Mounted Wishlist. What we do, and do not want to see.

[Viknuss]

Hello there, I am Viknuss, Mounted Combat aficionado. Today I would like to discuss what a good portion of the community would consider an enjoyable, balanced, and well thought out playstyle would be for Mounteds.

I played mounted combat for the better part of 5 years during Mortal Online 1. I found it to be the easiest way for me to enjoy the game. I got around quickly, I did a lot of damage, and I looked great doing it. Myrole in PvP pushed a little bit past "Mounted Knight" and felt more, at times, like I was an M1A Abrahams battle tank. Now I'm not complaining. With my passion for the class I gained a lot of Notoriety within the community as just "another shit tier mounted player". I'm mostly interested to what people view as "balanced" or "fair" when it comes to MC/MA/FM.

We have a unique opportunity to have our rationale, and actionable feedback be acted upon by Starvault developers, to help shape the game into something we will all enjoy for years to come.
What I don't want to see is "Mounteds are shit, you are shit for playing them, SV is shit for making them" etc. This is wasted effort, and no one enjoys seeing it.

My question is simple, What would you like to see, or not see when it comes to Mounted? I will start. There are a few things, with some of them already being confirmed.

1.) Craftable, Modular, Badass looking Horse armor. Full barding w/ mail. An honest looking WAR Horse.

2.) Lances that can dismount. Too long have I wanted to participate in Tournament jousts. With War of the Roses, Life is Feudal, and Conan Exiles being the only games I could do so in.

3.) A good Mount/Ground relationship. I don't want to see my horse hitching all over the place due to slight terrain issues. They shouldn't just glide over the ground by an inch, but they shouldn't feel like I'm riding a jackhammer. Getting stuck on the smallest rock or twig would be devastating considering how heavily the map is forested.

3.) Dismounts looking realistic. Whether it be you flying off your horse as it continues to ride, you horse rearing up, throwing you off, or the horse crashing headfirst into the ground flying you foward, I want to see some HEAVY dismounts. The horse standing still and you taking a little tumble on dismount is very lackluster.

4.) Lower the investment for Mounted. Some of you might think this means "Make my class cheaper so I can be more OP." What I'm saying is lower the overall value, by delivering a balanced playstyle. I dont want to spend 2500 gold just to go out and get killed by a mage and 3 foot fighters. Let me spend less than 1000 gold, and STILL get killed by a mage and 3 foot fighters. This could probably be explained better, but at it's core what I'm saying is "Make mounted less OP, but make it cheaper to play in doing so."

I'd like to see your wishlists for what you want/do not want. Maybe we can come to a centralized opinion on how it should look in Mortal Online 2.

 

[Grasthard]

I was a MA in MO1 but mostly for pvp.

what I would like to see from mounts in MO2:

- speed of around 700-750+, to enjoy traveling this huge map a bit more. for reference, a max char sprint speed is 425, ghost speed is 800.

- more breeding tradeoffs between mount str and mount speed. in MO1 the tradeoffs were kinds laughable, with int and psy being relatively useless on mounts

- less reproducibility of "perfect mounts" through breeding. I know that this is how it works in RL: get pedigree parents, breed them over and over etc etc. but in MO1 this created huge surplus and kinda killed the taming economy. one quick solution, decrease the "fertility" (ie breeding success rate) of mounts the farthest they are bred from a wild ancestor. in other words, each generation fo breeding makes the offspring less and less viable, until you breed it back with a wild individual.

 

[Viknuss]

The disparity between perfect mounts, and others, was guild large. When I spoke on lowering investment, this was a concern. Make most mounts viable, with Perfects still existing, but now THAT much better.

 

[Grudge Bringer]

Make it so you can't use two-handed weps from a mount easily. No more 30kg cuprum hammers and axes from horseback lol.

 

[DeliveryDriver]

make it like preawakening when mounts were only good for moving stuff and not very viable for pvp, that is if you want your game to be healthy. Devs making the dumb decisions of adding necro pets and making mounteds hit for 70 and ride around like race cars put MO1 into a pit of death. you'd be in a foot fight and it got so predictable that you knew within 30 seconds to 1 minute mounteds would be ontop of you.

making mounts pvp viable would just be starting the game entirely in the same pit of death as MO1, just on a different version of the engine. The best part of MO1 was the melee combat, but hey, thats already trashed so maybe they can focus on Mortal 2 being a horse game instead. they already have a cat game out.

I cant wait for mounted, death knight, zerg online 2.

 

[Viknuss]

Make it so you can't use two-handed weps from a mount easily. No more 30kg cuprum hammers and axes from horseback lol.

