Goblin Squad Member
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Expect a horse that you magically summon, and when you get on it you move 4x speed, then when you get 'hit' it magically disappears and you are thrust into combat.
Then wait 2 years after EE starts and then there will probably be some mechanics around companions. Like in the PnP, Druid animal companions will probably be the best(maybe also animal domain clerics). The tricky part is balancing it so animal companions are not a must-have. My guess is that an animal companion will take up a few of your passive slots, and most of your refresh slots.
Personally, I would rather see something like the 'Creature Handler' and 'Bio-Engineer' from SWG in the game, where you have to go out and find baby animals to tame and train, and do away with the simplified 'here is your companion, go play!' mechanics in the PnP. I hope to see a lot of these mechanics simplified for the tabletop go away and be replaced with some more complex and time consuming activities.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Good questions! As for no.1 I can't see why not, this will be a skill based system where you mix up the traditional classes any way you want.
Number 2 is very interesting to me, because I think it could work the way mounts work in Darkfall:Unholy Wars. There, you craft statuettes that allow you to summon mounts. The mounts can be killed and looted from you. I much prefer that system to the common MMO system where you learn the ability to summon a mount and it will always be available through the press of a button. Companions could work in the same way, with a crafted dog whistle allowing the summoning of your pet dog and so on. Of course you would also need skills to handle the animal or even to be able to summon it at all.
Number 3 I don't know but it will have to depend on whether that would be too much of an advantage compared to other players lacking those summoning skills.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I like the idea of having a large number of small animal companions - not really combat beasts but maybe adding some small bonus to a skill. I'm thinking of something quite weird like having squirrels fetch tools and materials to add to your crafting skill.
More conventionally, dogs, raptors (the birds, not the dinos) or even cats could add to hunting and survival skills, a sleek pampered pedigree lapdog or exotic bird could add to Diplomacy or other social skills. A thief could use a trained monkey. A carthorse or ox would add to farming, an otter or seabird to fishing, a snake to entertainment - the possibilities are endless.
You'd have to have each animal linked to a skill, possibly an animal training ability. You could then have professional animal trainers. How that would work as a programming challenge I have no idea, but I strongly suspect that it won't be added!
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Goblin Squad Member
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Expect a horse that you magically summon, and when you get on it you move 4x speed, then when you get 'hit' it magically disappears and you are thrust into combat.
Wait have they said that? Because if they have then my interest level in this game just went WAY down.
I haven't seen a promise for mounted combat but I just figured as a sandbox they would opt for that over half-assed theme park style mounts. Especially in a game based on Pathfinder which has full mounted combat.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Expect a horse that you magically summon, and when you get on it you move 4x speed, then when you get 'hit' it magically disappears and you are thrust into combat.Wait have they said that? Because if they have then my interest level in this game just went WAY down.
I have seen nothing to suggest that at all. Anywhere.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I have seen nothing to suggest that at all. Anywhere.Expect a horse that you magically summon, and when you get on it you move 4x speed, then when you get 'hit' it magically disappears and you are thrust into combat.Wait have they said that? Because if they have then my interest level in this game just went WAY down.
I vaguely recall something of that nature... however the closest I can find is a statement of what a mount will almost certainly not be
Let me give you an example. If you said "it would be cool if you left your mount standing outside a dungeon while you went exploring - because I'd like to be a mount thief who specialized in finding abandoned mounts and taking them", this is what the emergent behavior would be on the server: Nobody would ever leave a mount standing outside a dungeon.
doing a bit more digging to find something closer though
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Goblin Squad Member
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Persistent mounts and a lack of mounted combat are two entirely separate issues.
Having my mount disappear underneath me the moment I get tapped by an attack is a very big immersion breaker, on top of it meaning we miss out on a lot of great content.
Having my mount not visually represented in the world while I'm doing a dungeon is something my suspension of disbelief can handle.
But I mean really. I say mounted combat or no mounts at all. Having a mount disappear from underneath me is about as immersive as if taverns offered twinkies in little plastic wrappers that say "Hostess" on them.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Some added notes on how mounts are handled in Darkfall:UW:
Mounts statuettes are player crafted and can be traded. Activating a statuette summons a mount. This mount remains in the world until unsummoned (requires a few seconds to do this). After unsummoning, the statuette returns to your inventory.
Mounts do not auto heal, players need to manually heal them. If a mount is killed it is gone forever.
If you are hit while riding, the mount is NOT immediately unsummoned. You need to dismount to get off it (or the mount can be killed from under you). There is no way to get knocked off of a live mount as far as I know but that option would obviously be good to include in PFO.
After dismounting, the mount is tagged as belonging to you but other players can attempt to steal it from you. If you are killed, your statuette can be looted (if you have one in inventory) or your mount can be taken by your vanquisher (if it was summoned and alive when you died). With the flag system of PFO, horse theft could be made more interesting than in DF:UW.
