An update on Mounts

Greetings fellow Hyborian Adventurers!

There has been a lot of activity lately, both on these boards and in-game, due to the way Mounts are currently performing in Age of Conan. While there has been little-to-none official feedback on the subject so far, I am happy to finally be a part of this community and able to shed some light on what I perceive as the most pressing concerns.

1) Mounting up doesn't increase my speed at all!
UPDATE 09.06.2008: Issue resolved

Without going into complex and, quite possibly, boring details it's worth mentioning that we've tracked down the bug that caused this, and that it has been fixed internally. Basically what happens is that, when you mount up, your new movement-speed isn't being read correctly; resulting in your speed being exactly the same regardless of whether or not you are mounted. Unfortunately I can't promise an exact date when the fix to this issue will be applied on the Live servers, but I can offer you a functional work-around; after having mounted up simply draw, or sheathe, your weapon. By doing this the game will once again attempt to read your movement-speed, and it will be applied correctly.

2) My Horse is too slow (even after the work-around)
UPDATE 12.06.2008: Issue resolved

If this is one of your concerns, you will be happy to know that I am personally feeding our stock of proud hyborian steeds some extra vitamins this week; which should result in an overall speed increase for all types of Horses. The increase won't, by any means, be massive; but it should go a long way towards making these mounts more useful and desired.

3) My Rhino/Mammoth is too slow
UPDATE 12.06.2008: Speed slightly increased

Yes, they are both very slow creatures in-game. I know that this has been, and most likely will continue to be, a topic that is being discussed to great length; but a decision was made shortly after new year that, for the sake of balancing things out, we needed them both to have the same movement-speed. The War Mammoth is still slightly harder to kill, and the Killer Rhino is still a bit easier to maneuver, but when it comes to moving forward they will both run at the same speed. With that being said, I am happy to say that they're also being fed vitamins, albeit a smaller dose than the horses, and will as a consequence move slightly faster.

4) My Rhino/Mammoth is useless outside of certain scenarios

If, by useless, you mean ineffective in PvE combat scenarios or as traveling mounts, then yes; you are indeed correct. These mounts were, from the start, designed to be a fearsome weapon in siege warfare and not something you would climb to the top of just to either ride from A to B or slaughter a group of unsuspecting picts. When it comes to their usability in siege warfare we would like to put off any further balancing until guilds around the world have started par-taking in this activity on a more or less regular basis. Tweaking something "just right" is never easy, and making something "overpowered" is equally bad to making something "nerfed".

5) I need to purchase Basic Riding in order to get my Mammoths/Rhinos special abilities
UPDATE 16.06.2008: Issue resolved

If you don't plan on purchasing Basic Riding for any other purposes, I would advise you to save your money. You were meant to get these abilities automatically when claiming your pre-order mount, without having to purchase either Basic Riding or Advanced Riding, and just as intended this will be the case once the respective bug-fix goes Live. Consequently, players whom have purchased Basic Riding already will have to do another /claim after the patch introducing these changes in order to get the respective abilities back on their Ability page; and players who aren't meant to have access to these skills (i.e. players without pre-order mounts) will find them removed from their Ability page.

Allow me to end this, my very first post on the official forums, by saying that I am thrilled to see the amount of feedback coming in already, and that I try to read through as much of it every day as my free time allows. I might not always reply, even in the future, but I do my best to listen to what the players say and take it with me into our design meetings as suggestions for what to implement something new or how to implement something already existing. Naturally, I cannot accommodate every wish of every player, but I will at least endeavor to make the community feel that it is being listened to.

Thank you all for reading!

I've originally posted these snippets in other threads around the board, but I am making a collaboration here to make the information more easily accessible. Hopefully this will also lead to less duplicate threads being created about an issue that is already answered.

Regarding forced dismounting happening too frequently
UPDATE 16.06.2008: Issue resolved

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sharum

I'm happy to say that we have, finally, tracked down the bug that caused mounted players to be forcibly dismounted more frequently than intended. We've also tweaked the system slightly to make it scale better with the level difference between you (the mounted player) and whatever is attempting to dismount you.

Please note that the values we're currently working with are based on our calculations, and that they are subject to change at a later time should we see the need to do so in order to preserve game balance and overall good gameplay.

Hoping to see you all riding around in Hyboria soon!

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Regarding the variety of mounts

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sharum

Camels are "on the way"
Mammoths and Rhinos might stay pre-order exclusive
Other siege mounts might be introduced to the game to not unbalance PvP
Different types of mounts are being considered...

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Regarding riding skill(s)
UPDATE 16.06.2008: Changes gone Live

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sharum

Just to clarify

/claim will NOT give you Basic Riding; it will give you the extra abilities for your pre-order mount(s)

Basic Riding will make you able to ride "normal" Horses

Basic Riding will no longer give you the extra abilities for your pre-order mount(s)

Basic Riding will no longer give you the extra abilities for Horses

Advanced Riding will make you able to ride Swift and Armored Horses, as well as give you the extra abilities for Horses.

