Ways to Improve Deino Gameplay Loop?
So I’ve been playing a bunch of Deinosuchus on Dinopolis and the Bosch servers, and noticed a bunch of annoying things in the general gameplay loop that don’t exist in other dinosaurs and consistently piss me off:
The only relevant river system on the map is on the Eastern half in the delta region. Deinos who go to South Plains/West Rail do so at their own peril.
There are countless safe drinking spots, meaning fewer chances to catch prey
Due to point 2, most of your diet as a Deino will be cannibalizing your own species in the spawn regions or Delta
Making the above points even worse, you can’t even eat the regular fish without waiting for them to rot. Frogs and Elite Fish spawn too rarely to rely on, even on servers with increased AI spawn rates.
Deino vs Deino PVP is boring as hell. It’s decided by who is larger or who gets the first bite, since you can’t outrun larger Deinos in the water or on land unless they are already out of stamina.
All these points make playing Deino feel completely RNG and stealth reliant. It’s pretty much impossible to survive as a fresh spawn if your starting lake has Deinos who are larger than you (not as bad in Swamp). Its like a pyramid scheme where in order to get to prime you need to have an endless stream of fresh spawned or smaller Deinos to eat since the AI and regular dinos are too inconsistent to rely on.
Short of a complete map redesign to make rivers unavoidable or “safe“ water spots more dangerous due to land predators, I feel like it will be very difficult to improve the Deino gameplay loop. More semi aquatic dinosaurs or consistent fish AI might be a decent band-aid fix, but I don’t think most Deino would repopulate the western half of the map even if these were changed.