Before I post let me preface this by saying we don’t know what we don’t know. There’s little information to go on about mounts and pets other than what we already have in Mortal Online 1. I believe animal gameplay has room for improvement from MO1 and hope the devs are hard at work making an immersive system!
Background:
To begin, let me label off the current MO1 stats a horse has and what they do:
Health: Amount of Hit Points
Stamina: Amount of stamina points.
Level: Creatures power Level (Raises all other stats)
Strength: Reduces how fast your mount can break, increases piercing and slashing defence, increases stamina drain. It also increases your mount’s carrying capacity.
Constitution: Reduces mount stamina drain
Dexterity: Increases max jump height, max speed, turn rate and how fast the mount speeds up/down
Psyche: Used for magic damage reduction and increase boost time as well as decrease stamina drain when boosting.
Intelligence: Higher INT means less chance that the mount will throw you off.
Max Speed: Effects and lists the Speed stat and max jump.
Size: Adds chance to knock someone down, Increases blunt defense, increases stamina drain, increases speed.
Weight: Increases chance of knocking down, increases stamina drain
While some of the stats have downsides, the upsides more than make up for the small loss and maxing out ALL stats was what a breeder ultimately wants. After long, the “perfect” horse was far more common (and cheaper). There were other systems in place to ensure newly born horses were not always perfect like their parents, but the problem lies in having only one “best” to strive for. It goes against the great variety this title has to offer.
My Suggestions:
The most important change I believe would help is treating pets like player characters in terms of how attributes are done. Horses should have a pool of free attribute points that can be used by training, like players. Ex: Riding a slightly over encumbered horse will start to raise it's strength or riding at full speed will increase dexterity. The horses parents will determine each of its stat caps, like Clades do in MO1.
Horses should have stat caps that are limited by other stats.
The Graphic
In my mind, there are three major stats: Dex, Con, and Str. There should be a trade off between these three, much like a sprinter, distance runner, and weight lifter. A weight lifter is sturdy, but he's likely not running as far or as fast as a distance runner and sprinter respectively.
The other stats would be more linear, depending on where the horse falls on the stat triangle. Ex: A sprinter has a high boosted speed. A weightlifter not so much, but is still explosive. A distance runner does not have the body to hold a sprint very long.
Each stat should have a breeding deviation. Basically a range of numbers the horse might pass on calculated with it's mate's numbers.
In the example horse, we have a horse that has good Dex, but bad Con and Str. The horse was trained to maximize it's dex, con and stamina. It's Str, boost, and health were almost maxed, but the rider ran out of free attribute points. Psy and Int were not trained on this horse at all, meaning the rider needs to have very good horse skills or this horse is likely to buck him off.
Intelligence
Intelligence should be separate, but with the highest breeding deviation to ensure it is difficult to max.
Psyche and Boosted Speed
Psyche should deal more with pain tolerance and magic defence, rather than boosting stats. Have it work with intelligence, where an intelligent horse is less likely to throw you off all around, but an intelligent horse with high psyche is less likely to throw you off while at low health and stamina. Basically, Psyche helps keep the intelligence buff while the horse is under stress. A horse with high psyche and low int will throw you off as much as a horse with low pysche and low int.
Boosted Speed, would determine the efficiency and speed at which you can boost based on a you mounts top unboosted speed. It's basically a percentage of your top speed added on top that drains stamina at a fixed rate. Increasing this stat would increase the percentage added and slightly lower the stamina drained.
Level
Level was always a strange stat to me in a game that emphasizes players having no level. I think this should be changed to age with the non-numeric descriptors Young, Mature, and Elder. Time would cause these to change. Taming a creature Young would start it off with lower stats but allow the creature to be trained faster. A Mature creature has reach breeding age but is now trained at a normal rate. An Elder creature can no longer be bred, and its attributes are trained at half the speed. That way horses have a breeding shelf life and can't simply be bred indefinitely.
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I know this was long and is far from perfect. This is to get people thinking and talking (and hopefully SV thinking more). I'd love to hear what others think and perhaps get our voices in on the pet stat system before it's set in stone.
