Accepted Mounts

[KabbyDankGod]

Mounts.
Mounts are found in almost every MMORPG and are essential tools when traveling. They let you cross large distances in a short time, and makes traveling between places convenient. Why am I bringing mounts up? Well, there are a few things I'd like to address regarding them that maybe most people wouldn't give a thought to.

What are mounts?
- Mounts are a form of transportation in which a player rides atop the back of or inside beasts or machines. In my suggested form of mounts, most mounts would also have a specific use/uses.

Why mounts?
- As the staff has already mentioned before when mounts were brought up, Dyescape will have a form of fast travel between towns, probably similar to GW2 Waypoints or Flight paths from WoW. So if there is fast travel, why would you want mounts?
1. Mounts can be used to travel between non-city areas. Maybe a quest requires you to go from a small village to another, with no travel points in between. Using a mount in this situation will be helpful.
2. Mounts are useful when questing, especially when you need to gather materials, run between groups of mobs or just getting where your quest is.
3. They're cool, and you can show off if you have a rare mount.
4. They're a nice reward for players, that isn't directly linked to combat.

What can mounts do?
- Most mounts will give you a speed boost when traveling on land. Along with this, mounts will have a special use depending on its mount type and mount class.

What are mount types, and what mount types are there?
- Mount types determine a few things about your mount. What type of speed boost you get (Swimming, Running, Flying). They also indicate where you can summon them and when you can summon them.
1. Land mounts give you a speed boost on land, can be summoned everywhere (including raids), and they can be used in specified indoor areas.
2. Flying mounts give you a speed boost whilst flying, can be summoned when in the overworld, and can't be used indoors.
3. Aquatic mounts give you a speed boost in water, can be summoned only when on or in water, and can be used in specified indoor areas.
4. Amphibious mounts give you a speed boost in water and on land, though less than Aquatic and Land mounts, they can be used on both land or in water, and can be used in specified indoor areas.

What are the mount classes you talked about?
- Mount classes are what determine what their special abilities are, outside of the ones they gain from their type. These are split into five categories which are:
1. Generic, your normal mount, with no special abilities.
2. Defensive, your mount has an ability that gives you a defensive advantage. These can be: increased armor while mounted, not getting dazed when riding, being immune to crowd control effects, defensive buff when dismounting, etc.
3. Offensive, your mount has an ability that gives you an offensive advantage. These can be: An attack that you're able to use on the mount, think dragon fire breath or a bull charge, an offensive buff when dismounting, a mount attack when dismounting, etc.
4. Utility, your mount has an ability that gives you a utility advantage. These can be: Merchants on the mount that you're able to sell items to, repairmen, being able to have two or more people on the mount, being able to harvest or mine on the mount, etc.

Why would mounts have classes?
- To make mounts more unique from each other. Would you want just every mount to be a reskinned horse? Most likely not.

What problems would you face with having mounts?
- Obviously this all sounds great, but what are some of the problems you would face when creating these kinds of mounts?
1. Textures / models. As we all know, one of the big limitations of Minecraft, atleast Java Edition, is not being able to create custom mobs. Creating mounts outside of normal Minecraft mobs could be difficult, atleast to make them look nice.
2. Breaking the game. Mounts might let you skip certain things or break out of the map which could be bad for gameplay and immersion. These might be able to be addressed with proper map-making and testing, but not everything can be patched out until it's too late.
3. It might be expensive. In games like WoW, atleast in the earlier expansions having a mount was essential, but it was a huge time and gold sink. It was a goal to work towards, but Minecraft players might not have the patience or determination to farm gold to buy a mount. This can be easily fixed by having basic mounts at a cheap price, and the arguably stronger and better they get the more gold you must sink into it.
4. Just not needed. If the game world is dense enough, there might not be a need for mounts, atleast at this scale and depth.
5. Balance. Certain mounts might have abilities deemed too powerful or too underwhelming. This can be as simple as changing a few numbers, to needing the entire ability reworked.

Conclusion:
- These are just my ideas, mixing elements from a few MMORPGs that I like. I really hope other people start to voice their opinion's on this topic because I haven't gotten a lot of traction on these posts in a while.

As always with my suggestions, I will update here with other people's suggestions for easy viewing and so people don't suggest what others have already:

From DatzZoo: "Selling and Buying mounts", gives players more ways to make money and adds another thing to grind money for. Let's you get rid of duplicate mounts or just mounts you don't see use for.

