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Thoughts on Domestication Balance


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First, if you're not familiar with how domestication works, you can check the wiki page on it. It's kind of complicated.

I gave a full "proper" domestication an attempt today, and my general takeaway was this:

  1. There needs to be a better basic saddle option. The basic saddle is way too expensive, has too few uses, and in general just makes the process of domestication very very hard. Either making it significantly cheaper (no more than 1 pig skin) or making it repairable with sewing kits would help tremendously. It's fine that the endgame saddles are expensive, because once your beefalo is fully domesticated you most likely won't lose saddle durability unless you really screw up somehow. But the basic saddle needs to be more usable.
  2. Domestication decay needs to happen more slowly. It's fine that it might take 15 days to fully domesticate a beefalo, as it is supposed to be a challenge. But one slip-up, like the beefalo going into heat without you having a beefalo hat, or one time where you accidentally let your last saddle break and you have to run home and get 4 more pig skins (4!), and you lose days of domestication progress.
  3. You have no control over domestication while the beefalo sleeps. If you hadn't filled its belly before nightfall, you're losing a ton of progress, and you certainly can't ride it. It's hard enough just to feed yourself while also riding the beefalo 24/7, let alone being able to feed it. One thing that would be cool is if the beefalo gained domestication if it slept within a tile or so of a player; right now, if you stay by your beefalo's side all night as it sleeps, it only loses domestication.
  4. You can't use wormholes, you can use roads, you can't use canes, you can't interact with anything on the ground, so riding the beefalo just made everything feel super slow. Having to hop on and off every time got really tedious; this animation should probably be a lot faster. For some math... player + cane + road is 6*1.25*1.3 = 9.75. A beefalo, except for a fully-domesticated rider beefalo, is 7. Also take out wormholes, and cave shortcuts. It felt terrible.

It was surprisingly easy to get the foot in the door on domestication, and it seems like maintaining it once you've reached full domestication isn't too bad (provided you're riding it pretty much all the time), but getting through the whole process from the beginning seems very harsh.

Some more overarching concerns:

  1. Anyone can just punch your beefalo 3 times and completely destroy its domestication, even if it was fully domesticated.
  2. Leaving the server for 8 days and your beefalo will lose all domestication.

How can this be solved? I think that beefalo domestication needs to be tied to the player doing it more closely. Yes, that would prevent a cooperative domestication effort, but I really don't see that working out in practice anyway. It would allow the loss of domestication on taking player damage to only occur when being done by the domesticating player, and it could involve saving/loading the beefalo with the player (if being ridden), which would let you take it to caves, and let you save it with you when leaving the server, instead of basically losing it any time you want/have to take a break.

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How much does the brush help?  I've never actually managed to craft it but I noticed upon reading it's code that it does provide a little bit of obedience and domestication on the beefalo.  And it has 75 uses, not sure how much that would effect things.

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@Zackreaver The code is a bit intricate, which makes it hard to follow. I think I managed to distill my own observations and DarkXero's pretty well on the wiki page. The basic idea of the brush is that if you use it every day you can shorten the domestication process from 20 days to 15 days. Each brushing gives approximately 1.7% domestication. A day of not getting positive domestication ticks loses about 12.8% domestication

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4 minutes ago, Zackreaver said:

How much does the brush help?  I've never actually managed to craft it but I noticed upon reading it's code that it does provide a little bit of obedience and domestication on the beefalo.  And it has 75 uses, not sure how much that would effect things.

Brings it down to the 15 days he is talking about... Normally it would take 20 days (without brushing once each day).

To the OP: I also did a "proper" domestication and came to pretty much the same conclusions. I didn't have an issue with the saddle expenses but my co-players (who also tried to tame a beefalo) certainly did. In fact so much so, that they just gave it up completely as soon as their second saddle broke.

About Beefalos sleeping, you can wake them up by trying to mount them, then feed them because they stay awake for a few seconds after an unsuccessful mounting attempt (This has been a change in a recent update, so if you played on non-updated world for some reason the old system of the beefalo completely bugging out at night, making feeding impossible might still be in place).

However I see no reason why trying to feed them shouldn't directly wake them up at night - instead of going through the somewhat obscure procedure of trying to mount, then quickly feeding, then mounting again to jump on. Just noting that it is in fact consistently possible.

I think it would be good to make domestication decay stop completely or keep ticking up while the beefalo has at least some domestication while the beefalo is sleeping (but not sure if thats allready the case?). The reasoning behind this is that its quite harsh to have to ride the beefalo 24/7  as you said (Well to domesticate without giving it 32 twigs a day or a few dragonpies). So having "free domestication" during sleep time would at least give you a bit of breather to get some stuff done at night.

