SnapJelly Posted 7 hours ago Report Posted 7 hours ago Hello, Currently in game chickens are the only animal that drops feathers and the feathers are only really used for arrows and a quil so in practice mostly arrows, and I had some thoughts about it. Firstly, chickens can drop between 8 and 16 feathers while irl chickens only have 10 primary flight feathers, which are the feathers you'd need for arrows. You could find one with less than 10 if they end up losing one or one gets damaged or something but you wouldn't find 16 usable feathers on any bird irl. Second, irl chicken feathers aren't actually used for arrows really because they are too small. Typically feathers for arrows are goose or turkey feathers. Which brings me to my 2nd suggestion which is the inclusion of other fowl, I am probably not the first person to suggest this but I think it's a little strange chickens have a unique meat drop that no other animal has while ''redmeat'' is dropped by most other things. Other fowl would add other sources of poultry and eggs to the game and animals like cassowary could even form a threat to the player much like sheep are. Waterfowl like ducks would also be very interesting to see on the water as opposed to just fish. Different kinds of fowl could be balanced so that they produce less eggs than chickens but produce more usefull feathers or more meat so the player is incentivized to try both. Different types of feathers might also be used to craft different quality arrows. Perhaps chicken feathers might still be used for arrows but larger feathers create stronger arrows or arrows with a smaller break chance? Other uses for feathers might be: 1) Bedding (technically irl you wouldn't use flight feathers for these so you'd have to strike a balance between realism and gameplay of course) 2) Decoration obviously 3) Fertilizer 1
LadyWYT Posted 7 hours ago Report Posted 7 hours ago Welcome to the forums! Birds are still on the roadmap, and there's likely still other animals yet to be added to further flesh out the world. There are other livestock fowls that could be considered flightless for gameplay purposes, as well as wild birds like the cassowary that are entirely flightless. However, it's important to consider that while domesticated geese and ducks might not fly very well, their wild counterparts do, in addition to migrating, so it would be just a little bit disappointing to have wild waterfowl that acts the same as domesticated. Additionally, some of the flightless bird options, like the cassowary, are found in more specific environments like the tropics or warmer regions of the world, so they're not likely to be much of an option on a standard playthrough. It also takes quite a bit of time to model, animate, texture, and code new entities, so while new creatures are always nice to have it's also resources that aren't being used to develop other aspects of the game, such as new mechanics or story content. 19 minutes ago, SnapJelly said: Second, irl chicken feathers aren't actually used for arrows really because they are too small. Typically feathers for arrows are goose or turkey feathers. Right, but keep in mind it's also a videogame. Arrows are meant to be fairly easy for the player to create, which means that the crafting materials also need to be fairly easy to find as well. Maybe when more bird variety is introduced, the rules on which birds drop usable feathers for fletching(or other purposes) might change(ie, you're not going to kill a songbird and get anything useful), but overall I would expect the rules to remain rather simple. It's easier to code and saves on file size to just make all decently sized birds drop a generic feather item for crafting, than it is to make several different feather variants for each bird type and then further restrict which variants can be used for which recipes.
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