Animal Congestion Fix

[Wiro 370]

It works fine on Epic.

[Miretta 1,415]

honestly, it seems to work where iam on indie...I had a rat invasion lately, but else I see alot of different animals roaming around(mostly aggro) the only - point I see is, that there seems to be missing variety in status all rats here are slow rats, most animals are aged/venerable or old...I really really rarely see a young wild animal

[BobMcKnob 46]

I personally see no reason to keep an enormous amount of animals. But I do believe that there is a cap and that aggressive and non aggressive are both included in that cap and that hoarding animals just for the sake of doing so is bad for everyone. So sure, Rolf implements this fix, and what happens? The people that were hoarding and not taking care of them lost a lot. And that just made room for new people to do the same thing. Check the mrtg data on creatures for the 3 servers that were open at the tame, it's the exact same across all 3, nothing really changed.

Independence:

Deliverance:

Exodus:

As a side note, I have been starting to see occasional spawns in the wild, boars and deer both.

[Wulfgar 1,119]

unicorns. unicorns everywhere...

Just as before, since unicorns (only?) spawn from lairs.

It works fine on Epic.

Yeah, but I think it worked fine on Epic before the "fix" which is also the reason this isn't really a priority.

honestly, it seems to work where iam on indie...I had a rat invasion lately, but else I see alot of different animals roaming around(mostly aggro) the only - point I see is, that there seems to be missing variety in status all rats here are slow rats, most animals are aged/venerable or old...I really really rarely see a young wild animal

When Rolf made it possible for animals/monsters to spawn at different ages, it really appears like most animals spawn at venerable, aged or old, rather than young, mature and adolescent. That is another problem though that should be adjusted.

As a side note, I have been starting to see occasional spawns in the wild, boars and deer both.

Deer spawn from lairs, and boars spawn was boosted fairly recently and they don't count towards any cap as they are special kingdom/god animals.

To clarify: The problem was and is still that domestic animals does not spawn in the wild. We are talking about animals that spawn from tiles, not lairs, that means horses, cows, bulls, pigs, hens, pheasants and roosters.

When is the last time anyone saw one of these animals in the wilderness (on the Freedom Isles server cluster)?

Personally, it is almost a year ago now since I saw one (Deliverance).

[ReaverKane 363]

Last time i saw a pheasant was like 3 months ago, but then again those are hard to see... I've seen roaming calves just a week ago.

Biggest issue with these is that Rolf, like many people, seems to think the best bet is through negative reinforcement (make it harder to keep the animals, so people will start having less, and this has been applied in almost every patch on animal husbandry), while he should be focusing on making it easier to get good animals, and keep a decent stock with less animals. But its the other way around, dificulty is the same, or even harder, and what happens is that people start taking up more space with animals (less animals and space for others to settle) and keeping the same, or even larger numbers to make up for the loss of animals from the harshness of the measures.

(Ie. More animals die from disease, so what would a guy that has 10 animals on a 15 tile field? He'll make 2x1 pens for the animals, thus taking up 20 tiles for the same 10 animals, and he'l probably increase his stock, culling, releasing or selling less animals, so that he can keep his numbers despite some of them dying).

[Masochist 3]

I am new here...so I am not speaking from experience but instead logic. The way I see it...nerfing the ability to keep lots of animals is more usefal than making it easier.

Basically from readng this thread I have seen a legitamite nerf passed down to help alleviate the issue of no wild animals running around and everyone is just crying that it hurts them.

So I am really confused what the issue is? I would rather have a game with wild animals and actually having some difficulty involved with keeping tamed ones around. Especially when it comes to people that have hordes of animals that go missing for months on end. Add in no player conflict (on the non PvP servers) combined with no resets? you end up with a stale game economy and worse yet a game where the wilderness has not wild animals besides bears and things that want to eat you.

I would say a fluid and realistic method like that which has been presented (aging, diseases, feeding from enchanted grass no longer infinite) is much better than some gamey "cap" on players that has no real rhyme or reason besides as a stop gap to a larger issue.

When it comes to that person taking up more space and animals? well I guess there isnt an in game system that allows players to exert legal power over one another (IE a mayor of a village assigning plots of land to people) which I suppose it could use. Especially on non PvP servers where you cant destroy or cull player resources.

[atazs 965]

Lots of animals on chaos like horses, cows, bulls, pigs,pheasants etc...

[Xalorum 765]

When is the last time anyone saw one of these animals in the wilderness (on the Freedom Isles server cluster)?

When Cele opened there were a ton, and I saw probably a dozen pheasants, and I even grabbed a few bison, which I still have. Horses were everywhere. Now, I haven't seen any of those on cele in quite a long time anywhere near my area.

