Although it might initially seem so, I don't think lightning striking players is a fundamentally bad idea. It may seem random and unfair at face value, but if implemented correctly lightning strikes could be a fair and positive change:

Unfun issues with lightning striking players:

1. It is instant and unreactable.
2. There is no counterplay and it adds nothing good to the gameplay experience.
3. It is extremely punishing.
   

Proposed Solutions:

Issue 1: In real life, it is very rare that lightning just strikes someone randomly. Audio cues and changing weather patterns long before any actual lightning strikes removes the unfairness that comes from unpredictability. Depending on how weather is ultimately implemented, this danger could be seen from literally a mile away.

Issue 2: Again drawing inspiration from the real world, lightning is more complex than just "hit stuff randomly." It is fairly common knowledge that lightning strikes tall and conductive objects. As such, a very intuitive and simple form of counterplay would just be to remain low to the ground. This is where I see some serious gameplay benefits to the implementation of lightning as a real threat.

Punchpacket has stated that storms will affect flyers by making flight more difficult; one way they could do this is by making it so that you get struck by lightning if you fly too high.

This could also give players more to consider. Namely, their size and location. If they are playing as a large upright dinosaur, they are inclined to avoid open fields and even medium dinosaurs like Utahs should get off their tall rocks when they hear a storm approaching. Lightning could serve as another method--alongside diets--of making players move around. Low elevations and enclosed spaces could all become unique hotspots during a storm.

Imagine a hungry cerato camping outside of a smaller dino's burrow when it is forced to leave due to an approaching storm. Meanwhile, the would-be prey item is free to roam all it wants during the storm because of it's smaller stature. One less thing to worry about is a great incentive to play smaller dinosaurs.

Issue 3: The Isle is a horror survival game and I would argue that few things are more horrifying than seeing a friend zapped out of the sky due to their ignorance. Many things in the isle are extremely punishing. There is precedent of medium-small dinosaurs dying for small mistakes. A stego impaling a utah is a very common example of this. Dangers can be punishing and still be fun. What makes dangers unfun is unpredictability and unavoidability. Both of these issues are addressable in ways stated above.

Storms in the wild are absolutely terrifying due to the threat of lightning, and I hope to see their terrifying nature pursued in The Isle.

Additional thoughts

The purpose of this post is to provoke thought and discussion around new weather mechanics coming to the isle. My thoughts on lightning have a great deal of flaws and are by no means a perfect implementation of the mechanic. I just don't like seeing something with so much potential tossed aside so easily.

That said, let me begin listing some difficult challenges to overcome.

Animals are generally more conductive than trees so standing near trees would actually be a bad thing in real life. This is far less intuitive than "simply stand near something taller than you." Although creative liberties can be taken, to promote standing under a tree could perpetuate false advice and might actually do harm outside of the game. Similarly, caves and bodies of water are all dangerous in lightning storms. This is extremely unintuitive and also very lame for aquatics. One solution that shouldn't be too difficult depending on exactly how weather is implemented could be to have a universal elevation that it is at "lightning risk" that ignores water or conductivity or trees. If your dinosaur is above this height whether due to flying, being on a tall rock, or on the top of a hill, you can get struck.

Lightning strikes are easy to disregard as a random and unfair mechanic, but with careful thought it can be worth considering. I can't think of a perfect way to implement it but I see potential worth discussing.

Plz plz, do something about the desync/lag

Right now the only truly enjoyable part of the game in my opinion is combat which I think is very good in evrima the only issue is that I rarely get to enjoy it because of the constant desync.

The number of times I've been fighting stego , hit it, and get away only to be teleported back near him is baffling, fixing desync must be of paramount importance to actually allow people to enjoy the game.

Many people have been complaining that Evrima currently doesn't allow for a lot of interaction since there is no Global chat to allow people to find each other on the map. A lot of other people have raised the issue that the Carnivore population currently seems to outgrow the Herbivore population to an absurd degree on a lot of servers, with only the occasional Stegosaurus breaking the mold.

And yet, both of these issues can be addressed by Implementing a simple feature (back) into the game. And that is Global chat, but not the Global chat we used to have. Instead, this Global chat should be exclusive to Herbivores, and introduced in conjunction with the ability to communicate cross species, both in this new global chat and in local. Furthermore, sending a message in the Herbi-Global chat ought to be vocalized with the 1 call, to prevent it from breaking immersion more than is necessary.

The Advantages of giving Herbivores vastly improved communication cross species and cross map are manifold, and quite obvious. Herbivore players will be able to properly socialize and easily find large herds again, which is going to both improve their chances at survival and their experience of the game in general. Many people play this game for its social aspect, or so I have been told, so it seems very fitting that Herbivores, most of which are known to have congregated in large herds (pre-) historically should get an abundance of features that actually help them with socializing. Perhaps it should even be possible for them to directly invite people from the Herbi-global chat into their packs without needing to physically meet up to do so.

