Beefalo Domestication Discussion

[YouKnowWho]

I quite love the little beefalos. They’re incredibly derpy, but incredibly protective of their herd and children. I was ecstatic when were first hinted at being able to ride beefalos, but incredibly disappointed with the process. Even though I still like to tame beefalo, it’s a widely accepted fact that there are a whole lot more things you could be doing instead of taking care of a hairy cow for a whole season. This is a survival game after all, and the top priority of everybody is usually eating instead of having a cute little guy eat your twigs. 

There are a couple problems with the system currently in place right now, the first one being the long amount of time it takes for a beefalo to become domesticated, and the other being the huge amounts of care required, slurping up every little pinch of time you have. Now, this system, while a bit frustrating, is no doubt, pretty accurate. I’m not completely familiar with making wild animals into friendly fuzz balls, but I’m pretty sure it would take some time and patience. So the problem is that beefalo domestication needs to be made a bit more reasonable without making it completely unbelievable. 

I believe I have a bit of an idea that might be able to assist in this cause.

A troff.

Imagine a sort of ice flingomatic system where you “fuel” a troff with grass, and your beefalo comes around and eats from it, which slowly increases domestication points, but also gives it more pudgy points, as it wouldn’t stop eating until it was full, which would be pretty bad, because pudgy is the worst trait, despite its adorableness. This would decrease the time having to be spent constantly feeding the beefalo, allowing for preparation and survival to be a main priority, but would encourage other activities to keep the beefalo nice and strong for those who don’t want a fat hairy cow 

Perhaps other ideas like this could also be used, like a backscratcher, or a slight buff to the salt lick. I’m not too sure on it. 

 

Anyeay, what are your thoughts? Should beefalo domestication be tweaked, and become an actual strategy? Or should it stay as it is and become a novelty thing that you do when your base becomes supreme? Let me know of this, or if you have any ideas of your own below!

 

Edit: also maybe rework the fence placing system. Making a good looking fence is freakishly hard. Allowing or making corner pieces would be real good

[Kolascay]

Just don't domesticate one in the first place

Well, perhaps the time taken to tame one could be halved. Because sometimes realism doesn't quite work with gameplay. Taming a beefalo is a long, very grueling process that overall seems too high a cost for such a small reward. I mean... you can't affectively feed your beefalo with 4 dragonpies a day early in the game. You definitely can't during winter. So most players will build a salt rack or something and make sure that the beefalo is slowly getting domesticated through winter, albiet slowly, and it usually does not meet the beefalo's standards a day, but... with a salt lick the beefalo will most likely last until spring, where you can make massively more crops to give to your beefalo, allowing you to continue the domestication process. So in all seriousness, taming a beefalo can take more than 2 seasons. Maybe, just halve the time it takes. Then... it would take 10 days. (8 days with brush) and so one could Definitely tame a beefalo if they had a pretty average base by day 10, and everybody chipped in with the beefalo process. Then, the beefalo could be tamed by day 21, winter, and not even turn to heat, which means one doesn't need to go out and find a beefalo horn for a hat so the beefalo won't kill them. Amazing. 

 

I've only once saw a fully domesticated beefalo on a Klei Official Server. It was ipsquiggle was here! and they were on like day 700 and they had a single domesticated beefalo (I think he was Docile). Even then, the beefalo was pretty much unused. It was a status statement. It was basically saying; Hey! Look at all this surplus food I have! I have so much food I can get a tamed beefalo! But the owner never actually used it, really. It's too frail to take on a level 3 spider nest. The beefalo will kick you off after a while, and sometimes just won't let you back on. And if you don't have any grass or berries on you, you're pretty much screwed.

 

In all, I'd say that Beefalos was just too tiresome a process to actually be rewarding.

[ButterStuffed]

A good start would be to reduce the time needed to domesticate beefalo or add some more ways to speed the process up. Beefalo are really convenient when fully tamed but the time it takes to get to the fun part is just unbearably long.

[Sinister_Fang]

I don't mind just how long they take to domesticate. What really bothers me is just how needy they are. That, and it's a bit inconvenient that you're unable to pickup items off the ground while riding them. While that dose make perfect sense from a realism standpoint, it's a little annoying in terms of gameplay.

