Hunting Should Be Tied to Progression and Adding Butchery

[moderngamer327]

Right now hunting is a very narrow gameplay system. Bows do very little damage to animals even with the Hunter. So more often than not hunting consists of chasing down animals on foot with spears and stabbing them to death. The only additional mechanic is that you harvest the game then and there with a knife. The Butchery mod adds in some good ideas but i feel some of the mechanics are gamey(no pun intended). Here is what i propose to add progression to hunting and make it more immersive
 

1. Add critical hit spots for animals like the head and heart. Make it so you get rewarded for setting up a good shot rather than running them down with a spear(This also may require making bows more accurate)
    
2. Make it so animals bleed slowly if a damage threshold is reached. This mechanically accomplishes two things. One, it makes it so bows can kill something like a deer in "one hit" if the shot and weapon is good enough without making bows mass murder machines. Two, it makes it so that larger animals become easier to hunt as you unlock better weaponry thereby tying it more directly to the progression system. It also ties in with change 1. by making it so hitting a critical hit spot with a weaker weapon allows you to reach the damage threshold when you otherwise wouldn't.
    
3. Add in hooks and the butchery table like from the Butchery mod(with a small tweak). The most immersive addition of the Butchery mod is that it makes hunting more of a complete process while simultaneously more rewarding. You *can* just use your knife but you will get less rewards than if it's butchered properly.
   
   3a. Instead of having better hooks and tables give you more meat or hide which is very gamey. Make it so that you require stronger hooks for larger size game. A rabbit or a fox can be skinned with a primitive hook, while a bear will require an iron hook. This further ties the progression system of the game into Hunting.
   
   3b. The penalties for using just a knife instead of a butchery table and hook should be smaller for smaller game and larger for larger game. This makes it so you don't feel totally obligated to setup butchery equipment immediately, while acting as a punishment later on for not doing things properly and trying to bypass the progression system.
    
4. To balance out these mechanics, make it so that hunting takes much longer while simultaneously making it more rewarding. Hunting a deer should take an entire in game day and a couple more to process, but should provide enough meat to last several days.

Overall this would make hunting a more involved, fun, immersive, and realistic process. It would require about the same time and difficulty to hunt in the earlier game but require much more time and effort in the later game, with higher tier weapons and tools required to make it worth while. It would also still allow flexibility by allowing you to get some meat on the spot from larger game.

(Bonus?) Add in stamina to animals so you can hunt the way ancient humans did through what's known as Persistence Hunting.

Edited Sunday at 06:15 AM by moderngamer327

[MKMoose]

2 hours ago, moderngamer327 said:

Add critical hit spots for animals like the head and heart. Make it so you get rewarded for setting up a good shot rather than running them down with a spear(This also may require making bows more accurate)

Head and heart are in most contexts not practical targets. It would be an arguably much better and more realistic gameplay incentive to only add a weakspot for lungs, because that is what hunters typically aim for. I do think that bows should be reworked as well.

 

2 hours ago, moderngamer327 said:

Make it so animals bleed slowly if a damage threshold is reached. This mechanically accomplishes two things. One, it makes it so bows can kill something like a deer in "one hit" if the shot and weapon is good enough without making bows mass murder machines. Two, it makes it so that larger animals become easier to hunt as you unlock better weaponry thereby tying it more directly to the progression system. It also ties in with change 1. by making it so hitting a critical hit spot with a weaker weapon allows you to reach the damage threshold when you otherwise wouldn't.

I don't think a damage threshold is a good idea here. Bleeding has two primary purposes:

• tracking,
• ensuring a kill through bleeding out.

For the purpose of tracking, bleeding should apply on every single hit, but by itself be unlikely to kill the animal unless the initial hit leaves it only on a sliver of health. For the purpose of bleedout, hitting lungs or other key areas should apply a much stronger bleeding effect which could kill the animal within ~10 s or less on a good hit, and up to around a minute if not more for weaker hits. Even when two weapons both can kill the animal in one hit consistently, a better weapon would have the advantage of faster bleedout and thereby shorter tracking distance.

 

2 hours ago, moderngamer327 said:

Add in hooks and the butchery table like from the Butchery mod(with a small tweak). The most immersive addition of the Butchery mod is that it makes hunting more of a complete process while simultaneously more rewarding. You *can* just use your knife but you will get less rewards than if it's butchered properly.

