Vandraad said:Oh joy...mounts. Just what this game doesn't need is #%!@%!@ mounts.
Brad and the team, back in early development, included a Warhorse in the Kickstarter which carried over the official site and a good portion of them were sold before we could change them. So we need to honour those pledges but we can't just give Warhorses to a bunch of people and not let anyone else have them, that turns the pledge into a pay to win game-breaker.
Our idea is to rectify this by having mounts but making them as natural and immersive as possible and by allowing some of the world's creatures to be ridden it works a lot better for us and our game.
Out of curiosity, what is your issue with mounts?
I'll say for myself, for all New World has gotten wrong, one they they got right was no mounts. Not having them pulls the players into the world, and one of the few things NW is complimented for is how immersive the game world is. It makes me wonder if people would have noticed what the game world offers if they were blowing by content riding on a mount.
On top of this, adding mounts adds many other considertions like can you combat on them? are they allowed indoors? Does adding fast travel for all players eliminate reasons for players to interact? How much additional time to code and balance them while taking away time for other things?
Kilsin said:Brad and the team, back in early development, included a Warhorse in the Kickstarter which carried over the official site and a good portion of them were sold before we could change them. So we need to honour those pledges but we can't just give Warhorses to a bunch of people and not let anyone else have them, that turns the pledge into a pay to win game-breaker.
Our idea is to rectify this by having mounts but making them as natural and immersive as possible and by allowing some of the world's creatures to be ridden it works a lot better for us and our game.
Are you saying there won't be "standard" mounts other than the pledge mount?
Or are you simply saying standard mounts are in because of the Kickstarter?
(I think you know what I mean by "standard"...Clickable from inventory mounts like we are all familiar with)
Thanks in advance for any explanation.
Kilsin said:Vandraad said:Oh joy...mounts. Just what this game doesn't need is #%!@%!@ mounts.
Brad and the team, back in early development, included a Warhorse in the Kickstarter which carried over the official site and a good portion of them were sold before we could change them. So we need to honour those pledges but we can't just give Warhorses to a bunch of people and not let anyone else have them, that turns the pledge into a pay to win game-breaker.
Our idea is to rectify this by having mounts but making them as natural and immersive as possible and by allowing some of the world's creatures to be ridden it works a lot better for us and our game.
Out of curiosity, what is your issue with mounts?
Did the pledge specify that the Warhorse would have increased run speed?
Cosmetic only Warhorse would not be pay to win game breaker....
Kilsin said:
Out of curiosity, what is your issue with mounts?
Mounts, in every game that I've played that has had them, has trivilized movement.
If your mount move faster than NPCs, keeping you outside of melee range, you're 100% safe from any melee NPC.
If the NPC chasing you is a caster, the caster has to stop to cast and if your mount moves fast enough you're outside casting range by the time the NPC finishes cast, making you 100% safe from caster NPCs.
If a guild is fully equiped with the fastest mounts available (and that is guaranteed to happen) it allows guilds to monopolize more content than otherwise possible.
And given that VR will have mob leashing, use of a mount will get you to that leash point faster, further minimizing your travel risks.
But, some are going to say, just give NPCs (melee and casters) the means to dismount anyone through snares, roots, stuns, etc. Ok, fine, but that then disproportionally affects people not on mounts. If you're running on foot and accidentaly aggro something, you're 100% fubared unless you can kill that mob as it can employ those long range abilities to stop you from running.
Others might say "well mounts don't need to move any faster than a normal player". Ok, fine. If VR were to say that all mounts only move at the base run speed of players then it's just a visual thing to make the 'lets play dress-up' crowd happy.
Oh, and the fact that Warhorse was in the Kickstarter shows just how stupidly shortsighted the original design team was on things.
Instead, VR, go back to the original idea of the PackMule and put that into the game if you're looking for a mount system.
IMO:
Honestly, at this point, why not just retroactively adjust all the pledge rewards back to and including the Kickstarter and remove all in-game item rewards, including mounts, bags, gear, armor, anything equippable, all of it?