[spideswine]

10 hours ago, Mikro said:

Beefalo are really convenient when fully tamed

Really aren't.

They are less insufferable, but still a hindrance.

12 hours ago, Youknowwho said:

I quite love the little beefalos. They’re incredibly derpy, but incredibly protective of their herd and children.

What are you talking about? You chase a baby away from the herd and they all go like "Meh I'll let this stranger just chase the baby away from the herd, sure the last 20 times this happened the baby didn't return, but we're sure it'll be different this time".

They don't care too much for the herd either, as some will give up chasing before others, leaving them to die.

12 hours ago, Youknowwho said:

Even though I still like to tame beefalo, it’s a widely accepted fact that there are a whole lot more things you could be doing instead of taking care of a hairy cow for a whole season.

Yes, but also even if taming was instant people wouldn't deal with them too much, I guess the wendys and wes will have some use of them at that point, but they will still be more of hindrance than anything else for the rest.

12 hours ago, Youknowwho said:

instead of having a cute little guy eat your twigs

If by "cute little guy" you mean a traitorous, insufferable, entitled, sack of **** then yes.

12 hours ago, Youknowwho said:

There are a couple problems with the system currently in place right now, the first one being the long amount of time it takes for a beefalo to become domesticated, and the other being the huge amounts of care required, slurping up every little pinch of time you have.

You forgot "lack of any uses(outside of moving statues, which isn't much of a use(outside of suspicious marble that only needs to be done once))", I mean sure for wendy/wes the ornery beefalo has a use, but what about everyone else?

12 hours ago, Youknowwho said:

pudgy is the worst trait, despite its adorableness

That thing is disgusting, with that stupid smug smile "Haha I ate all of your twigs, Haha".

12 hours ago, Youknowwho said:

Anyeay, what are your thoughts? Should beefalo domestication be tweaked

Definitely, but the question is in what ways? First of all I think they shouldn't just outright die, I think due to their pet identity they should require a while to get, but they shouldn't easily drop dead because one stupid thing or another(they are fairly good at getting themselves killed).

Second thing: it shouldn't be such a piece of ****, it shouldn't demand food in the most annoying manner constantly, and it shouldn't attack you, or at least not lose domestication and realize it shouldn't be an ******* when you hit it back.

Third it actually needs to be good at something which is worth doing: there's probably a lot of very different ideas here though.

[YouKnowWho]

38 minutes ago, spideswine said:

Really aren't.

They are less insufferable, but still a hindrance.

What are you talking about? You chase a baby away from the herd and they all go like "Meh I'll let this stranger just chase the baby away from the herd, sure the last 20 times this happened the baby didn't return, but we're sure it'll be different this time".

They don't care too much for the herd either, as some will give up chasing before others, leaving them to die.

Yes, but also even if taming was instant people wouldn't deal with them too much, I guess the wendys and wes will have some use of them at that point, but they will still be more of hindrance than anything else for the rest.

If by "cute little guy" you mean a traitorous, insufferable, entitled, sack of **** then yes.

You forgot "lack of any uses(outside of moving statues, which isn't much of a use(outside of suspicious marble that only needs to be done once))", I mean sure for wendy/wes the ornery beefalo has a use, but what about everyone else?

That thing is disgusting, with that stupid smug smile "Haha I ate all of your twigs, Haha".

Definitely, but the question is in what ways? First of all I think they shouldn't just outright die, I think due to their pet identity they should require a while to get, but they shouldn't easily drop dead because one stupid thing or another(they are fairly good at getting themselves killed).

Second thing: it shouldn't be such a piece of ****, it shouldn't demand food in the most annoying manner constantly, and it shouldn't attack you, or at least not lose domestication and realize it shouldn't be an ******* when you hit it back.

Third it actually needs to be good at something which is worth doing: there's probably a lot of very different ideas here though.

Jesus Christ man, calm down. Let's try to be a little civil here, yeah? If we really all want change, it's probably good to be a little nice about it instead of just pushing for it with loud complaining. You don't start things off with a riot, yeah?

[spideswine]

5 minutes ago, Youknowwho said:

Jesus Christ man, calm down. Let's try to be a little civil here, yeah? If we really all want change, it's probably good to be a little nice about it instead of just pushing for it with loud complaining. You don't start things off with a riot, yeah?

