Hero's Journey

Just a quick thing I'd love to see in Hero's Journey: Persistent mounts.

I always picture scenes in movies and books where the hero ties his trusty steed to a tree just outside the dark cavern, and it is there waiting for him when he emerges. I have yet to see anyone stuff a horse in a backpack before they enter some ruins.

<chuckle>  Good point.

Do you think it would get awkward and inconvenient tho?

I'd say having the horse in a bag would be VERY awkward...

I'd say the alternative would be to have the horse go into some sort of grazing animation and wander off...then have a "summon mount" command and it would come running to you.

I like the persistent thing, then you can come back out and find a passing bear has eaten your mount.

then you can come back out and find a passing bear has eaten your mount.

That'd be awesome.

*Dang!* Not another horse...

Since the game is zoned that should allow for a more dynamic change in visuals from area to area, how many types of terrain are planned? Such as swamp, desert, tropical, tundra, etc. Is anything planned we may not have seen before? Maybe its too early to tell...

Also, how 'large' are you planning on the world being at release? Will the common hunting areas be big enough that we would require (or at least find it handy) to have a mount? Can we get to town to town through common areas or are they mostly revealed through questing? Lastly, when we play an instanced mission, is that area unlocked once we have completed it and can revisit it later on or redo it?

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Originally posted by SIMU-MELISSA

<chuckle>  Good point.

 

Do you think it would get awkward and inconvenient tho?

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Yeah. Personally the whole horse-out-of-the-bag thing ruins the experience for me. When I first saw it in AC2, I thought it was... stupid? Then after that when WoW took it up and it pretty much now is becoming common place in MMOGs, I still think it's ridiculous. I just don't care as much.

In AC2 I think you crafted your mount or had to craft some item or obtain it which then summoned your mount out of thin air and then you could ride it. I can take the magically appearing swords in your hands, etc. but a 400-pound creature or heavier just out of a backpack is sort of moronic.

Another example is Lineage II. Their dragon-like mounts are awesome. They're the best that I've seen in any game, except they still magically appear out of nowhere.

I think that when you purchase your mount at the stables or tame it, it should follow you until you dismiss it or set it free. If you dismiss it, it should ride off faster than you can run into some forest or dark place and then disappear. If you log off, then it should log off with you (and not in your pack but by your side). When you want it to stay, you could set it to graze mode or something.

Do you think it would get awkward and inconvenient tho?

Probably and it would be awesome. I'm tired of getting spoon-fed in MMOGs. I just want a game to take me by surprise and give me a truly dangerous adventure. I want perma death, rampaging monsters destroying towns, traps and vagrant player rogues around the corner. I want limbs to fly and my character to die of blood loss or sickness or disease or starvation - but only in appropriate times. An appropriate time for starvation would be if my character hasn't eaten for 24 hours of in-game time. A time for disease would be when I kill a mangy bat and pick up its corpse and start chewing on it.

Really I don't care about convenience just as long as the inconvenience is fun - meaning, it offers new and exciting experiences. One experience might be riding on your horse when it has an injured leg, and then watching as the horse buckles from the pain of its wound and your character go hurdling to the ground as a pack of wolves advance quickly behind in the night. As you watch their glinting pale eyes coming closer to you, you notice that you've got a broken hip now and your horse is laying beside you breathing heavily. >>Time for that good ol' permadeath to kick in.<<

Persistent mounts would be very bad in cities because of the lag they would cause, so it'd be best if the critters were kept in a stable until they were needed. Final Fantasy 11 does this with chocobos - instead of pulling a big yellow bird out of your shirt, you pay the stablehand and are shown a brief cutscene of you mounting up and riding out to the nearest outdoor zone. Of course when you dismount the bird kindof runs away while fading like a ghost which is a little odd.

Persistence in outdoor zones and instances wouldn't be that hard - but how would you feel if your horse (which was probably an expensive prestige item) was slaughtered while you were fighting on the other side of a boulder? And I doubt someone in your party would much feel like babysitting the mounts while everyone else ran off to have fun.

I hope HJ intends to have mounts by release. This is strongly implied by a couple of early screenshots - one of a man and 'his trusty mount', and another of a saddled amphibious lizard thing called an Indorus. Even more intriguing is some concept art showing a saddled sauropod on two legs as a Sunok Warrior's mount. This implies that NPC's can also ride. Can you say Cavalry Charge?

Mounted foes suggest some intriguing quest scenarios. Suppose, for example, that your party stumbles upon a camp of Sunok raiding party - and your strategy to foil their plans is to quietly kill, scare away or even steal their steeds?

As long as I'm dreaming, I'd love to see riding as a bonafide skill rather than an item you just buy. An inexperienced rider shouldn't be able to control anything beyond a donkey, or a swaybacked nag. Anything else ought to buck them off, or give them a swift kick! And as one progressed in skill, it would be possible to use different gaits (trot to gallop), jump low obstacles, ford streams, and even fight (or heal!) from horseback. Only then could you handle that spirited charger without landing on your backside.

Done right, mounts could be much much more than a means of crossing zones faster than on foot. I'd love to hear what Simutronics has planned (or doesn't have planned) for mounts.