Edited 12/19/2020 to try and break up long post*
Background:
To begin, let me label off the current MO1 stats a horse has and what they do:
Health: Amount of Hit Points
Stamina: Amount of stamina points.
Level: Creatures power Level (Raises all other stats)
Strength: Reduces how fast your mount can break, increases piercing and slashing defence, increases stamina drain. It also increases your mount’s carrying capacity.
Constitution: Reduces mount stamina drain
Dexterity: Increases max jump height, max speed, turn rate and how fast the mount speeds up/down
Psyche: Used for magic damage reduction and increase boost time as well as decrease stamina drain when boosting.
Intelligence: Higher INT means less chance that the mount will throw you off.
Max Speed: Effects and lists the Speed stat and max jump.
Size: Adds chance to knock someone down, Increases blunt defense, increases stamina drain, increases speed.
Weight: Increases chance of knocking down, increases stamina drain
While some of the stats have downsides, the upsides more than make up for the small loss and maxing out ALL stats was what a breeder ultimately wants. After long, the “perfect” horse was far more common (and cheaper). There were other systems in place to ensure newly born horses were not always perfect like their parents, but the problem lies in having only one “best” to strive for. It goes against the great variety this title has to offer.
My Suggestions:
The most important change I believe would help is treating pets like player characters in terms of how attributes are done. Horses should have a pool of free attribute points that can be used by training, like players. Ex: Riding a slightly over encumbered horse will start to raise it's strength or riding at full speed will increase dexterity. The horses parents will determine each of its stat caps, like Clades do in MO1.
Horses should have stat caps that are limited by other stats.
The Graphic
In my mind, there are three major stats: Dex, Con, and Str. There should be a trade off between these three, much like a sprinter, distance runner, and weight lifter. A weight lifter is sturdy, but he's likely not running as far or as fast as a distance runner and sprinter respectively.
The other stats would be more linear, depending on where the horse falls on the stat triangle. Ex: A sprinter has a high boosted speed. A weightlifter not so much, but is still explosive. A distance runner does not have the body to hold a sprint very long.
Each stat should have a breeding deviation. Basically a range of numbers the horse might pass on calculated with it's mate's numbers.
In the example horse, we have a horse that has good Dex, but bad Con and Str. The horse was trained to maximize it's dex, con and stamina. It's Str, boost, and health were almost maxed, but the rider ran out of free attribute points. Psy and Int were not trained on this horse at all, meaning the rider needs to have very good horse skills or this horse is likely to buck him off.
Intelligence
Intelligence should be separate, but with the highest breeding deviation to ensure it is difficult to max.
Psyche and Boosted Speed
Psyche should deal more with pain tolerance and magic defence, rather than boosting stats. Have it work with intelligence, where an intelligent horse is less likely to throw you off all around, but an intelligent horse with high psyche is less likely to throw you off while at low health and stamina. Basically, Psyche helps keep the intelligence buff while the horse is under stress. A horse with high psyche and low int will throw you off as much as a horse with low pysche and low int.
Boosted Speed, would determine the efficiency and speed at which you can boost based on a you mounts top unboosted speed. It's basically a percentage of your top speed added on top that drains stamina at a fixed rate. Increasing this stat would increase the percentage added and slightly lower the stamina drained.
Level
Level was always a strange stat to me in a game that emphasizes players having no level. I think this should be changed to age with the non-numeric descriptors Young, Mature, and Elder. Time would cause these to change. Taming a creature Young would start it off with lower stats but allow the creature to be trained faster. A Mature creature has reach breeding age but is now trained at a normal rate. An Elder creature can no longer be bred, and its attributes are trained at half the speed. That way horses have a breeding shelf life and can't simply be bred indefinitely.
------
I know this was long and is far from perfect. This is to get people thinking and talking (and hopefully SV thinking more). I'd love to hear what others think and perhaps get our voices in on the pet stat system before it's set in stone.
Edited 12/19/2020 to try and break up long post*
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