sacremon:
July 16th, 2007 at 16:13

The ‘non-threatening crap blown out of proportion’ reminds me of beetles in many of these games. Okay, we don’t see beetles in RL the size of dogs, but unless it is something noted to be vicious in the insect world, an oversized version isn’t going to be that big of a threat either. Maybe to a character just starting out, but a trio of 1? long beetles that can kill a top level character? Sheesh! Spiders I can understand - they are venomous. Beetles?

Actually, I’d be more scared of giant beetles than almost any other giant insect, spiders included. There is a reason that the beetle is the most successful basic design of all insects. They tend to be top tier predators in their niche. (Ants would be the other giant insect that would give me the heebies…they are social.)

Wouldn’t it be nice if the bad guys had a social structure. There’s a wild boar den. It can suport a family of wild boars. The number of boars, variety of boars and spread of boars is controled by the weather, landscape, availability of food and most importantly, frequency of PCs wandering by and laying down some smack on the boar’s nest.

Want to see it get cooler? Replace boars with goblins in that last paragraph. See the population of goblins at the goblin spot affect the composition of goblin society (we got 50 goblins? we need a goblin forge. And some wolves. How ’bout a tower. Hey we got a goblin shaman yet?).

That would be cool.

JP

Lucius’ new character tells you, “Hey, what’s up? Its Lucius.”
You tell Luc, “Hey Luc, long time no see. How’s it going?”
Luc tells you, “Starting over in gfay killing wasps. You?”
You tell Luc, “Heh… level 45 and in the Burning Woods… killing wasps.”

Much time passes, Luc quits the game and comes back a few times, and one day I’m on a raid and he sends me a tell.

Luc tells you, “Hey, get a load of me, I’m in Burning Woods killing wasps! What are you up to?”
You tell Luc, “You aren’t going to believe this, but I’m level 63 in the Bastian of Thunder ans there is a group of like fifty of us… killing wasps.”

I’ve always gotten a giggle thinking back on that story…

Possibly true, but an overabundance of humanoids also results in a kind of fatigue. The silhouette of what you’re fighting doesn’t change, and the animations don’t change, and after a while, you get bored. This is definitely something I felt playing CoH, which was pretty much limited by their IP to focus on humanoid enemies.

Let’s not forget, the twelve tasks of Hercules included a Lion, a Boar, a Hind, and a Bull - and this was considered the greatest hero in greek myth!