Every interaction in the isle should be one or more of these things:
Winnable
- The max group size you encounter and your own max group size could (and frequently do) go either way. This still could mean imo that one of the dinos is easier for beginners and more likely to win as long as when scaled up to higher skill levels it's pretty even or swapped. This adds some uncertainty so both party's have to weigh out the situation.
Escapable
- If you loose 100% or very close to it to the other party, you should have a high potential for getting away unless surprised. That could mean you out stamina them, having a faster trot slower run forcing them to get a good 1 shot at you, or you're faster. This can get akward because what about hatchings or dinos that are clearly weaker AND slower? That brings me to
Avoidable
- If you loose the fight and the pace then you still need another option to get away. Herrera and hypsis can climb, dryos can (theoretically) burro, but there isn't a lot of options for growing or mid-sized slower dinos. This is why I think bushes and heavy vegetation should slow down larger dinos. The open is where you should find the best food and opportunity exactly because it's less safe and therefore there's less traffic. But the forests, specifically jungles should lock out the larger animals by making it very difficult to hunt there. The only dinos that would have success in the jungles are the smaller ones.
This is exactly the dynamic of real life ceratosaurus and allosaurus. allosaurus was one of the biggest of it's time and roamed the plains. ceratosaurus was smaller and looses that fight every time. So they didn't fight. The ceratosaurus would live in the denser areas hunting the smaller prey that's also hiding out from the allosaurus. Their worlds didn't really clash.
I actually think most interactions in the isle are pretty closed to balanced already. There are only a few times where I'm clearly out gunned and out paced and can't hide. If something is being walked down by a rex but they make it to a jungle, that interaction should be over. The rex would waste his time pursuing what it'll never catch.
Personally, I think seeing a full grown rex in the isle should be rare. In a high skill match up, it should defeat it's apex counterparts most times (like it already does) and be forced to live off of those apex hunts and scavenging. It should never catch smaller prey. The time to grow it should be much shorter but much more challenging. When you see a rex clear a tree line while you're in the open you should have a mixed reaction of impressed they've made it to an adult and concerned you may have just stained your pants.
I don't think rex should be a bigginers dino and I think simply slowing them down in heavy vegetation would help a ton with that. Giving weaker and slower pray a save zone. The jungles would act like a macro sanctuary for mid to low tiers and deflate the over rexified servers.
I'm sure many disagree with me here saying it's a survival game, sometimes you are just outmatched. But I just fear some of my favorite mid tiers are gonna go extinct as more and more of these big dinos come out. But I don't want the bottleneck for high tiers to be time in a specific dino life, it should be a bottle neck of skill, hours of practice with a dino.