Gradual monster genocide

[saarn]

How about a totally brain-dead approach:
Have an optional attribute for "nuisance monsters" that has a count and a second rarity. When your kill count for that monster type hits the value, the rarity drops to the second level.

For an RP kind of story behind this mechanic, some monsters aren't very common but there is a rogue pack loose in the dungeon and they are tracking @ down. When he kills the rogue pack, the frequency of encounters is reduced.

It doesn't sound as cool as the population dynamics discussed above, but it might be as good for game mechanics.

[Rydel]

Originally Posted by fizzix

I'm not sure how to get both incentives to work. Maybe it's impossible?

This may be something that's best to work on a case-by-case basis for the monster. Some monsters, a single one can ruin your day, so you would design them for positive incentive so that taking the time to kill them on your terms means you are less likely to be surprised by them. Same for monsters that are fine when your healthy bun especially dangerous if you are wounded and trying to get away.

Other monsters aren't too bad on their own, but can be trouble in groups. These would work best with negative incentive, so its best to kill them when you see them alone or in small groups to keep those large groups from spawning.

This would require changes in the monster edit file since you would definitely have to have the breeding count, allocation weight, and max population in there instead of calculating them off the existing rarity value, but I suspect that's what you were thinking anyway.