Hunting realism

Gameplay
#1

Please fix this one thing in the hunting mechanics to make it perfect.

Firstly, I am a long time player of The Hunter: Classic (hence I enjoy realistic hunting games), and secondly, I think KCD is probably the best RPG I’ve ever played, and their attempt at creating a realistic hunting experience is commendable on many levels - well done!!

That being said, there was one aspect with the hunting mechanics that I was really disappointed with, and actually found to be quite ridiculous and hence immersion-breaking. The animals run away when you walk up too close to them and make too much noise. Great. But when I shoot an arrow at a deer and it lands (or even if it just misses him), the animal does not run away or even flinch. Please can you fix this? It is rather immersion breaking knowing that I can just stand 10 feet away from a buck and casually land 5+ arrows into his side while he nonchalantly continues grazing. Not sure if this is a bug or an oversight. I appreciate some people may think that hunting is already too hard, but considering that one buck can bring home circa 1k gold, I think it makes sense to increase the difficulty of this prize.

8 Likes
#2

Just wait for the perk that the animals won´t run that much… With this perk you can (almost) hunt with a sword.

I think the patches will deal with it (at least the perk)

1 Like
#3

Lol yess. I always laugh my ass off for this very reason. When I was still getting used to archery, I’d shoot a barrage of arrows all around the animal and it would just stand there grazing between the circle of arrows as if it was mocking my shit skills as a hunter. :joy:

2 Likes
#4

I’m not sure how the animals reactions to humans have changed since back then, but I feel like all animals should run away as soon as I come within earshot if I’m galloping through a forest, and I would not spot a single one. the same If I am running in plate armor and so on.

Sneaking / walking would allow you to get close enough - at least with correct gear or perks, and standing still near the hunting spots should let you surprise them.

2 Likes
#5

There’s been no appreciable change in deer’s attitudes towards people in the last several centuries. Deer’s opinions were formed over the ~100K-year span when they were the primary source of human food in much of the world, a situation that only changed just a few thousand years ago with the adoption of agriculture. So when a deer sees a human, the deer sees its most dangerous predator and acts accordingly.

HOWEVER, this does NOT mean it automatically runs away. Often, it’s quite the opposite. If the deer doesn’t think the human has seen it yet, it will often freeze in place to avoid drawing attention to itself. This depends largely on what the human is doing. If the human is being all sneaky when the deer sees it, the deer will recognize predatory behavior, think it’s you’re after it, and take off. But if you’re walking tall, stomping around, not looking at the deer directly, not walking directly towards it, etc., the deer will often think you haven’t spotted it and will hold still. Sometimes, by exhibiting the exact opposite of expected predatory behavior, the deer might think you’re not hungry at all and start ignoring you. Either way, by being clever this way, you can often get very close to deer and then attack them unexpectedly. It’s somewhat counter-intuitive but it’s true. Most hunters these days, however, merely sit in blinds and snipe whatever walks by, so this technique is not that widely known anymore.

That said, the deer should definitely spook and run when you shoot. Deer have been shot at by bows for so long that they recognize the sound of the shot and have evolved reflexes to let them duck or jump over arrows heading towards them, even if the shot came as a surprise. Then they run far away, whether you hit them or not.

2 Likes
#6

Humor or WTF. Just wanted thought on this. I hit a Rabbit with a Mace and appeared to have knocked it out. it slid down hill a little and lied there a few seconds then got up and ran away. I was running down a hill and just before I broke my legs from the fall. I came across some deer as one deer in front of me appeared to trip and fall, slid down a hill about 50 meters, lie there a few seconds, then get up and run away. WTF

#7

Yes, Me too used to enjoy some rabbit/deer hunting at first (“shtunk” sound is both so conforting and saddening to hear… :stuck_out_tongue:), but then wilderness AI limits are showing off, like being able to walk over barely fleeting animals, or even animals so confused they ran directly toward Henry… right before stopping few feets away like nothing happened (and often be killed mercifully).

AI and animation department need a serious ovehaul to credibilize animal behavior regarding the hunt.
Refining animals behaviors would make so much more difference (immersion-wise) than refining human ones (yes humans can be dumb by choice or make mistakes, animals are pure instinct), at least in my taste.

I still need to sidequest, hoping to find a way to hunt legally… ^^

1 Like
#8

I believe the lack of realism with animals running away is because it is not a 1 shot 1 kill, except for rabbits.

Do you know how many people will be on here complaining that they can’t hunt any animals because after 1 arrow, the animal runs off? And how many of those people would not have even landed the one arrow?

Sometimes in video games, you have to make a compromise between realism and what makes sense for a gamer to have fun and be successful.

2 Likes
#9

as i understood, that was not his point. he said its immersion breaking when you hit an animal with arrow, it just keeps standing, not running away. i agree, they should run away, but its not that bad that it breaks my immersion. anyway, i think it will be fixed in some of the future patches.

#10

Well, in real life, even using highpower rifles, deer rarely fall dead immediately except from headshots. So the general rule is, shoot the deer, watch it run off out of side into the woods, wait 1/2 an hour, then follow the blood trail. You wait so in case you lungshot the deer, it won’t go far but will soon lie down and bleed out quietly. If you go right after it, however, it can run half a mile.

The game can do all these things already: bleeding out, blood trails, and waiting. it just needs to have even fatally wounded deer run like they really do. And then folks who don’t hunt in real life would have to be told this is perfectly normal.