You kneejerk to my language like that, I didn't really aim any of my insults at you or at klei have I?

I just find the behaviour of beefalo while being tamed really obnoxious, and if you try to take a serious look at it, so will you.

In a realistic scenario, how much tolerance do you think a tamer is going to show towards something that occasionally decides that it wants to kill him?(Like a beefalo in heat, or when a saddle is placed on it at 0 obedience) Chances are he'll put the damned thing down.

Theoretically it should sorta act like a pet, but it's waaaaay too obnoxious for that.

[YouKnowWho]

Just now, spideswine said:

You kneejerk to my language like that, I didn't really aim any of my insults at you or at klei have I?

I just find the behaviour of beefalo while being tamed really obnoxious, and if you try to take a serious look at it, so will you.

In a realistic scenario, how much tolerance do you think a tamer is going to show towards something that occasionally decides that it wants to kill him?(Like a beefalo in heat, or when a saddle is placed on it at 0 obedience) Chances are he'll put the damned thing down.

Not really the point man, think of it as a resume. I understand how it can be real annoying at times, personally it isn't to me, but that's probably because I'm a little biased against the things, but anyway, taking things a whole lot more calmly increases the chances of you being taken seriously. 

As for the realistic scenario thing, there are two factors I think that make this a little less true than it seems out to be. First, this is a wild animal we're talking about here, we haven't suddenly got a tame cow going wild, this thing hasn't seem lots of humans, so it's definitely going to have to work out most of it's instincts, like the urge to defend itself and it's herd from, well not really anything, but that's kinda what instincts do. Secondly, this is don't stare, and pretty much everything's out to kill you. A survivor in that sort of scenario who really wanted some hair cow to saddle up would obliviously realize that they have a pretty hard task ahead of them, and would require a bit more patience.  However, in some other scenario like a farmer, that guy would definitely be put down, so I would see where you're coming from.

As for the obedience thing, yeah that is entirely selfish, just outright attacking somebody who's been feeding you like everyday, and it makes me upset, but since this is an animal here, it probably hasn't learned so much in the way of manners. Other animals have though, so they need to step up their whole 'not biting the hand that feeds you' game.

[spideswine]

9 minutes ago, Youknowwho said:

Not really the point man, think of it as a resume. I understand how it can be real annoying at times, personally it isn't to me, but that's probably because I'm a little biased against the things, but anyway, taking things a whole lot more calmly increases the chances of you being taken seriously. 

This is a myth, any decent developer isn't going to ignore criticism just because it's not toned down, beefalos as they are now behave like entitled, obnoxious, and traitorous sacks of ****, no need to put it more lightly, in fact it can only mislead(the dev can't know that some people find the thing extremely obnoxious unless they say so).

(Also I'm fairly sure that they are aware that beefalo domestication is a failed feature)

9 minutes ago, Youknowwho said:

As for the realistic scenario thing, there are two factors I think that make this a little less true than it seems out to be. First, this is a wild animal we're talking about here, we haven't suddenly got a tame cow going wild, this thing hasn't seem lots of humans, so it's definitely going to have to work out most of it's instincts, like the urge to defend itself and it's herd from, well not really anything, but that's kinda what instincts do

And you need to remember that these sort of things were tamed not only with love and care, but plenty of negative reinforcement and punishment, if it tried to do it's tamer harm you could bet it was gonna feel pain in return, as I've said " or at least not lose domestication and realize it shouldn't be an ******* when you hit it back."

9 minutes ago, Youknowwho said:

As for the obedience thing, yeah that is entirely selfish, just outright attacking somebody who's been feeding you like everyday, and it makes me upset, but since this is an animal here, it probably hasn't learned so much in the way of manners.

I would be fine with it if it didn't realize that you're the source of its food, yet it's clearly asking you for it, so it doesn't hold.

 

[YouKnowWho]

1 minute ago, spideswine said:

This is a myth, any decent developer isn't going to ignore criticism just because it's not toned down, beefalos as they are now behave like entitled, obnoxious, and traitorous sacks of ****, no need to put it more lightly, in fact it can only mislead.

