Hey, Anet, I've got a beef to grind
Sunday, July 19th, 2015 08:29![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cashewDear Anet and Guild Wars2 developers,
Can we please make the wildlife non-aggressive? Especially the predators? I get that you need aggressive mobs to keep the players on their toes, but I think it's kind of irresponsible to make the wildlife aggressive, when you already have non-aggressive ones. In fact, that you made the herbivorous animals non-aggressive and the predatory ones aggressive shows your utter lack of understanding of animal behavior.
As a general rule, all wildlife are non-aggressive towards humans. The only ones that are aggressive tend to be the ones who learn that humans are easy prey. Hence the stories of man-eating tigers. But they are, in fact, the exception, not the rule. Most wild animals would rather take the flight option over the fight option during most confrontations. The only exception to this is during mating season in many herbivorous species, where there is a heightened aggression in the males towards any perceived enemies. To the point where they will even attack their predators to show off to the females how strong and viable they are (and then get eaten if they're not as strong as they're trying to show themselves off to be).
As a rule, predatory animals do not engage with anything aggressively to avoid unnecessary injury. Injury could mean no more hunting and no more food. Even when hunting, predatory animals pick easy to kill individuals, such as the old, the young, or the sickly. A strapping, healthy buck in the middle of rut is not going to be on a predator's menu.
What I'm trying to say here is that those aggressive animals you've coded into the game, such as the leopards, wolves, bears, hyenas, are not, in real life, the most likely to attack you. In fact, the more likely source of wild life attack are from those animals you've coded as non-threatening, such as the moa, deer, moose, etc. Those are the ones who are more likely to charge you with no provocation simply because you got too close for comfort. The predators, especially if they're full, are much less likely to give a shit about a human that's passing by unless said human approached them in a threatening manner. Otherwise, you'll probably just get ignored.
And it's bad enough that predators have such a bad reputation that almost every single predatory animal out there is on the endangered species list. I mean, seriously, that's how bad it's gotten. As a game that prides itself on breaking the usual game meta (such as having gay characters, or avoiding chain mail bikini for the female characters, etc.), how about you also break this "predatory animals are dangerous" trope, too? With all the environmentalist messages in your game, isn't it a little hypocritical to turn around and encourage players to run around slaughtering wildlife?
I don't mind killing the evil animals, the wargs and icebroods and drakes and skelks, but when it comes to things like sharks, barracudas, bears, wolves, leopards, etc., can we at least have the choice of not killing them because all we wanted was the mine that iron node? Hell, even piranhas aren't all that interested in human flesh (experimentally proven - piranhas don't bother attacking humans, they prefer smaller fish). It would be nice if you could stop perpetuating this falsehood about this aggressive wildlife that we must eliminate or they'd eliminate us.
Wild animals have it hard enough as it is, predators especially so because humans have an irrational fear of them for no scientifically justifiable reason. The least you could do is discourage your players from slaughtering the virtual ones in your game.
Hoping you see the light,
Cashew
Can we please make the wildlife non-aggressive? Especially the predators? I get that you need aggressive mobs to keep the players on their toes, but I think it's kind of irresponsible to make the wildlife aggressive, when you already have non-aggressive ones. In fact, that you made the herbivorous animals non-aggressive and the predatory ones aggressive shows your utter lack of understanding of animal behavior.
As a general rule, all wildlife are non-aggressive towards humans. The only ones that are aggressive tend to be the ones who learn that humans are easy prey. Hence the stories of man-eating tigers. But they are, in fact, the exception, not the rule. Most wild animals would rather take the flight option over the fight option during most confrontations. The only exception to this is during mating season in many herbivorous species, where there is a heightened aggression in the males towards any perceived enemies. To the point where they will even attack their predators to show off to the females how strong and viable they are (and then get eaten if they're not as strong as they're trying to show themselves off to be).
As a rule, predatory animals do not engage with anything aggressively to avoid unnecessary injury. Injury could mean no more hunting and no more food. Even when hunting, predatory animals pick easy to kill individuals, such as the old, the young, or the sickly. A strapping, healthy buck in the middle of rut is not going to be on a predator's menu.
What I'm trying to say here is that those aggressive animals you've coded into the game, such as the leopards, wolves, bears, hyenas, are not, in real life, the most likely to attack you. In fact, the more likely source of wild life attack are from those animals you've coded as non-threatening, such as the moa, deer, moose, etc. Those are the ones who are more likely to charge you with no provocation simply because you got too close for comfort. The predators, especially if they're full, are much less likely to give a shit about a human that's passing by unless said human approached them in a threatening manner. Otherwise, you'll probably just get ignored.
And it's bad enough that predators have such a bad reputation that almost every single predatory animal out there is on the endangered species list. I mean, seriously, that's how bad it's gotten. As a game that prides itself on breaking the usual game meta (such as having gay characters, or avoiding chain mail bikini for the female characters, etc.), how about you also break this "predatory animals are dangerous" trope, too? With all the environmentalist messages in your game, isn't it a little hypocritical to turn around and encourage players to run around slaughtering wildlife?
I don't mind killing the evil animals, the wargs and icebroods and drakes and skelks, but when it comes to things like sharks, barracudas, bears, wolves, leopards, etc., can we at least have the choice of not killing them because all we wanted was the mine that iron node? Hell, even piranhas aren't all that interested in human flesh (experimentally proven - piranhas don't bother attacking humans, they prefer smaller fish). It would be nice if you could stop perpetuating this falsehood about this aggressive wildlife that we must eliminate or they'd eliminate us.
