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FireDefender

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  1. I absolutely love most of the idea's given. I 100% agree this shouldn't get venom at all. One of my biggest disappointments in this game was the fact that the snake(s) were all venom based, including the boa which is actually a constrictor. Along with the fact that they weren't all that useful, and the only special one was the Basilisk, yet it is quite bulky and feels weird to use, which was another great disappointment, because I absolutely love snakes (got one as a pet too), and not seeing them the way they could have been in this game is very sad... To expand on other peoples comments and such, here is what I would think may be best for this creature: Appearance: Nothing too special. No spiky bits or other more strange deviations from what a more baseline constrictor like the boa or anaconda has irl (so no frills either, something I never understood the design choice of), as that would make it more like a serpent which we have - the Basilisk - along with making its appearance less friendly looking. It should to me have a look that makes it look friendly and cute, but a behavior that is usually considered less cute. This would for one make players who like/love snakes make the potentially stupid decision to approach it, as a friendly look would be a great deception. A color pallette along with the pattern that the first image in the submission has would absolutely do the job, with some minor deviations in color, along with the ablility for the player to breed them for different colors and looks like real life breeders are doing. Behavior (Wild): Its wild behavior should be as an ambush predator if it isn't guarding eggs (only females should guard eggs, yet not all females found should be guarding eggs). With its attack pattern defined by how 'hungry' it is, therefore not always actively hunting prey, so that players may approach it without too many issues so long as it isn't hungry or defensive. Players should be able to know if it is hunting, defensive or just kind of chilling by looking at its behavior and movement or 'stance' rather than through a HUD indicator or a value on screen ('equip super spyglass > note low hunger value > likely aggressive' should not be the way to find out if it is aggresive, defensive or passive). This would hopefully set the stage for new kinds of creature behaviors which will make creatures feel like actual creatures, and not assets in a virtual world. Something ARK has so far failed to do horribly, making carnivores kill anything on sight the moment something enters their aggro-range is not immersive in any way, and it does not make you able to feel anything for said "creature". A carnivore shouldn't just kill if it isn't hungry, only act defensively on possible threats. Rather they should hunt when hungry, and live their life if not. As an ambush predator it shouldn't be easily seen, but rather trying to hide to then ambush its prey and constrict them when successful, including players when the Gigantophis is of a small to medium size. And mainly hunt medium to large creatures whenever they are their full adult size. Of course fully swallowing the prey rather than just bite-it-until-it-disappears. Behavior (Tamed): As a tamed creature it should be ridable without a saddle, and instead give it a natural armor or resistance to counteract the bonus a saddle gives. I like the idea of an egg-gullet or spot where things could be "stored" without exposing them to the elements, this should be the kind of spot a player would be, bonus points if you have to be swallowed in a way to get there (snakes don't have arms, an external "pouch" wouldn't be sensible as there'd be no way to get anything in it without external help. In order to put its eggs in a safe spot it would need to swallow said eggs to put them in that spot, so the player would need to be swallowed the same way). This would make the mount/dismount animation more unique, and give an interesting 'ew' factor that would make sense in this context. You are dealing with a massive snake after all. When ridden this way, it makes more sense when you would use it to constrict/subdue/hold prey of your choice in place. The prey it should be able to hunt should be decided by its size, introducing a new kind of growing system, where a creature is fully usable without being full size, and having certain benefits or drawbacks related to its current size. At a smaller size, it shouldn't be ridable yet, it is too small to be directly controlled, this stage would be useful for hunting smaller prey, or as a pet, coiled around the player as an anaconda or similar size snake could be IRL. While mostly having a mind-of-its own, "imprinting" should be done by having the snake wrapped aound you as the player, with it giving larger and larger debuffs while it grows in the way of increasing the amount of weight the player is carrying, decreasing the movespeed, and making it harder to do many things, combat and agility being affected the most, then resource gathering and the players ability to use their hands or tools (decreasing player crafting speed, slowing tool use or eventually making the player unable to use tools or weapons while carrying the snake at later stages of growth). At a medium size, (about 80% to 120% the size of the Basilisk) it should be ridable and usable as such, no longer able to constrict or wrap itself around smaller prey and instead able to hunt medium to medium-large prey. This would make it so that you could stop it constricting your tribes creatures by using smaller creatures en-masse in PVP, especially if it is constricting one of your tribes medium-size creatures, therefore giving it a kind of counter, yet smaller creatures would be easily defeated whenever it isn't constricting due to its crushing weight and nasty defensive bite to encourage players to manage their small tames and make strategic