That was fixed a long time ago. 2h weapon weight was capped to 4.25 at 122 strength. So the heaviest weapons you were using were TM Halberds.
Additionally I would like to see much more versatility when it comes to Mounted weapons. I'm a fan of using Sword on horse back. Even now one of my MC's in MO 1 has sword skill to 100, and uses an oghmium swelled blade that weighs 2.5kg

 

[Viknuss]

make it like preawakening when mounts were only good for moving stuff and not very viable for pvp, that is if you want your game to be healthy. Devs making the dumb decisions of adding necro pets and making mounteds hit for 70 and ride around like race cars put MO1 into a pit of death. you'd be in a foot fight and it got so predictable that you knew within 30 seconds to 1 minute mounteds would be ontop of you.

making mounts pvp viable would just be starting the game entirely in the same pit of death as MO1, just on a different version of the engine. The best part of MO1 was the melee combat, but hey, thats already trashed so maybe they can focus on Mortal 2 being a horse game instead. they already have a cat game out.

I cant wait for mounted, death knight, zerg online 2.

Yes remove the concept famous through out all of medieval warfare known as "Calvary" because someone ganked your molarium stacks

Here it is. Mounted PvP will always be a thing.

 

[Keurk]

I do think the mount system was way better pre-breeding for the following reason :
Perfect mounts came in with breeding and it was not only creating a major imbalance (you either have had a perfect mount ,or you were fucked) giving all pvp abilities to a player : speed, dps, carryloot ability, luxury to engage or disengage at will. but also killing the purpose of having any others kind of mounts

Imo, it break some logic that was ingame pre breeding.
To me, a naked tamer getting a solid desert horse should always be faster than a mounted knight.
I wish we could see the "trade off" mounts a bit like it was pre-breeding :
-Fast mount ( low hp, excessive speed desert horse kind mount)
-Combat mount ( hp, carry ability and decent speed)
-Farming mount : decent speed, increased carry capacity, decent hp (steppes, jotuns)
- tank mounts : donkey/molva kind : HPbags, huge carry capacity, slow max speed but better climbing than other mounts

I do think having a perfect kind of mount in every of thoses categories would be ok. I think having 1 perfect kind of mount only would be a huge mistake, and kill the purpose of having any kind of other mounts.

Or, make it based on ingame mechanics such as terrain , heat system , armor weight , etc to balance mounts ( like bullhorse were nerfed in desert in sarducca while desert horse were adapted to the environement ) but it would seriously need a deep , polished, and complete system to properly work.

 

[Viknuss]

It was a shame that Lyks were only good for Fat Mage or MA. They were such dope creatures. MC was busted on them so you almost never saw Lyk MC's

 

[sigrace]

We have a unique opportunity to have our rationale, and actionable feedback be acted upon by Starvault developers, to help shape the game into something we will all enjoy for years to come.
What I don't want to see is "Mounteds are shit, you are shit for playing them, SV is shit for making them" etc. This is wasted effort, and no one enjoys seeing it.

I'm still new to Mortal Online, but for the last few years I've been playing Planetside 2, the MMOFPS with combined arms. There's a two-three man vehicle called a Harasser, a high mobility vehicle with very little armor that was fantastic at running over infantry and picking off vehicles. It is countered with a few different weapon types and good positioning. A person with a lock-on rocket launcher basically sets up an area denial if he's positioned well. People still hate this vehicle, simply due to the small minority that have a trusted crew and know how to use it.

Horses should feel like this. They are a force multiplier. Mounts should also be able to knock the snot out of someone who isn't prepared. It would be dumb to be able parry a horse. Maybe the riders weapons. I also think mounts should have very key downsides. I think foot infantry with spears should have a spear stance that does damage based on the mounts momentum (Speed x Weight). If someone isn't complaining about mounts... are they really doing their jobs?

As far as cost goes, I think that depends on how taming and horse stats work. If taming is an action skill that eats at our combat skills and you'll likely see less dedicated tamers. Less tamers means less supply in general. If we can max out all important stats like we could in MO1, I'd say price will probably even out and lower top tier to near top tier horses become common. I hope that doesn't happen and there are tradeoffs with breeding, but we don't know what we don't know. I actually made a post about combating one end all be all horse stat block:

Horse Stats Suggestion: Preventing Perfection

I'd love to hear what you think, since you have way more experience than I do in this game.

 

[Amadman]

I think mounts should be pretty vulnerable to melee attacks and have pretty low hp over all.

The mounted player should not regularly be going toe to toe with melee fighters.

And a group of melee should be able to take a horse down quick if it finds itself being attacked by said group at once.

This would then require the mounted player to have to use its advantage of speed to get in make attacks and get out.


With mounted on mounted it should probably be easier to hit the other mounted player than their horse though. Unless really focusing to do so.

