What do you folks think the feasibility, return on investment, and flavor would be for spells that pack more offensive umph but require a mounted status to fire? Would a simple needed status be too far into the old horse code to touch? The eye candy might be neat, at least. ;)
NRAY
STELLARMAGUS
Re: Mounted Magic
06/08/2014 03:03 AM CDT
There are a lot of other things about horses that need to be fixed about horses before this sort of thing should be looked at, I think.
First and foremost that they're kind of senseless as a travel option. It's essentially just as fast to move around without a horse as it is with one. Not that in-game travel needs to be sped up at all! In a world where you can spring from Crossing to Dirge in less than a minute flat travel needs to be slowed, not sped up. If on-foot travel were slowed somehow, then horses could provide a means to travel quickly. This should be their primary purpose. Travel is currently the single most immersion breaking and unfun thing in the game due to how fast it is, in my own opinion.
Once the most basic and fundamental problems with horses are fixed, then I'd be all for discussing mounted combat options.
First and foremost that they're kind of senseless as a travel option. It's essentially just as fast to move around without a horse as it is with one. Not that in-game travel needs to be sped up at all! In a world where you can spring from Crossing to Dirge in less than a minute flat travel needs to be slowed, not sped up. If on-foot travel were slowed somehow, then horses could provide a means to travel quickly. This should be their primary purpose. Travel is currently the single most immersion breaking and unfun thing in the game due to how fast it is, in my own opinion.
Once the most basic and fundamental problems with horses are fixed, then I'd be all for discussing mounted combat options.
STELLARMAGUS
Re: Mounted Magic
06/08/2014 03:04 AM CDT
(Note: I hate that I can't proofread after-the-fact on these forums without completely deleting and then reposting. "things about horses that need to be fixed about horses" ... gah. Facepalming so hard right now!)
SHAWN255
Re: Mounted Magic
06/08/2014 03:16 AM CDT
As someone that was around for longer ferry and barge times and fewer survival based alternative methods of travel.. and as someone that was on the first boat rides... I strongly disagree. Yes.. it is unrealistic.. but so is fast travel in almost every other game.. it is there though because it isn't fun to sit and wait. The first boat rides were like 8 hours long just to get from crossings to ratha... (might have been a bit shorter but it was 'go to bed and pray you wake up in time to get off before you are stuck for an even longer journey..." And to be blunt.. while at the time it was exciting because it was insanely new... it got old reaaaally fast.
Now.. with that said.. I wish there were some improvements made to horses. Like having them be more like the carriages.. hope on.. tell it to go to xyz and it trots off to wherever.. Originally I think the reason they didn't do that was because they didn't want to step on trader's toes because of caravans.. but I am not sure if that is a worry anymore.
Anyways
Now.. with that said.. I wish there were some improvements made to horses. Like having them be more like the carriages.. hope on.. tell it to go to xyz and it trots off to wherever.. Originally I think the reason they didn't do that was because they didn't want to step on trader's toes because of caravans.. but I am not sure if that is a worry anymore.
Anyways
STELLARMAGUS
Re: Mounted Magic
06/08/2014 03:52 AM CDT
Yeah, I was around back in the "beta" days on AOL. Played off and on for years. Recently got back after a long "off" stint and was very disappointed to find the ferry times shortened so much as to be laughable. There's almost no reason for most ferries to exist anymore. The grandiose scope of the game is significantly diminished as travel times get shorter and shorter. Basically, I feel that shortening them was a step backward for the game, not forward. What are these ferries, speedboats? At this point, everyone may as well be able to teleport since we don't even have a command buffer due to lag anymore. Just activate a script and you can go from Shard to Theren in about 10 minutes! And the vast, vast majority of that time is spent on ferries.
It's ridiculous and immersion breaking, imo. Only fun in the eye-rolling, groaning, make-fun-of-it sort of sense. DR should be about the journey, not the destination. An interactive story, not a race to max circle. I know not everyone feels that way, obviously, but there's my two kronars.
Horses that can auto-move from point a to point b is a good compromise.
It's ridiculous and immersion breaking, imo. Only fun in the eye-rolling, groaning, make-fun-of-it sort of sense. DR should be about the journey, not the destination. An interactive story, not a race to max circle. I know not everyone feels that way, obviously, but there's my two kronars.
Horses that can auto-move from point a to point b is a good compromise.
SHAWN255
Re: Mounted Magic
06/08/2014 04:39 AM CDT
The problem though is with longer times... people will just put on a travel script like they do now.. and nothing changes. except that they might be afk for longer while the script moves them along. If we are making it an interesting journey... we can do that without putting artificial mechanics in slowing everyone down.
I get what you are saying.. and for some things.. especially new areas.. I like to take it slow and explore and really dig into what the game has to offer.. but after that, especially for repetitive trips, it would just lose any appeal.
DR-RAESH
Re: Mounted Magic
06/08/2014 05:34 AM CDT
There's a reason games like WoW make you find the flightpath before you can use it... once.