About domestication loss, I think this should be tuned down too... or possibly just the amount of hunger a stick / grass gives a beefalo, since that's the variable its linked to, if a Beefalo wouldn't require 32 sticks per day it would be considerably easier to keep domestication going... right now its just really brutal!

About heat, probably a beefalo that has ANY domestication should not be part of it's herd mating season, or if it is, should at least not attack the person domesticating it. Otherwise a beefalo hat is simply mandatory while taming beefalos.

Some more things:

Beefalo not specific to a character, I was quite distraught to find out that beefalos have no loyalty at all. You can have spend 20 days 24/7 on its back to finally achieve full domestication only to have it taken away in a snap by a random passerby while you were plucking some grass! Maybe a "loyalty" variable is in order that grows along with domestication and is specific to a certain character name. Only characters that pass a certain loyalty threshold would be able to ride the beefalo at all and on higher loyalty levels the beefalo would refuse to attack the person it is loyal to, probably resulting in bucking off the rider when he tries to attack this person or something similiar.

Beefalo losing domestication on being hit by a player character, I don't know the numbers, but beefalos take a HUGE domestication damage if a player character hits them (read: ANY player character, as there is no loyalty there is no difference if its you, your friend or a random stranger on the server). I don't know the exact numbers but a friend of mine had his beefalo go from almost fully domesticated to almost feral by hittng his beefalo 2 times in a row by misclicking.

Beefalo remaining in the world, upon leaving the beefalo stays in the world, losing domestication if the world remains on. There is a good chance upon coming back "your" beefalo has lost most of its domestication if not all - At least if the server is well played on and dedicated. I have no real good idea how to combat this except making domestication loss considerably slower. Possibly picking up the loyalty system from before, domestication is actually character specific and gets frozen or considerably slowed down when the domesticating player is not on the server? This would at least adress the issue of coming back to a feral beefalo just cause you couldn't play for a few days (and the server going for another 30 days). The beefalo should probably try to stay close to your log out spot at this point, and move slowly towards it while you aren't there, kinda how it goes back to the herd when not domesticated.

Beefalo still attacking when herd is attacked, even when the beefalo is fully tamed, it will still jump to fight anything any beefalo in its vicinity is fighting (INCLUDING YOURSELF), even worse so because its pretty hard to mount it while its attacking allready, since it keeps being "busy", you have to spam "mount beefalo" until you can squeeze in there and take it away from the enemy... this can lead to some pretty unfortunate incidents.

 

All that said, beefalo riding can be fun, and the whole "getting bucked off until you don't anymore" thing feels kinda cool... believable. It could just use some work as a multiplayer feature.

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12 minutes ago, Zackreaver said:

How much does the brush help?  I've never actually managed to craft it but I noticed upon reading it's code that it does provide a little bit of obedience and domestication on the beefalo.  And it has 75 uses, not sure how much that would effect things.

Brush also gives 0.4 obedience. Can only be used once per day. Gives you one beefalo wool. And no, if two days pass, you can't brush it two times. You have to brush it everyday.

1 hour ago, rezecib said:

It was surprisingly easy to get the foot in the door on domestication, and it seems like maintaining it once you've reached full domestication isn't too bad (provided you're riding it pretty much all the time), but getting through the whole process from the beginning seems very harsh.

Take ARK: Survival Evolved for example. Taming is a central mechanic there, where two and a half hours (20 days) is nothing for most dinosaurs. If I went to a cave and came back to my base to find all my **** undomesticated, I would be extremely mad. And mind you, a dinosaur can actually stomp, destroy, and gather resources way better than players can.

10 minutes ago, Wyeth said:

Beefalo losing domestication on being hit by a player character

If a beefalo gets hit by a player, and the beefalo is not being mounted, then it loses 0.3 domestication. So somebody can smack your beefalo four times to make it go feral (1 - 0.3 * 4 <= 0).

16 minutes ago, Wyeth said:

All that said, beefalo riding can be fun, and the whole "getting bucked off until you don't anymore" thing feels kinda cool... believable. It could just use some work as a multiplayer feature.

What if after you tame a beefalo, the creature stays tamed until death? You would still have to take care of not getting it killed. Having it be loyal to you, and only you, the tamer, means that other people playing with you can't enjoy it, either.

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30 minutes ago, DarkXero said:

What if after you tame a beefalo, the creature stays tamed until death? You would still have to take care of not getting it killed. Having it be loyal to you, and only you, the tamer, means that other people playing with you can't enjoy it, either.

