Mission Simpossible

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Selvin novaraptor
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Re: Mission Simpossible

Post by Selvin novaraptor » Wed Jan 31, 2018 9:53 pm

Escape the scientists

You have to escape from an helicopter which holds rangers and scientists who want to collar you. If you fail, you'll get shot and go unconscious for a while, and will wake up with a radio collar. It can be a good way of getting radio collar. Instead of simply starting with one. Similar events will happen again to collar your mate or grown pups.

Weird Toys

You can actually interact with boots. You have to do something with that boot(tear it apart, throw it, roll while holding it) and you get achivements.

Painful sting

A colony of wasps has spotted your pack as an intruder. And they're trying to sting your pups. You have to run away from them ASAP. Or your pups will get a minor nerf in stats.

A Famous Wolf

There's a portal to certain areas of yellowstone where tourists are frequent. If you want, you can go there for a little vacation alone/with your pack, watch humans watching you, and hopefully grab a carcass lying in the area too. But if you're too frequnt to that area. Your pack is very likely to get collared.

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Re: Mission Simpossible

Post by xc92u3 » Thu Feb 01, 2018 10:15 am

Selvin novaraptor wrote:Escape the scientists

You have to escape from an helicopter which holds rangers and scientists who want to collar you. If you fail, you'll get shot and go unconscious for a while, and will wake up with a radio collar. It can be a good way of getting radio collar. Instead of simply starting with one. Similar events will happen again to collar your mate or grown pups.

Weird Toys

You can actually interact with boots. You have to do something with that boot(tear it apart, throw it, roll while holding it) and you get achivements.

Painful sting

A colony of wasps has spotted your pack as an intruder. And they're trying to sting your pups. You have to run away from them ASAP. Or your pups will get a minor nerf in stats.

A Famous Wolf

There's a portal to certain areas of yellowstone where tourists are frequent. If you want, you can go there for a little vacation alone/with your pack, watch humans watching you, and hopefully grab a carcass lying in the area too. But if you're too frequnt to that area. Your pack is very likely to get collared.
Woooww.... before I had even read the whole thing, I was in love with the idea. :shock: I loved the first idea, second, not really the third, and I liked the fourth. But my favorite... is the first suggestion! :mrgreen:

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Re: Mission Simpossible

Post by 44wolfquest » Thu Feb 01, 2018 2:59 pm

Shiverdam wrote:
Wolvencall wrote:Destroy the coyote den? Defend your mate against other potential mates. You could have a mates trial period where if you don't get certain things completed such as bringing down an elk with them, then they're more likely to stop pursuing in interest of you.
I like this idea. Perhaps before you can progress to having pups, you have to retain your mate's faith in your strength and capability as a good partner. Stuff like successfully tracking prey, hunting together, defending yourselves from potential threats. Perhaps other AI wolves will try to swoop in and steal your mate and you have to fight them off successfully.
Rather than exp, there could be a "heart" system like is in the game now, wherein choosing the correct responses (or in this case, the correct course of action) will earn you a heart, and you need 3 hearts to progress to the next stage: 1st successful hunt, 1st successful defense against a predator (like guarding your kill from a bear), and 1st successful defense against a competing wolf. If you fail any of these, like if you abandon a hunt or die to a predator, or the opposing wolf defeats you, then you lose a heart or lose your mate, depending on how many hearts you had gained. One failure = loss of a heart, so if you have 0 hearts left, you lose your mate. But once you gain all 3 hearts, you cannot lose them.

Once you advance to Slough Creek, you still need 2 more hearts yet. One more successful hunt on the new map, and then finding a den. This brings the total to 5 hearts in order to have puppies, and also encourages people to explore the map.

