I have a solution for sand sharks

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• jamintheinfinite_1 Jupiter Join Date: 2016-12-03 Member: 224524Members

  January 2018

  Too much things to keep track of what is related to the sand shark.

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• RurikVaeringjar Join Date: 2018-01-11 Member: 234959Members

  January 2018 edited January 2018

  Some of what I'm about to say was already mentioned in the post linked by TacticalHog, but I wanted to expand upon the concept somewhat and explain how I see something like this playing out along with the reasoning behind why I really think it needs to be done. I do mean to say it needs to be done.
  
  Main Points:

  • Drastically reduce the number of smaller predators that spawn in any given biome.
  • Increase tension by letting the player hear the presence of a predator well before they ever actually see it.
  • Consider the use of sudden silence (specifically the absence of prey animal sounds) as a mechanic for telegraphing the presence of something dangerous in the immediate area
  • Turn the rarer interactions with predators into truly dangerous events
  • Types of predators should have truly unique behaviors that cause them to stand out from other predators in the game
  • Avoiding specific predators should almost be a kind of puzzle where player skill and knowledge is rewarded.

  
  The problem that I see with the game's various smaller predators are that they aren't functionally all that different from each other. For the most part, tactics that work on one type of predator will work on all of them. Mostly it just involves not getting within their aggro range. I don't typically like that kind of uniformity and I think there are a few very simple and, more importantly, easy to implement changes that could drastically increase immersion while making each of the game's predators stand out as unique. Even better, these changes should actually increase performance by decreasing the number of creature's being simulated at any given time.
  
  In order to facilitate a proper tension and release cycle, the number of smaller predators needs to be drastically reduced. The player should be worrying about what's out there and as it stands I feel that a lot of the wonderfully terrifying creature sounds aren't being used to their full potential. Those sounds are terrifying beyond comprehension for a person like me and it's an amazing thing. The problem though, is that whenever I can see the creature making the sound there isn't as much tension in the moment. Sight is something that gives humans a sense of control and seeing danger is the first step towards avoiding it.
  
  If, however, the player can hear, or infer, a creature's presence without being able to immediately identify where exactly said creature is, then you've just created a sense of constant tension and excitement without having to actually do anything. The player's own mind will make the area they're in dangerous, even if there isn't anything truly dangerous anywhere near them. Not only can you use a creature's own sounds to facilitate this, but you can also use the absence of other sounds to facilitate this. Imagine hearing a Bone Shark before you see it, then knowing you're in its domain because the sounds of all other sea life just.. stops. All of a sudden there is just this eerie silence because nothing living is stupid enough to make a sound.
  
  I also think that each predator should be a unique set of experiences and require their own tactics to avoid. I have a kind of vision for how some of them could work and I basically see predators as being kind of minibosses in a way. Entirely avoidable if you know what you're doing or what to look out for and incredibly deadly if you make too many mistakes.
  
  - Sand Sharks: As others have stated before me, they should hide in the sand more and stalk you when you get too close. For these, hearing their calls should be a sign that you're not quite in danger yet. Once you do get close to one, you should only be able to hear distant calls of Sand Sharks far far from you. I envision them actually staying under the sand with just their fins sticking out like a kind of sensory organ. Instead of lunging out of the sand to immediately charge you, they should shift slowly towards you.. moving inch by inch under the sand. You should hear the sand moving before you notice the subtle disturbances on the surface of the sand.
  
  When they finally do attack, they should throw up a massive cloud of sand that hangs in the water, reducing visibl makes orienting yourself fairly difficult. They should take a large bite out of you and immediately dive back under the sand to set up their next attack. This would give the player a window to get away as quickly as possible and to reorient themselves. The enemy here should be if the player panics or otherwise sticks around. The danger being mostly that they can always see you, while you can't always see them.
  
  Avoiding them is as simple as knowing their attack patterns and looking out for the signs. However, A trick to avoiding them could involve the very thing that allows them to see when you can not. Perhaps that fin really is a sensory organ and it uses a kind of electroception to hunt down prey. One interesting mechanic could be that when they're close your compass spazzes out as north starts pointing towards the Sand Shark.
  
