Path of Titans

Let me set the stage (official servers)

I’m playing a bird, and for the better part of 6 hours I’ve spent my time in the impact crater mostly questing and grinding marks with replenishment quests. Mostly just enjoying the coming and goings of the random dinos. I don’t chat, I don’t call, I’m just a completely silent observer.

Some Dino’s are friendly and some are not, as to be expected. Some attempt to attack me and in the return, I fly away. Some ignore me and go about their business. Rinse and repeat.

But it started to pique my curiosity when I noticed a particular time where it seemed that all were welcomed. Many different dinos were there, iggys, trikes, a few metris, pycnos, even an amarga and a sucho. But what’s more there where hatchlings. Baby megs skittering around, a juvie sarco in the water, and many others. None seemed bothered by this, in fact, they seemed to get along great. I could tell they were trepidatious at first, but they warmed up and all just quested and drank from the pond.

Then the pachys came. Instantly the mood soured and most were driven off or died, however a few stayed and fought.

The most interesting part is this escalated very quickly. Wave after wave of spawn ins and reinforcements came until the pond was filled with bodies. T-rexs, eotrikes, ducks, sarcos, everyone brought the heaviest hitters they could muster. The chat, all the while, filled with trash talk.

But the one thing I noticed was, at some point during all this, it stopped becoming a game where you played as a dinosaur and just became about hurting the other players as best as you could. A vicious cycle of revenge and retaliation.

It made me think about the psychological aspects of this game. Is this what you want your dinosaur game to be about? Is this the experience you want to have? If not, how can we change it? can it even be changed? Is this just human nature? Is there a way we can encourage people to act more like animals and less like humans?

An interesting thought experiment if nothing else.

TLDR: I witnessed a very human like war in a game where we’re supposed to be animals.