That way there's absolutely no chance of any of it being even slightly pay2win.
It's not like people can demand or get refunds. :D
My first thought is "why do mounts in games always go faster than running"? This is something that games (and a lot of fantasy) get wrong. Having a horse doesn't mean you travel faster. It lets you carry more on a journey, sure, and you can have a quick burst of speed that won't last and tires out the mount, but you won't be galloping from one zone to another.
Pet peeve.
I do like the idea of making mounts part of the environment that require some work, and not just an "instant horse" in your pack, but mounts as a means of traveling faster... that bothers me.
But I'll wait and see what happens. Maybe different creatures do different things, and don't last long.
Vandraad said:Kilsin said:
Out of curiosity, what is your issue with mounts?Mounts, in every game that I've played that has had them, has trivilized movement.
If your mount move faster than NPCs, keeping you outside of melee range, you're 100% safe from any melee NPC.
If the NPC chasing you is a caster, the caster has to stop to cast and if your mount moves fast enough you're outside casting range by the time the NPC finishes cast, making you 100% safe from caster NPCs.
If a guild is fully equiped with the fastest mounts available (and that is guaranteed to happen) it allows guilds to monopolize more content than otherwise possible.
And given that VR will have mob leashing, use of a mount will get you to that leash point faster, further minimizing your travel risks.
But, some are going to say, just give NPCs (melee and casters) the means to dismount anyone through snares, roots, stuns, etc. Ok, fine, but that then disproportionally affects people not on mounts. If you're running on foot and accidentaly aggro something, you're 100% fubared unless you can kill that mob as it can employ those long range abilities to stop you from running.Others might say "well mounts don't need to move any faster than a normal player". Ok, fine. If VR were to say that all mounts only move at the base run speed of players then it's just a visual thing to make the 'lets play dress-up' crowd happy.
Oh, and the fact that Warhorse was in the Kickstarter shows just how stupidly shortsighted the original design team was on things.
Instead, VR, go back to the original idea of the PackMule and put that into the game if you're looking for a mount system.
Insulting the original design team, who a good portion of them created or worked on EQ and VG (among many other games), won't do you any favours man, you don't know what their vision was for mounts and armchair dissing industry veterans by speaking as if you know better, never having made a game yourself is just poor form.
EQ worked well without mounts but mounts in VG were a great addition to a huge open world. Pantheon is a different game altogether and we will look to balance them to best suit our game and our vision.
Joppa has already mentioned using wildlife as ridable mounts and while I can't go into details yet, we have idea's for balancing but making a horse move at the same speed as a human, for instance, just seems silly to me.
When mounts are added to testing we will get feedback from everyone as per normal and work with the data to address it then but in the meantime, it may help to be a bit more open-minded about them and share idea's on how you feel they could work, rather than just dump hate on the idea when it's difficult for us to change path at this point.
Kilsin said:Insulting the original design team, who a good portion of them created or worked on EQ and VG (among many other games), won't do you any favours man, you don't know what their vision was for mounts and armchair dissing industry veterans by speaking as if you know better, never having made a game yourself is just poor form.
Actually I was there in the earliest days in 2013 when the original development team had near real-time discussions about game mechanics and mounts being something that trivializes content was very much a common discussion. Several of them, along with a majority of interested persons (such as myself) explained in great detail how mounts can negatively impact a game. So yeah, even after they themselves agreed that mounts trivialize travel only to see it show up in the KS did show they were incredibly shortsighted. And here we are, nearly 8 years later, than putting that warhorse into the Kickstarted is now forcing VR to include mounts.
Kilsin said:Joppa has already mentioned using wildlife as ridable mounts and while I can't go into details yet, we have idea's for balancing but making a horse move at the same speed as a human, for instance, just seems silly to me.
So at least keep mount speed slower than player buffs so that player buffs remain in demand.
