Suggestion: NPC Mounted Fighters

@Ragnaguard
Mounted warriors in purges…
Aaaaawwwsoooome! Bring it on.
@Dzonatas and @Rekt, please guys can we pve dream for castles before pvp reminds us that they are sand castles builded in the beach?
I totally respect the pvp version of the game, but let us dream a bit before the wave comes, thank you :rofl::rofl::rofl:.

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I build castles in PVP and defend them from raids all the time :slight_smile: Meta builds are boring after all. And I totally want mounted warrior NPCs. I just know that lances need some work before it’ll be viable. Plus a pork-thrall with a lance and damage multiplier will make short work of pretty much anything, Bosses included. Which is bad for PVE because it removes any challenge from the game at that point.

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I would LOVE my thrall on horseback… I feel so sad when they try to keep up.

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Op never asked that, he asked npcs on horses so we, the pve aspect, will take our horses to go and fight them. Thralls on horses is a bit too much for now, it demands more I believe, but npcs on horses so we can fight them… This is the objective, not pvp :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:. I know you have excellent suggestions m8, bring your wild imagination here and surprise me once more.

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I wouldn’t, because of all the gripes we would hear. On top of all the balancing complaints from PVP community, half of PVE community would complain about being players relegated to sidekicks, and the other half would complain about how the AI sucks.

I almost regret bringing up the issue in this thread, but it seemed like a good idea at the time, sort of like ripping a band-aid all at once instead of little by little.

At any rate, I would love to face the “Riders of Doom” purge, but I wouldn’t want to see mounted thralls, because I really don’t want Funcom to get bogged down by trying to balance that mechanic.

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Yeah… but… all that stuff aside… you know it’d be cool

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I will continue to make this argument - mount-specific npc’s. The whole thing is technically one actor, but upon death the rider will ragdoll off the mount. No different than say, the way rocks crumble when you break them.

Of course - it being implemented like this means that de-horsing the rider midfight won’t be possible but that’s not really the point now is it?

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@drukuku
I remember in Witcher 3 when you were killing the mounted npc you could use the horse, but I had no reason to leave my Roach to take this one. Maybe it would be a really cool alternative to gain a horse by killing the npc mounting it, like in Siptah that you release the prisoners, yet this is the step after the first one I guess, if devs want to implement this option too later in the game. So baby steps, let’s start with mounted npcs and fights for pve.

See, that’s a whole different hill of beans. W3 enemies were distinct entities from the horses and essentially when they were on them, the horse’s AI was hijacked by theirs. It can be done for CE but given the nature of it being on servers and already having the workload of all the other AI rather than it all being localized around the player and in really limited number (with witcher being singleplayer, and all) having NPCs being able to utilize mounts the same as a player just isn’t feasible from an overhead standpoint. Because more than just the pathfinding I’d imagine it’d have to be checking regularly about states of being mounted/on foot yada yada yada. I can picture it being the same kind of issue with crossbows all over again.

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I am pretty sure, If devs decide to implement something like this in the game, they will put their own signature on it and make it work.
No reason to be so scared for something that it’s still in the dreaming section :rofl::rofl::rofl:. I do get your points, but relax :wink:.

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Oh I agree that it’s nice to dream but I maintain that the method I put forward can make for some exciting stuff… like, say, rhino-mounted npcs (combining all the fun of mounted enemies with a rhino’s usual toolset). With the way combat behaviors would be set up you could hopefully bypass the usual ‘all up in your grill’ tactics and try to make them more readily make strafing passes or attacks where the rider rears the horse up a two/three-strike attack where the horse kicks with its front legs while on the way down the rider swings their weapon. Things that you couldn’t normally get with regular mounted combat the way the player interacts with it (though in a perfect world we’d get these nice little things along with the new npcs)

Now this would be ultra-super-duper situational but even work in things like if you attack while the horse rears up damage is increased to a critical level for certain types of attacks (i.e. pike thrusts).

I wasn’t trying to poo-poo on the other method, just spitballing about how it’d probably be the most feasible way to implement such a thing.