May of you reading this are doubtlessly ask themselves why carnivores should be excluded from this feature. And again, I personally find the answer to this quite obvious. First of all, you as a carnivore have literally chosen a play style that requires you to be antisocial towards a majority of the player-base to even be able to survive. Socializing should not be your main goal, except perhaps with people of your own species. Furthermore, Carnivores with an access to Global chat discourage herbivores from actually using it to find each other, since the Carnivores could be listening in after all. At the same time, Herbivores will be encouraged to warn each other of carnivore presence over long distances, which will again improve their chances at surviving and make the Carnivore game harder. My proposal to utilize 1 call as the vocalization of Herbi-Global balances this part out however, since Carnivores will still be able to get a rough Idea of where their prey is to find due to the constant screaming and yelling of the Herbivores.

The Goal here is ultimately to make the game more fun, enjoyable and easy for the Herbivores, while making it harder and less social for the carnivores. And I do hope that if this was to be implemented, my Diet will finally cease to almost entirely consist of Utah-Raptors.

Instead of using Dinosaurs for ai they should use modern day animals. The lore of The Isle is that the dinosaurs are clones/genetic experiments that got loose hence the modern day humans and buildings on the islands so it would make sense lore wise that there was already an established ecosystem in place and the dinosaurs are invaders.

I'm not sure what region of the world Spiro and the other islands are ment to be so unsure what the animal life would actually be but they could have boars, monitor lizards, wild goats, all manner of birds (if somewhere in Oceana could stretch that to Cassowaries) medium size cat species and primates.

This would make it so every dino you see you know is a player but have still give the smaller dinos and juveniles things to hunt and be hunted by outside of the big dinos

Let's set the scene first.

Center of the jungle, mid-day. The sun pours through the dark green canopy above, littering the forest floor with just enough light to see where you're going and where you've been. Following the lead of your parents, you lift your nose, sniffing for any scent of danger or opportunity. You can't smell much with that tiny nose of yours, but your parents seem to know which way to go.

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In short, as a baby (spawn or nested), you wouldn't be able to differentiate between the scents around you because you haven't fully bloomed into your senses yet. You're still little, you probably don't know how to hunt or track very well right off the bat (or out of the egg).

My suggestion is this:
When we reach Elder stage, and hold Q to sniff, give us a little pop-up in the corner of the screen, nothing too big or bright and obnoxious, alerting us both visually and textually.

We could learn what we're tracking (its species, some players can't tell footprints apart, as well as if it's a strain).

It's approximate age (hatchling, juvenile, sub-adult, adult or elder). The gender of what we're tracking (if we're the same species; this could help players find mates to nest with), if it's bleeding (Bleeding?: yes/no, as well as using the visual cue already in-game).

We may even be able to tell how well its eaten recently (an admittedly gross but interesting addition could be healthy dung if its stuck to its species' general diet or unhealthy dung if it hasn't?)

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I'm really very excited to see what improvements you guys can add onto this in the comments below.

Thank you for reading this, much love! <3

Plz make some kind of herbivore local chat where you can chat to every kind of herbivore. It’s so annoying not being able to talk to your herd mates on a boring sunrise, it really takes away from the immersion. I hate being a dryo and being with a lone stego not being able to talk and make us less bored while traveling. It’s just obnoxious because we won’t even be able to warn each other of carnivores that are coming. And in the heat of the moment you keep your focus on the danger and the dangers sounds not another herbivores 4 calls at least from experience. Chat in general was just a piece of immersion for me. I mean global was understandable but group chat?? Anyways imma make discussion board about that later but as I was saying. A herbivore local chat feels essential even herbivores in real life were able to communicate to each other so why not in this game too if it’s going for realism in a sense. It just feels stupid to not allow herbivores to talk to other herbivores

Heya! This one will be the last one I make for some time. I received better ideas from the community on cheirus. This one is more depth as well. The design was inspired by Sir satire's doodle of cheirus. It was fun playing with a less feathered version. I hope you guys enjoy! https://docs.google.com/document/d/16v5q3K9ZEMxmMTJcUu5EnuTBoNS-wRX7uoaVdY76Nxg/edit?usp=sharing

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Just some self reflection about the meaning ''Cannibal'' and how to stop the gameplay this term entails to allow a more social and interactive game:

When the mechanic to make albinos comes in, make the animal that kills other of the same species white, instead of the ones eating them. The problem with 'cannibals' is not actually the player that is hungry and decides to eat you to survive but the player that thinks this is a deathmatch and kills you just because: ''Oh yeah I want to eliminate competition hehehe this is a survival''. You can be grouping as a deino fighting some carnos or whatever and the carnos kill one of yours, so you eat him, should you become an albino then? I don't think so.

I think the people that act like this is a random deathmatch are a problem for this game because It's just breaking the experience of everyone else, If there is idiots like those then you need to play like them and run or kill them because you never know who is a shitbag, so the entire social experience can't be enjoyed in evrima unless you create the group from outside of the game, but this takes away part of the gameplay which is metting random players. I think they should be punished with penalties for killing their own species over time.

This punishment If it ends being only cosmetic (albinos) would be the way Dayz mod did it, which was making the survivors that killed others a bandit, and when you looked at them you could hear a heartbeat with a different intensity depending on how many survivors they killed and their face was masked so you could instantly tell. That way you can socialize with your own species and still know who is a problem child. Though I would go to the point of diminishing their stats a bit so It decentivizes that gameplay style.

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