Animal aggression level varying by season and individual animal

[eMander]

Right now, wolves and bears, I think, are excessively aggressive, with any and all of them attempting to kill you upon detection. To make the mechanic a bit more realistic, as well as causing more uncertainty-induced tension, I propose this:

Each time an animal spawns, they would also be given one of four random temperaments: skittish, calm, touchy, or aggressive.

Skittish animals would immediately try to run from the player upon detecting them. Most animals would switch to skittish if their health went low enough.

Calm animals will generally ignore the player, even if they are right next to them. However, if the player attacks them, they will immediately become aggressive and try to attack the player.

Touchy animals, upon detecting the player, will first try to warn them away (for instance, a wolf would growl). If the player does not approach further, the animal will continue to hold its ground and warn them for up to 20 seconds, then become aggressive. If the player continues to approach past a certain threshold, the animal will immediately become aggressive. But if the player retreats, the animal will resume its previous activities.

And of course, aggressive animals will immediately try to pursue and attack the player upon detection.

Different species would have different probability tables for spawning as different temperaments. As a few examples:
Rabbits would always spawn skittish, and not change that when attacked. Small carnivores such as raccoons and foxes would be most likely to spawn skittish, but sometimes spawn calm, and rarely spawn touchy, without ever spawning aggressive. Wolves' and bears' temperament likelyhoods would vary by season. In the summer, they would mostly spawn as calm or touchy, but spawn aggressive more frequently in the winter (when food would be more scarce, so they'd have more motivation to hunt you).

Animals with their young nearby would be more likely to be touchy or aggressive.

Animals that spawn in groups would be more likely spawn with the same temperament as one-another.

I think this could make the game's wildlife interactions much more immersive, and create more seasonal variation in playstyle.

[Thorfinn]

Cool idea. Definitely should be a mod, not base game. The lore itself talks about animals becoming more aggressive as history unfolded, though I have not seen anything that reaches the level of causality.

It was not to make the coding easier -- they already have those various behaviors coded. Rabbits, foxes, sheep sun/panda bears, wolves and other bears already form largely your continuum of aggressive behavior. They could have "randomly" assigned behavior tendencies mapped to those those characteristics as easily as they did fur color. Yet they did not. Whether it's true or not Ockham argues that was just not the game experience Tyron wanted to create.

But, again, fairly easily moddable. Just as a rabbit's fur color is stored in the data structure and does not change, so could his behavior.