However, what if your current mate dies? If you lose your mate after you have puppies, a new mate shouldn't "cost" as much as the original. Maybe then, only 3 hearts are required, but this time along with hunting and defending your kill, you have to defend the pups from predators rather than fighting off an opposing wolf like before.
A new heart system would be great, but a wolf's mate wouldn't run away if a wolf abandons a hunt (real wolves sometimes do abandon hunts) But maybe these hunting/defending missions could be used in another mission! A good heart system could be maybe using the right emotes and maybe only having a 50/50 chance of gaining a heart! This would make mate finding a bit more of a challenge! But maybe still use EXP to determine dispersal spawning. I would love if we had a challenge to find a mate, and I am happy that we have a complete revision of wolf encounters!

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Re: Mission Simpossible

Post by Muncie my dog » Thu Mar 15, 2018 7:28 pm

I was thinking that you could find a mate then find other wolves to start a pack then go to Slough creek and you could have it so when a wolf gets trenq it would have to ecape the humans while the mate cares for the pups and you when you go on a hunting mission you like two of the pups could get lost and they would try to make it back but at night they might die your mate would go find the pups also ou could have it so you could take the pups anywhere and have two at a time in you mouth but it wouldn’t take away your stamina so you have to drop them. Also you could dig out a den for the pups and it could only take about 15 minutes and also there could be hunters and if one of your pups wonder to at it could get shot by a hunter lastly you could add people on horses and they would tranq you and you would have to escape the high fence but if you were seen pit bulls would try and kill you and you would have to stay until you get out unnoticed

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Re: Mission Simpossible

Post by x1103 » Sat Mar 17, 2018 8:29 am

I don't know if somebody already said this (six pages... come on, not a dev), but what about truly raising/teaching the pups?

- How to hunt different pray
- What to avoid
- Encourage them to come out of the den for the first time / stay in the den when in danger
- Teach them to follow
- Perhaps when they grow, enforce the hierarchy?
- And when they do grow, some of them could leave
- Chase off the potential mates for the adult pups

Luring a mate from an already formed pack would be an exciting side mission for the player, too.

Another thing that somebody mentioned is the scents. Learning what different scents mean could be a nice tutorial-type quest - and get the wolf in trouble! Inexperience works that way in nature too, eh?

As for the multiplayer... Different relationships with other wolves? Not sure if it happens in the wild, but could for example young wolves gang up temporarily to hunt without actually forming a long term bond?
And if it is possible to have a territory in multiplayer, maybe a kind of "ranch mission", as in getting an easy meal from another player's pup/carcass/etc. And, as I said before, luring someone to leave their pack. Or joining the pack. Not knowing what the dude is up to is kind of cool in online multiplayers, especially with the PvP possibility.

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Re: Mission Simpossible

Post by Invar » Sun Mar 25, 2018 5:32 am

Denning could be made richer -- you might find an existent den-site (possibly pups will not perform as well in a fleasome well-used site?) OR dig a new den entirely, choosing your site (and here's where you could make a mistake and somewhere too low, and need to move your pups to a new site when the area becomes soggy and muddy, but nobody has to make animations of a dramatic rushing-water flood) and digging it out, which takes a lot of time and energy but gives you a wholesome den OR you could find some smaller creature's den and dig it out, which takes a lot less time, unless the small den you choose to enlarge happens to belong to a badger, who can beat you up underground and won't be coming out with you around, forcing you to start over with time running out.

Perhaps sometimes backcountry hikers move through some areas and camp. +large number xp hooray! if you let one get a glimpse of you, but you lose it again immediately if you stay in view long enough for them to get a photograph. :twisted:

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Re: Mission Simpossible

Post by Medenagen » Sat Mar 31, 2018 2:00 pm

Don't know if you're still looking for comments, but I'm making some anyway... LOL

Field Guide Finds
I saw it mentioned a few times, and I have to agree, some kind of a collectibles for a Field Guide would be awesome. It's a nice passive way to encourage exploring around maps and using different senses for your wolf AND could be used to drop a little more nature info in there. So somewhere there would be a log of how many things you've found in different categories in the guide (like... Scents, Plants, Animals, Insects, Random Objects, Mushrooms, or some random breakdown!) where you can visit and see a short piece of info about them and maybe how many you haven't found in game yet (blank slots with question marks or just blank slots?). It's also something that could be randomly expanded on to add more over time.