Wild animals have it hard enough as it is, predators especially so because humans have an irrational fear of them for no scientifically justifiable reason. The least you could do is discourage your players from slaughtering the virtual ones in your game.
Hoping you see the light,
Cashew
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no subject
Date: 2015-07-19 18:33 (UTC)Also, I don't think normal drakes are evil, just the orrian undead ones. They're just giant lizards.
no subject
Date: 2015-07-21 21:52 (UTC)I think drakes are supposed to be mini-dragons. I mean, drakes don't exist in real life, I'm pretty sure. They're supposed to be mythological animals that have, at least in western culture, a distinctly evil bent. They're supposed to be dragon-esque, just not as large. Sometimes drakes and dragons are interchangeable words. Anyway, my point is just that "drake" is a word that already has a negative connotation. Otherwise, they would've just called 'em lizards.
no subject
Date: 2015-07-22 00:46 (UTC)There doesn't seem to be any hints in lore that they're intrinsically evil rather than behaving like any other wild animal. Otherwise they wouldn't be a charmable pet category.
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Date: 2015-07-22 18:27 (UTC)As for devourers, I have no preference either way, precisely because they don't exist in real life. :p
As for the drake, I'm referring to the common use of the word. Otherwise, one would argue the warg technically is just a pig/wolf hybrid, like any other wildlife. Same with skelks, they're just mythological geckos. But given that the word "drake" is used as a synonym for dragon, I'm fine with drakes being aggressive.
Also, I don't think you can use the newbie area as a measuring stick. everything is non-aggressive in the newbie area. Even the jungle wurms are non-aggressive.
no subject
Date: 2015-07-22 23:30 (UTC)There are also non-aggro drakes in higher level areas. All the charmable junvenile ones, for instance, including the juvenile reef drakes in Southsun Cove (lvl 80 zone).
Ergo, GW drakes are meant to be animals, not intrinsically evil critters. Same for devourers, for much the same reason. Also, tellingly, the warg is not a charmable pig-type.
no subject
Date: 2015-07-24 14:23 (UTC)If that were the case, then all non-sapient creatures ought to be considered regular animals and non-aggressive, yet we make the exception for wargs. I don't buy that. Furthermore, just because they get coded (mechanically) as neutral doesn't mean they aren't necessarily evil. E.g. the raisen hand, bone whips, and fish heads are all coded neutral (yellow), yet, they are clearly evil. So, I don't think we can use game mechanics to determine whether the programmers intended the creatures to be evil or not.
However, if the mechanic makes it so that I am forced to fight off the creature, then the meta of the game is implying that these creatures are aggressive, even if it's clear that the creators didn't think things through; it's especially weird to be killing wolves/bears/leopards as a Norn character, given that these animals are worshiped as spirits. There's an internal inconsistency at play here, hence calling them out for hypocrisy.
But that doesn't mean that I don't think the creatures such as drakes were meant to be super aggressive angry magical creatures, as opposed to the IRL creatures, like the wolves and bears. For me, there is a definite difference between a mythical creature vs. actually existing animals, even if some of those mythical creatures are supposed to be magical homologues of real world creatures.
(On the other hand, I can totally buy giant spiders preying on humans. Spiders are pretty indiscriminate hunters that will eat anything they can overpower, hungry or not. Insects in general I can buy being more indiscriminately aggressive because they have tiny brains and are indiscriminately aggressive in real life.)
no subject
Date: 2015-07-25 03:13 (UTC)For elementals, they do have an existing category they fall into - summons, just like the necro's minions, the guardian's spirit weapons, the mesmer's illusions (and hopefully the engineer's drones)...
The only critters I see in GW which are "naturally" evil are the ones specifically denoted as such in the name or lore. Eg. the branded devourers, risen drakes, icebrood fish, destroyer crabs, mordrem wolves, etc. For everything else there's a line between evil and being aggressive towards the player.
I do agree that a lot of critters who are by default aggressive towards the player probably shouldn't be when you move beyond the generic gaming/fantasy expectations. In fact, if you make it so the only mobs that should be naturally aggressive are the ones that should have an in-lore reason - eg. All of the dragon-corrupted critters, the racial enemies, unfriendly groups of lesser races, etc. - there'd still plenty of mobs to make travelling dangerous.
Unfortunately, I doubt Anet is going to go that way with GW2. There's not really a lot of demand for it.
no subject
Date: 2015-07-26 17:36 (UTC)But more importantly, Drones? Engineer gets drones?! So are we basically getting moving turrets? o.O I'm...kind of excited about this. If we can throw hammers, I think that would be perfect. (Mostly because every single engineer set up is for melee range; even the mortar kit, which can only really hit anything at melee. We really need some viable long range options.)
I do think that it'd be nicer if the only aggressive ones have actual reason (being evil). There's no reason why wildlife is randomly attacking you. Hell, even if they set up the ornery crab mechanic, I can deal with that. Have the wildlife threaten you to give you some time and if you continue to approach, then make them aggressive. (BTW, sometimes I run around bloodtide coast just to threaten ornery crabs for fun. XD)