[Amber 337]

On the southern part of Indy, can't speak for more than that area I travel alot, I've seen zero non aggro wild spawns. The non aggro spawn seemed to get borked with whatever change it was that caused the rainbow unicorn invasion & it hasn't returned to normal since. At least before then I was seeing wild horses, pigs, & phesants on the steppes. Nothing since but unicorns as far as blues go.

So, no, as far as I can tell this latest nerf has done nothing to raise non aggro numbers on Indy. But then IMO it wasn't hoarders that were the problem this time. It was a code change Rolf made that messed up the spawn rate.

[ReaverKane 363]

I am new here...so I am not speaking from experience but instead logic. The way I see it...nerfing the ability to keep lots of animals is more usefal than making it easier.

Basically from readng this thread I have seen a legitamite nerf passed down to help alleviate the issue of no wild animals running around and everyone is just crying that it hurts them.

So I am really confused what the issue is? I would rather have a game with wild animals and actually having some difficulty involved with keeping tamed ones around. Especially when it comes to people that have hordes of animals that go missing for months on end. Add in no player conflict (on the non PvP servers) combined with no resets? you end up with a stale game economy and worse yet a game where the wilderness has not wild animals besides bears and things that want to eat you.

I would say a fluid and realistic method like that which has been presented (aging, diseases, feeding from enchanted grass no longer infinite) is much better than some gamey "cap" on players that has no real rhyme or reason besides as a stop gap to a larger issue.

When it comes to that person taking up more space and animals? well I guess there isnt an in game system that allows players to exert legal power over one another (IE a mayor of a village assigning plots of land to people) which I suppose it could use. Especially on non PvP servers where you cant destroy or cull player resources.

Wiser person wouldn't speak of what they don't know...

Wild horses pose no real gain, except for new players, or simply for looks. Also the problem is that the "legitimate" nerfs, this one is just the latest attempt towards this issue, have just made it so that players need more animals than before.

I'll explain:

Around a Year and a half ago, when i started breeding, If you had 2 horses with all the traits you wanted, they would breed, and you'd have pretty much those same traits guaranteed. This way a comercial breeder (one that would breed to sell) would just require 2-3 couples of these horses and would have 3 all traited foals regularly, no worries about consanguinity, about them being eaten by aggros while you ride them, etc.

Nowadays, although the new skill-related breding system is more realistic, Rolf took it one step further and added consanguinity. So now, to lower the number of bad traits one has to get more breeding couples, so that their descendants can be bred as well without risking a penalty. So now from 2-3 pairs, one needs 5-6 pairs to make sure that on the long run you don't cross brothers.

Plus, you have a real risk that your horse will get killed quite easily by wild animals, which means you need to have extra horses to ride, because one can't risk that their breeders die. So +1 horse per villager (maybe a extra 2 for carts).

Then, you could have 20 horses on a 5x5 enclosure, now, because of extra virulence of disease, players need a 20x2 row of pens for those same 20 horses without risking death.

So, please, use that logic again to explain how is it that these nerfs help stop hoarding of animals, and land grabs?

Edited July 28, 2012 by ReaverKane

[Ecrir 887]

Yeah, several of the nerfs have simply forced people to keep more horses, realism is fine and all until it starts getting in the way. I'd say the inbreeding thing is certainly getting in the way since you need way more horses due to it, It also really doesn't make the breeding any more interesting. It just forces the player to do a whole load of bookkeeping to make sure they don't breed the wrong horses. Fun stuff, bookkeeping, that's what we all play Wurm for, right? For the bookkeeping

I've said it before and I'll say it again, scrap the inbreeding stuff already so people don't need as many horses.

Edited July 28, 2012 by Ecrir

[Masochist 3]

So, please, use that logic again to explain how is it that these nerfs help stop hoarding of animals, and land grabs?

A wiser person would read my post before lashing out at me

When it comes to that person taking up more space and animals? well I guess there isnt an in game system that allows players to exert legal power over one another (IE a mayor of a village assigning plots of land to people) which I suppose it could use. Especially on non PvP servers where you cant destroy or cull player resources.

IE it DOES NOT. There needs to be a way to prevent that...but this is a step towards helping alleviate the issue as a whole in my opinion.

[Wraithglow 787]

I personally see no reason to keep an enormous amount of animals. But I do believe that there is a cap and that aggressive and non aggressive are both included in that cap and that hoarding animals just for the sake of doing so is bad for everyone. So sure, Rolf implements this fix, and what happens? The people that were hoarding and not taking care of them lost a lot. And that just made room for new people to do the same thing. Check the mrtg data on creatures for the 3 servers that were open at the tame, it's the exact same across all 3, nothing really changed.

