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Please don't introduce humans as battle-able enemies

Posted 2021-07-24 19:56:41 (edited)
#496703
poaching is a bad situation and a bad thing. it should not be a grey area. poaching is destructive and terrible and causing a majority of harm to the environment. i think if wolvden included humans it would possibly be in a month event - like it is in lioden, a month event. i cannot foresee this causing bad perception on wolves because most users on here love wolves. lioden did not change the public perception on wolves. lions are extremely endangered and very rarely are hunting people in real life. lioden did nothing to change this perception of animals.

i also have animal related trauma. i have ptsd from my own personal dog, and i will not go into detail, to save people from having to read my own trauma. but it is trauma regardless and valid. i worked veterinary for years and got my fair share of wounds then as well, and regularly worked around combative animals. but wolvden is a fantasy game. wolvden are fantasy wolves and there are no real life wolves going into the dreamland and fighting crab dolphins. it is an enemy in a fantasy game.

you do not have to fight humans as enemies. you can bypass them. in fact, a good compromise would be making humans part of an event. and it is not true that all humans want to save the environment, and it is not true that all of them even particularly care about it.

we could be applying this argument to the dogs in the tundra and glacier. is it not traumatic to be killing working sled dogs? or what about the dogs in dreamland? those are pets that are implied to belong to humans - explicitly the working dogs. there are people who are disgusted by the idea of killing a dog in a game, but it is still an enemy in the game.
Pikachu
#409
Posted 2021-07-24 20:10:38 (edited)
#496704
I just think there’s a difference between “poaching is bad” and “poachers deserve to die.”

I don’t think an event is a good compromise, especially a month long event, because that’s a huge portion of the site I and others wouldn’t be able to interact with. Especially if there are event specific prizes!
Badger
#10939
Posted 2021-07-24 20:17:48
#496709
agreed with this thread 100%. i think it'd be cool to eventually add humans to the game, but not like this!!
valeria
#37486
Posted 2021-07-24 20:29:18
#496720
I also think there’s a point being missed by the people arguing that Lioden already has human enemies: WD is not LD. Devs have already stated that they do not want WD to become a LD clone. It’s also much more reasonable to ask for devs to alter a planned future feature to preserve the experience that we have already had for nearly a year now than to change things after the fact.

In terms of how this portrays poaching, why would making it black-and-white be a good thing? Media showing it as a simple issue is how you get people who genuinely think ‘All poachers are terrible people and they deserve whatever’s coming to them’ and not, you know, ‘The best way to stop this from happening is to spread awareness and to take action against the underlying causes that force people to act this way.’

People won’t stop poaching because a video game says they deserve violence. Everyone on this game is already well aware that mass-culling wolves is a bad thing. Is it too much to ask that a game focuses on education and concrete action instead of pointless hatred?
Muirgeilt
#8671
Posted 2021-07-24 20:30:24
#496721
I fear that Wolvden will lose a lot of people if they carry on with killing people. I have suffered from depression since the 1960s and finally people are beginning to understand mental illness. I feel to go forward with killing people would be a big step backwards for the understannding we have reached for people with severe mental problems. My depression is quite mild compared to what others are suffering but these people need love and understanding not reminders. We all need to escape from what is happening these days and playing games is one way to do it. So I ask you, the developers, to give these people the understanding and consideration they need. Society still has a long way to go but it has finally progressed from what it was like sixty years ago which the nurses were asking for back then 		PhoebeFoal
#44748
Posted 2021-07-25 00:30:17 (edited)
#496766
I also feel like there's a reason this objection was not as widespread and vocal when humans became a battle opponent in Lioden. The two situations are not entirely the same, just because the two games have the same basic gameplay.

Most of the players of Lioden, I would venture, don't have a direct connection with lions in real life. There's a very slim percentage of Lioden players who would have to worry about lions actually impacting their lives at a local level. Lions are not as widespread as wolf species, so for Wolvden, many more players have had personal experiences with these characters. That means that when humans were announced as being a battle opponent in Wolvden, suddenly a lot more people got an uneasy feeling and thus this thread was created, because it triggered uncomfortable feelings in a larger percentage of the players.