So, for some examples... the Scents log could give you a reference for what each animal scent looks like in the scent vision mode as you find out what they are in scent vision mode in the game, while the Animals log you need visual, but not necessarily scent, contact and you'd get a little bit of info on it. Like you spot a fox. You go to the field guide and there is a little description that says something like "The Red Fox has been seen in Yellowstone since the late 1800s. It hunts small prey, such as voles and hares, but will sometimes scavenge kills made by wolves." Nothing huge, just a quick tidbit of detail.

(Plants could appear in the right times of year in bloom or not in bloom in the right locations for their growth, too! Would probably push you to enter other pack territory to find them all. Ha!)

"Puzzle" Style Side Quests?
Yeah, finding mostly realistic activities to do is harder, but maybe we can get a "figure this out" style side quests going on that activate either as a portal to a different mini-map (as someone else mentioned) or as something that activates when you wander into a certain part of the main map.

For example, maybe there is a region with more fallen trees from fires and storms, where navigating through is like a maze. So your mini-quest is to get from one side to the other by crawling under, going around, etc obstacles. Or maybe find a thing in the maze, like a vernal pond or something.

Or maybe there is prey hidden inside/under an old rotting log that you need to figure out how to access? Or something...

Someone mentioned a boulder-hoping platforming challenge to climb to a location. There could also be a "Don't Get Wet!" river crossing challenge where you have to find a spot to use rocks/debris to cross a river and successfully navigate it?

Timed Challenges
I've got nothing specific here... but essentially some sort of task needs to be done and you have a limited time to do it. Could be taking down prey, could be sneaking into a campsite, could be just finding something. The task triggers at a specific spot on the map and the faster you can do it, the better your experience gain.

Something that could go along with this would be raid style challenges. So, sneak into another pack territory and grab a chunk of carcass and get away before you're found out and caught. Or sneaking into a campsite and doing something before you're caught.... or grabbing something from another predator.

Escape the ___
Getting to safety from something could be another mission. People keep mentioning fires and floods, which I understand would be rather hard to implement, but could be fun. However, if you do add a large bison herd... you could have a situation of "escape the bison" if the herd is large enough and they panic-run in the wrong direction for a bit... LOL (run, wolf, run!) Mission starts if you and/or your mate accidentally aggravate that herd the wrong way while hunting...

Interaction Challenges?
We're getting an update on the depth and breadth of interacting with other wolves, so why not have some things tied to that? Of course you have the get a mate and bond goal, but maybe have a mission to intimidate a potential threat wolf out of the area as well?

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Re: Mission Simpossible

Post by Noctis_ » Sun Apr 01, 2018 5:07 pm

Personally, with a wilderness simulator like WolfQuest, I value true immersion and realism over "gamey-ness", and I don't think the former takes away from the fun. I know it's best for the two elements to meet somewhere halfway, but I'm on the more realistic side of that spectrum. I'm definitely inclined to say no to 'battle' (I wonder how well real wolves would do in life if they went out of their way to battle giant grizzlies), and other overly dramatic/eccentric mission types. I think it almost goes against WolfQuest's goal. By deriving the game's interest from the aforementioned unrealistic or rare activities, it marginalizes real wolf daily life. The greatest success WolfQuest could achieve is creating and fostering true, genuine interest and appreciation for wolves based on what they really are.

I think smooth, naturalistic missions are the way to go, ones that rope the player's interest into realistic activities and tasks, such as courting and hunting. For instance, I really like the idea of player wolves sneaking around the outskirt's of another pack's territory and courting an available young wolf who hasn't yet dispersed. It's a realistic activity that also takes some strategy to pull off. The mother and father (the leaders of the pack) would perhaps chase the player if the player is detected, and the player would attempt to draw the available wolf from its pack in order to court it. It may be a mission that would take some time to complete, maybe even one that stretches over the course of several days.