EDIT: The patch with these changes hasn't gone Live yet, but it should do so soon(tm).

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Regarding mount abilities
UPDATE 16.06.2008: Changes gone live

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sharum

Mount abilities were made, and intended, to be a part of mounted combat. However, the intention was never that mounted combat should be a on/off switch. As with normal (melee) combat, where you gain addition attack directions at level 40 (as an example), we wanted to introduce it to the players gradually; first by allowing you to ride on the very basest of mounts and do basic attacks (swinging your sword, casting some spells, firing your bow) and, at a later point, by giving you better horses (armored vs. normal) and skills that, at least in my head, proves that you're a better rider that can utilize your mount as a weapon.

Unfortunately, due to a bit of internal miscommunication just before launch, the abilities were linked to the incorrect skills. It was fixed internally just after launch, but not patched out straight away. There were many reasons for this, and one of them is that we wanted to address the concerns people had about mounts being too slow and nail down the bug that caused people to be forcibly dismounted way too often. Said patch is "just around the corner" now, and although I cannot give an exact date you should see both the bug-fixes, the "buff(s)" and the "nerf(s)" pretty soon.

In closing I would also like to say that I can understand why some people will be upset about this "nerf", and for this I can only apologize on behalf of both myself and Funcom. We do however think that, for the long run, correcting this mistake and bringing mounted combat more in line with our intial design will be the best solution.

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- END OF 11.06.2008 UPDATE -

Greetings again my fellow Hyborian Adventurers!

Over the past few weeks theres' been tons and tons of feedback coming in about our Mounts and Mounted Combat. Many improvements have already been patched out to the Live servers based on this feedback, and there is more to come! We've discussed a lot of different approaches to several issues lately, and I wanted to take the time to make a post here and share a few details about upcoming changes and, hopefully, in the process answer a lot of questions you as players might have.

A) If you've started mounting up you loose all control over your character until you're done

We're currently looking into changing this so that moving will cancel the process of mounting up.

B) Mounts and their abilities generally do too low damage

First of all, allow me to clarify that the damage you do when mounted on a Siege Mount such as the Killer Rhino or War Mammoth is intentionally low when fighting against other players or PvE monsters. The main component of the damage these mounts dish out is "siege damage" and players/PvE monsters are naturally resistant to such damage when compared to "normal damage".

When it comes to the damage you inflict while mounted on a Horse, and without going into specifics, I can promise you that it is currently being investigated and re-evaluated by our System Designers. When they are done, and based on their findings, the necessary adjustments will be made to ensure that we feel these abilities and attacks deal the appropriate amount of damage.

C) Whenever you talk to a NPC you're automatically dismounted

Let me start of by saying 'Yes, I understand why you might find this as cumbersome' and 'Yes, we're currently looking into whether or not we can change this'. However, while changing this might seem like a small thing, there's a lot of technology involved with regards to our dynamic camera placing during NPC interaction that needs to be checked and, in some cases, tweaked for this to work. I cannot guarantee when this change will happen, or if it even will take place, but we are looking into improving the current solution and making it so that you don't have to re-mount every time you're done speaking to an NPC.

D) I'm unable to cast any kind of spells while mounted

This report caught me a little by surprise when I first saw it as mounted spell-casting is one of those things that worked "straight out of the box" when we first implemented it. Rest assured that tracking down whatever bug that is currently preventing casters from working their magic while mounted is something we take very seriously and hope to have addressed sooner rather than later.

E) Dismounting takes too long

One of the hottest topics on these boards recently has been how long it takes to dismount, and how easily it is to get killed if dismounting while in combat. While this is true to our design, where mounted combat has a lot to do with gaining extra mobility at the cost of certain other factors, we take the feedback we receive very seriously and have mapped out a solution that we hope players will feel go a long way towards remedying this issue. As it currently is every character that is a member of the Rogue archetype have access to a Quick Dismount ability.

Now, before you all de-rail right here by saying 'But that ability doesn't work' let me just jump in and say that 'We're on top of it, we're fixing it'. However, to get back on track, we're going to give said ability out to every character regardless of his or her archetype. You will still have to stand still in order to use it, it still won't be a instant "poof" off your mount and it will have a cooldown to it; but we're taking this step in the hopes of making players feel less "doomed" because they want to dismount while engaged in combat.

To keep with the original design where members of the Rogue archetype, due to their naturally higher dexterity (and I use the word as a adjective here, not as a reference to the in-game stat), would be more nimble and able to quickly dismount we're revamping their version of the Quick Dismount ability and allowing them to use it while moving. I'm not going to go into further details about this revamp for the time being as, during the process of testing and balancing, many of the finer details might change.

I'm going to cut my post off here, but before I go I would also like to point out that these are but the most immediate changes we have planned to this part of our game. There will be many more updates to come, and we will of course take your feedback into careful consideration before fleshing out and implementing these updates. Stay tuned for future updates in this thread as soon as I have more concrete information to share!

Again, thank you all for reading, and I'll see you in Hyboria :)