Mount/riding skills

I think mounts could be made more useful and enjoyable in the game if there was some kind of skill tree for "horsemanship" or general mount/riding skills since a horse isn't the only mount.

Some examples,

- Quick mounting -- faster mount/dismount speed. Allows you to get up on your mount faster, to cut down on your time getting where you need to go, whether just travelling in a hurry, dismounting quickly to deal with town business, or fleeing from a scene.

- Steadiness -- increased % resistance to being knocked off your mount due to damage, whether from enemies or from falling, so you can keep riding your horse despite minor nuisances. Currently, if you take any damage, this puts you into combat mode, dismounting you. This would still happen with such a skill, if the damage was great enough. But the skill would allow you to continue riding despite those nuisances. In theory this could also be adapted increase your resistance to be dragged into overland encounters, too, or that can be another skill.

- One-hand reins -- as a rule, having only one hand on your reins should impair all your other riding skills; this skill would mitigate that. Currently, the only use would be that you can hold a torch while riding your horse, but for example there could be some spells like Light that could be cast with one hand, or you could use a summoning whistle, another one-handed action. Of course, it would be cool some time in the distant future if there were jousting with lances. Jousting would be a lot simpler than mounted combat, it would just be a damage on physical collision thing, and would be of minor benefit in combat. It could however induce enough damage to dismount someone else.

- Spur mount -- active skill like Sprint that temporarily increases the speed of the mount into a galloping pace; like with Sprint, the time and speed increases with skill. Theoretically you could have a skill to also slow the mount, but it seems unnecessarily because active skills can just be cancelled through the UI.

- Maybe some skill should be involved, but generally an ability to manipulate a horse to jump over small obstacles like logs on the road, probably using the same jump mechanics that players use, with the Space

Other skills could deal with things such as carry burden, but honestly those sound more like skills for the mount, something where you would treat the mount like a pet, and equip items for him, etc.

 

I agree with this but I think taking it a step further ( doesn't really involve skill tree here ) I'd really like to just be able to talk to npcs and such well mounted if not atleast allow for auto dismount when you talk to npc/perform action instead of having to force yourself off mount by hitting escape. I also think that speaking of dismount I would also like for the mount button to also act as a both the a mount/dismount button instead of having to click escape.

I would prefer at end of day if it would just be like other games and dismounting was pretty well instant so you can just go straight into action but I still agree with having this atleast.

 

I agree with some of this (I think you should be able to both talk and interact with outdoor vendors, and also think that there should be a way to cancel every active skill by pressing the same button a second time, maybe with a shift combo), but was trying to limit to one topic per thread, which is what the devs request.

 

Nice ideas which would improve QOL and shouldn't have significant balance implications, other than the possible impact on Tactics spec. It feels a bit weird to me that riding skills are currently in the Tactics tree given they have nothing to do with combat; I'd happily see them moved to a more utility-oriented tree.

Not sure whether dedicating an entire tree to mounts alone is worthwhile. Maybe skills like Heavy Lifter and Safe Fall would also be a good fit for such a "utility tree"? Current logic seems to be that Tactics is the "Strength tree", Subterfuge is the "Dexterity tree", and they therefore contain some skills which are thematically linked to the stat but not necessarily the tree as named.

I think your Steadiness suggestion could be a double-edged sword, very helpful when your focus is on getting from point A to point B, potentially problematic in situations where you want to respond rapidly to threats. The first of those scenarios calls for ignoring as much damage as possible, the latter for reducing the threshold. Perhaps it could a buff skill which is activated and deactivated manually, rather than a passive? It could also take into account the rate of damage received rather than only considering whether each individual hit exceeds the threshold, i.e. if you're bombarded with enough pebbles the effect is similar to being hit by a rock.

 

I was thinking a riding tree would be useful primarily because you could have enough skills that they would be too much for a general tree and have synergy together, such as the suggestion for one hand reins control. This could even theoretically later expanded to include features for mounted combat although I think that would be difficult to implement.

I definitely have thought about the idea of a separate physical skills tree... for example a swimming skill would also add to the game (you shouldn't be able to apply sprint in water) but would only make sense to flesh out more if we had diving too... then you could have acrobatic skills like balance that would allow you to walk on narrow bridges or ledges with less fear of falling off because the game would give you some % chance of guard rails. But that's all a topic to draw out in a separate thread I guess.

Steadiness definitely would need to be worked out in a way where you can respond to real dangers while simply avoiding nuisances. Although quick dismount would give you better control of that too. Its just necessary to balance it so it isn't better to get knocked off vs manually doing a quick dismount.

 

When I think of a riding tree I think of Elmwood or Oak as an Ent to be mounted like the Hobbits being transported by the Ent in Lord of the Rings...

 

not sure about the the whole riding skills tree idea.
though,
i do wish horses can jump over obstacles. like fences, narrow rivers, rocks over cliff, etc.