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why hasn't a survival RPG/MMORPG about wildlife been made yet?

64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
If you've been on youtube and have even a fleeting interest in biology and animals, you likely have come across the channels Tierzoo and Casual Geographic. Both are very educational channels about wildlife and biology. Their content is IMO very well researched and well made, specially in the case of Tierzoo, who uses fighting game analogies and tierlists to make the content more interesting and unique than something like your regular animal documentary. There's no wonder why they both have millions of subscribers. This honestly raises the question though.... why hasn't a survival RPG about wildlife been made yet?

A full on replication of real life in the wild, where you can choose from every different species of animal (besides Humans, because that is a 'game' you're already playing 24/7), go out and hunt for other animals, get into fights, etc. Your only true goal is to survive and thrive, which sounds pretty easy until you realize you're in the wild where everything and everyone can, will, and most certainly wants to kill you. Everything from the smaller scale shit like ants to regular land animals like coyotes and lions, to behemoths like sperm whales in the ocean and elephants on land. Crabs on beaches, birds in the sky, poison dart frogs in the forest, etc. The sense of scale would be insane for one, seeing how humongous a lion would be from the perspective of a mosquito would be immense, let alone seeing the size of an elephant. Or being an eagle flying high across the world, getting a beautiful view of the scenery.

As well as all of the combat possibilities that come with all the animals in the wild. Being able to be a snake, poisoning your food, and watching in real time as they slowly die off and shut down from the neurotoxins... or charging at other animals as a rhino and violently goring them for attempting to challenge you. Being a crocodile biding your time until an unlucky deer gets near you, or a polar bear violently fighting and mauling prey that it managed to find after days of searching. There's a lot of unique combat possibilities found from different animals in the wild and honestly it's a shame that we haven't had a high budget survival RPG that explores all of these possibilities.

Certain animals would be exclusive to specific patches of land for balancing reasons and also because of the realism factor, you don't really see tigers or cape buffalo out in the wild of Antarctica. (This would also mean Australia and Africa would the most populated regions in the game, but honestly that's kind of expected lol) This seperates the playerbase and keeps the game balanced which is good because a game like this is fucking difficult to balance. How i'd manage to prevent everyone from just choosing the most OP and powerful animals however is honestly kind of difficult. It doesn't have to be every animal ever made getting into the game at first either. Maybe the most popular animals like Tigers, elephants, dolphins all get in first, and then over the course of updates they add more and more obscure animals into the game, making it more content rich and diverse.

I'm not sure how successful something like this would be but honestly I feel like it's a great idea. Many people are very curious about animals and wildlife but also don't want to fucking die. Having a fun simulation like this would be interesting and make for a unique, educational experience, in my eyes.
 
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RoboFu

One of the green rats
LOL good luck with that!

When Ubisoft's pirate-themed Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag was unveiled this week, we learned that whaling would be part of the game. The animal-rights group PETA was quick to condemn Ubisoft, saying its inclusion glorifies hurting and killing animals.
 

Punished Miku

Human Rights Subscription Service
I thought there were tons of these. Like the entire survival genre.

There's also that Ape game from the Assassin's Creed 2 guy with the amazing beard. I had a ton of fun with that lol.
 

64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
Because you’re looking in the wrong place? They’re on PC and mobile.





thanks for the recommendations, bear simulator actually looks quite interesting.

I should probably have elaborated more in my initial post though.... or just remove the survival RPG label. these games are that but in reality i wanted a much larger MMORPG style kind of game where you could choose any animal and basically be anything out in the wild. a lot of these seem to focus on only one animal and didnt have the scale or depth that i was looking for. it's a bit outlandish yea but i feel like a game like this would be really incredible
 

ANDS

Banned
thanks for the recommendations, bear simulator actually looks quite interesting.

I should probably have elaborated more in my initial post though.... or just remove the survival RPG label. these games are that but in reality i wanted a much larger MMORPG style kind of game where you could choose any animal and basically be anything out in the wild. a lot of these seem to focus on only one animal and didnt have the scale or depth that i was looking for. it's a bit outlandish yea but i feel like a game like this would be really incredible

. . .and wildly complex to do animation for, I would imagine. Like how do you model the combat between a fish and a bear? I mean if I'm overthinking game systems here and this is not difficult to code, then I agree - why the hell haven't we gotten a game like this (imagine playing as a weak creature with poison, or an eldritch creature that procreates by planting their egg into another player and then killing and taking over the creature, or something).
 

64bitmodels

Reverse groomer.
Like how do you model the combat between a fish and a bear?
i think you just don't. The fish isn't coming out of that scenario alive lol

and also because a lot of MMORPGs don't really model specific animations for attacks on specific species. the same animation plays for pretty much all enemies.

Feel like the true difficulty in making this game comes from the scale of it all. you have to account for insects, big cats, dogs, fish, pretty much every species documented in human history needs to get representation in this game. that's not even mentioning species like insects which are much smaller and as a result see a world completely different than ours in scale, we'll have to make the world detailed for those players
 
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chaseroni

Member

This has some of the elements you're describing, I had a nice experience with it on release but idk if there are many players now.
 

SmokedMeat

Gamer™
thanks for the recommendations, bear simulator actually looks quite interesting.

I should probably have elaborated more in my initial post though.... or just remove the survival RPG label. these games are that but in reality i wanted a much larger MMORPG style kind of game where you could choose any animal and basically be anything out in the wild. a lot of these seem to focus on only one animal and didnt have the scale or depth that i was looking for. it's a bit outlandish yea but i feel like a game like this would be really incredible

I think The Isle is sort of like that, but I’m not 100%.
 

spawn

Member
This sounds exactly like ancestors: the humankind legacy. I've seen some videos on youtube and you're basically a monkey trying to survive while other animals try to kill you or if you eat certain plants it will either heal you or hurt you. It has some RPG elements because you unlock skills and those skills you unlock get inherited to future generations
 
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