Taming system?

[TetsuyaHikari]

As you may already know, taming is becoming a more common system in MMOs these days, so I was wondering how the dev team would feel about incorporating this mechanic into the game at a later date. Of course, much like flying, we could expect this new system to only be available in the areas from 4.0 onward (or even 5.0 if it would take that long to implement).

When you have F2P games allowing you to tame monsters and use them as mounts or pets, it really makes you wonder what FFXIV could be improving upon. I haven't really heard Yoshi-P touch on this subject before, so it would be interesting to hear his take on it. I think part of the problem with our current mounts is that we usually see most of the players riding the same ones, so there's hardly any sort of feeling of individuality, and the mounts don't feel as unique as they should.

In a couple of other games I've played though, it was very rare that you ever saw a lot of people riding the same mounts because there were soooooooooo many to choose from (99% of the common enemies could be tamed as a mount or pet, depending on their size). I think it would also allow for alternatives as well. For example, if there was a dragon mount you wanted, but you had to get incredibly lucky on a roll in endgame content, you might feel a bit discouraged about that. If you knew there were other dragons out there you could tame though, you may not feel as bad about it because you'd know you could get a dragon anyway.

It would also allow players to use mounts which may not otherwise be obtainable for them. If you have a player that has no interest in playing a Warrior, but wants to have a bear mount, it's doubtful he'll actually put in the effort for that achievement in order to obtain it. However, if you have a bear enemy (like Phecda for example) that can be tamed, then they can still have a bear mount. It won't be the same one, so it doesn't really take away from the Warrior's being unique, but it still allows that other player to have a bear mount through other means.

Anyway, I just think the feature is rather nice and I've been seeing it pop up more frequently as of lately in games, so it would be nice to see FFXIV's take on taming as well or at the very least, hear what the dev team/Yoshi-P has to say about it.

[The_Last_Dragoon]

There's no way that they would create such an influx of mounts in the game. Not only would it flood the roster with "similar" mounts, but they'd really lose the opportunity to make them actually have a meaning behind them besides "I got lucky." It would also require a ton of extra work for every "tamable" enemy model in the game since it would have to scale with the races and the animations would have to be matched up with the rider's movements. The only way I see this being implemented is for the Companion system, which would replace your chocobo. Unfortunately, I highly doubt SE would put so much effort into a part of the game that can really only be used during solo play. Besides, even if they did, who would honestly put hundreds of hours into leveling up a second companion?

[TetsuyaHikari]

There's no way that they would create such an influx of mounts in the game. Not only would it flood the roster with "similar" mounts, but they'd really lose the opportunity to make them actually have a meaning behind them besides "I got lucky." It would also require a ton of extra work for every "tamable" enemy model in the game since it would have to scale with the races and the animations would have to be matched up with the rider's movements. The only way I see this being implemented is for the Companion system, which would replace your chocobo. Unfortunately, I highly doubt SE would put so much effort into a part of the game that can really only be used during solo play. Besides, even if they did, who would honestly put hundreds of hours into leveling up a second companion?

But they wouldn't lose the opportunity to make some mounts have a meaning. If you weren't able to get that specific dragon from the endgame content and just tamed another one, does that really take away from the players that did obtain the rare dragon? No. It looks different and people know the difference. For example, if you were able to obtain a Bahamut mount (work with me here, lol), someone being allowed to go out and tame some trash mob that can fly isn't going to take away what you did. You still got Bahamut, so what has changed? Nothing.

Secondly, as I said before... The taming system wouldn't work for areas in 3.0 and prior because much like flying, this wasn't taken into account when the game first came out, so it would only work in the new areas (see: 4.0 or 5.0). Lastly, you don't need to make all of the enemies tameable. The way it works in other games is you usually need a specific item before you can even tame it (unless it's trash), you need to meet a level requirement, and you need to win the little mini game (just because you have the item and do everything right in the mini game though doesn't guarantee you a mount).

All-in-all, I definitely think it could work, but it would honestly be more dependent on whether or not they'd want to invest in the time and effort involved in adjusting each mount for each race's size and such, as you said. I have no idea how long that sort of thing takes, so I can't say one way or another on that front, but yeah... If we have F2P games out there capable of doing this, I see absolutely no reason FFXIV couldn't implement it as well. They have the resources for it, we know that much.

There just has to be a high enough demand for it before they can even consider it as a viable plan.

[Lambdafish]

This is never ever happening, the amount of work that it takes to make one mount (as has been said, model scaling, animations, extra collision functionality etc.) this would be such an unnecessary strain on resources, for not much gain. It doesn't matter if the mount uses an existing model in the game, it takes just as much work as a unique mount.