 

[Grudge Bringer]

That was fixed a long time ago. 2h weapon weight was capped to 4.25 at 122 strength. So the heaviest weapons you were using were TM Halberds.
Additionally I would like to see much more versatility when it comes to Mounted weapons. I'm a fan of using Sword on horse back. Even now one of my MC's in MO 1 has sword skill to 100, and uses an oghmium swelled blade that weighs 2.5kg

You shouldn't be able to use Halberds from horseback effectively. Halberds are footman invented weapons for fighting cavalry.

 

[Handsome Young Man]

Mounteds should be glass cannons.

Highly mobile, does a good bit of damage to unsuspecting targets, but if focused can easily be dismounted. If dismounted, depending on how race balance is, they should be able to join in on the foot fight no problem unless focused down when dismounted.

I also think, and this may be controversial to some but most will agree. If you parry a mounted your parry shouldn't be chipped through with 15-20 damage.

Terrain should actually stop mounteds rather than a random chance they just follow you up hills and mountains.

Also yes, the gold investment in mounteds should be less. They should be equal to a footfighter if anything.

I want then to work like they did way back in the day where they were specialized but they usually rode horses to combat and if their horse died it wasn't a big deal.

Horses also need diversity and hard caps on stats that they pull from a pool of available points. We can't have go karts that are nearly indestructible in the right hands.

Thats where I stand with mounteds.

 

[Handsome Young Man]

To tac on..

There needs to be weapon restrictions. Spears, lances, and one handed weapons in my eyes are what should be used off horseback with 2 handed weapons having a harder stam penalty and the weapon weight cap we saw in later iterations of MO1.

A working spear stance would be cool too.

 

[Godkin Veratas]

I do think the mount system was way better pre-breeding for the following reason :
Perfect mounts came in with breeding and it was not only creating a major imbalance (you either have had a perfect mount ,or you were fucked) giving all pvp abilities to a player : speed, dps, carryloot ability, luxury to engage or disengage at will. but also killing the purpose of having any others kind of mounts

Imo, it break some logic that was ingame pre breeding.
To me, a naked tamer getting a solid desert horse should always be faster than a mounted knight.
I wish we could see the "trade off" mounts a bit like it was pre-breeding :
-Fast mount ( low hp, excessive speed desert horse kind mount)
-Combat mount ( hp, carry ability and decent speed)
-Farming mount : decent speed, increased carry capacity, decent hp (steppes, jotuns)
- tank mounts : donkey/molva kind : HPbags, huge carry capacity, slow max speed but better climbing than other mounts

I do think having a perfect kind of mount in every of thoses categories would be ok. I think having 1 perfect kind of mount only would be a huge mistake, and kill the purpose of having any kind of other mounts.

Or, make it based on ingame mechanics such as terrain , heat system , armor weight , etc to balance mounts ( like bullhorse were nerfed in desert in sarducca while desert horse were adapted to the environement ) but it would seriously need a deep , polished, and complete system to properly work.

Yes. Completely agree. The underlying logic explained here needs to be true.

Hello there, I am Viknuss, Mounted Combat aficionado. Today I would like to discuss what a good portion of the community would consider an enjoyable, balanced, and well thought out playstyle would be for Mounteds.

I played mounted combat for the better part of 5 years during Mortal Online 1. I found it to be the easiest way for me to enjoy the game. I got around quickly, I did a lot of damage, and I looked great doing it. Myrole in PvP pushed a little bit past "Mounted Knight" and felt more, at times, like I was an M1A Abrahams battle tank. Now I'm not complaining. With my passion for the class I gained a lot of Notoriety within the community as just "another shit tier mounted player". I'm mostly interested to what people view as "balanced" or "fair" when it comes to MC/MA/FM.

We have a unique opportunity to have our rationale, and actionable feedback be acted upon by Starvault developers, to help shape the game into something we will all enjoy for years to come.
What I don't want to see is "Mounteds are shit, you are shit for playing them, SV is shit for making them" etc. This is wasted effort, and no one enjoys seeing it.

My question is simple, What would you like to see, or not see when it comes to Mounted? I will start. There are a few things, with some of them already being confirmed.

1.) Craftable, Modular, Badass looking Horse armor. Full barding w/ mail. An honest looking WAR Horse.

2.) Lances that can dismount. Too long have I wanted to participate in Tournament jousts. With War of the Roses, Life is Feudal, and Conan Exiles being the only games I could do so in.

3.) A good Mount/Ground relationship. I don't want to see my horse hitching all over the place due to slight terrain issues. They shouldn't just glide over the ground by an inch, but they shouldn't feel like I'm riding a jackhammer. Getting stuck on the smallest rock or twig would be devastating considering how heavily the map is forested.