I am more against mounts than I am SoW because the latter encourages class interdependancy and social interaction.
When mounts become ubiquitous everyone is running past everything/everyone and it detracts from the immersion in the world. So focused on getting to your destination that you don't explore off the trail or discover the hidden things, doubly so when you are staring at the in game map as you auto-run at 200% speed.
My main question about mounts is ... if they are going to be mobs that are out in the world, and those mobs have a specific speed already, would they actually go faster when a player gets on them? Or will different mobs have different speeds so you'll want to find faster mobs to mount?
I hope they don't make everyone instantly masterful riders everytime they mount something to ride away. Doesn't make sense that every other skill needs to be built up to be mastered but mounting a beast and riding away everyone is automatically a master.
Not being able to get on and stay on to being bucked off may make being able to mount a beast be more meaningful.
However, if that just means players simply spam mounting the same beast over and over again (sort of like building up your safe fall skill in EQ by running up and down the same vertical face didn't make it all that meaningful a journey) then it will be something that is done as a solo activity to build up a skill - but not really play the game. Perhaps have some kind of attempt timers (cool downs) when failing to mount or when getting bucked off. Won't stop the spam mounting to build up a skill - just drags the repeat activity out.
I don't have a problem with mounts in a general sense, but their performance ought to be linked to a Stamina/Endurance stat innate to the creature, similar to how VR has already shown player climbing to be linked to Stamina. For example, a donkey-type creature would have more endurance to travel longer distances and carry more "stuff", than a cat-type creature that might be better for short bursts of speed with no payload. Maybe that can all be linked to an Animal Husbandry skill that allows players to get a sense of what different creatures are capable of.
eunichron said:I don't have a problem with mounts in a general sense, but their performance ought to be linked to a Stamina/Endurance stat innate to the creature, similar to how VR has already shown player climbing to be linked to Stamina.
I believe they are going to be introducing a climbing-specific resource that is not stamina.
I like the idea that you'll just have to try whatever is in the area. Like you come to a new zone and you suddenly need X kind of mount.
"Is this something I can ride?"
Beast kills you.
"Nope, I guess not."
Like something you have to learn anew as you level up.
Or you could be wandering in a zone and see a Capacious Thornfoot.
"Oh I need one of those. Lucky me."
Crowsinger said:I believe they are going to be introducing a climbing-specific resource that is not stamina.
I like the idea that you'll just have to try whatever is in the area. Like you come to a new zone and you suddenly need X kind of mount.
"Is this something I can ride?"
Beast kills you.
"Nope, I guess not."
Like something you have to learn anew as you level up.
It would give new meaning to the phrase "ride or die". Though it's been stated many times that there will be no flying mounts, perhaps a bonus to climbing could be one benefit applied to certain mounts. A halfling clinging onto a giant tree frog might reach the canopy if they manage to hold on long enough. A gnome sitting atop a large ibex might have better chances scaling their way up a dam or cliff, assuming their riding skills even allowed for the attempt to be made. The risk would then lie in being knocked or bucked off of their mount and either dying with their corpse in a hard to retrieve location or badly injured and stranded there, needing to bribe a rogue with plenty of rope, lowering them from branch to branch, or a porter to come airlift them out.
I like the idea of free mounting, there are current games that I look at some of the wandering mobs and think how neat it would be to ride them but there is no actual mount skin that matches them.
As for giving people an unfair advantage of just running through camps and stuff, it seems like it would be easy enough for NPCs to have an action that says: "if *mountbuff* active then deploy *dismountability" so that unmounted players aren't effected. Another idea would be to have combat remove the mount speed bonus altogether which would leave you with your character's buffed run speed making run speed buffs still relevant. Both of these will also encourage more thoughtful routes or even sticking to roads.
Bonus if roads gave a speed boost or autopilot ability to predetermined checkpoints so I can get a drink while riding to the next zone or closest unlocked checkpoint. That way I'm well caffeinated and nobody has been trained by my afk running (mounted or otherwise).