(Also I'm fairly sure that they are aware that beefalo domestication is a failed feature)

And you need to remember that these sort of things were tamed not only with love and care, but plenty of negative reinforcement and punishment, if it tried to do it's tamer harm you could bet it was gonna feel pain in return, as I've said " or at least not lose domestication and realize it shouldn't be an ******* when you hit it back."

I would be fine with it if it didn't realize that you're the source of its food, yet it's clearly asking you for it, so it doesn't hold.

 

Alright.

[pedregales]

Ways to improve them? Well, I have not much experience with them, but in order of relevance:

• Remove obedience. Realistic, but unfun and frustrating.
• Once a beefalo is domesticated, it should stay domesticated for life. It takes too much time and resources to tame them, and all that work could go to waste? No way I am wasting my time with it. Of course, if you hit your beefalo it should un-domesticate and would require re-domestication, but that is another thing.
• As for the Pudgy specifically: increase it's health to 1.5 or 2 times the regular amount of health a normal beefalo has. This way it is closer to be a tank, and would justify the loss of damage and speed instead of that very small sanity aura (the sanity aura can stay as an added bonus).
• For the saddles: make them work like armor on player. Give them health instead of "uses", and every time the beefalo takes the saddle away in the process of taming, the saddle receives a damage equal to the damage of a beefalo (34). Below I will give my suggestions on damage reduction for saddles, and take note, the numbers might seem small, but a beefalo has 1000 health, so 10% damage reduction effectively makes it have 1111 health (or 111 extra health, which is more than Maxwell, and slightly less than Wes); as for the health, they are also pretty high considering that for every 100 damage, they will only receive a very tiny amount.
  • A regular saddle would give 25% damage reduction and have 750 health. The default saddle, nothing great, nothing bad.
  • A war saddle would also give 25% damage reduction and have 450 health. It has less health than a regular saddle just to balance out.
  • A glossamer saddle would only give 10% damage reduction and have 225 health. This saddle is definitely not meant for combat, and even if that was the case, you should be able to kite quite easily with it, so this little health makes sense to me (specially considering the beefalo has to receive 2250 damage before it breaks...).
  • Add a new saddle (armored saddle) that gives 50% damage reduction, but -15% reduced speed and have 1050 health. A tanking saddle, though with a rider beefalo you might be able to kite quite easily most, if not all, mobs.

This is what might make beefalo riding a bit more worthwhile for me.

[spideswine]

1 hour ago, pedregales said:

Remove obedience. Realistic, but unfun and frustrating.

So they will never throw off their saddle, and there will be basically no point in feeding them.

I mean I'm not necessarily against that but you're gotta add depth(as you're making it even more shallow than it is) somewhere in return.

1 hour ago, pedregales said:

Once a beefalo is domesticated, it should stay domesticated for life.

Yeah current domestication loss is obnoxious, not sure if I will do it only for domesticated one, but this seems reasonable.

1 hour ago, pedregales said:

Of course, if you hit your beefalo it should un-domesticate and would require re-domestication, but that is another thing.

How the hell is that "Of course", damned thing should know it's place, and you should be able to clarify to the vermin exactly where that is. It's part of why it's so obnoxious currently, it can and will hit you, but you can't hit it? screw that.

1 hour ago, pedregales said:

As for the Pudgy specifically: increase it's health to 1.5 or 2 times the regular amount of health a normal beefalo has. This way it is closer to be a tank, and would justify the loss of damage and speed instead of that very small sanity aura (the sanity aura can stay as an added bonus).

Tank what? Tank for the sake of tanking? You're not gonna use it to fight because of lower speed and especially lowered damage, what's the point of it having more hp if there's no point of riding it?

1 hour ago, pedregales said:

For the saddles: make them work like armor on player. Give them health instead of "uses", and every time the beefalo takes the saddle away in the process of taming, the saddle receives a damage equal to the damage of a beefalo (34). Below I will give my suggestions on damage reduction for saddles, and take note, the numbers might seem small, but a beefalo has 1000 health, so 10% damage reduction effectively makes it have 1111 health (or 111 extra health, which is more than Maxwell, and slightly less than Wes); as for the health, they are also pretty high considering that for every 100 damage, they will only receive a very tiny amount.