2 Likes
#11

yeah i suspect they made it this way so it’s even possible to hunt. most people might just break down in frustration and buy the meats from vendors instead. this seems like something that could potentially be modded in using xml editing, since one of the perks does affect how skittish wildlife are around the player, and those have been modded already.

#12

That’s exactly it - but you forgot to address the last portion of my last post. In video games, not everything should be made to replicate real life.

Shooting arrows in this game is already less life like with how you hold the arrow. In the beginning, Henry is pretty crap at holding his aim as well and you are not that accurate. So:

-You miss a shot, deer runs off
-If you gut shot - you get tainted meat
-If you land a good shot but you don’t find the deer in those woods fast enough (I haven’t seen as much wetlands, so bacteria growth won’t be insanely fast) - you are going to get extremely low condition meat, if you ever find it
-If you land a non-vital shot - deer might never die in your vicinity and you lose that deer
-Any of the above scenarios, all other deer in the path your deer takes will be on alert and moving

All of the above, in the world of Henry and everything else you are doing, you are now slowing everything down and 1 entire playthrough/session of yours might be just finding 1 deer that may or may not be dead. That’s what the hunting simulation games are for, and RPGs need to find a good balance between some realism and some video game elements to make hunting quick, allowing you to gather multiple kills, and have a curved level of difficulty for the different prey that is available.

I’m all for more realistic hunting approaches, but only certain games have room for so much technicalities.

1 Like
#13

They also need to add blood to trail a animal (or even NPC) that ran away from you and they should put into the game… You need to shoot two arrows in the deers body to kill or one head shot or neck shot.

1 Like
#14

Skyrim managed to achieve it quite well, if you shoot a deer with an arrow then it bolts.

#15

Since i love to go in the woods and hunting, i’d like a lot better hunting mechanics BUT i am aware this is not a Medieval Hunter Simulator so i have to deal with it. I will be very happy if hunt will be upgraded, but i don’t think so. Let’s see in the future.

#16

I’d be up for blood trails of humans as they would leave larger, more frequent drops since majority of the time they are running away from you after they are near death.

Animals would require an unrealistic blood trail. Realistically, unless you get a main artery or a downward trajectory of the arrow, animals are leaving small, infrequent blood drops and you would be relying on direction and other trail indications. I personally don’t feel it’s needed with the animals because i’m pretty sure there would need to be a ton of recoding for animals - does anybody know the draw distance of bodies? I feel it is rather short in comparison to your sightlines, and animals disappear all together after not that long. So now the game would need to be coded to keep a wounded animal from phasing out if it runs away putting more strain on the structure. I think it is in a good place right now where hunting is a neat thing to do on the side but does not merit that much attention to

2 Likes
#17

I dunno. I don’t find archery that hard even when just starting. Of course, this isn’t shooting at a moving target in combat, but it’s pretty easy to hit stationary targets. Start with the main weapon in hand so you have the dot, line the dot up L-R and then raise it as needed for the range. Then switch to bow and draw. You sway to the right. Keep holding back on the draw but don’t move the mouse. Release when you sway back to the left on line with the target, by which time you have full power. With this method, I got 6 out of 7 bullseyes in my 1st contest with the castrated chicken (Hans Capon). You’re allowed a few practice shots before the contest starts, which I used to set my elevation.

Fine with me. Shooting, finding, butchering, and returning with a deer takes much of a real day.

IMHO, shoot a deer and hit or miss, it runs away. If you didn’t zero its hitpoints or give it a fatal bleed, then it should run indefinitely and you’ll never find it. If it’s going to die, then it should drop at the end of say 50m. So you shoot and then walk 50m in the direction the deer ran. If you killed it, there it is. If you didn’t, it won’t be there and there’s no point in looking for it. Go try to find another.

1 Like
#18

Yea I think doing this would put a lot of people off, I mean to kill my first rabbit took like 20 arrows :blush:

However would be cool to have this as a gameplay option for those of us more gifted in the archery department.

#19

I mean to each is their own, and I am not saying your mechanics cannot work, but I just do not agree a mini true-to-life hunting sim fits in with this gamestyle. The amount of time and resources for a true-to-life hunt in this game outweighs the reward.

In life, you’re gaining exercise, experience, food that can feed your family from one kill, and a lot of resources for many other things (bones, hide, etc). Not to mention all of the psychological benefits of being out in nature and hunting in general.

In this game, you’re getting experience for the drawing/release of the arrow and landing a hit/performing a kill. You then obtain a randomly generated number of meat that will go bad rather quickly, that comparatively does not give you a ton of health/nourishment/energy back.

The meat in this game is meant to be gathered, cooked, and sold/used relatively quickly. You can’t do that if you’re spending 20 minutes on one deer :\ And this is what I was meaning in one of my other posts where too many game mechanics and logic need to be reworked and now the game is getting weird.

So although the experience of simulating relatively realistic hunting can be cool, it would not be logical to keep doing in game since you expend more resources than you gain. It would turn into a, “nothing else to do at the moment, why not hunt for an in game trophy?” which would be an unfortunate change in outlook for this world. (to me that is)

1 Like
#20

Ah, I see what you mean. However, if the “rotting” timer doesn’t start until you hit “E” on the carcass, then the short time needed to walk 50m won’t affect freshness.

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