop you have to buy from player run stables.
So all the horses would be wild to start with and someone would have to herd them to their barn.

After that you could breed them or have someone train the horse so you could ride it.
Finally the horse could be taken to a shop and sold.

This would give herding, trapping, taming, breeding more value with no NPC to buy animals from.
Yea with no mounts or barns yet maybe this is something for one of the expansions.

 

If you ask me one of the biggest reasons why UO's ecology didn't work was the fact that the entire world was a single map where players were also present 24 hours a day. I brought this up before in another thread some time ago.. I was thinking about posting along these lines but never got around to it.

The reason *I* think they should consider retrying the ecosystem is two fold.

1: The "mini-shard" nature of the game. Each hex is its own separate map and therefore the ecology of one map doesn't need to influence the ecology of the other.

and

2: The "mini-shard" nature of the game. Now I realize that's mainly 1 underlying reason but I thought it was such a big one it was worth mentioning twice.

Someone pointed one the "one server" for the entire world.. but what you seem to forget is that the server won't be managing things like creature & animal spawns in the instanced maps.. your computer will. Remember if you're the first person to enter a hex.. then YOU are hosting that hex.. if someone joins you there.. you are still hosting that hex.. you are the server for those who join you if you're the first to enter.

This also means that is someone else who doesn't see any of you or anyone else in the group of players you play with enters that same hex.. they create a new instance of that hex and host it for those players that would join them.

So if you're group wipes out all the animals in that hex.. when the 2nd group joins their instance of that hex the animals will all still be there..

Also, when you and everyone who joined you leaves that hex.. it gets unloaded and spawns may be allowed to reset.

Basically, it would be impossible for an ecosystem to fail for the same reasons it did in UO.. That being said, it is possible for one to fail for other reasons. Essentially you would consider it a failure if few people ever noticed it. You'd be putting all that work into it for little or no benefit to the game.

So the big question they'll be asking it whether or not an ecosystem of any kind will improve the game.

 

Given the size of the EP1 world (either 4800 or 9600 open world land-hexes) I don't think running out of targets/animals should be a problem, even if there are several thousand concurrent players. They could each have their own hex worth of targets, and there would still be half the world left, to say nothing of procedurally generated dungeons, and the underworld map.

I think animal breeding/animal farms is a great idea, though, regardless of the open world population. Even "monster" breeding. People IRL cities breed ducks, dogs, cats, chickens without too much trouble. Sign me up for a giant spider farm.

 

Silk farm.
Nice.
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