From DatzZoo: "Skills / Levels to mounts", gives the mounts a leveling up system. Levelling up the mount could give them new skills, faster speed and other upgrades.

From Dwasemd: "One mount might be better at hilly terrain, some mounts can carry you through a one block hole, some mounts might have more armor, but in a race across the open world, the top tier mounts need to perform within a certain variance of each other to keep fair mounted combat and diverse playstyle choices."

 

[DatzZoo]

I would love to see a variation of mounts implemented, however, I believe that these mounts should serve minor influences on actual gameplay. Mounts like horses (or similar animals... potentially specific variations for different topographical regions) that improve walking speed and introduce a new way of transportation are great for gameplay experience all around. Mounts or companions (which I assume in the poll is referenced under "Mounts with __ abilities") that aid the player in fighting or other game-play related tasks should be kept to a minimum and their effectiveness considered to be greatly nerfed to preserve the difficulty of the game.

While smartly balancing their actual influence on gameplay (i.e. combat, anything beyond transportation), I believe that mounts could be a useful and exciting feature for Dyescape. Large variations in the types of mounts, while still remaining simplistic and realistic, will help set Dyescape apart from other MMORPG communities. The ability to sell/trade mounts of a wide range of rarity, with different price tags, will provide another economic niche for players to delve into. I also think it would be interesting to incorporate skills/levels to the mounts as well to add extra grind to the game.

Great idea!
Zoo

 

[KabbyDankGod]

Mounts or companions (which I assume in the poll is referenced under "Mounts with __ abilities") that aid the player in fighting or other game-play related tasks

Mounts wouldn't fight for you, the abilities I meant were more like having a dragon mount that shot fire when you were riding it, as I'd assume players wouldn't be able to use their own skills while on mounts. When it comes to more minor abilities, these would be like having a harvest mount that lets you mine/fish/gather herbs etc. without dismounting, making it faster to run around and gather these materials. The more major abilities wouldn't be game-breaking, just something to make the mounts more unique.

The ability to sell/trade mounts of a wide range of rarity, with different price tags, will provide another economic niche for players to delve into.

I agree, being able to grind for a rare mount people really want to make money is an interesting thought, or maybe if you get a duplicate of a mount you have, you can sell it for profit or give it to a friend.

I also think it would be interesting to incorporate skills/levels to the mounts as well to add extra grind to the game.

Adding skills or levels to mounts would be interesting. Maybe having a skill tree or just having them unlock once you level your mount up could be nice for gameplay and makes people work to make their favorite mounts better. You could potentially make it so to level up your mounts speed, you have to run X amount of blocks. Rarer mounts would have increased caps to movement speed increase over the lower-ranked ones, or they would just have extra abilities.

Good suggestions, I'll be adding them onto the original post.

 

[Dsawemd]

Mounted combat is difficult to balance, as the faster mounted player will be able to fight a war of attrition if they are able to define the terms of combat (run away, eat/heal, re-engage on their terms). I assume there will be out-of-combat timers or player radius or something to affect mount permissions and prevent this sort of calvary-archer attack.

There should be one consistent block-movement rate for the top tier of mounts, to allow for fair and diverse choices.

One mount might be better at hilly terrain, some mounts can carry you through a one block hole, some mounts might have more armor, but in a race across the open world, the top tier mounts need to perform within a certain variance of each other to keep fair mounted combat and diverse playstyle choices.

Extreme rarity/collector mounts could focus on giving non-combat advantages, ie "utility" instead of "offensive", which would keep them desirable but not let a rare mount act as a barrier to top tier combat effectiveness.

 

[KabbyDankGod]

I assume there will be out-of-combat timers or player radius or something to affect mount permissions and prevent this sort of calvary-archer attack.

I think the best way to solve this problem is to give mounts a mounting time, like 5 seconds or something, as well as having mounts only be accessed when out of combat.

 

[Aekalix]

Great idea. I definitely noted this one down.

Mounted combat is difficult to balance, as the faster mounted player will be able to fight a war of attrition if they are able to define the terms of combat (run away, eat/heal, re-engage on their terms). I assume there will be out-of-combat timers or player radius or something to affect mount permissions and prevent this sort of calvary-archer attack.

Mounts would only be available after either entering a town or being out of combat for a minute or two. For now, I don't see mounted combat being a thing that can be even balanced since some classes will be focused close range and would not stand a chance against a mounted person.