Mount System Suggestion

So I was thinking about the mounts system and thinking how a bit of depth could be added without much dev team effort. Currently, the moment you get your GC Chocobo mount at level 20, you're set. It can even fly eventually so it's all you need from start to end game and any additional mounts are just cosmetic. How about emulating some of the other FF games where certain mounts can only cross certain regions?

Some Examples:

• Beast tribe mounts might be the only ones that work in the Beast Tribe strongholds. "The desert sands are too hot for your fat chocobo's feet, only a drake could withstand this heat", "The slippery, wet, and jagged terrain is tricky for your mount. Only an Elbst can cross", "Your Unicorn is freaked out by the Kobold bombs and refuses to enter the mines", etc
• Any mount can work in the starting areas
• Some end-game mounts can go to more areas, maybe even everywhere. (like Kirin? Would make for incentive to get ponies)
• Ranking up a chocobo could allow it go in areas previously only usable by other mounts. "Your chocobo has toughened up through training and can now withstand the heat of the desert sand" etc
• Can extrapolate to flying mounts as well.
• Can still walk everywhere which keeps the mounts optional, but enticing. Everyone hates walking.

Some Benefits:

• I'm trying to think what work this would entail for the dev team and all I can think it would need would be a handful of flags (similar to the ones used that track whether you have your aetherite currents attuned or not for flying) and a handful of pop up info boxes.
• Gives incentive for players to spend time and gil to collect more mounts. I say gil because it's always useful to pull money out of circulation by spending gil on npcs to combat economic inflation.
• Gives more depth, meaning and purpose to the mounts.

Some Drawbacks

• Would require taking the useful-everywhere-functionality away from current mounts, and I can't see taking stuff away from players being unanimously accepted. (tell me what you think, I could be wrong)
• Some of the benefits of this suggestion have already been partly addressed by other HW patch content. The Diadem is pulling gil out of circulation with the exploration tickets, the anima weapon is promoting beast tribe grinding which will give a lot of people access to the beast tribe mounts anyway.
• Mount roulette would need some tweaking to either only work with mounts that are ride-able in the current region, or just be removed entirely.

Edit: So the feedback so far has been that now that the mount system has been established, features shouldn't be taken away such as region restrictions on mounts. I wanted to summarize some of the points and counter points made here though so far (thanks for all the feedback!) which I think are more player friendly and address the big drawbacks from my original proposition.

• There have been a few saying they agree the mounts could use more depth, but this isn't the way to do it. Some would love to see more mounts used as companions though to fight alongside with. Would be a fantastic idea and I'm sure everyone would like to see that but it would also take more work on the dev team's part (ie animations and skills would have to be introduced for each mounts instead of just changing some global variables with flags). The point was made that some of the alternative chocobo mounts or even beast mounts that have mob equivalents could be used as companions to get around this to reuse the animations/skill tree.
• Another point was to give certain mounts extra perks in certain areas like a bit more resistance to heavy or aggro. ie. any mount can be used in the South Than strongholds, but the Drake would have some resists. The point was also brought up this could be used in frontlines with the GC ponies but I haven't done much of the PvP to know how that would affect gameplay balance.
• A final suggestion was to apply perks to all your mounts when unlocking a specific mount or quantity of mounts. ie unlock Kirin and all of your mounts get a small speed bonus.

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Originally Posted by Craigen

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I think your first drawback in the list is probably the major complaint you're going to face with this suggestion. For most people, mounts are basically just another form of glamour and point of pride showing off that they could actually get the mount in the first place. Second, the problem for this then becomes people are going to complain seriously when, if they're riding a different mount and they go into a 'restricted zone', they're going to have to be dismounted then mount -again- to the proper mount. This means when going to different parts of the same zone you need to stop, go into your Mount Panel (who the heck is going to keep all of those mounts on their bars?), remember which is the correct mount for that particular spot then spend the couple seconds it takes to remount. No one's going to want to do all of that.

I think this would be a giant pain in the butt, and there would be an incredible amount of outcry and backlash from it.

Nope. I'm not going to tolerate having to swap out mounts every darn time. Considering all the mounts play exactly the same way, why impose such a restriction now? What makes the drake mount better than a chocobo other than the former can cross the sand?

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Originally Posted by Malzian

I think your first drawback in the list is probably the major complaint you're going to face with this suggestion. For most people, mounts are basically just another form of glamour and point of pride showing off that they could actually get the mount in the first place. Second, the problem for this then becomes people are going to complain seriously when, if they're riding a different mount and they go into a 'restricted zone', they're going to have to be dismounted then mount -again- to the proper mount. This means when going to different parts of the same zone you need to stop, go into your Mount Panel (who the heck is going to keep all of those mounts on their bars?), remember which is the correct mount for that particular spot then spend the couple seconds it takes to remount. No one's going to want to do all of that.

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This pretty much.


To OP;
Nope! I want to ride my favourite mount(s) wherever and whenever I want.

I do want more dept into mounts, more ways to interact with them, and even fight with them alongside us. However this is not the way to do it. Your way only limits things further, which is always a no no in my book.

I'd be happy if select mounts can become companions.