• A regular saddle would give 25% damage reduction and have 750 health. The default saddle, nothing great, nothing bad.
• A war saddle would also give 25% damage reduction and have 450 health. It has less health than a regular saddle just to balance out.
• A glossamer saddle would only give 10% damage reduction and have 225 health. This saddle is definitely not meant for combat, and even if that was the case, you should be able to kite quite easily with it, so this little health makes sense to me (specially considering the beefalo has to receive 2250 damage before it breaks...).
• Add a new saddle (armored saddle) that gives 50% damage reduction, but -15% reduced speed and have 1050 health. A tanking saddle, though with a rider beefalo you might be able to kite quite easily most, if not all, mobs.

 

...I'm starting to see where toros is coming from.

This will make saddles even worse than they currently are, why would anyone want expensive saddles such as the war saddle to break so easily?

1 hour ago, pedregales said:

This is what might make beefalo riding a bit more worthwhile for me.

I can't possibly see why.

[pedregales]

2 minutes ago, spideswine said:

So they will never throw off their saddle, and there will be basically no point in feeding them.

I mean I'm not necessarily against that but you're gotta add depth(as you're making it even more shallow than it is) somewhere in return.

This feature does not add depth, it adds complexity. Extra things add complexity, extra functions on an already existing thing adds depth (this extra functions are often discovered by the players, like for example: bunnymen houses are almost void of complexity but are used for: farming bunnymen, farming spiders, having an army for fighting giants, and even used as plague control with batilisk). Obedience is just an extra thing that has only one function: force the player to feed the beefalo in order to ride it.  But I guess if it is toned down I can live with it, because complexity is not bad, is just another way of doing things.

4 minutes ago, spideswine said:

How the hell is that "Of course", damned thing should know it's place, and you should be able to clarify to the vermin exactly where that is. It's part of why it's so obnoxious currently, it can and will hit you, but you can't hit it? screw that.

You should be punished in some way. Also, you can hit it, you will lose domestication (as in you lose their trust) but you can hit it. Also, AFAIK, beefalos only hit you if they are in mating season and you are not wearing a beefalo hat; so is not really that unfair in this case.

6 minutes ago, spideswine said:

Tank what? Tank for the sake of tanking? You're not gonna use it to fight because of lower speed and especially lowered damaged, what's the point of it having more hp if there's no point of riding it?

Exactly because of those 2 downsides I recommend health for tanking, if it is not going to have the speed nor the damage, might as well have the health to make a more forgiving battle when failing to kite on time. My reasoning was: ornery makes battles faster by dealing extra damage, and rider makes battles safer by making kiting easier. In short, is novice player friendly variant, which seems fitting for the variant itself, it would still be a bad variant, but would definitely fit a different niche than the other 3.

19 minutes ago, spideswine said:

This will make saddles even worse than they currently are, why would anyone want expensive saddles such as the war saddle to break so easily?

It won't break that "easy". It would require 1400 damage received before breaking, unless you go full tank it should last half the battle. Also, the war saddle is not expensive, the most expensive ingredient is steel wool, but that thing is only used for 3 things: brush (1 steel wool), war saddle (4 steel wool), and ewelet (1 steel wool); and one of them is a pet (very optional). The glossamer saddle on the other hand is expensive because of the insane amount of butterfly wings (68), but it would still require 2250 damage before breaking (with my suggestion).

[spideswine]

1 hour ago, pedregales said:

This feature does not add depth, it adds complexity. Extra things add complexity, extra functions on an already existing thing adds depth (this extra functions are often discovered by the players, like for example: bunnymen houses are almost void of complexity but are used for: farming bunnymen, farming spiders, having an army for fighting giants, and even used as plague control with batilisk). Obedience is just an extra thing that has only one function: force the player to feed the beefalo in order to ride it.  But I guess if it is toned down I can live with it, because complexity is not bad, is just another way of doing things.

It also give a point for the beefalo to do it's beg animation(though it very, VERY much overdose it currently), it also makes it feel like an animal, instead of furniture/machine.

1 hour ago, pedregales said:

You should be punished in some way.

Why? It's not really a mistake or a misplay, why should you be punished for it?

1 hour ago, pedregales said:

Also, you can hit it, you will lose domestication (as in you lose their trust) but you can hit it.

