Wild animals aren't aggressive like this

[redxlaser15]

–IRL, bears won’t attack you unless you get close to either them or their cub(s). They eat much more than simply meat, such as berries and honey. You really don’t need to worry much about them at all if you ever see one, just don’t start poking it or throwing stuff at it and you’ll be fine.
–Wolves don’t actually attack people much, unless it’s their only option. They prefer to eat their natural food, with is not humans. They are more hostile than bears, but they still most likely won’t just charge at you all the time.
–Do mutant creatures not obey their original instincts anymore? A bee will never attack you unless provoked or near their hive. Wasps are a bit sketchy in this category, but staying still and away you will more likely avoid them.
–Stay still and snakes won’t attack even if they are literally sitting on your shoulders or lap, they don’t do that sort of thing, it’s just not how it works.
–It is straight up rare that any predatory wild animal will actually attack you unless they are starving or you provoke them in some way. There are only two animals that will actually straight hunt humans for food, polar bears and another one that I forgot. Not wolves, not bears, not cougars, not dogs, nothing but two different creatures in the entire world!
–You have some excuse for mutants, but even so would they just drop a bunch of their natural instincts all the time? Zombie animals would make sense too attack you, but even moose aren’t that aggressive.
–This game largely uses realism, so how about some realism right here?
–Seriously! Ever heard of the Golden Lancehead snake? Terrifyingly deadly, yet hardly ever reported biting people.

SAVE THE ANIMALS!

[psyxypher]

I think for the mutant animals, the change in size re-wires how they see predator/prey. Their old prey is now too small to fill them and their old predators are prey sized.

Personally, I think the fact wildlife is so aggressive helps add to the “Everything trying to kill you” vibe of the game.

[Straume21]

I have just always thought that it fits into the lore of the game, given that there are monsters out trying to get all of the natural creatures, they are more geared up to fight than in the real world, and see threats in every humanoid shape. If this bothers you, try using the animal empathy trait and it will tone down animal attacks quite a bit. Bears and such won’t really hunt you down like they do in the game currently without it. Other than that, I think that mutant animals should be that aggressive. I could see your point about natural animals, but if I don’t want to get attacked like that, I just take the animal empathy trait.

[Coolthulhu]

AI is rather hard to implement. Most animals act weird because of that.
At the moment most aggressive animals will get angry in two cases:

• You stand within 5 tiles from them
• Something else angered them and they didn’t manage to calm down yet

[Straume21]

Actually, those characteristics make sense… I’ve seen bears in the game that aren’t angered run from my characters. In real life, if you get a wild animal pissed off, it’ll attack, regardless of if you had anything to do with making it angry. Also, if you get close to a wild animal, they tend to freak out. I don’t think this particular mechanic is a problem worth spending time working on, as it’s not so unreasonable as to break game immersion when a ton of wild animals attack you.

You don’t know what that bear has been through, man. Maybe it just had its cubs eaten by a zombie brute, and you’re just the next thing standing on two legs that it sees. A human survivor looks a lot like a zombie to a bear.

[NuG]

Games tend to make wildlife more aggressive than normal life. The Long Dark comes to mind, and they even put a disclaimer splash screen about it when you start the game. It makes things more interesting/challenging I guess, but I haven’t put too much thought into it.
I think the mutant versions should be aggressive, though.

[hobophobe]

Some animals should be more aggressive in a cataclysmic setting, for example packs of starving feral dogs in search of a meal. As the apocalypse wears on, and normal food sources die and/or mutate, other wild carnivores would probably start getting desperate as well.

Most animals though, especially herbivores and small creatures should just run away when they see you.

[Pyrite]

I think we might have a better time if two things happened:

Animals that were spooked into attacking by proximity roared or made some other kind of warning display when you reached six tiles from them, and only attacked if you moved closer after doing that.

And animals who were going crazy because something pissed them off similarly displayed their anger for all to see.

[Straume21]

Okay, that’s a cool idea, but currently, all you have to do is hover over the creature by using [x] to look at it, or [V] to list all creatures, and it will tell you if it is hostile to you, tracking, or fleeing. Generally, if you don’t want a fight, stay away from creatures that are tracking or hostile. This is also a function of the safemode feature. Animals that are hostile will trigger your safemode warning when it’s active. I think a warning by the animal itself would be cool, but it seems a little unnecessary. This also wouldn’t apply to creatures such as giant dragonflies, spiders, or frogs…

“The giant frog croaks at you!”

[redxlaser15]

–It’s not really a problem necessarily, but even in the apocalypse, thoughts and instincts that have been drilled into your brain for hundreds of years will only change so much. I do understand why mutant versions would act a lot different, but sometimes it feels like over-kill.
–Gets animal empathy trait, walks out door into empty field. Soon sees unaggressive bear. Bear turns hostile within roughly 10-15 tiles away. Writes ‘I thought something like this would happen’ on grave.
–In terms of bear starvation, they are omnivores, like us humans, and they are accustomed to nature more than us. They don’t actually hunt meaty beings a whole bunch like they do in a movie or whatnot, and I doubt they would easily turn to being straight-up carnivorous. If nature intended them to be meat-eaters, they would be meat-eaters.
–True evolution takes years to occur. Evolution can’t happen fast enough for bears to only eat meat within the time-scale of the game. Unless in this alternate universe humanity also decided to turn all predatory animals into their stereotypical versions for some inexplicable reason, the amount of change this game can induce is highly unrealistic.
–One way to make this at least slightly better is add that natural warning systems many animals have before attacking (As mentioned before). Growling exists for a reason.

[Straume21]

I see your point, but the thing that you have to remember is that the cataclysm world is a bit more stretched than reality. I could see animals being more aggressive, like bears acting like stereotypical bears, because it’s not very realistic that so many people would have military-grade firearms in their basement… The pre-cataclysm world is a little bit more far-fetched and doesn’t necessarily line up to the real world in many different ways. I understand this is a bit of a cop-out, but its something to remember when you are actually playing the game.

Also, if you really want to feel more immersed in the game, it definitely helps if you aren’t sober.

[dissociativity]

I mean if you constantly yell a moose will run off if you don’t have much mouth encumbrance, but bears are just overly, unrealistically aggressive in-game, as are pigs, pigs are incredibly, terrifyingly aggressive in-game.