-Raesh
"Ever notice that B.A.'s flavor text swells in direct proportion to how much one of our characters is getting screwed?" - Brian Van Hoose
-Raesh
"Ever notice that B.A.'s flavor text swells in direct proportion to how much one of our characters is getting screwed?" - Brian Van Hoose
STELLARMAGUS
Re: Mounted Magic
06/08/2014 05:41 AM CDT
Yeah, that's the real issue. Making travel interesting. The problem with the ferries, to use one example, wasn't that they took forever ... it was that nothing interesting happened.
I'd be curious about implementing some sort of random event generator, sort of like what's seen in Skyrim or the Fallout games. Imagine walking from point a to point b (anywhere, really) and then something unusual happens. Maybe a little message comes up about how you see something shining in the bushes. If you choose to inspect more closely, you find a corpse clad in plate armor. If you then search the corpse, you find a treasure map.
Random events could be anything, really, from the above example to highwaymen (flexed to match your character's circle or whatever), to random salesmen, to pickpockets, and everything in-between. Some sort of combination system might be the best approach ... multi-tiered events that lead from one to another, allowing for a vast number of combinations. Just throwing it out there.
This sort of thing would mean that travel times could be increased (thus preserving the feel that Elanthia is actually a very large place) while still keeping things interesting. If done really well, the journey will truly be more exciting than the destination. Although, if random events could also happen within cities (and perhaps even without moving from room to room) then maybe even more interesting things will happen once you arrive!
Just some ideas. Also, regarding horses ... in such a system, the benefit for horses would obviously be reduced travel time. The tradeoff would be that you'd be less likely to notice interesting things en route.
I'd be curious about implementing some sort of random event generator, sort of like what's seen in Skyrim or the Fallout games. Imagine walking from point a to point b (anywhere, really) and then something unusual happens. Maybe a little message comes up about how you see something shining in the bushes. If you choose to inspect more closely, you find a corpse clad in plate armor. If you then search the corpse, you find a treasure map.
Random events could be anything, really, from the above example to highwaymen (flexed to match your character's circle or whatever), to random salesmen, to pickpockets, and everything in-between. Some sort of combination system might be the best approach ... multi-tiered events that lead from one to another, allowing for a vast number of combinations. Just throwing it out there.
This sort of thing would mean that travel times could be increased (thus preserving the feel that Elanthia is actually a very large place) while still keeping things interesting. If done really well, the journey will truly be more exciting than the destination. Although, if random events could also happen within cities (and perhaps even without moving from room to room) then maybe even more interesting things will happen once you arrive!
Just some ideas. Also, regarding horses ... in such a system, the benefit for horses would obviously be reduced travel time. The tradeoff would be that you'd be less likely to notice interesting things en route.
STELLARMAGUS
Re: Mounted Magic
06/08/2014 05:44 AM CDT
Replying to myself again. Ordinarily I'd say that "random events" should be mostly in the hands of the players ... why script NPCs to do things when you've got a game full of players that can do way more than anyone could possibly script? Problem is that everyone currently moves around so quickly that the only place for players to really meet up is at points of interest - outside the empath guild, in a shop (comparatively rarely), and the like. The road is not an interesting place in the current environment, and players spend as little time on it as possible.
The Tolkein fan in me frowns mightily at this. :(
The Tolkein fan in me frowns mightily at this. :(
STELLARMAGUS
Re: Mounted Magic
06/08/2014 05:52 AM CDT
"There's a reason games like WoW make you find the flightpath before you can use it... once."
Very, very true. I would hope, however, that DR would never be enough like WoW to warrant such a comparison. Every step it takes closer to that (such as the removal of permadeath, and reduced ferry times, and apparently gnomes with airships now, too!) makes me a little more sad. I love DR for the immesrive value it provides. Games like WoW are no fun for me, and never have been, because there's just not anything in them to really spark the imagination ... nothing to even make me care about the world my character lives in, or even about my character him/herself.
Anyway, I don't actually expect movement roundtimes in DR. Just throwing out my own opinion, which is that I would actually really appreciate them (or something like them) if they're done well. It'd make horses way more enjoyable, and possibly travel (and Elanthia itself), too.
Very, very true. I would hope, however, that DR would never be enough like WoW to warrant such a comparison. Every step it takes closer to that (such as the removal of permadeath, and reduced ferry times, and apparently gnomes with airships now, too!) makes me a little more sad. I love DR for the immesrive value it provides. Games like WoW are no fun for me, and never have been, because there's just not anything in them to really spark the imagination ... nothing to even make me care about the world my character lives in, or even about my character him/herself.
Anyway, I don't actually expect movement roundtimes in DR. Just throwing out my own opinion, which is that I would actually really appreciate them (or something like them) if they're done well. It'd make horses way more enjoyable, and possibly travel (and Elanthia itself), too.