Hey DarkXero thanks for the great thread about beefalo taming mechanics you did before... quite a bit of numbers but it really helped me get my beefalo tamed.

About the loyalty... well thats why I said others can build up loyalty too... they just would need to feed it a bit to get it up (I mean if we had a loyalty mechanic in general that isn't connected to domestication process, that would mean that feeding it 5-6 grass and waiting a bit would build enough loyalty to ride at least, otherwise a new player wanting to tame a normal beefalo would need to wait very long before even being able to ride it), so if you want to share your beefalo with your friends, they just have to build some loyalty, then they can ride it too, but it prevents people from just hopping on when you just got off to do something and stealing it.

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For the people who still believe a domesticated beefalo is worth it cause this and that (I mean really, comparing it to a dark sword? what's the attack period of a dark sword? how easy is it to get a darksword compared to taming a beef? speed riding when there's the cane and roads and wormholes?) take a note on this thread. Rezecib and DarkXero have written some great posts why the system still needs work in a much better and kinder way than I did.

My point still stands:

Quote

I really don't know who handles the balancing and actual new content design but beefalo riding is useless at the moment. And I have noticed some other poor design choices with the new Through the Ages content as well which makes me worry I'll simply say "meh" more than before.

I believe there could have been two ways to make beefalo riding appealing:

  1. Make it an endgame element where you need to put a lot of work to get to tame a beefalo you could ride for days afterwards without worrying, plus a few more benefits besides just a speed boost (some insulation during winter for example). And by a lot of work I mean feeding them a certain crockpot food (here's a good incentive for players to make those crockpot recipes no one ever makes), apply all those new tools on them until they change their state to rideable. Certain beefs would prefer a certain set of crockpot dishes.
  2. Make it easier for beefs to be tamed with the result being much less effective, making beefalo riding more accessible for newer players and attractive even early in the days.

These are just ideas I would expect a team to brainstorm a lot before actually implementing stuff. The way it is right now is it has the hard work of my first point and the sucky result from the second one. It's horrible and not rewarding whatsoever. I am never going to tame a beefalo, never going to craft those new tools and saddles that are considered "new game content" because they could have not been introduced in the game to start with as far as I care.

 

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I like the points you raise here. Particularly number three of the first post. A beefalo should not lose domestication when hit by another. Its loyalty ought to be to their tamer. It makes sense for tamed animals to be scared of strangers or even aggressive towards them while loving their humanoidal partner. I could even go for the tamed beefie ignoring everyone but their tamer until some griefer hits it, then become like in heat to everybody BUT the tamer.

My other ideas. Somebody said the pudgy tendency gives you the aura of a Tam O'Shanter. This is 6.7 per minute. However said beret lasts 25 days without any effort and can be taken to the caves. There are usually more beefalos than igloos to farm the berets, with Glommer (6.25 per minute) being a single entity (so it is hard to share the aura between a group and leaving the flower in the camp is risky), but the beret is still a bit easier to get. And a no-brainer once you have it. Whereas your favourite pig minions give 25 sanity per minute when close. The discrepancy is jarring.

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9 hours ago, Wyeth said:

About the loyalty... well thats why I said others can build up loyalty too... they just would need to feed it a bit to get it up (I mean if we had a loyalty mechanic in general that isn't connected to domestication process, that would mean that feeding it 5-6 grass and waiting a bit would build enough loyalty to ride at least, otherwise a new player wanting to tame a normal beefalo would need to wait very long before even being able to ride it), so if you want to share your beefalo with your friends, they just have to build some loyalty, then they can ride it too, but it prevents people from just hopping on when you just got off to do something and stealing it.

Without loyalty, since we don't have factions/tribes/clans, we can't easily limit our property to other people. Loyalty may prevent people from just hopping on your beefalo and running away with it. But it doesn't stop people from stealing your saddle with the saddlehorn, or indeed dedicating 1-5 days to steal your beefalo while you were spelunking.

What I need to hear about loyalty is how it would build up and how the different levels of it affect your interaction with the beefalo. If two people take turns taming a beefalo, do they get half and half loyalty gain, or the beefalo is fully loyal to both? How do we measure how much loyalty somebody gets? The tamer has to be the last one to tame the beefalo for full loyalty? The beefalo keeps track of how much stuff he was fed? The beefalo keeps track of how much hunger points he was fed? If you play with a friend that contributes nothing to the taming progress (he was raiding the ruins, or he went to the bathroom, or he came back home from work to play), is it unfair that he may need to perform a 20 days loyalty ritual? Maybe it wouldn't be unfair if it was 10 days? Maybe 5 days?