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@drukuku
Omg, thieves mounted on rhino outside the silver mine, whoooo, yes bring it on. The only thing I could ever ask is their spawn to be a bit far from the entrance. This path has 2 entrances so it would be best to be on the very start of these paths, this way a low level player should choose the thieves way by climbing hills to avoid the guards, and a high level to go and crush them so he will enter victorious the mines.

I just knew that if we have NPC mounted fighters, then players would be scratching their heads going “ok… so they can do it, but what about my thrall?”

Of course the easiest way to balance that would be to disallow thralls from using lances. Boom, problem solved. :stuck_out_tongue:

I want more varied NPC mounts, too. Lemurian dragon riders, Nordheimer Dire Wolf/Bear cavalry, Votaries of Skelos on Volcanic Rocknoses. All horses all the time just doesn’t scream “Conan” to me.

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@Rekt
To be honest like @darthphysicist I want my thralls to follow me mounted too. For some of us the thralls are not tools but companions. So we hate the idea of going mounted and they run behind. What saves the day is their ability to teleport :rofl::rofl::rofl:, so we digest the idea of walking behind us. Like is said to @drukuku… Baby steps at the time. We wish this game to have a long life and watch all our dreams come true.
We have to admit that the last 4 years this game has changed a lot. One thing that didn’t change for some of us is the love we have about it. We dream and hope for the best.

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This was what I thought also Tephra and drukuku, that the rider and horse could both spawn in and live and die together. ie-they do not mount and dismount at their leiseure, but remain permanently mounted. And for the record I would not only be absutely fine with this limitation, but as I said earlier, I have expectected it to be the case.

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Guys I feel like you are all getting too far ahead of yourselves here. The original post was a request for ENEMY NPCS to appear on mounts. If other people would like to see thralls on mounts then that is their own progression of an idea, not mine. And as such at that point it becomes a standalone suggestion for separate thread. I just want to see enemies on them, as it seems odd that there are enemy NPC entire cities in the game, but not one of them owns a single horse. Like stelagel said:

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Hey there stelagel. I could tell you were itching to discuss this one, so I really wanted to get an individual reply to you. :smiley:

Thankyou so much for your passionate support my dear friend!

I had never actually contemplated this possibility, but it is an interesting concept. However, we would probably need to establish a premise as to why it could only be completed on horseback. But it would be kind of cool.

Yeeeeaaah! People always seem to beclamoring for more challenge, he is one way to achieve it.

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Perhaps if we ever get a Hyrkanian culture pack dlc there will be a thrall saddle. I sincerely doubt it, but can always hope.

But on to the issue of lack of mounted enemies, I do agree it would be nice to see them.
Probably not Darfari or Dogs of the Desert, they would eat the horses.
Nor Black Hand, that would be food for their panthers and other beasts.
Votaries are right out because a horse in the volcano would be flash fried.
However, the relic hunters in Seperemu and the Vanir in the Meadows are especially prime groups for domesticating mounts.
The terrain around the Mounds of the Dead is far less conducive to such endeavors, but is possible.

As for Siptah, the terrain near the coasts in not horse friendly and bringing them on ships is a pain, So I could easily see the Stygians and Black Corsairs not having them. There are some native to the maelstrom blight, but it’s mostly Accursed there, and I think they would more likely eat a horse, or feed it to their pet yakith than domesticate it.

I personally think the best place for them, however, would be Purges. An encapsulated way to introduce them and it makes sense that a mounted horde would raid with speed, thundering down out of seemingly nowhere and leaving the same. To follow that up, if in the future content roving npc bands become a thing (pure speculation on my part) then riders would fit there as well.

The under the hood mechanics are probably a bit complicated, and the rider and mount as a single mob with one hit box may be the best implementation to avoid the intensive work load (both dev and labour of the server tracking the two characters as one) from keeping them separate or like PCs.
That said, if there were an implementation where the NPC uses the PC mount rules I absolutely would love to be able to rustle some horses.

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They have that in Myth of Empires. It’s just a question if Funcom is able to do it. And keep it performant. And balanced.

Sorry, I wasn’t precise enough. I didn’t mean whether it’s possible in general. I meant whether it’s feasible with Conan Exiles engine.