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I think this is a pretty good system for handling mounts in a sandbox MMO. Some parts could be changed for PFO, like "breeding" instead of crafting and having a "horse whistle" to summon your mount rather than a statue. Many aspects of mount handling, such as riding, chance to fall off, ability to heal, fast dismount, adeptness at theft etc. could be affected by PFO skill system. The gist of the system is good though and I think it would work well in PFO.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Frustrating though it might be to have your horse stolen while you are looting a dungeon, it does make you think ahead somewhat. You may need to hire guards and horse holders, or someone to take your horse back to the nearest safe settlement.
As long as these people are tagged as 'belonging' to you, they should not be in danger of being indiscriminately attacked by other PCs (in the same way as PvP is not without consequences), and ought to be strong enough to fight off wandering wild animals. Of course, a wandering goblin warband is another matter, but it might lead to the opportunity for a revenge raid to recover your mount.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Horse theft does seem like it would lead to a more interesting variant of PvP. Sort of like a Barbaric way to 'count coup'.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'd like the record to show that I don't propose a system where you have to leave your mount outside a dungeon where you enter.
Mounts statuettes are player crafted and can be traded. Activating a statuette summons a mount. This mount remains in the world until unsummoned (requires a few seconds to do this). After unsummoning, the statuette returns to your inventory.
What I think would work is an inventory item that lets you summon your mount (a whistle or horn perhaps), making them appear by "fading into view" and running up to you. You should also be able to dismiss your mount by targeting it and performing some action, casing it to run away and "fade out".
While summoned, the mount can be killed or stolen. If stolen, the new owner can then unsummon the mount, recieving a whistle/horn in his inventory allowing resummoning of the mount.
While summoned it will be flagged as belonging to its owner, if someone steals it they should get the "thief" flag.
A system such as this where mounts are tied to an inventory item allows for mounts leaving the economy through death or the destruction of the summoning item, thus providing a constant need for crafters/breeders able to provide new mounts. It also allows for situations where people decide to leave their mounts at home and travel by foot, whereas with the permanent summon ability of WoW for example, you always have access to your mount and never risk losing it and you only ever need to buy one mount (if you ever buy a new one it's because it's an upgrade).
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Goblin Squad Member
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Frustrating though it might be to have your horse stolen while you are looting a dungeon, it does make you think ahead somewhat.
This is the exact scenario Ryan used as an example in his "X" would be Cool ... becomes Nobody does "X" thread.
Let me give you an example. If you said "it would be cool if you left your mount standing outside a dungeon while you went exploring - because I'd like to be a mount thief who specialized in finding abandoned mounts and taking them", this is what the emergent behavior would be on the server: Nobody would ever leave a mount standing outside a dungeon.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Except its not because I'm pointing out that being a horse thief in that situation wouldn't actually work. The horse is guarded or taken to safety. There is no unaccompanied horse that can simply be untied and led away as Ryan was suggesting.
Yes, you could kill the guards and take the horse, but then you could kill the character and steal his horse token/whistle whenever you wanted. In both cases stealing the horse is something that is dangerous and will have you branded as a killer and thief. If the guards are somehow tagged as being under that PCs protection it would work as though the character himself was sat next to the horse.
The alternative is having magical horse tokens like some sort of Pokémon where you slip the mount conveniently back into your pocket when you arrive anywhere. Yuck.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think part of the reason we won't have mounts sitting all over the world is server load. If every time you leave your horse somewhere it stays there, and you have to leave NCP guards. That eats a lot of the server's resources. Resources better spent on other things.
Mounted combat on the other hand requires no additional server resources. Just development resources. Resources which would be well spent IMO.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If mounts are going to be intangible items, then I hope something similar to what Valkenr posted comes to fruition (attack a mount and it vanishes and the rider is put into combat). Otherwise, it will become impossible to ever catch someone if they have a mount. They'll just summon their invisible mount and ride off into the unset, leaving the mob with their pitchforks and sputtering torches in their dust.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Possibly if mounts are for travel eg just horse and saddle then they are very vulnerable to damage while used and so can be "destroyed" if used, so it encourages players to "dismount" or lose a valuable resource? I like the idea of fast mounts used for "fast travel" effectively also and perhaps along roads with different mounts adding different off-road travel options for eg??
In battles chargers with full armour would act differently and oc later in development expand gameplay, I hope.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If every time you leave your horse somewhere it stays there, and you have to leave NCP guards.
Sorry, I know that it was a typo for NPC but this was hilarious. In the UK, we have a nationwide car park company called NCP. I now have visions of a horses parked up in a multi-storey parking lot with.
In any case, I take your point about server space. I'm just hoping we don't have Pokemon horses.