Stretch Goal Confusion

Great post. Just to be perfectly clear I've never said ALL players shouldn't be able to ride a horse once the stretch goal is met. I've said that ALL players shouldn't have immediate access to horses once the stretch goal is met unless they bought one. There's a big difference.

 

Thank you for clarifying, because I was sort of getting that vibe from your posts so I apologise...

Being able to work towards getting a horse (of some other kind/colour), if you don't or can't buy one in advance, is what I'd expect from however this gets implemented in-game. What I would prefer not to see is that everyone, regardless of how they felt about this goal, starts off with a horse in their backpack. So I think we're in agreement there!

 

We're very close it sounds like.

I think it should work very much like the Edelmann Brewing Reward:

So it might read something like this...

A Unique Horse Breeding Ability that allows you to "create" baby foals of your own. Only you will be able to teach this unique ability to others!

That way the people that buy into the stretch goal have an organic power to spread the wealth of horse mounts. After all, they're the ones that put the money in and risked the goal not even being met.

 

I sure hope the stretch goals stick around after episode 1. It's a great alternative model.

 

I think it is very easy to say "games X, Y and Z have this feature, so I expect it in all new games" without realizing that those features usually weren't available at launch. When SWTOR launched, all I heard were complaints that it didn't have every feature that WoW eventually got after years and years of post-release patches and expansions. With ESO and Wildstar launching, I'm hearing the same complaints. Launch games rarely meet expectations created by games that have been around for yers.

 

Breaded chicken is okay, not sure about breaded horse...

But yes, I like that idea! Being able to ride and breed (if you want to) horses and teach others how to do so would be a way of slowly spreading the riding ability among the player base without making it something that everyone can have right away.

 

Ha! I fixed it.

 

Boo! I should have quoted it for posterity...!

 

This is a bit off topic, but all this talk of horses has me thinking. We should have horse racing in SotA, with ability to make a few gold via gambling on the race. Heck, breeding could be a mini game all in itself. If these features were implemented at least horses would have more purpose than just being a pacifist mount. By episode 2 or 3, I believe horses or mounts in general will have much greater capabilities.

 

There is nothing to stop us from organising that ourselves in-game. People did similar things in Ultima Online all the time.

The only foreseeable issue is the gambling. Due to real life legality, it might conflict with the game's terms of service.

 

I understand that you could have unofficial gambling in game, but I was thinking something that would be monitored by the game itself. In terms of the amount of gold that could be placed on a bet, I was thinking something relatively small, nothing high stakes.

 

Many years ago, I used to spend a lot of time playing with a game called El Fish. Catching different types of fish and breeding them to create interesting shapes and colour combinations was a lot of fun - sometimes you got mutants that you couldn't breed from, but sometimes you managed to breed something unique-looking. My poor 386 struggled to animate my fish and I used to leave them processing overnight, but being able to build a tank and display the fish I'd created as a screensaver was very rewarding.

I can imagine that being a horse breeder and having a field of different coloured horses for customers to choose from would be a thing some people would enjoy very much. Perhaps it could be linked to pack animals in the future, and breeders could work together to breed sturdier animals for carrying heavier loads. Maybe even warhorses for armoured knights, or thoroughbreds for faster travel. Lots of possibilities, depending on how involved the team wanted the design to get!

 

Sounds like Farmville, I think RG said there would be no blue cows in SotA , maybe they could have a meat grinder stretch goal it might help with the sausage making process.

 

So let me get this straight. You sold your Royal Founder account. Do you currently have a pledge tier now?

 

I love this idea. This is a great feature that will entice people to pledge into the stretch goal.

Another great idea.

Ideas like these are what we need around here. Too much whining lately and not enough positive ideas. Keep them up!!!

 

Does anyone else feel like the way the mounts are being presented is eerily like WoW..... One of my favorite features of UO was mounted combat, that and the ability to dis-mount somebody....not allowing combat while mounted is what counts me out for this stretch goal

 

It's the same in Neverwinter, if you're riding and you take a certain amount of damage (or take more than so many hits, I think?), your mount just goes *poof* and you have to fight on foot. And if you're mounted and want to attack someone, as soon as you hit the button for your spell or attack your mount vanishes.

Mounted combat sounds like more fun - mounted archery, jousting and so on could all be interesting - and perhaps that's something they could work on adding in a future Episode once the basic riding functionality is in.

 

Oh I agree that 73 horses is far too many. In fact in Lotro one of the comments most made to the Devs when asked is, "Please no more horses!" Well that and "Fix your crappy PVP system!"

 

In Lotro we do have mounted combat, but only once you reach Rohan and only on a warsteed you gain through a book quest. (And my back pack continues to drag the ground)

 

I wouldn't go so far to say that I wish I didn't back the game, but I am VERY concerned with the direction it has taken. The add-ons and stretch goals are really feeling more and more like desperate cash grabs and there is no end in sight. There are a lot of items/features being added seemingly with more of a focus on making short-term cash than making the best possible game. I truly hope Portalarium can assuage my fears, but right now I would have to say that I am much less confident in the game's success than I was at the end of the Kickstarter campaign.