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Agreed, loyalty was just an invention of mine just then. I mean clearly this would need to be worked out properly.

I don't wanna derail the thread but generally the concept of "ownership" is pretty weak in DST right now. I actually like that there is no direct mechanical "claim" and that others can interact with everything the same way you can, but there should be something along the lines of a key & lock principle.

This could also offer a solution for beefalos, such as when taming a beefalo it requires a "key" of some sort to ride it, so say when first starting to tame a beefalo or when fully domesticating a beefalo you get a "tuft of beefalo hair" which it drops at that point, this item could be named in the same way you would name a sign, except in your inventory, which would give the beefalo a specific name too (for differentiating purposes). Essentially whoever holds the lock of hair is the "owner" and it will follow that person, try to go to that person and only let this person ride it.

This would give you some ownership over the beefalo, which you also could lose (when being killed) or give to someone else at your leisure. It would also not add "hidden information" such as beefalo taming levels/loyalty levels etc. which could become messy and unclear to understand. Heck, you could even track if the "tuft of hair" object is still in the server to give the beefalo no domestication loss while the "owner" isn't on the server or something to make beefalos more viable overall.

Ehh yeah but enough of that, I guess one could go on forever with different arguments and thoughts on the subject.

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I can't give a proper review to it because ... I don't see the point in having a domesticated buffalo . I have never tamed one . I think spending that time for armor/weapons is better ... And I don't have the patience to do it ... I have tried but after 6-7 days I just gave up on it ... 

Keep in mind I have not tried it ingame and what I'm about to say is based on text/information I have read  . 

I will try to explain why I don't see the point in it ... 
- you are faster with walking cane and road and you can pick up stuff from the ground and everything ... but you can't do the same while you are on the buffalo (as said in the first post)
- yea it has HP (500) but ... let's be honest I don't think anyone actually used it to battle monsters harder than spiders or hounds (your armor has more hp than the buffalo and it's easier to make - log suit + football helm (both of them have 450 hp)) ... Maybe if they add a armor slot (this slot used for other items too , example  bags to store items) for the buffalo I think it will be worth it , even alittle overpowered but then again I hope the game will get harder so it will be fair when you fight stronger creatures (late game content vs late game content) . 
- Best case scenario dmg is good I admit that but for that time needed (to gather all I need and tame a buffalo) I can just make a dark sword a way more easy and fast ... basically I'ts just a loss of time taming one .
- And when I heard that you need to keep feeding it in order to keep it domesticated ... it became entirely pointless ... (normally I make a camp in caves and spend my late game caves/ruins only) .
- Can't say anything about PVP or problems with other players because I only play DST with my friends (in co-op)

it's a good feature but only to show off , not really helpful to your survival . Overall I consider it optional and not worth it .

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3 hours ago, 1v0 said:

- you are faster with walking cane and road

You are very slightly faster than cane plus road, if and only if you have a rider beefalo with a glossamer saddle.

3 hours ago, 1v0 said:

yea it has HP (500)

1000.

3 hours ago, 1v0 said:

Best case scenario dmg is good

For ornery beefalo with a war saddle. Barely a dark sword. For all the others you can directly just replace them with a ham bat.

 

But yeah, this isn't worth the upkeep and attention you have to pay to the beefalo. If I put a cane and a dark sword in a chest, they are still there next season. Even if beefalo didn't undomesticate at all, I would just have one, a ornery with war saddle one, to tank hounds, but mostly to keep as a trophy.

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10 hours ago, rezecib said:

I've actually implemented beefalo saving/loading in my mod. The rest of the mod is still very incomplete (and crashy) though, so I'm keeping it friends-only on Steam for now.

So it saves domestication status w/out decay, then?  Is that what you're working on?

That sounds... well, amazing.  o.o

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So with the introduction of Salt Licks, a few of the original issues posed by @rezecib have allready been resolved. Namely the domestication decay while it stays behind.

For me the most glaring issue right now is that anyone can hit your beefalo 3 times to reduce its domestication to 0% and the fact that anyone can "steal" your beefalo as soon as it hits full domestication with really no way to guard against it, except to keep close to it at any time.

I propose that it will not lose domestication on hit, but a bit of obedience (which happens right now anyways). This would give someone fighting a person on a beefalo the chance to eject the rider by hitting it a few times, but not destroying 20 days of work.

As for the stealing of beefalos... well I think your solution binding beefalo domestication to specific players would be okay, could be something like the beefalo is shaking off other players if a player with higher domestication is close to it aswell for example.

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