I'm not trying to say that in the real world, poaching against lions is okay because it happens on some other continent. I'm just saying that a lot more people playing Wolvden have a direct connection with the characters in this game, as opposed to Lioden. For some of us, wolves are a real part of our lives and even if you don't have wolves in your area, it's easier to imagine wolves as being a creature you might encounter someday, as opposed to a lion.

As has been pointed out, the devs have stated that they don't want Wolvden to be a direct copy of Lioden. Which I think is a good thing. The games have the same basic set up, yes, but they are clearly different games that appeal to different players. We can't say "This type of thing is okay for Wolvden because the people playing Lioden didn't have a problem with it," although I think it's understandable that this reaction from the Wolvden community was not anticipated because there was no such reaction from the Lioden community.

Sorry if my post is a bit jumbled, I'm writing it quite late at night. I hope all my points are clear.
Ryuukokoro
#32675
Posted 2021-07-25 02:13:19
#496776
To those that suggest to have humans as part of a month-long event as the solution: that would still really exclude players who don't want to battle humans from the gameplay. Events are generally one of the highlights of a game, something that players look forward to. They also generally include goals and prizes. If humans and/or battleable humans are one of the main features of such an event, then this would essentially lock out a significant portion of the playerbase from actively participating if they cannot bear to fight humans or disagree with that premise, and depending on how the prizes/rewards are set up, might also lock them out of getting some really cool and valuable game assets. So I really don't see how this would be better than introducing them in any other way. If anything, it makes it even harder to avoid the battle encounters. I battle most during Lunar events, because there's something tangible to battle for (LT, and the Lunar event items you can buy with them). I would 100% want to participate in a month-long event, and it is the feature that was voted as most exciting by the largest section of the playerbase in the poll about upcoming features. Having the event be a really controversial and triggering thing for many, many players would be super disappointing and would cause a lot of drama, without a doubt.
Iona
#22199
Posted 2021-07-25 02:22:49
#496779
I think Ryuukokoro brought up an excellent point!

I honestly think Wolvden will be even more Like Lioden if humans were at all painted in a bad light. I think a good compromise is no human enemies, but keep the subtle human presence, and introduce passive encounters as mentioned before. Absolutely against human centered events, unless they had to do with something like conservation or biology/science but again nothing with humans being negative. I think it would be very, very cool to help say, a biologist with studies.

“You show caution to the strange creature in the distance, crouched with a flat object (journal, clipboard, etc) in their paws. They don’t move but they watch you. As your pack members exit the forest into the clearing, you see them move their paws along the object (tracking population? Migration status?). What do you do?”
[here be] or [passive] or [options]
- my awful example of an explore encounter. I’ve no idea how wolf biologists wolf biologize but wanted to give an idea. Thinking about it more they’d probably just use a helicopter instead of getting too close lmao

Or passive deer hunter encounters.
“You see oddly shaped creatures with strange shiny objects.”
[sneak away] or [chase] or [howl]

How about indirect human encounters? Like finding empty campsites, abandoned cars, child or dog toys, stray or off leash dogs and cats. We already have the dog encounters I know, but I’m thinking passive or neutral ones as well, and more than sled dogs. I know the poll said what battle encounters are you most excited to *see* in the future, likely meaning they wanted to add them regardless, but I meant my first comment and this one as instead of having humans as enemies, period.
Redpineapple1 (hiatus)
#1250
Posted 2021-07-25 04:00:28
#496788
I like indirect encounters, personally. As for the poll, it only talked about battle encounters speficially - it didn't ask if people would like to see non-battle human encounters.
And I think having the full variety of positive to neutral to negative is probably a good idea, but going the LD route of "almost all human encounters bad, kill them if you can" and "your hunters can bring human parts to eat" is probably not a good idea.
Ihmislehma
#1850
Posted 2021-07-25 14:22:56
#496982
I think introducing human enemies is a good idea, in addition to introducing humans in non battling encounters. Yes, Wolvden isn't like Lioden, but there are some good things that Lioden had going that this game can look into.

Game wardens, rangers, and biologists can all be added into the game. Have their encounters give bonuses like food, energy, and HP restored after say being "sedated" for tracking. Make it more accurate and enticing.
Crescent
#12054
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