Long range attacks should make animals flee or aggro

[kingdrasker]

I don't know if anyone has suggested this here before or if it has been changed yet. I like the challenge of this game but one thing slightly bothers me.
When you hit an animal with an arrow or rock from a long distance it just stands there. Shouldn't the animal run if you're far enough, since it got impaled by an arrow or hit with a rock?
Or aggro you if you're close enough. I played as a Malefactor and I could just search for high ground, grab my sling, and kill bears just like that. Same for every other animal. It was too easy to kill and there wasn't any risk involved.

My suggestion would be:

• passive mobs would always try to run away when hit,
• neutral and hostile mobs would aggro if you're in a realistic range for them to know you attacked.
• neutral and hostile mobs would run away if you're too far away. Since they would be startled and don't know where the attack came from

It's not much, but this broke the feeling of realism for me. It just didn't make sense that they stood there doing nothing.
Love the game btw, one of my favorite games for sure :))

[Michael Gates]

IME animals *do* react when you hit them with ranged weapons. Thrown rocks are a great way to pull wolves or bears over to you, it's a lot safer than walking right up to the things.

[Maelstrom]

Reminds me of a streamer I was watching a couple of years ago.  He threw a single rock off into the distance, turned to keep digging sand or gravel only to question, "Ding?"  Ignoring the warning to continue the task at hand only to be mauled a few seconds later by a ram came rampaging out of the dense bush.

Edited January 8 by Maelstrom

[Malnaur]

11 hours ago, kingdrasker said:

I don't know if anyone has suggested this here before or if it has been changed yet. I like the challenge of this game but one thing slightly bothers me.
When you hit an animal with an arrow or rock from a long distance it just stands there. Shouldn't the animal run if you're far enough, since it got impaled by an arrow or hit with a rock?
Or aggro you if you're close enough. I played as a Malefactor and I could just search for high ground, grab my sling, and kill bears just like that. Same for every other animal. It was too easy to kill and there wasn't any risk involved.

My suggestion would be:

• passive mobs would always try to run away when hit,
• neutral and hostile mobs would aggro if you're in a realistic range for them to know you attacked.
• neutral and hostile mobs would run away if you're too far away. Since they would be startled and don't know where the attack came from

It's not much, but this broke the feeling of realism for me. It just didn't make sense that they stood there doing nothing.
Love the game btw, one of my favorite games for sure :))

Run where? IRL, if you were the animal, your first instinct would be to look around to know which way to run. Bows are almost silent so which way to run is not at all obvious.

[kingdrasker]

I wanted to be more clear so I made a small video as well. 

I went into creative, but I made sure to be in survival mode to test this out. You can even see it in the video.
@Michael Gates I'm talking about long long range. Not just from  10-15 blocks away. As you can see, the bear just walks around, ignoring the attack. As I get closer it does attack, I wanted to show that so you know I'm not in creative.
Same for the bunny, it totally ignores it, and only when I get close it runs away.

@Malnaur I understand what you mean, but if you were standing somewhere, and you were hit with a rock, you would know where it came from. Afterward, you would probably run in the opposite direction, right?
And if any animal was hit with an arrow, do you think it would stand there and look around? It would at least bolt forward in the direction it was facing out of pure panic.

But to keep it simple, if it ran away in the opposite direction (maybe in a cone so it's not straight away from you, but still somewhat) from where you hit it. That would already work for me. As long as it's not standing still.

[Malnaur]

@kingdrasker Fair enough. I would amend my comment that you would not simply look around but I still maintain you would not automatically know where the missile came from, especially if you are out in the open. I would not expect an animal to even understand the causality of a long range missile beyond knowing, "something hurts now". Given the rather absurd number of arrows needed to bring down quarry here (a poor bow and basic arrow won't even kill a rabbit with one shot). I'm rather glad I don't have to chase *everything* half way across the map

[kingdrasker]

@Malnaur Yeah I totally get that, while you're glad you don't have to chase it that much. I feel like I'm abusing the AI behaviors to make it easier for myself.
I feel like killing a Bear for example is more rewarding if I have to gear up with armor and stuff, this adds to the feeling of progress for me. Instead of slinging rocks or arrows from a great distance. I also don't dig trenches around my farms to catch animals, since I feel like it's the same thing. That's the kind of player I am.
It's a hard thing to keep the wants of multiple people balanced. If I want this but you don't then I don't even know what's the right thing to do here.
Thanks for your opinion man.

