Please don't introduce humans as battle-able enemies

I would prefer humans not be in the game, but since it's already very controversial and I wish to avoid them myself, all I ask is that no trophy items required to craft be included for humans. That way I can avoid them.

I'm just going to repost what I said here because I'm too lazy to retype it.

I semi-support. I do want humans as an opponent but know how delicate this is to other players. Wolf attacks on humans are rare but do happen so I think humans should be extremely rare battle encounters and mostly consist of poachers and maybe hunters. It doesn't take much for an animal to learn that a human with a gun is a threat to either be avoided or destroyed. 

I also think, if possible, they should be slightly more common in a pack's home biome because of the protective nature of a pack to it's pups. Many humans stupidly approach baby animals with zero regard for personal safety and injured or killed by the adults reacting with understandable aggression.

With all that said, I do really hope we get peaceful interactions more than immediately prompted to battle. Like maybe having a low chance at getting to interact with conservationists with a possibility of getting tranquilized and equiped with a radio collar that'd appear as a decor item in the hoard or even getting disease resistance for a rollover or two from them examining us while tranquilized.

no support.

no offense to anyone here but the wolvden community is SO small (literally less that 400 players online at the time of typing this--that's not a lot), i really really doubt theres any real risk of non-players seeing screenshots of in-game wolves attacking in-game people and that seriously affecting the way they think about the real life animals. this game doesn't have as much reach or influence as ppl in this thread seem to think it does.

plus, if it's going to be anything like lioden, i'd bet the devs are planning to make the human enemies poachers and the like--potentially for some kind of anti-poaching event/whatever. and on top of that, unless i missed something(which is entirely possible, i havent been into lioden in a couple years), we never saw anything like whats proposed in this thread directed towards lions as a result of lioden's addition of human enemies. and, if i recall correctly, lioden had a MUCH larger player base.

i just think it's very unlikely that an obviously fictional game is going to have such a drastic affect on the real world. not saying fiction can't affect reality, but in this case? i don't think it's something so serious.

(also, as an aside, the hostility in this thread towards the devs is very strange. i get being upset about a potential feature being added that you don't want, but insinuating  outright SAYING that the poll was rigged feels very inappropriate and rude. i'm not saying you have to agree with everything the devs do, but it is possible to respectfully disagree with people.)

@nemo

i dont really get your hostility claim? people can accidentally make things biased/unfair, its not hostile to realize and point out that bias.

@kas

like you said, its not hostile to point out a bias, but when people start saying things like "that poll was definitely rigged," that certainly comes off as hostile, even if it wasn't the intention.

"plus, if it's going to be anything like lioden, i'd bet the devs are planning to make the human enemies poachers and the like--potentially for some kind of anti-poaching event/whatever. and on top of that, unless i missed something(which is entirely possible, i havent been into lioden in a couple years), we never saw anything like whats proposed in this thread directed towards lions as a result of lioden's addition of human enemies. and, if i recall correctly, lioden had a MUCH larger player base."

This isn't Lioden though and I understand people's concern. Personally why not make the human interaction positive use Vet teams if your wolf is sick or not full health that could help your wolf? I say positive interaction is best and games such as this can influence young minds and hearts. I know when I was young shows from animal planet influenced me along with animal sim games and the Warrior series. I didn't really bump into games like Lioden they didn't exist and though I was aware of poachers I never really played games like that. I feel like overall it would be incredible to use positive interaction to negate the stigma show people helping rather than hurting and then maybe some kind of awareness about what wolves face today maybe even send some proceeds to help the organizations trying to save the wolves and get them back on the endangered species list.  I just can't support wolves killing people especially when in the wild they avoid humans unless they are ill or starving. These animals don't hunt people and as a sim that tries to mimic wolf behavior I think this too is important unless the wolf is cornered with 0 escape. That is my perspective on it and many have theirs.

Concensus: Support please do not add humans unless it is of a positive interaction with a wildlife conservative/veterinary team to help further negate any bad stigma towards these beautiful wild animals.

I’d be fine with scaring/driving away humans, but as I said before, killing them makes me super uncomfortable - including if they’re “bad” humans! Honestly I don’t like the whole “this human did X, so now they deserve to be torn about by wolves.” Especially when poaching, culls, and trophy hunting are all complex issues once you get in to the nitty-gritty of on the ground conservation and human-wildlife interaction.

Edit: On which note, romanticizing wildlife (especially while demonizing humans) is just as bad as demonizing wildlife. If we want to talk about potential messages human battles send, I’m far more concerned about the people on site rooting for wolves to kill people. It’s not that I think media turns people violent -  it’s just that wolf discourse is already heavily polarized and that’s a problem. 

big agree— thinking about it, i wouldn't mind it if the game was set super far in the past (like 30,000 years ago far) and humans were included— that would be around the time humans began to domesticate wolves, so that could actually make for really interesting interactions. but modern humans? a polite no thank you from me haha

As far as the game's influence not reaching many people - I am sure the Wolvden admins don't want there to be ~400 players on at once forever. They are very diligently and constantly updating the game, adding new features, and interacting with people on other platforms like Tumblr. I am sure they want the game to stick around for a while and attract more players. It means more revenue for them but it's also good for us! It means more players to interact with, more cool wolves bred, more people putting up / buying out trades, more people to chat with, and overall a more interesting game for everyone!

Saying the influence is not large enough is the same sort of stance people think when they litter. "Oh, it's just one soda bottle, it won't matter," as they toss it out the window of their car into the ditch. Or "I can dump this leftover cleaner down the drain, the oceans are so big it won't matter." But repeated enough times by enough people, that's how we end up with 8 million metric tonnes of plastic entering the ocean each year, or poisoned rivers and streams. 

While it may not matter to many people, it can mean a lot to just a few. And sometimes that's all it takes to make a big impact. What if one post goes viral, or enough people talk to their friends about Wolvden who talk to their friends and so on and so forth? If this can easily be avoided by not having problematic content in the first place, I don't see it being worth the risk.

Yeah... I was someone who said the poll felt rigged, and that may not be true. It just felt like that. Few people are gonna be truly excited for the alligator or crocodile options (and I know some people voted for those because they DIDN'T want humans), because we already have a crocodile battle encounter. Either of those aren't gonna add much to the world. Same with the condor, although the closest we have to a condor is a turkey vulture, which is a bit more different. But as cool as these animals are, no ones gonna be hyped for another crocodile encounter. These are too similar to battle encounters we already have.

I guess what I'm saying is people want new stuff. To most people, the crocodile, alligator, and condor options don't feel new. Humans are new, we don't have anything like humans in game. Imagine if the devs had a poll asking which biome players wanted: the boreal forest or the volcano. Players would probably pick the volcano, because the boreal forest is almost exactly like the taiga, while there's no biome like the volcano.