Feedback talk:User/Silverdawn/Mounts and War Platforms

I really only liked the last part that you talked about, and even then, I only kind of liked it. I personally think that mountas are overrated, and there is supposed to be map-traveling, which provides faster-than-mount travel. For those of us to cheap/poor to actually pay this fee, why don't we enjoy the scenery that the art team put so many long hours into? It is a cool idea, but I don't think it fits in the GW universe. For your last idea, it was nice, but it might have to be conditional. You might have to cut out you enemy's ankle first, so that it will drop down for several seconds. This would allow you to "climb on board", so to speak. It also makes more sense that characters would get profession and weapon specific skills to use while on said beast (a ranger wielding a bow would get point-blank skills to use, or an elementalist would get larger, single target spells to use), instead of general ones like "Whack 'em good!". Plus that just sounds wierd. :P Just a couple of thoughts. Darkshine 13:38, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Well thought out, well written, well formatted suggestion. Personally not pro or con for it. I look at mounts as the wrong solution to a problem; that is, trying to travel rapidly between locations because the intervening space is non-interactive when - instead - the developers should be looking at ways to make the surrounding world part of the game rather than something to simply "get through as quick as you can". That aside, I think that mounts could still have a place in the game and your suggestion offered reasonable solutions to many of the pitfalls that mounts would otherwise present.

My two additions would be:

1) I would add an aquatic mount (likely a dolphin; you hold on to the dorsal fin or have some kind of harness attached) for the underwater areas of the game.

2) Do not make mounts part of an expansion wherein some players have mounts and others don't. All that does is promote the very elitism you criticized in your opening paragraph and is punitive to those players unable or unwilling to afford the expansion that includes mounts. Make it all or nothing; either everyone has the potential to own a mount or nobody gets one. Guild Wars 3 perhaps 03:53, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

In most games, mounts are thought of as transportation. You hop on, and suddenly you are able to glide through the landscape, becoming separate from and invulnerable to the world. I'm trying to approach it from a different angle: I think of mounts as cavalry rather than transport, and I think a player should feel his character is as much a part of the world on the back of a berserking bison as he does on foot. That is why I suggested so many limitations on mounts; my aim was to balance the obvious advantages mounts provide with characters on foot and give horseback an immersive feel. The playstyle should feel different, but neither should be superior to the other overall. Granted, the speed boost can be useful as a medium-range, intra-zone transportation (anything more would be outshined by map travel), but the way the mounts are set up would make the way mounts are used in other games impractical in GW2. Mounts as I suggested them are primarily a combat mechaninc, not a fast-transportation one.

@ Darkshine: "Whack 'em good" is a placeholder name, and a flippant one at that. But yes, you are right. It should represent different skills, but all of them should make it worth the extra risk and effort of climbing up a boss (but not overwhelmingly so).

@ Guild Wars 3 perhaps: putting mounts in an expansion or another campaign probably wouldn't cause any more eliteism than would a warrior in silver eagle armor would to someone who only owned prophecies. Sure, it looks cool, but it doesn't offer any clear overall advantages than what's available to the prophecies character. I imagined mounts themselves being reasonably-priced, low-key and available; the "prestige" part is the barding you deck them out with. I'd be against aquatic mounts unless they also had aquatic stables - but somehow I get the feeling that underwater areas are more like dungeons than outposts. --Silverdawn 07:46, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Wait it was a placeholder? XD lol I kind of figured that was what it was. What the difference between Silver Eagle armor and mounts is that mounts give you a noticeable benefit (moving faster) while different looking armor doesn't. Aquatic areas are not purely dungeons. There are places in persistant areas where you are allowed to swim. Use of stables seems wierd to me because you can just store your pets away as rangers (it seems wierd to me to make two similar things have different ways of storage). However, I still don't think that mounts are needed in a game like GW2. Darkshine 21:15, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Thank goodness, right? Can you imagine if that was the name of the skill in the final release? And you're right, mounts are unneeded - GW2 is going to be awesome without them. You're also right that most underwater areas are going to be explorable areas rather than dungeons. However, underwater areas are like dungeons in that I don't envision players taking mounts into them - it's the kind of area you tie your mount up and leave it behind before venturing inside.

The reason why the mounts I describe are more like silver eagle armor than mounts in other games is that while the mount does provide a benefit, it does so at a cost and with several limitations/parameters making it no more or less effective overall - in other words, lacking any sort of total advantage, just like the silver eagle armor. In other games, there is no tradeoff, the mount is just a pure benefit in the form of a free speed boost between encounters. The stable system I proposed is part of this tradeoff: each player has to decide upon departing the part of town with the stable in it whether he is going to walk or ride. If he brings his horse, he's going to have to look after it, making the hop-on hop-off gameplay you can witness in other games kind of impractical. He's going to fight on its back unless he wants to waste time tying it up before the battle or finding it after the battle. It's going to change how he fights until he abandons it, it dies, or he stables it, but it is not meant to make him any better or worse off than he was. Contrast this with a ranger pet, which, unlike the mounts I'm suggesting, is there to be a pure benefit.

So, you might ask, if there is no total advantage to mounts, what is the point of even wanting them? There are lots of answers! It's a dramatic change of playstyle whenever you want to shake things up. It opens up several awesome tactical opportunities that wouldn't otherwise be there, such as blitzkreig (using superior mobility to attack underdefended points) and classic cavalry charges and flanking maneuvers. There are several exciting cinematic opportunities that come with it, as well as it can become an excellent thematic or role-playing element. It provides a basic mechanic for other awesome things, such as war platforms and boss climbing. Mounts, if done right, have a lot to offer. --Silverdawn 09:40, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

I think that the "boss climbing" would still be a good idea, if done right. I think that war platforms should be done in the style of the origional GW, so you wouldn't have to tie them up (it IS a war platform after all). Players could run and jump onto the seige devourer or whatever, and take up a machine gun that is mounted in the stuff on its back (whatever that is called). I still think that mounts ar unneeded, but if they show up, I will probably just not use them.

Question: if the mount dies, would you have players buy new ones, or would another one appear at the stable? (If you explained this already, just say so. I kind of forgot :P)

One last thing which I forgot to mention before, great job with formatting your suggestion. It does a much better job than others I've seen. Darkshine 14:11, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

The war platforms would be like a cross between a seige devourer (PvE in Charr Homelands) and a seige turtle (from Fort Aspenwood). You could take control of them like a seige devourer, but if not they'll do their own thing like a seige turtle. I never imagined friendly players even being able to tie them up.

I left the question about mount death and replacement deliberately unanswered. The answer all depends on how much the game needs a gold sink. Even if players could revive fallen mounts like rangers could pets, mount death will play its part by providing a counter to the extreme mobility mounts provide. At the very least, I would recommend that mounts be able to be resurrected at a stable (for free or for a fee, doesn't matter), because some folks might get attached to their mount.

Also, thanks for the compliment ^^ --Silverdawn 23:26, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

I thought you said something about tying up war platforms. Guess not. Darkshine 03:56, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

I'm surprised I missed this post. Liked the whole thing. Excellent post and excellent ideas. Cause it is not that I agree with it all, but that I love the fact that ArenaNet can be inspired by those ideas to adapt them into the game as they see fit. ArenaNet wants people to feel the scope of the world, and mounts usually allow too much bypassing. But this post has solutions that could be worked with, like the speed decreases. I personally don't want a mount for travel, but simply to have a mount, so limitations are fine by me. It makes a great idea to work with for expansion content. Wazwolf 23:06, 25 August 2011 (UTC)