Wildlife & Underwater & Space

[Magpie]

Bugs!?!?! Starship trooper woo!!!

O wait that's the tr

[Bags]

Originally Posted by Sirisian

Precisely. It's why I've never cared much for supporting the idea of non-gameplay features.


Oh sweet. I can say the statement I like to make. "Why would a world ravaged constantly by war be covered in soldiers". Auraxis is an interesting continent. It was actually the reason I originally thought of hostile creatures. "Why would a creature attack a soldier with a gun?" and the answer was the creatures had lived thousands of years without dying and didn't know/fear an actual death. That an NTU evolution making cool things. I digress. This thread should probably focus on client-side insects and fish that can't be attacked. We have two other threads that went very in depth into NPCs/creatures.

Because they have a way to resurrect soldiers. Not much point in resurrecting the widllife if they don't need food.

[Warborn]

Originally Posted by Sirisian

Precisely. It's why I've never cared much for supporting the idea of non-gameplay features.

I honestly laughed out loud when I read this. Yeah, fuck all those non-gameplay features. Great looking, modern graphics with dynamic lighting and stuff? Realistic sound effects? Stop wasting time, SOE, we don't need that non-gameplay stuff 'round these parts! If it doesn't look and sound like something from the Commodore 64 days you guys are just screwing around.

Does anyone really need for someone to say that people like games that look good? That adding wildlife to games, whether bugs or birds or space-deer frolicking in the fields, adds a lot of vibrancy to a game and "brings the world alive"? Are these new concepts? I feel like we're probably people who've played games before and appreciate worlds which are not just totally barren save for other players.

Originally Posted by Bags

Because they have a way to resurrect soldiers. Not much point in resurrecting the widllife if they don't need food.

Whether there's a "point" is completely irrelevant. It's science fiction. But if you must have a point, consider the ecosystem of this imaginary world. Animals are an extremely important part of some plants' ecology. From insects and animals which cross-pollinate flowering plants, to seeds which need to pass through an animal's digestive tract to have their seed coat weakened enough to grow, to animals eating fruit and shitting the seeds all over the place, many species depend on animals to reproduce. Any world which has flowering plants (like the world of Auraxis does) would only have them because they depend on animals in their reproductive process.

So there you go, your perfectly unnecessary but totally logical justification for insects and animals in your made-up world of space mans and lasers.

[Shogun]

i´m totally for cosmetic wildlife.

make it scaling to playercount so all animals fade away when the zerg comes along to free up the ressources needed to show all soldiers.

and give an option to deactivate them for the whiners who don´t like their game to look good ;-)

just let the animals flee when anything comes near. hostile creatures are a nogo (the devs think our beloved spitfires are harming the pure pvp feeling, so animals would even be worse)

and i would like to know if the leafs in the trees actually show a little movement, or if they are stuck totally frozen?

[BlazingSun]

I'd rather see the dev time to be invested in important things.

[Firefly]

Do not want wildlife. NPCs (which is what they are) require computational power that could be given over to something more relevant and game-worthy. Like having more people per continent without lagging the shit out of our rigs.

[Vash02]

Originally Posted by Firefly

Do not want wildlife. NPCs (which is what they are) require computational power that could be given over to something more relevant and game-worthy. Like having more people per continent without lagging the shit out of our rigs.

They can always buy bigger servers, and the lag comes with trying to render too much on your computer. I doubt if they do do animals they wont be wondering around a full on battle.

[DayOne]

Originally Posted by Firefly

Do not want wildlife. NPCs (which is what they are) require computational power that could be given over to something more relevant and game-worthy. Like having more people per continent without lagging the shit out of our rigs.

Just have small bugs and flies rendered client side. That way they can be switched off if you really don't want them.

Personally I just want those swampy areas to feel like actual swamps, with tons of flies and such, rather then water logged forests.

[Whalenator]

Originally Posted by Warborn

I honestly laughed out loud when I read this. Yeah, fuck all those non-gameplay features. Great looking, modern graphics with dynamic lighting and stuff? Realistic sound effects? Stop wasting time, SOE, we don't need that non-gameplay stuff 'round these parts! If it doesn't look and sound like something from the Commodore 64 days you guys are just screwing around.

Truthfully I could not care less.
People play Minecraft.
People still use PS2s and N64s.
Graphics are overrated. Gameplay is where it's at.

[Sirisian]

Originally Posted by Warborn

I honestly laughed out loud when I read this. Yeah, fuck all those non-gameplay features. Great looking, modern graphics with dynamic lighting and stuff? Realistic sound effects? Stop wasting time, SOE, we don't need that non-gameplay stuff 'round these parts! If it doesn't look and sound like something from the Commodore 64 days you guys are just screwing around.

I think you took what I said to the extreme, but in a good a way. There is a balance. My point was mostly that if they're going to add in something I'd prefer that it effect gameplay which is the point Bags was making. Though it is an overused argument that can apply to anything. I mean everything the devs do has an assumed time so a priority of features and weighing the cost of each feature is something that would ultimately need to be done, but could go without saying.

Originally Posted by Bags

Because they have a way to resurrect soldiers. Not much point in resurrecting the widllife if they don't need food.

Go read the lore again. I know it's not a big part of the Planetside game, but it was created.

[Bags]

Originally Posted by Whalenator

Truthfully I could not care less.
People play Minecraft.
People still use PS2s and N64s.
Graphics are overrated. Gameplay is where it's at.

This, I'm all for immersion but gameplay comes first.

[Aaron]

Why would the wildlife (if any would be implemented) be of any "alien" type? Wouldn't have the people introduced earth wildlife to Auraxis when they made the place liveable? Surely someone brought along some dogs. Am I wrong?

[texico]

What was it about Weapon holstering that meant they decided to drop it again?


To be honest, at the stage we're at now in computational power, I'd rather see energy going in to adding immersion, like this kind of thing (ambient animals that don't affect gameplay), rather than game play. I don't know how much PS2's gameplay could honestly be improved with the energy you'd gain from not having something like this anyway. Do we need even bigger fights than we're getting? There's a point when the capacity for bigger fights becomes limited by how many players will actually be available to play and how many people would be able to fit into the range of space you're playing in at any given moment anyway.

[Sirisian]

Originally Posted by texico

What was it about Weapon holstering that meant they decided to drop it again?

Performance when a lot of players are in a region. They said having weapons on the player cost them rendering 60 players.

If you read the other threads you'll see that people falsely assumed that there would be creatures alive in the middle of a battle thus dropping the player count. Fun debate.

[Bags]

Originally Posted by texico

What was it about Weapon holstering that meant they decided to drop it again?

More weapons rendered = less players.