Animals

Quote from Grey

It would be cool if you could push animals into a pen, and breed them and make more animals for meat and cooking later on.

Maybe they could add a leash system. Pushing would be too much like something else.

I think it would be great to have livestock in a pen which can be breed to supply yourself / group with meat, milk, leather etc.. But I want to see limits on this so it isn't abused to the point where it's causing server lag lol. Maybe you can only breed so many of one type of animal, until some are killed off or die. But also limiting how many animals total can be kept in one area at a time would be necessary.

Also, it should be fairly difficult to get wild animals back to your pens. So I would be against a leash for anything other than maybe an already tamed dog, possibly an already tamed horse. To make it a challenge, for the others it would make sense to me that they would need to be herded back to your pens. This means you would have to be creative with your fence designs in order to make it easier on yourself. Think funnel.

There is a sim game (I'll let you figure it out) that allows you to have hundreds if not thousands of any type of animal. The thing is, it only renders about 10 of them. If you have less than 10, it only shows the exact amount you have. You can have as many as you can afford (to buy and/or feed), but the game only ever has to show 10 actual rendered critters. Makes for far less lag. You could do the same and just once you lead or push or lure the animals in, a little sign pops up on the gate with an image of a COW for example. Then you could just toggle that sign (as if opening a chest) to see your stats. Food, number of animals, births, deaths, etc. Without lag and without limiting the player.

I personally would LOVE to see taming animals be done in a realistic way. You have to lay out treats, get them used to coming to eat. Lure them into gated pasture and let them get used to being in there, then once you have some pretty much staying in there most of the time, you can close the gate and begin to actually tame them at that point. It makes the process longer and more real. Plus you get to login every day and see how many new critters you've lured into your pasture. Which just makes the game more exciting and rewarding, I think.

Side Note: I LOVE the idea of thieving raccoons. It'd be cool if you could make those pets as well because raccoons are adorable. MONSTERS, but adorable.

I hope to see tamable:
Horses that can be ridden and trained and bred and ALL that. (I've been dying for a game that actually incorporates horse breeding with different breeds that actually impact how the horses act and move and stuff. Draft horses for working, etc. Clydesdales! Please! Please Dev GODS gimmie Clydesdales!)
Dogs,
Cows,
Pigs,
Wolves (Even tamable ones! Wolves make better guard-beasts if you can tame them without dying!)
Donkeys -- Would move slower but could carry larger loads perhaps?
Mules -- Same as above.
Chickens.
Sheep (Wool coats anyone?)
I'm probably forgetting loads of important food/clothing animals.

Different animals are attracted to different stuff maybe? Like you could make hay bales for cows, salt licks for horses, slop for pigs, goats.... um... anything and everything? I don't know lol

That list sounds straight out of MC. I want to play a different, unique game.
Don't know about 'pushing' animals. I picture it like trying to push a rope. Herding sounds better. "Creative" luring sounds even better, salt licks, etc.
(Maybe a herding dog, but please, no "wheat". Been there, done that.)

Yeah no "hold this and they will follow..." haha. Not sure I like the idea of seeing 10 cows, but in reality there are hundreds. It's just too much and OP. Some balance needs to be found once this feature is in the game. How many cows in one area starts to cause lag for client? How many cause lag for server?

I like the idea of leaving something in the pen to lure them in, like their favorite food. But it would be nice if the herding option was available also. Or maybe herding works for some, but others you need to lure...

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That list sounds straight out of MC. I want to play a different, unique game.

I wouldn't know. I never played MC. I lived through those graphics way back when they were the best there was. I do not ever want to see those kinds of graphics again and I cannot believe people willingly expose themselves to them lol.

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I like the idea of leaving something in the pen to lure them in, like their favorite food. But it would be nice if the herding option was available also. Or maybe herding works for some, but others you need to lure...

Maybe add the ability to herd them after they're tamed?

Quote from CrystalTears83

Maybe add the ability to herd them after they're tamed?

I suggested herding as a way to get animals into the pen a few posts back there.

1000's of animals represented by 10 or so? What you could do is have them merge into flock entity (think a three headed sheep representing 10 or so). But I think it's better to let the lag fly. We don't have the same handicaps as MC (java emulation port to network ughhhhh) and you won't hit the wall as quick. We use to allow players too keep 20 animals that can't despawn which they did by naming them. Other animals were cleaned up every 15mins so our cloning machines etc didn't kill the server (such as my collosal chicken xp juicer).