Pack Animals

Discussion in 'Avatars & NPCs' started by Poor game design, Jun 22, 2014.

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  1. smack

    smack Avatar

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    Playing devil's advocate, I would argue that pack animals are Pay 2 Lose!

    Consider the following:
    - You still need to harvest or mine all those resources that you can carry twice as much of now, so you took twice as much time to return to town, which meant you lost out to the miner who didn't have a pack animal and got back quicker to sell his goods quicker.
    - And you're twice as likely to be ganked because you're just putting a spotlight on yourself with all that phat loot.
    - Once they implement item weights and encumbrance, you're slowed down since your pack animal could be slowing you down with all that stuff so that makes travel times even slower
    - And because these are essentially physical representations of extra inventory slots, they don't just magically appear/disappear and you have to lug them around from place to place or stable them somewhere prior to leaving town
    - So now you have to feed and care for the animal, which requires even more time, effort, and money to buy food for it, rent stables to keep them in, etc.
    - Because of all that, you will miss out on the real-time dynamic resource nodes because you'll be the last one to arrive due to the weighed-down, encumbered and slow pack animal simply because you want to carry more stuff
     
  2. Numa

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    I would like to see the Asian water buffalo as a pack animal option.

    [​IMG]

    It can carry a lot, and can even serve as a (slower) mount.
     
  3. Time Lord

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    That is one of the most diverse critters in the world for all it's uses Numa!
    I totally agree ;) But this one's funnier :p
    [​IMG]
    "Mongo Like Very Much" :D
    ~Time Lord~:rolleyes:
     
  4. PrimeRib

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    I liked the way the pack animals worked in GuildWars2. When your side held two locations next to eachother, the animals would slowly bring supplies from one to the other. But they became a PvP target in addition to the two locations. So this increased the strategy because you simply had more possible targets and things to defend.

    To some extent trade routes in Civilization 5 are the same. You establish them and they sit more or less on autopilot. But they can also be attacked so there are reasons to keep territory clear.
     
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  5. Wagram

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    It may take the other miner longer to go to town and back with the extra instance loading screen
     
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  6. smack

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    That loading screen affects everyone, including the PK chasing the miner :)

    But hey, Chris and team are working hard on improving performance. I do hope they'll get to their original goal of "a few seconds" between scene loads.
     
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  7. blaquerogue

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    how bout an armoured wagon, pulled by a buffalo type creature, that can fight when attacked?
     
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  8. Gridian

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    I am curious how fast the Pack Animal Stretch Goal is going to be met once encumberance is in.
    When People realize that they cannot carry half a ton of ore in their backpack they're going to want a way to expand the weight Limit... :)
     
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  9. blaquerogue

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    so we need pack animals (that can fight)
     
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  10. Time Lord

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    "Our Choices and Decisions"
    I actually think most pack animals would run away from a fight ;)
    And any dragon with a backpack, should fight allot less than one who did not. But, I also think that it would take more taming required, to ever train an animal such as a dragon to willingly carry a backpack in the first place... o_O and then once it was trained for the backpack, it would still not be as trained to fight as well as one that was trained "only to fight"...
    There should be consequences for everything we choose ;)
    Thinking and choosing with consequences,
    "Is Our Ever Deeper Ultima" :eek:
    ~Time Lord~:rolleyes:
     
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  11. David J Thompson

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    Cute !!!
     
  12. redfish

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    Aurochs would be interesting to see in the game. They were alive in the Middle Ages, and although I know this isn't real Earth, it would be cool if they were acknowledged. I was happy to see that aurochs were in the dwarven areas of the game in LOTRO.

    Oxen in general are good examples of pack animals. In case anyone here doesn't know the difference between oxen and bulls, they're bulls that are specifically castrated so they're easier to train.

    And Muskoxen would work in arctic-like areas of the game if they ever make it in.

    [​IMG]
     
  13. stile

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    Id very much love to have 10 water buffalo horns ( from natural causes, not harvested or anything). Err irl not in game :). Or 12 would be better. If anyone can acquire such very cheaply let me know. *grins*.
     
  14. Robby

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    Ive already brought up the idea of heavily armoured pack mules myself. Maybe one with a cannon on its back. Other than that if pack animals are completely defensless your going to need to only bring a pack animal with a heavily armoured team of players to guard it.
    Even the NPC spawn and stuff is going to be hungry for a little bit of pack horse meat. Orcs will love to roast a horse thigh over the fire and gobble it up. Probably like the jewels and ore in the pack too, along with the wood you might be chopping so they can build more clubs. They might use the ore to build ring mail and two handed axes for the orc lords.
    So yea...
    I dont know how these mules are gonna workout but I get the idea that you shouldn't make them too powerful if they can defend themselves, nor should they be too defenseless to the point were they no longer have a use in the game once everyone discovers they aren't worth it.

    Pack mules worked great in the 2001-2004 era of UO. Because a miner or prospector didnt even have to leave the protection of the town guards! I remember mining away all day long without any sort of interruption(unless my internet service crashed or if there was harsh weather and the power went out). And gmed my mining, got 100 strength, and gmed smithing all at the britain mines. Why even go to minoc? All the players hung out at the britain bank, and blacksmiths were sitting at the britain forge 24/7 selling their wares.

    Mining was great fun for that era. But now that we are making a new game and have a chance to take a second look at the skill as a whole(along with pack mules) i can now see theres a lot of room for improvement. We need to add a sense of adventure and excitement to the whole pack mule and prospecting aspect of the game. Perhaps in this game every party will have a miner or prospector in their group AT ALL TIMES because thats the way to get every treasure and resource you can while adventuring. Towns should deplete of ore quicker and prospectors should have to adventure more and deal with a certain amount of danger more than there was in UO.
     
  15. David J Thompson

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    Pack animals could add so much to this game.
     
  16. blaquerogue

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    well they said here recently that weight allowances will be in effect, so pack animals would be a good addition, to carry more (although they should be able to be killed) "thats reality" even though we know Pkrs will drop them to get what you have on them.
     
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