decisions, and give small tames an actual use. While this mechanic carries the risk of an army of snakes of different sizes being very powerful and very difficult to beat, I am of the opinion that this should absolutely be the case, instead making players have to use smart use static emplacements in strategic positions and player-held firearms to fend the snakes off instead of powerful creatures. At full size, it should be able to constrict medium-large creatures at minimum, and very large creatures at maximum (with a few exceptions). Making some extremely large creatures a good counter, and making medium creatures the "small" creatures of the previous size. Small creatures should be useless here, dealing absolutely no damage whatshowever while being killed without a thought. Main balance to prevent spamming, while maintaining full immersion: Feeding them isn't done the usual way of just toss meat in their inventory and you are good, instead they should be fed through live-feeding your other tames (They are still predators who swallow and constrict prey for food of course, and this should be reflected while tamed. Demanding respect toward the snake, and making the larger sizes hard to sustain for early-game tribes). The size of the tames changing linearly with the size of the snake. Therefore ensuring that keeping them is limited by your tribes ability to breed prey creatures for food. I feel like having it eat eggs of other creatures should't be an option, as we have 2 egg-eating snakes already, and I'm up for something never done before. At the small size this should be smaller sized prey, like dodo's or similar sized creatures and earlier stages of growth, and humans at the mid- to late stages. Which means that yes, the snake may decide that you are prey when it gets hungy while wrapped around the player, which will add the needy mechanic in a unique way. This will encourage players to either keep being the prey every time it gets hungry, or to tame other prey creatures for food to prevent you from becoming its food. This would be a great risk-reward situation, where having the snake coiled around you will be the way to imprint on it and gain powerful bonuses, with the risk of becoming the food if you didn't pay attention to its behavioural indicators. They should be obsecure enough that they could be missed if you don't pay attention, but not too obsecure where you need to continuously be paying an extremely close attention to it, so that it could still always cause for a funny moment where you got too distracted no matter how experienced you are with it, yet not annoying so that it happens all the time you aren't looking. What may also be a really cool feature is that, if you carry the snake around a lot, it may decide to coil around you on its own when the imprinting is high enough (50%>). Giving it a more animal-like feel, and not so much an asset like that plant in your greenhouse. At the medium and large size it should be the normal size prey according to the snakes size. Still risking other tames not meant for food, or the player themselves when they attempt to ride it when it is hungy, making the snake opt to consume the player instead when swallowing. The tamed abilities are a simple bite attack for defense, a lunge-and-coil for either constriction, subduction or immobilization of prey, and the simple damage caused by it moving over creatures small enough due to its crushing weight. It should be possible for it to swallow and "store" tames for safe transport as well, provided there are no eggs in the gullet already. Gender diversification can be done through colors, patterns or - what I would vote for - snake size and tail type. IRL, male snakes grow to smaller sizes and have the end-portion of the tail less smooth, and more a thick tail and a sudden "drop" in thickness, due to the reproductive organ that is located at the end of the tail. And female snakes are much larger, and have the tip or end-portion of the tail end much smoother, linearly decreasing in thickness until the end. Taming wild snakes should only be possible by stealing an adult female snakes eggs, or by finding a smaller size snake and attempting to gain it's trust through passive taming by petting it, protecting it against larger nearby predators, and by eventually handling it the same way you imprint on smaller snakes that you tamed by breeding wild or tamed eggs, while carrying the same risks. Breaking free might be better done through external means, like dealing damage or scaring the snake with loud roars from certain creatures to encourage it to release the held creature. I believe it wouldn't make much sense for a creature that is stuck in the coils of the snake to have the ability to escape and break free themselves, they are immobilized and likely getting weaker by the second. In this situation the prey is completely at the mercy of the snake and not in a position to break out without external help. When a wild snake has released a creature or player, it should instead seek to get away as fast as possible to prevent getting killed. When a snake has forcefully released something, they should be unable to wrap around anything for a period of time (45s to a minute would make the most sense) along with getting a debuff to damage dealt, a buff to movement speed, and an incoming damage modifier of 200%, to encourage players to attempt to escape as well. Let me know what you think, I don't know if the submission could still be altered, yet I read that the devs will read through the discussion for the potential final design. And regarding the sea-snake arguments, they are valid, yet tbf I don't think ARK looks all too well at realism with other creatures for that to be a weird thing. I mean they made the boa a venomous snake with frills. Like, really? C'mon! (also I realize I'm very late to the party, in my defense I didn't even realize there was another submission until now lol)
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