3.) Dismounts looking realistic. Whether it be you flying off your horse as it continues to ride, you horse rearing up, throwing you off, or the horse crashing headfirst into the ground flying you foward, I want to see some HEAVY dismounts. The horse standing still and you taking a little tumble on dismount is very lackluster.

4.) Lower the investment for Mounted. Some of you might think this means "Make my class cheaper so I can be more OP." What I'm saying is lower the overall value, by delivering a balanced playstyle. I dont want to spend 2500 gold just to go out and get killed by a mage and 3 foot fighters. Let me spend less than 1000 gold, and STILL get killed by a mage and 3 foot fighters. This could probably be explained better, but at it's core what I'm saying is "Make mounted less OP, but make it cheaper to play in doing so."

I'd like to see your wishlists for what you want/do not want. Maybe we can come to a centralized opinion on how it should look in Mortal Online 2.

Agree with all points.

Mounted Combat was broken, then OP, then broken, then OP and Broken but expensive. Possibly the worst outcome.

A good balance of power and speed, but lacking terrain navigation and agility sounds good. As Keurk pointed out, having viable options for fast light calvary, and heavy armored "tank" mounted would be ideal.

I'm very curious to see how mounted takes shape. The terrain is dense and layered, trees, hills, rivers, rock formations, all provide a tricky landscape for mounts, and good defensive options for playing on foot. We now have a chance to see how these various roles will be implemented closer to the original design.

As I look at this new game, I'm happy to put down much of the past with MO1. We shouldn't attempt to draw too much from what became of MO1, other than what not to do.

 

[Bernfred]

left and right leaning with Q and E

 

[Vagrant]

I do think the mount system was way better pre-breeding for the following reason :
Perfect mounts came in with breeding and it was not only creating a major imbalance (you either have had a perfect mount ,or you were fucked) giving all pvp abilities to a player : speed, dps, carryloot ability, luxury to engage or disengage at will. but also killing the purpose of having any others kind of mounts

Imo, it break some logic that was ingame pre breeding.
To me, a naked tamer getting a solid desert horse should always be faster than a mounted knight.
I wish we could see the "trade off" mounts a bit like it was pre-breeding :
-Fast mount ( low hp, excessive speed desert horse kind mount)
-Combat mount ( hp, carry ability and decent speed)
-Farming mount : decent speed, increased carry capacity, decent hp (steppes, jotuns)
- tank mounts : donkey/molva kind : HPbags, huge carry capacity, slow max speed but better climbing than other mounts

I do think having a perfect kind of mount in every of thoses categories would be ok. I think having 1 perfect kind of mount only would be a huge mistake, and kill the purpose of having any kind of other mounts.

Or, make it based on ingame mechanics such as terrain , heat system , armor weight , etc to balance mounts ( like bullhorse were nerfed in desert in sarducca while desert horse were adapted to the environement ) but it would seriously need a deep , polished, and complete system to properly work.

I completely agree

also just forget breeding altogether and allow horses to breed in the wild - artificially afk-inseminating horses was a mess and destroyed the taming playstyle. us vagrants need to make a living somehow ya know

make top tier mounts findable and tameable only, and relatively expendable as an organic part of Myrlands wilderness resource demand and attract even more new and old back to the game, this will help the social and resource economy no end.

As far as cost goes, I think that depends on how taming and horse stats work. If taming is an action skill that eats at our combat skills and you'll likely see less dedicated tamers. Less tamers means less supply in general.

yes dedicated tamers were a thing before breeding, breeding was a coin operated slot machine made best for those with keeps and stables, not skill/profession based, so tamers left or rerolled.

if breeding *must* come back at some point then it needs to come under the taming profession with careful consideration, I don't see why rare high stat mounts can't be produced in spawns and become a resource like any other requiring a top tier tamer to capture, much like how other resources require top tier skill for best results.

 

[Malathion]

I'd like to see mounts like MR's mounts.

 

[Zerotrigger]

Spears, Lances, and polearms all need to be substantially better for MC then they were in MO1.

Historically these are by far the most practical weapons used from horse back and mortal needs to do a better job reflecting how lethal these weapons can be when used with a mount.

Also like other people said already we need to punish the use of heavy 2h weapons like axes and maces being used when mounted, especially when used at higher mount speeds.

 

[Rhias]

Directional blocking against MCs.

Mounteds being slower than foot on terrain (wasn't the case with horse boosting and correctly maneuvering in MO1).

Mounteds not turning to full-stamina foot fighters once they dismount. There is nothing more disappointing than getting away from a mounted zerk into the mountains, and then they dismount with full stamina and you already used all your stamina to get to the mountain.