Will horses/mounts have any purpose?

Hi,

Just a thought on horses/mounts, if this has been discussed earlier I apologize but I searched the forum and did not find anything.

The purpose for me with having mounts in the game would be that you can travel faster than running,
especially when traveling far distances this way of transport would be useful.
After finding out that the game will be scenes/instanced in not to big hexes ,it seems, is there really any need for them?

Getting on your horse to run for a short period to get to your desired part of the scene a little bit quicker feels abit forced and in towns I assume you will not be able to mount.
But again in towns you would again mount and unmount, if you could mount in towns, to get to your location 5 secs faster then running, again abit forced.

Mounts are for exploring, traveling far far away...
Does mounts fill any purpose in a instanced world?

 

Actually nobody knows... XD Portalarium planned mounts for next episodes. Anyway I think that you can use horses, instances or not. I think you are thinking too much about "instanced". Actually most of the games with online have any kind of instanced.

Anyway it looks like we will arrive to the 250k SG in the episode V.

 

They have many options. From mounted combat to avoiding some encounters on the overland map.

 

I thought mounted combat was completely out of scope?

What's your thoughts on being mounted on the overland map to avoid encounters?

 

Yes, out of scope for episode 1. But you still could avoid it.

 

If you have a horse and we unlock the stretch goal, you could still see yourself on a horse on the over world map and move faster through it.

 

It's highly dependent on how large they make the scenes. So far the scenes we have access to are tiny in terms of usefulness to having a mount. Save 30 seconds when going from one end of Owl's Head to the other? Not a big deal really, and that's assuming they'll allow mounted travel within town borders. But if there will be non-town scenes that are much larger than Owl's Head, sure it could be a time saver but likely not a whole lot per scene.

In terms of the overland map and mounts, sure it might cut some travel time down. If it takes 30 minutes to traverse the continent of Novia without a mount, and 25 minutes with a mount...is it really that useful? Perhaps for some. Now if it only takes 10 minutes, then yeah that's pretty big time savings....if all you really wanted to do was go from Point A to Point B as quickly as possible. Or just use gate/recall spells or lunar rifts to do that in two seconds instead.

And of course once we get to Episode 5, the world will be absolutely huge. Mounted travel could make a difference, if you're not using spells or lunar rifts for instant travel.

Having said all that, it all depends on what you want out of the game or what your current needs are while in-game. People that simply need to travel between two points as quickly as possible, are going to use spells or lunar rifts. Those that are simply exploring the overland map will likely not care about the time savings as much.

 

I really hope that the exploration centered hexes could be bigger!

 

The Brave Coast was not Tiny. I really wanted a Horse at that point.

 

Really? I didn't think it was that big to warrant horse travel. Then again, I'm used to playing Skyrim without fast travel at all (and sometimes without even using my mount) so my mental picture of "large scene" is a bit skewed.

 

You weren't looking for water city lots late in the game then eh ?

Oh, certainly our scenes are much smaller than Skyrim's open world area, but I'm not sure it's a fair comparison... plus skyrim had real fast travel and horses.

I dunno if you've noticed, but it seems like you travel faster with the coconut horse ... maybe it's my imagination

 

The Brave Coast was big for me, but because I'm a dumb llama and got lost all the time...

 

You're just a cria until the stretch goal is unlocked, Eriador

 

Yeah, I actually walked/ran the entire area, traveling along the coast and going everywhere. Not once did I feel the need for a horse so I can get to the next thing I saw quicker, or to get back to where I was previously.

I guess it's just me then!

 

Well, you gave yourself away when you said that you thought it wasn't a big deal to travel without fast travel in Skyrim.

Don't worry tho - for explorer types like yourself Novia is 10 times bigger than the hidden vale.

And that' just episode one. Don't forget about the underworld (kickstarter !)