An idea I've read that I agree with is making the den-finding mission a little longer, where the player may use an already dug-out den, or dig their own in a spot of the player's choosing. There would be some risk and trial-and-error here, because some areas would be dangerous or not ideal, and would pressure the player to think strategically about den placement. Choosing a poor location may result in natural punishment such as predators finding the puppies more easily.

This isn't exactly a mission, but I'm also interested in the plant and animal glossaries that a few other people have already mentioned. It serves as a nice educational tool as well as a sort of 'collectible' element to the game that I know some would really enjoy. Encountering new plants, animals, and phenomena would add them, and information about them, to the glossary, which could be accessed through some sort of game menu at any time. Maybe discovering a certain number of animals would award the player with XP, and searching for plants to add to the glossary would prompt players to explore the map to find those plants.

What if there were unique hunting techniques for each prey animal (that may or may not be enter-able into the glossary) that the player would have to use in order to catch that animal most effectively? It would encourage the player to utilize strategy when hunting, and perhaps the player would receive an XP reward for mastering every hunting technique. Perhaps this could even be transformed into a mission, where the elk herds are no longer currently in the player's territory, and therefore the player must sustain themselves and their family by catching a wide variety of small animals such as mice, voles, rabbits, and squirrels. Here the player might be prompted to catch all the animal types using the appropriate technique.

As for the issue of how to trigger secondary missions, players wandering into certain areas is certainly a way, but maybe life events (such as the elk herd wandering out of the player's territory, mentioned above) or the player witnessing phenomena occur may also trigger them. It would be neat if many of the secondary missions revolve around learning some new skill or piece of information that the player could incorporate into their gameplay later on. As for whether or not to include a mission marker, I do think this is too "gamey". Players should be prompted to think whenever possible and try to figure out what to do on their own, just as real wolves would.

This is a larger idea, but what if WolfQuest had a tutorial of sorts, where the player plays as a juvenile wolf still in their natal pack? This would allow the player to learn the skills necessary to be a successful adult wolf in a realistic fashion. The parents would bring the player wolf and their siblings along on hunts to demonstrate hunting, and would teach the player their limitations (for instance, to avoid certain animals/situations). There may also be a small event(s) where a stranger wolf wanders into the player's natal pack's territory, and the parents drive it away. This would reinforce (or teach, in the case of players who did not already know) the fact that wolf packs do not generally include unrelated wolves, and do not simply 'take in' strangers. As an added bonus, players would be able to play/socialize with their siblings and learn wolf body language, that perhaps would be helpful for socialization later in life?

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Re: Mission Simpossible

Post by Paige3138 » Wed Apr 04, 2018 4:03 pm

Sorry this might be a little late but maybe add a side mission were you have to defend your territory against another pair of wolves looking for a den during winter? Like they try to urinate and howl and stuff to claim your territory but you have to chase them out some how or persuade them to leave?
Maybe it sounds a bit gam-y but idk just a thought.

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Re: Mission Simpossible

Post by Figero11 » Wed Apr 18, 2018 1:32 am

I'm not sure exactly what would prompt you to do this but it has two good qualities:
You have to track a cougars scent trail and chase it away, possibly because it is killing your elk. It could lead you and your pack away from your den (so maybe you wouldn't have pups) and into a new area of the map. This would teach you how to follow scent trails on the wind, and encourage you to explore the map, especially since they will be MUCH bigger than they are now. When you catch up to it you would have to chase it through the woods (Keeping up with the cougars twisty turning way of running away) until the game announces the cougar will not bother you anymore, or perhaps your pack would kill it, also earning you the "Bye bye kitty" Acheivement

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Re: Mission Simpossible

Post by Lebron BMT » Wed Apr 18, 2018 9:50 am

Seasonal Gameplay - WINTER

1) Make the winter season longer. Find a way to make winter last longer -- perhaps putting a set amount of real time players have to play in winter waiting for spring before pups can be born.

