Horses and Dismounting

Bugs & Suggestions board archives from Act V forums.
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SeminoleScam
Posts: 41
Character: TBD

Horses and Dismounting

Post by SeminoleScam » March 5th, 2019, 4:28 pm

I wanted to make a suggestion after talking with a few individuals in the community about the horse travel system and the rigors of the road. Currently, the routes are predetermined, and work great- however, the downsides is sometimes these routes go through some dangerous areas, and you're dismounted as soon as you are struck. This may not be a bother to say, getting hit by a couple cultist mundanes and their crossbows, but is sure is a pain, and 90% of the cases of being dismounted occur when you are knocked off your horse by a crustacean or a crazed sparrow.

My suggestion would be to make getting knocked off the horse require using the Dismount Special Attack, since it occurs in game, and really is a very specialized and specific skill, which currently, has no use outside of perhaps ambushing a player riding on a horse; however, with the current system being based solely on damage, this noble ability has no real place in existing. I'd like to suggest that if you attempt to knock someone of a horse, you need to use this ability, for both players and NPCs. I know there are plenty of monsters with special moves in their arsenal, so why not apply this dismount mechanic into the same wheelhouse as the other special attacks.

With something like this, I think more people would use the horse rental service more frequently, along with considering actually buying the dismount perk, which as it stands is simply a throw away of animus, as it has little factor of use in game, since it only requires damage alone be done to the victim. By making it require the special attack, you give it viability. A bear should have dismount, along with boars and perhaps some of the tougher human NPCs that haunt the roads, but things like rats, birds and shrimp- not so much.

Kadda
Posts: 45
Character: Basti

Re: Horses and Dismounting

Post by Kadda » March 5th, 2019, 4:50 pm

+ 1

Mogrand
Posts: 52
Character: Rufus Vilantri

Re: Horses and Dismounting

Post by Mogrand » March 5th, 2019, 5:14 pm

I use the horse system quite a bit and haven't been dismounted too often. I've been hit while riding and not dismounted as well, so not sure if there is like a damage threshold or just a flat percentage chance rolled per hit to dismount.

I think if its one of the options I listed above it would be easier to tweak those than to add the dismount skill to specific mobs, as far as time consumption on the GM front.

If it isn't something like that and would be more complicated to input something like a damage threshold (say taking like 20% of health to be dismounted), then yea would the dismount ability would be the way to go.

Wyrmlance
Posts: 45
Character: Svatomir Varga

Re: Horses and Dismounting

Post by Wyrmlance » March 5th, 2019, 6:18 pm

+1. I've been frustrated by this too, since it is nonsensical to be dismounted by certain things.
Mogrand wrote: March 5th, 2019, 5:14 pm I use the horse system quite a bit and haven't been dismounted too often. I've been hit while riding and not dismounted as well, so not sure if there is like a damage threshold or just a flat percentage chance rolled per hit to dismount.
I've noticed that if you dodge or parry the hit, you don't get dismounted, but as for damage threshold, I've been dismounted by rats and crabs doing minimal damage so I don't think it exists. Some of the routes have exponentially higher chance of dismounting occurring, which of course is fine if intended, but I don't think rats and crabs should be the perpetrators.
Mogrand wrote: March 5th, 2019, 5:14 pm I think if its one of the options I listed above it would be easier to tweak those than to add the dismount skill to specific mobs, as far as time consumption on the GM front.
Adding Dismount to specific spawns should be super easy, since XmlSpawner comes with XmlWeaponAbility attachment coded in by default. It can be set as Dismount and can be given the frequency you want it to occur on hit. I.e., it's something that's easy to add in to mobs that should have it.

SeminoleScam
Posts: 41
Character: TBD

Re: Horses and Dismounting

Post by SeminoleScam » March 5th, 2019, 6:23 pm

Mogrand wrote: March 5th, 2019, 5:14 pm I use the horse system quite a bit and haven't been dismounted too often. I've been hit while riding and not dismounted as well, so not sure if there is like a damage threshold or just a flat percentage chance rolled per hit to dismount.

I think if its one of the options I listed above it would be easier to tweak those than to add the dismount skill to specific mobs, as far as time consumption on the GM front.

If it isn't something like that and would be more complicated to input something like a damage threshold (say taking like 20% of health to be dismounted), then yea would the dismount ability would be the way to go.
I think in the grand scheme that would work in some capacity to maybe change it to a threshold, but I think its a half-formed way of fixing it, as the issue is a two part one. By doing that, it still doesn't grant any viability or need for the purchase and use of the Dismount Special Attack by players, which is further compounded as two-handed weapons then are now 3/4th effective in their application, as they now have an ability tied to them that is obsolete that essentially takes up a slot where something more effective would/should take its place- since simply damaging an opponent knocks them off.

I think between the fact that one cannot steer that horse out of the way of danger, and it sort of freezes in place for a second in a spot before transitioning to the next way point are other factors that play into how easily one can be dismounted. This is especially the case when in a group and following a friend on horseback; the first person gets chased, escapes, but the NPCs then stop their pursuit right on the path of travel for the horses. The next rider, is undoubtedly going to be knocked off the horse- which is a constant thing when in route to/from Briar's Hollow, as the Crustaceans who inhabit the shoreline there do oddly silly amounts of damage for being simply, shrimp, and a single hit can knock you off.

I think by coding in the dismount ability as an XML function like any other ability would be just as easy as simply going back through any code for this current system and trying to adjust the numbers to a fine point, as that still takes effort, trial and error, and again doesn't answer the question: why is dismount even an ability then?

Mogrand
Posts: 52
Character: Rufus Vilantri

Re: Horses and Dismounting

Post by Mogrand » March 6th, 2019, 3:44 am

To Clarify I was speaking only on a mob basis, not player basis for dismounting.

If mobs had something like that already in place that was being calculated it would just be easier to tweak that number, rather than going through 600+ individual entries, sorting out which ones you want to have dismount and value at what rate they should dismount.

Also as said in the last lines of my previous post if something like that isn't already in place then Dismount xml additions would be the best case to resolve it.

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pTxing
Posts: 28
Character: Hildwulf Grant

Re: Horses and Dismounting

Post by pTxing » March 6th, 2019, 2:10 pm

+1 to SeminoleScam;
- make the ability have a meaning in the game, a specific one.. dismounting people.
- make some monsters have that ability (surely not shrimps!) and do away with the dmg dismounting system.

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Alteripseity
Aeolian Staff
Posts: 69
Character: Barnabas Haim

Re: Horses and Dismounting

Post by Alteripseity » March 7th, 2019, 9:11 am

Thank you all for the feedback and bringing this to our attention. Upon review, we found dismounting to be a bit more frequent than we'd like. We'll modify the mounts to eject riders when they have less than 10 HP left, instead of the current 10 HP below your maximum. This will require a patch and we'll let you know when it's active in the patch notes.

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