On testlive currently I am enjoying the mounts allot. Funcom has done good and hard work and it shows (even in the testing department )
Problem:
My problem is nothing specific to the riding, mounted fighting or any of the new mechanics. It is the fact that when hopping on your trusty steed, they are made your following companion.
So you cannot bring a fighter thrall or beast. We all can imagine that a horse wonât be the first choice for a fight and in my experience is really bad at it as a follower ( not mounted combat, that ROCKS! ).
Solution:
My solution would be to make mounts exclusively just that - MOUNTS. They are a means of faster transport. Not a follower, not a companion just your trusty good boy steed.
What this means is they cannot aggro anything or aggro towards enemies attacking you. They are in a constant state of blissful ignorance. This would also allow them to be âparkedâ at a non-clan memberâs base on their claimed land. Which would make visiting someone less of running away from the claimed land trying to place your guarding mount thing and just parking it by the well or something more realistic.
Dream
If we can get the mount to be just a mount with no combat impact, surely to have a fighter thrall or beast come with us on our travels would be a possibility. So riding to a dungeon is valid. Going to farm mats with a bearer is valid. As mentioned, visiting other players across the map is valid.
Having a follower on his/her own mount is VALID.
Mounts - just mounts (can have a follower as well)
I like the fact they are also followers. Its also an incomplete feature. Meaning, people will come on the forums every day complaining about the fact Horses do nothing but stand there and donât follow you.
There are balance concerns with the fact you move fast AND can have a combatant companion.
There is the immersion breaking element of moving very fast and just having a Follower teleport to your location every 2 seconds.
There is also the concern brought up by Mikey.
Finally, from a design perspective, a lot more code would have to be implemented and tested to make it happen.
That is a lot of red flags for one relatively minor thing. Pass on this one, sorry.
Thank you Multigun, I appreciate your feedback. I am still gonna hold out hope for something like my suggestion but I understand where you are coming from.
A solution to this could be an âinvite player as guestâ option on the interaction wheel, making players able to access the clans landclaim and park the horse
All this would be no problem, if our mount would be something like this:
You could even put a lore/missoin around it⊠You have to defeat strong versions of the animal you want to extract its shadow to use as a mount.
This shadow mounts only exists as long as you ride on them and you can kinda call them (maybe you would have need a certain scroll, so you have to farm mats for it).
But seeing as how they are implemented, such a thing will never come⊠Also I dont know how it would fit the Conan lore. But then again we also have maproomsâŠ
Iâm okay with them being followers. I do think people would be bothered down the road if they just kinda stood around and just ignored everything and became purely for transport and nothing else. Being able to zip around on a horse while a thrall was just constantly teleported to you from the tether would bother me but itâs just a single opinion. I look forward to the choice of, do I wanna get to destination X quickly with my horse or go on foot with a thrall for some killing power and inventory space.
As @Multigun already pointed out, this would require non-trivial changes to the code. If weâre considering adding code, itâs much better to add code that adds a feature we want, than code that removes an aspect of a feature so that other features will work with it.
In other words, I think it would be better if Funcom could add the code that allows us to have an additional follower with us if the first follower is a mount.
Thank you for the response Codemage, always a pleasure reading your stuff.
@jot29 This! I think this is a brilliant idea. If my memory serves, the Witcher 3 had a similar mechanic where you whistled and roach came galloping from a small distance. That would be the best. And if not called our mounts could return and graze in the area of our stables or something like that.
Just to clarify my reasoning for suggesting this change where our mounts are placid traveling thingsâŠ
I was mainly thinking about balance, specifically keeping the one follower limit.
If the mounts are merely a mode of faster transportation that would make the possibility to have our thralls have their own mounts and alleviate the unrealistic follower teleporting every 2 seconds when following their mounted charging master. I also fear the battle would get too cluttered when there is a horse and a thrall busy reigning death along with their master. Even more so in a clan.
The thralls on mounts was iirc also a possibility on one of the dev streams (something they could look into at a later date) and the suggestion I believe would make this even closer to reality.
When it comes to coding and the technical side of things I am clueless, so I hope it would not be to hard but again I no nothing about coding and Multigun has pointed out it would be quite the task or at least a substantial amount of code. But after all this I do still feel it could impact gameplay more positive.
Thanks again for all the feedback guys, I appreciate every post!
I see one tiny issue if you were able to bring a pet/thrall with you while mounted, said pet/thrall would be unable to keep up with you as they canât ride mounts themselves yet, well, pets wonât ever get to ride mounts, but imagine a Crocodile riding a Horse for a second, youâre welcome for that odd mental image.
Having read through the replies, I can see the balancing issues and general problems. I am also of a mind that having the horse as a mount only and being able to take your thrall / pet with you would be way more useful.
IMO a solution would be:
If it is a thrall that is following you then they too would follow on horseback, that solves the weirdness of the thrall teleporting every two seconds.
If it is a pet they should be able to move at the same speed as the players horse.
Imagine charging into battle with Tiddles the Sabertooth running beside you.
There might be a number of valid reasons to dream about that for PVP.
I canât assess that, since I play PVE only.
As far as PVE is concerned:
I played around with horses on testlive and I enjoy them very much.
My first reaction was also along the lines of âwhy do they have to be followersâ
but after testing and contemplating about it, I canât think of a good reason, why they should not be.
There are some specific situations (at least for me) when I use a follower and none of them would justify to be mounted and have a follower.
The ones that I can think of right now are:
harvesting --> You canât mine, chop trees etc. while on horseback, wouldnât make sense anyway
Dungeons --> too confined for riders
Boss fights --> unless you are an exceptionally good archer, jousting is the most effective method. For that you need some open terrain. Even if the critter is in a feasible location, what would be the effect?
You start your run some distance away, hit the trarget and speed away, before being hit. As a result your thrall would spend his time teleporting instead of fighting.
As for the alternative:
Standing next to the critter, whacking away with axe or sword somehow negates the whole concept of mounts for me.
I think this is more of an acceptable solution, than just negating the horse as a follower, afterall you want him to follow you and not be stationary nor summoned. As for the balancing and coding, maybe it could be added that when +1 thrall/pet, mount = passive? That is assuming that mounts are in a different category than pets. This way people wouldnât abuse this system, you still only have one thrall/pet damaging.
This is still a concern that could lead to several ways of trolling.
I disgree with the mount should not be a follower, the mount is a huge advantage in most situations, having a thrall also with you, I feel would be way unbalanced, as you can solo most world bosses with just a horse now. I think it should be a trade off choice, your speed and mobility vs killing power of a thrall, not both.
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