2) Make it more difficult to run through snow in the winter. Equally slow all animals in the game down including player wolves. More deep snow that players and other animals sink into as they run would be neat too.

3) Decrease the number of prey animals and carcasses in winter. Obviously there won't be any young animals like calves in the winter, but decreasing herd sizes of prey animals in the winter is something that could be changed to make survival more difficult also (except for very difficult prey like moose and bison). There are no bears in the winter, but with fewer prey animals there should be more competition and fighting between player wolves, other wolves, cougars, and coyotes fighting over carcasses. Perhaps increasing the number of other predators in the winter can help cause this effect and make up for the absence of bears.

4) Require players to hunt more in the winter because of the cold affects on player wolves decreasing energy/heat.

In other words, make winter more difficult to survive and a more unique style of gameplay in Wolfquest.
Last edited by Lebron BMT on Thu Apr 19, 2018 12:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Mission Simpossible

Post by Wolvencall » Thu Apr 19, 2018 11:36 am

Wolves are different they have an easier time staying on top of the snow due to the large surface area of their paws so they have the advantage over elk and other hoofed creatures, wolves best season is winter but the summer and fall is more difficult

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Lebron BMT
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Re: Mission Simpossible

Post by Lebron BMT » Thu Apr 19, 2018 12:15 pm

I don't think that is true @Wolvencall. Look at this:

Wolves will sink in deep snow like any other animal.

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Re: Mission Simpossible

Post by Isela » Thu Apr 19, 2018 12:59 pm

Please refrain from going off-topic. If you have a question pertaining to wolves, please see the Wolf Q&A forum. Check the FAQ board to see if your question has been answered (the question pertaining to paw size/benefits of paw surface area has been answered under How big is a wolf's track?). If you have further questions about this, please direct them there.

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Re: Mission Simpossible

Post by ForeverEverest » Thu Apr 19, 2018 1:16 pm

To me, it sounds like these side-quests are a lot like achievements. I think rewarding experience for clearing them is a good idea. Maybe achievements could become the missions? That way, people would probably pay more attention to them, and be more likely to try clearing them for the reward. The journey to pack elder is pretty long, so I can imagine clearing missions to earn experience would be something many would want to do. If you are to turn achievements into sub-quests, then I guess it could be unlocked as an achievement the first time you clear it, but you can clear each mission once per wolf, gaining experience each time. That way, you can clear it multiple times, and still gain benefits.

Here's a little example:

Before the mission has been cleared, it's darker on the achievements list. (As they are before you clear them in 2.7.) There could be something like "(500XP)" written underneath, to show what you get for clearing it.

Once you've cleared it for the first time, you are awarded experience for the wolf you were using at the time, and you unlock it as an achievement, which then gains colour.

You can then clear the same mission, just with another wolf, to gain the experience for that one. (Or you can clear it again with any wolf, but if you clear it again with the same wolf, the experience is reduced... Or something like that.)


It's just an idea, but I think it would give people more incentive to collect achievements, as it benefits their wolf/wolves. It may result in certain achievements having to be removed, but I think it would provide a better use for achievements as a whole.

Edit: This post is now outdated:
loboLoco wrote:We are designing something new to replace XP, but you will be rewarded if you’ve earned a lot of XP in 2.7. We plan to archive all 2.7 achievements and have a new, larger set of achievements for WQ3.
(quote from May Q&A)


I thought this post might still have a use as inspiration for new ideas though, just wanted to mention that some parts would not work with WolfQuest 3.
Last edited by ForeverEverest on Tue Jul 03, 2018 3:44 am, edited 1 time in total.

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