I do generally like the suggestion here, but keep in mind that the contents of the Butchering mod are not likely to be directly implemented due to concerns around gore. If we get anything, it will almost certainly be a simpler and less gory system. I personally think that most mods and suggestions tend to overcomplicate it, as it would be pretty simple to add multistage harvesting, alongside animal carry and a butchering table, in a highly flexible way with very little added complexity over the current system.

Feel free to take a look at this post of mine, among others, for both an explanation of the reasons to avoid gore, and more details of my take on how butchering could be implemented.

Also, extra mention: snares for small game and pit traps for medium game could be great, especially as a easier alternative to hunting. A lot of these changes would require serious improvements to animal AI, though.

 

2 hours ago, moderngamer327 said:

To balance out these mechanics, make it so that hunting takes much longer while simultaneously making it more rewarding. Hunting a deer should take an entire in game day and a couple more to process, but should provide enough meat to last several days.

While I find the balance of taking a couple days to process and lasting several days to be somewhat questionable, this is absolutely the key design idea that current hunting is missing. It just isn't involved and rewarding enough.

Edited Sunday at 08:06 AM by MKMoose

[Emeal]

I agree with all your suggestions, except...
Persistence Hunting took hours in the olden times, nobody would do it in the medieval times, what vintage story needs are traps and hunting dogs.

[moderngamer327]

1 hour ago, MKMoose said:

Head and heart are in most contexts not practical targets. It would be an arguably much better and more realistic gameplay incentive to only add a weakspot for lungs, because that is what hunters typically aim for. I do think that bows should be reworked as well.

True, lungs would be a better idea

1 hour ago, MKMoose said:

I don't think a damage threshold is a good idea here. Bleeding has two primary purposes:

• tracking,
• ensuring a kill through bleeding out.

For the purpose of tracking, bleeding should apply on every single hit, but by itself be unlikely to kill the animal unless the initial hit leaves it only on a sliver of health. For the purpose of bleedout, hitting lungs or other key areas should apply a much stronger bleeding effect which could kill the animal within ~10 s or less on a good hit, and up to around a minute if not more for weaker hits. Even when two weapons both can kill the animal in one hit consistently, a better weapon would have the advantage of faster bleedout and thereby shorter tracking distance.

I agree that all hits should do a small amount of bleed but i think bleeding should be where the bulk of the damage comes from. The main reason for this is to better tie in progression. If you make it so all damage does moderate amounts of bleed, then it makes killing larger game still fairly easy early game which i was trying to avoid. Perhaps a better method would be to have two levels of bleed. 
-Below damage threshold do small damage overtime while leaving a thin blood trail
-Above damage threshold do lethal amounts of damage over time while leaving a large blood trail

 

1 hour ago, MKMoose said:

I do generally like the suggestion here, but keep in mind that the contents of the Butchering mod are not likely to be directly implemented due to concerns around gore. If we get anything, it will almost certainly be a simpler and less gory system. I personally think that most mods and suggestions tend to overcomplicate it, as it would be pretty simple to add multistage harvesting, alongside animal carry and a butchering table, in a highly flexible way with very little added complexity over the current system.

Feel free to take a look at this post of mine, among others, for both an explanation of the reasons to avoid gore, and more details of my take on how butchering could be implemented.

I had no idea the gore could be an issue. That's an interesting point

1 hour ago, MKMoose said:

Also, extra mention: snares for small game and pit traps for medium game could be great, especially as a easier alternative to hunting. A lot of these changes would require serious improvements to animal AI, though.

These would also be great additions

1 hour ago, MKMoose said:

 

While I find the balance of taking a couple days to process and lasting several days to be somewhat questionable, this is absolutely the key design idea that current hunting is missing. It just isn't involved and rewarding enough.

When i say multiple days for processing that's mostly for deer and larger, and i also meant for time like drying not multiple days of active work

[moderngamer327]

47 minutes ago, Emeal said:

I agree with all your suggestions, except...
Persistence Hunting took hours in the olden times, nobody would do it in the medieval times, what vintage story needs are traps and hunting dogs.

It was mostly meant as a joke, but it would be very funny if you could decide to walk for a day and just free kill game lol