[Malnaur]

@kingdrasker I wasn't commenting on your play style but pointing out that the behavior you describe may not be as realistic as it would seem. The current behavior is certainly not hyperdetailed in any event. I guess I'm confused as to how you would want the encounter to play out? If you want animals to run then it's a long chase. OK, if that's good for you. If you want them to attack, I guess that's easily achieved by getting closer before hitting them. If you want the full experience, you can strip naked and take them on barehanded (briefly). I don't think you are forced to engage at long range (the video shows how much loft you need to even hit the bear that far away). Impressive shot BTW. If you get closer first, then the behaviors you will get will be just what you describe, I think. The 'progress' you have achieved is the ability to hit your targets from great distances (which is NOT trivial given semi-real physics here). What am I missing?

Edited January 9 by Malnaur

[kingdrasker]

@Malnaur Sorry my explanation was a bit everywhere, I just want them to run away instead of standing still.
Right now, there's no downside to sniping animals with something as cheap as rocks. That's why I want them to run, so there's a drawback.
So it comes down to this: Long-range will keep you safe but you'll have to do some chasing and tracking. It would also add risk since you might lose the bear and suddenly bump into it in some bush.
Close combat on the other hand, you won't have to chase them, but you'll have to be prepared with the right armor and weapons to win the fight.
This way, both methods have their pros and cons.
That explanation was for neutral and hostile animals.

As for passive animals, like hares and chickens. Those should be scared of everything and bolt off in some direction. They could run in the direction they're facing since they might not even know what hit them, if they run into you they will turn around and run in the other direction. I think that would be a normal reaction for a prey animal. Which evolved to be scared of everything.

If I take it to another level, I would have the animals react not only when hit, but also when a rock or arrow lands very close to them. If a rock that was thrown at a decent speed lands near a hare, it would produce enough sound and a thud that the animal would be scared off. It's not a pebble, but a fist-size rock you're throwing at them.
That would be in an ideal world, just having them run away when hit would already be good for me.

[Malnaur]

@kingdrasker OK. I see where you're going with this. I still think you undervalue your ability to even hit things at long range. THAT's the disincentive. It takes considerable skill/practice to do that and many players won't get there. To continue your notion, it appears the 'sling' is actually a 'slingshot' and not a conventional sling. So, it is really another form of bow in practice. That makes it easy on the devs but not a genuinely different experience. If you had an actual sling that required whirling around between shots, you would have more challenge. Also, although the game renders these missiles as fist sized, actual sling ammo is closer to a pebble in size (more like a bullet). They could require knapping to make them like forging arrow heads. All this would increase the premium on using the sling and make you feel more rewarded?

[kingdrasker]

@Malnaur It is a sling that you rotate above your head, not a slingshot, it rotates in the video. Only the Malefactor class can craft it https://wiki.vintagestory.at/index.php/Sling.
So they do toss bigger rocks as ammo I think.
About the aiming, thanks haha, but the thing is that the rocks keep bouncing a bit forward. So if you shoot the rock a couple blocks in front of the animal, the rock would continue to bounce a couple blocks further and hit. That's what makes it a lot easier to hit compared to a bow.
Even though it is a great distance, it was only as an example, you can actually get a lot closer to the animals without them reacting. In this video, I just happened to be further away.
In another playthrough I was a tailor so I couldn't use the sling, I just crafted a lot of arrows and could take down bears from a distance easily as well.
Having to craft the ammo wouldn't make it more rewarding since you can just collect it afterward, it was mostly the fact that the animal acted like nothing happened that bothered me.