<snip: pics of stats>

As a side note, I have been starting to see occasional spawns in the wild, boars and deer both.

These graphs don't really explain anything. The caps weren't changed, so of course the numbers of animals returned to the same again. The graph doesn't say how many of those are wild, or penned.

Also i pointed out unicorns everywhere because there seem to be MORE than before, and they must count towards one of the caps, regardless of whether they come from lairs or not. If the spawn rate of unis wasn't changed, then clearly the nerf must have had an effect or there wouldn't be so many more spawn slots for unis to take up.

I'm not trying to say whether the change was good or bad, just observing the effects I have seen recently.

[ReaverKane 363]

These graphs don't really explain anything. The caps weren't changed, so of course the numbers of animals returned to the same again. The graph doesn't say how many of those are wild, or penned.

Also i pointed out unicorns everywhere because there seem to be MORE than before, and they must count towards one of the caps, regardless of whether they come from lairs or not. If the spawn rate of unis wasn't changed, then clearly the nerf must have had an effect or there wouldn't be so many more spawn slots for unis to take up.

I'm not trying to say whether the change was good or bad, just observing the effects I have seen recently.

Granted, i've been seeing lots of unicorns, but before that i saw lots of lava spiders, before that lots of trolls... So, yeah, i don't think this made any real changes...

A wiser person would read my post before lashing out at me

IE it DOES NOT. There needs to be a way to prevent that...but this is a step towards helping alleviate the issue as a whole in my opinion.

I did read your post, YOU on the other hand, apparently didn't. THIS isn't a step towards alleviating the problem at all, it just duplicated the area breeders use with pens. So again, please explain where you see the problem alleviated.

[Masochist 3]

I never said it was alleviated.

I am saying its a step towards it...which means these changes need to be combined with another change or set of changes to alleviate the issue.

[ReaverKane 363]

I never said it was alleviated.

I am saying its a step towards it...which means these changes need to be combined with another change or set of changes to alleviate the issue.

A step towards alleviating something that makes it worse, is not a step towards, its a step away.

[Masochist 3]

I think you are just so busy whining that you cant seem to accept that its something that will likely get adjusted anyways. You really need to chill out and its a shame that the first set of posts I ever make on this forum are dealing with you in such a manner. Its clear that you HAVE to be right about something. So have it cause i am done arguing with you especially when I didnt ever have a problem with you...you just seemed rather touchy that I suggested its not as bad as you make it seem lol

[BobMcKnob 46]

Well that escalated rather quickly didn't it?

Masochist, stay on board, there's nothing quite like a new perspective for fresh ideas.

And you should all take a step back and take those points individually, you aren't going to get anywhere, with anyone, by arguing about anything. There is no point in going at each others throats when we all have the same goal in mind, solving a problem, it just detracts from the issue at hand. Now is our chance to report what we see in game on a regular, day to day basis and to make note of how the changes have affected things and what they have affected.

On that note, does anyone have any proof positive info on how spawning works? And why wouldn't creatures from lairs count towards the cap?

And yes, there have been tons of unicorns and spiders, even a wolf isn't all that common. I actually level fighting from 50 to 70 almost entirely on unicorns in an attempt to help with that, but they spawned faster than I could kill them. The desert had more unicorns than crocs and scorps combined. Does that seem right?

[ReaverKane 363]

Well that escalated rather quickly didn't it?

Masochist, stay on board, there's nothing quite like a new perspective for fresh ideas.

And you should all take a step back and take those points individually, you aren't going to get anywhere, with anyone, by arguing about anything. There is no point in going at each others throats when we all have the same goal in mind, solving a problem, it just detracts from the issue at hand. Now is our chance to report what we see in game on a regular, day to day basis and to make note of how the changes have affected things and what they have affected.

On that note, does anyone have any proof positive info on how spawning works? And why wouldn't creatures from lairs count towards the cap?

And yes, there have been tons of unicorns and spiders, even a wolf isn't all that common. I actually level fighting from 50 to 70 almost entirely on unicorns in an attempt to help with that, but they spawned faster than I could kill them. The desert had more unicorns than crocs and scorps combined. Does that seem right?

From my experience since the patch that added aged creatures and increased the frequency of "rare" mobs, it seems that out of like 2-3 different lairs in one region, only 1 or 2 of the same type will spawn, and will spawn the same type of animals, usualy exclusively of one rare type.