  - Bone Shark: I firmly believe these things should cheat a bit, but I'll explain that momentarily. Again, you hear those wonderfully terrifying calls before you see them, but those calls don't stop when you get close, if anything they should get slightly louder. They should be found swimming about freely, in stark contrast to the Sand Shark's behavior. Once they see you, they start watching you from a distance.. swimming back and forth but not actually moving closer to you. Instead, whenever you look away or aren't paying attention to them they'll move closer. I even think these things should teleport closer, sometimes even seeming to be in an impossibly different place. It should give a sense that there are a few of these things stalking you.
  
  These things should attack when you allow them to get too close. One moment they're over 10 meters away and the next they're watching you from only a meter or two away, circling around you.. moving erratically in an attempt to get you to lose sight of them and once you do.. BAM! They attack from behind. These things need to be relentless, once they go in for the kill it's a matter of life and death, you either fight them off or you die.
  
  Avoiding them should actually be pretty straightforward. For the most part, don't let them see you. Shining lights at towards them or even having the lights on if you're too closer should be a bad idea. Generally speaking they should hunt via sight primarily, so night will make them easier to avoid but also harder to see in the first place. Once they see you, however, there are a few things you can do to get away safely. First, you can just stare at them and swim backwards til they fade into the distance, they won't follow you. Alternatively, if they're too close to do something like that, you should be able to chase them off by making yourself seem dangerous in some way. Charging at them in a seamoth or maybe even coming at them swinging the knife like a lunatic, something along those lines.
  
  I'll write up more if there is an interest for it. I have ideas for most of the smaller predators in the game actually..
  
  
  
  

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• Isummon_Durt Lower MiddleEarth Join Date: 2017-12-09 Member: 234349Members

  January 2018

  I think that your boneshark idea is trash for a boneshark. Bonesharks are bonesharks because they're... sharks. And they have exoskeletons. Bonesharks, in my opinion, should be given different head models and made scarcer yet deadlier in that they should be able to sense the player's location from quite a distance to compensate for their being less common. I think that they should either spend most of their time chilling in caves or on patrol for prey, unlike sharks. They could also have a really creepy tendency to move extremely quickly when they sense a feeding frenzy; so that if a player isn't careful and doesn't realize that a boneshark has snuck up on them and gets a bite taken out of their ankle, then like thirty seconds later, three more bonesharks will emerge from the distance and slowly make their way towards the player in the wormlike swimming patterns of theirs.
  
  But as for your idea in premise, I think that it'd be amazing for some other creature. Either it'd be a larger one, (maybe even larger than a boneshark,) or the size of a cutefish. In the open ocean, the larger creature could ambush the player when they're exploring a wreck; putting a time limit on how many PDA's they can recover or whatever. As for a smaller creature, (for scale's sake, I'm going to say a bit larger than wolf size,) the player would be exploring a semi-lighted cave extension and turns around to see, at the farthest end of the passage where it branches off to the player's right, there'd be a small sound aside from the hissing of the player's rebreather. A sound like a mouse's squeek
  Chirp Chirp
  scuttle scuttle
  The player is enthralled and waits a moment.
  Squeek scuttle scuttle scuttle scuttle
  and after a short pause, a pair of glowing red dots or four glowing yellow dots appear out of the far darkness. It'd chirp. (cut to 55 seconds into the video).
  After a moment, pairs of lights come from passage enterences closer and farther away from the player. The heads which the eyes are attached to might look something like sea emperor juveniles' heads. Sorta' box-ish. Then, they'd open their mouths and reveal a bioluminescent maw like a sandshark's and emerge entirely from the passages to begin slowly trotting towards the player- (yes, I said trotting. The monstrosity in my head is part dilophosaur, part Sea Emperor, and part sandshark,)- and then stop to occupy themselves with something on the side of the cave passage. Then, if the player goes back to reading a PDA or picking at Lithium samples, he'd turn around to find that the creatures have assembled themselves just outside the glare of the nearby bioluminescent plant. Their maws are open and glow beneath their yellow eyes. One of them would chirp. (Note that they're still a few meters away). After a few seconds, the player will turn back to find that one of the creatures, (maybe a biped with boney sea-emperor skin, an amphibious tail, webbed fingers, four yellow eyes, webbed gill extensions and a head like a Seadragon leviathan but more like a boneshark in the way that its skull is like an arrowhead with a rounded nub reminiscent of a monkey's lips at the very tip where its nostrils emerge from a bony skull protrusion.

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