Everything will be the same, just instead of a chocobo, it'll have the skin of X mount. Certain mounts should somewhat easy (especially the various chocobos) since some are already mobs with their own attacks

If there was an expansion that revised the whole feel of the game for something a bit more realistic, open-world-relevant, and generally more difficult for the sake of immersion, I could maybe something like this fitting. Short of that, its reception would not be kind.

I'd honestly be a fan of the ability for mounts to be killed, even (if only temporarily), such that we might leave them at the outskirts of a dangerous area and return to them later or call them over when the area's clear, but only if they're just as capable of significant use in dangerous situations as well (no auto-heavy, maybe even eventually mounted combat of some sort). There needs to be something to balance the negatives out, making the whole thing feel like a realistic and immersive world component, not just a restriction meant to be leveled through to slow pacing.

I can get the IDEA that the OP was going for with this, it could be neat on paper, but would never work in execution because of the responses already given, this game isn't known for having an open mind and accepting change, either.

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Originally Posted by MilesSaintboroguh

What makes the drake mount better than a chocobo other than the former can cross the sand?

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the idea was that the drake would have been trained to withstand the hot environs of the desert, the elbst to navigate the slippery shoal grounds of the sahagin area, etc not that it's "better", but just different trainings for environments, like I said earlier in this post, it's interesting on paper, but not something that would be very welcome in practice

Maybe if the mounts gave extra traits for certain areas, like drakes going faster over sand rather than the drake being the ONLY mount that can cross the desert, then we'd have something going. But as of the current idea now, it's pretty silly how a giant dragon or a round floating metal ball can suddenly be afraid of some hot sand.

one thing that should be added instantly is to increase ground mount speed in heavensward areas, or make them slightly faster than flying.

To OP: Absolutely not. I'm fine with mounts being mostly cosmetic, and being able to just go anywhere with whatever your favorite one is. It'd be an enormous annoyance to be forced to use specific ones, especially ones you need to grind rep for. Frankly, I'd start to despise those mounts rather than like them more. If anything, I'd want more mounts to be functional as Companions, especially the ones that already have attack animations finished (drake, elbst, etc).

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Originally Posted by MilesSaintboroguh

Maybe if the mounts gave extra traits for certain areas, like drakes going faster over sand rather than the drake being the ONLY mount that can cross the desert, then we'd have something going. But as of the current idea now, it's pretty silly how a giant dragon or a round floating metal ball can suddenly be afraid of some hot sand.

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This is what I was thinking going along with the OP's idea. Give mounts a little bonus in certain areas. Something nice to have, but isn't necessary.

Maybe certain ones have a lesser/no chance to be Heavy'd in certain areas (like, the Elbst in Sahagan-controlled areas, or Drake in Amalj'aa territory..sorry, have to deal with it in the Sylphlands >:D ), lesser chance to aggro mobs in places (maybe ADS and Twintania in Azys Lla would do this, or Middy and the Wyvern to dragon-type enemies...or any mount to similar mobs)...stuff like that. Nothing game-breaking (though, maybe make the GC Horses only have a chance to Heavy when struck in Frontlines rather than 100% chance.but ONLY when you are on the correct GC. You earned the horse after all...)

EDIT: Would say no to any movement speed increases in certain areas, just because people would definitely feel like they *must* use that mount there. Blanket increases to mounts' speed, fine, but not just in certain areas.

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Originally Posted by MilesSaintboroguh

Maybe if the mounts gave extra traits for certain areas, like drakes going faster over sand rather than the drake being the ONLY mount that can cross the desert, then we'd have something going. But as of the current idea now, it's pretty silly how a giant dragon or a round floating metal ball can suddenly be afraid of some hot sand.

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I like this idea. Adds the depth without taking features away which was the main inconvenience with the first post.

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Originally Posted by RyuRoots

To OP: Absolutely not. I'm fine with mounts being mostly cosmetic, and being able to just go anywhere with whatever your favorite one is. It'd be an enormous annoyance to be forced to use specific ones, especially ones you need to grind rep for. Frankly, I'd start to despise those mounts rather than like them more. If anything, I'd want more mounts to be functional as Companions, especially the ones that already have attack animations finished (drake, elbst, etc).

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Fair enough. That seems to be a general sentiment is what's done is done and to not take any features away. I like some of the other suggestions of unlocking certain mounts giving bonuses to all the mounts though.

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Originally Posted by PArcher

This is what I was thinking going along with the OP's idea. Give mounts a little bonus in certain areas. Something nice to have, but isn't necessary.

Maybe certain ones have a lesser/no chance to be Heavy'd in certain areas (like, the Elbst in Sahagan-controlled areas, or Drake in Amalj'aa territory..sorry, have to deal with it in the Sylphlands >:D ), lesser chance to aggro mobs in places (maybe ADS and Twintania in Azys Lla would do this, or Middy and the Wyvern to dragon-type enemies...or any mount to similar mobs)...stuff like that. Nothing game-breaking (though, maybe make the GC Horses only have a chance to Heavy when struck in Frontlines rather than 100% chance.but ONLY when you are on the correct GC. You earned the horse after all...)

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Good point with the heavy thing.

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Originally Posted by RyuSaarva

one thing that should be added instantly is to increase ground mount speed in heavensward areas, or make them slightly faster than flying.

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I wouldn't mind the mount speeds being increased in the Pre-3.0 areas to compensate for not being able to fly. It's a quicker and easier temporary solution than making all the 2.0 areas fly-able.