If you lose an immense amount of time hitting it, then no, you practically can't hit it.

Why can it hit you but you can't hit it? That's ********. How about every time it decides to turn on you you get the ability to make it starve for a couple of days? Hell in the process of taming any animal if it turned on its masters it received punishment, why is the beefalo above that?

1 hour ago, pedregales said:

Also, AFAIK, beefalos only hit you if they are in mating season and you are not wearing a beefalo hat; so is not really that unfair in this case

So If I go into mating season can I beat the living **** out of it without any penalties?

If it thinks it can attack you, you should be able to return the favor without any penalties.

1 hour ago, pedregales said:

Exactly because of those 2 downsides I recommend health for tanking, if it is not going to have the speed nor the damage, might as well have the health to make a more forgiving battle when failing to kite on time. My reasoning was: ornery makes battles faster by dealing extra damage, and rider makes battles safer by making kiting easier. In short, is novice player friendly variant, which seems fitting for the variant itself, it would still be a bad variant, but would definitely fit a different niche than the other 3.

No, just no.

Ornery deals more damage, so ornery is used for fights, the rider and the pudgy are just not used to fight, why the hell would anyone want to fight with something that deals 20/25 damage, I mean maybe if it's a really weak opponent and you don't feel like getting off the beefalo, but otherwise just no, having such low damage output guarantees it's doesn't have much combat uses.

1 hour ago, pedregales said:

It won't break that "easy". It would require 1400 damage received before breaking, unless you go full tank it should last half the battle.

That's 4 football helms/ wood armors, now tell me, what's more expensive,  4 pig skin+12 grass, or 4 steel wool+4 rabbits? It's not even comparable.

1 hour ago, pedregales said:

Also, the war saddle is not expensive, the most expensive ingredient is steel wool, but that thing is only used for 3 things: brush (1 steel wool), war saddle (4 steel wool), and ewelet (1 steel wool); and one of them is a pet (very optional).

It also require to be gotten intentionally(you're not just gonna have access of it by doing regular things, as hunts, especially later on, are a very subpar way to get anything which isn't steel wool), so that doesn't matter, it's a very expensive resource, and so is the war saddle.

1 hour ago, pedregales said:

The glossamer saddle on the other hand is expensive because of the insane amount of butterfly wings (68), but it would still require 2250 damage before breaking (with my suggestion).

So basically don't use it for fighting, how does that make things better?

[YouKnowWho]

Quick pop in the middle of this debate, was mucking about with my cat and thought of a little spray bottle. Maybe you could like, use one to pacify your beefalo at the cost of like, obidience maybe, since it wouldn’t be too much of a hinderence to remember to feed them and whatnot. It’d be a little difficult to do, since it’d have to tell the difference between beefalo in the process of domestication and regular beefalo since it’d make killing beefalo a whole lot easier, even though it already is easy. Just like something to hit your beefy with if they get all grumpy without having to slap them silly. Maybe it’d use the phlegm? 

[spideswine]

9 minutes ago, Youknowwho said:

Quick pop in the middle of this debate, was mucking about with my cat and thought of a little spray bottle. Maybe you could like, use one to pacify your beefalo at the cost of like, obidience maybe, since it wouldn’t be too much of a hinderence to remember to feed them and whatnot. It’d be a little difficult to do, since it’d have to tell the difference between beefalo in the process of domestication and regular beefalo since it’d make killing beefalo a whole lot easier, even though it already is easy. Just like something to hit your beefy with if they get all grumpy without having to slap them silly. Maybe it’d use the phlegm? 

Thing is spray bottles are used to deal with generally minor misbehavior, it would be sensible as an item to make them shut up with their demands for food, but not for trying to kill you.

Speaking of which, there's a whip in this game, and the beefalos even have special (unused) animations when hit by it, why not use that?

But seriously when it tries to hit you you should be able to hit it back with no penalties, hell, what was it expecting to happen?

[MasterWolf]

It is just not worth the time to tame a beefalo, I only did it on the Xbox for the achievement. Not only is it so long and hard to tame, it it’s really easily.

To make it better, they would need to rework most of the taming aspect, and make it into something new. They might as well scrap everything and start over. So that is my suggestion to make it better, Klei should just scrap the mechanic and start over.