[Malnaur]

@kingdrasker I watched again and see the whirling motion. Oddly, the sound is the bow draw sound so I assumed a slingshot. It's still too rapid fire to be a real sling. Either way, I get plenty of challenge in the woods where long-range is not an option Here's an example of sling ammo (slingshot is the same ammo) as the sling gets its benefit from high velocity (both range and kinetic energy on hit) versus throwing.

https://simple-shot.com/collections/slingshot-ammo

[kingdrasker]

@Malnaur Just as a final comment: don't you think the animals should react when hit? Don't you think it's weird they just stand there?
In every other game, the animal would run away at least, right? Even if you don't mind that they stand still. Don't you think running away is what they should do?
 

[Malnaur]

@kingdrasker I would expect animals to have evolved to deal with nearby events. When they sense a predator (or prey), they respond. Depending on the perception range for different animals in the game, when you are outside that, I expect an animal to be bewildered to suddenly be hurt. They have no idea what an 'arrow' is. Bears, as apex predators, don't fear much IRL. Herd animals seem to panic a lot since many moving targets are harder to focus on. So, it could go either way, I guess.

[BalmoraPete]

i love it, i want to join in moldy cringe soup. the age old forum argument slop "well in real life it works like this", "if this was real life". Malnaur says , "Run where? IRL, if you were the animal", bro if you were an animal in real life, if this was real life and you were an animal, if i was animals and this was real life. lol HAHAHA. ok now i'm going to wade into the mud with you guys and share in the brainrot. a dear has real good hearing, from the sound of the bowstring to the arrow in the air the animal is already reacting to it before the arrow hits. the dear than runs off with the arrow in it. wow real life if only youtube or something existed for me to look this up so i could win internet arguments.

also the fact also people did not know animals in this game just stand around when shot from long range and confidently said stuff like Michael Gates "IME animals *do* react when you hit them with ranged weapons. Thrown rocks are a great way to pull wolves or bears over to you, it's a lot safer than walking right up to the things. ". embarrassing, shameful.

this is more of a bug report than anything obviously things should react to damage from long ranges. hilarious that a completely reasonable request to fix a bug with the AI summons so many confused zombie posters vomiting nonsense all over the replies.

[Nedrakus]

The way it is currently desgined, it is extremely easy to kill animals at a distance without being noticed and thus doesn't offer much of a challenge.  I play a hunter which makes things even worse I guess, but the same is true for the commoner class.

I personally feel any improvement that makes this behavious less obvious one way or another would be welcome.  Whether the game is 100 % realistic or not shouldn't be the point of this conversation; I feel the focus should be on the gameplay experience.  I don't open a crafting grid whenever I need to sharpen a pencil at home after all and everybody accepts there's an in-game crafting grid ... 

Edited January 15 by Nedrakus

[Dra6o0n]

A suggestion to make long range attacks more challenging, and a maybe a slight tweak to AI:

- For a sling to feel challenging, when you use the sling you are suppose to 'wind' it up and whip it around, instead of shooting like a slingshot... So a circle crosshair that starts off large (maybe like 1-2 inches radius) and shrinks slowly over time would be suitable. And even when you shoot it, it flies in a cone arc, so at longer distance the accuracy is fairly bad to hit anything at that range.

- But if you start using improved materials for a better sling (or a staff sling), and use 'bullets' crafted from stone or metal, then your accuracy and lethality also increases.

- AI should generally go from passive mode into a cautious mode when they are attacked but cannot see or detect their attackers, meaning they should flee from the current area they are in, at a random direction (choosing to go via land, not water). For instance hares are skittish so they'll flee to a random spot 5 to 10 blocks away from the area they are currently at.

- Some AI might not care (like non-animals), and other creatures might go full hostile and investigate where the player's last position is (eldritch types?).

- Hitting targets far away accurately will inflict bonus damage as 'stealth damage'.

- Missing targets by landing hits around them (within 1 to 3 block radius) will trigger the same AI as if you hit them. It also cancels out any stealth bonus you have against them.

Edited January 15 by Dra6o0n