So a month ago all i got was angry or alert lava spiders, now its raging and angry unicorns, plus some normal spiders a bit further away. With the random greenish cave bug (which were spawning before the unicorns started).

its really hard to see if this unicorn spree is due to the disease change (which i doubt, since when i first started on exo there was a simmilar spree going, then later a deer spree ensued, not even counting the troll spree - in which i had to use my guards to help me kill 2 champions in a row - or more recently the lava spider ones), or most likely, just how spawns work now.

[BobMcKnob 46]

Just had a random Idea, we could possibly organize a server wide hunting trip, killing off, say unicorns, or anything that moves, and see if the spawns reset. Place some boats at good spots ahead of time to easily cross places en masse, load the boats with cotton and healing covers, see what happens.

[ReaverKane 363]

Leave my unicorns alone... I need the leather Xp

A few weeks ago, me and my bro killed around 40 unicorns in a couple hours, untill we stopped seeing any more unicorns, but then the day after numbers were back...

[BobMcKnob 46]

Oh we can bring those with us as well....I haven't hit 90 yet.

[Amber 337]

I did several mass unicorn kills, every single one I could find, on a steppe that used to be covered with horses & just a few unicorns. It does no good. Wipe the steppes clean of unicorns and the next day they are back in the same numbers.

Now, hell horses have taken over that particular steppe & they work the same way, kill them all off & they just come right back. Although I will say that the hell horses do not respawn overnight like the unicorns. It usually takes a day or two for their numbers to return to what they were.

I have to point out that up until the unicorn invasion the steppe I'm talking about was the best place on Indy that I've ever found to find a diversity of animals in one location. There used to be cows, phesants, pigs, deer, bears, scorps, spiders, trolls, lion, cats, wolves, & lava fiends there. Almost overnight it went to being almost exclusively covered in unicorns & spiders then that changed to hell horses with just a few unicorns & spiders. I have not seen a wild non aggro of any kind, other than unicorns, since.

As much as I like the idea of a mass hunt my own experiments in trying to "fix" the crazy spawns says it won't work.

[Cataleya 5]

Nerfs are not bad things.

That said, what I'm seeing a lot of in this thread is, "Well, now I need to keep even more horses to breed because [etc, etc..]" and the first thing that pops into my mind is, "Why aren't you cross-breeding your horses with your neighbors?" It's not like you don't have neighbors. I'm a new player, and I'm married to Epic, but even over here it took me a good long time to get out and away from highly developed areas that, yes, did have several people logged in through the local. Each town usually had multiple farms with horses and cattle.

The number of domesticated horses should be much lower -- the ratio of "crap to awesome" should be such that, yes, a truly diligent breeder could make a name for themselves by selling quality animals. And by "truly diligent", I mean someone who logs in very regularly and whose main skills are aligned to animal breeding.

The game needs to facilitate cooperation between players for better breeding. Right now, it is simply easier and more straight-forward to shove 50 horses onto a small parcel of land and breed them into insanity. There are NO incentives for going out of your way and arranging for a proper breeding program with another player, paying for stud, or requesting foals from known quality mares. One possible way is to allow ownership to be established through the use of individual brands, which can be used to identify a new horse with a given farm (of course, you'd have to keep players from creating multiple brands willy-nilly..it's just an idea) -- animals bred from differently-owned farms/stables/kennels will have a chance at unique, positive traits that can only be attained this way.

In-breeding is bad, but only after serveral successive generations (after which, you start to see spontaneous, truly cripling genes pop up). While I get the suspicion this goes way more into the feature than Rolf may actually like, there needs to be real support for pedigrees and lineage tracking. I mean, that's what breeding is really all about -- its getting desired results through attentive matching over a period of time, not pick A & B and C & D just because they're unrelated. Maybe one day, this can be taken a step forward to allow for purposeful breeding -- those crappy wild horses who would sooner kick your face in than let you ride them can be transformed into effective, highly prized (and rare/sellable) warhorses or sturdy, serviceable draft horses that can pull even the heaviest of carts without pitching a fit about it (but obviously, not out of the same line!). Once you have that in, you can make it so its desireable to have these animals (go hitch a wild mustang to a cart and tell me what happens). Other animals would then become useful -- dogs into writ- and deed-aware guard- and wardogs, or fast, responsive hunting hounds. Cattle and pigs that produce higher quantities of high-quality meats and are far more docile (easier slaughter).

Edited July 31, 2012 by Cataleya

[Masochist 3]

+1 to the above post. TRUE breeding and lineage would be a huge boon for the breeding aspects of the game. I bet it would even encourage culling bad farm animals more too. Meaning less farm animal spam and at least more focused lines of animal succession using a handful of prized animals.

Edited July 31, 2012 by Masochist