Here’s a random topic for you today: I hate mounts in MMOs. I was watching a video of Camelot Unchained where Mark Jacobs was fielding questions and two of them dealt with speed: (1) How quickly can players get into RvR, and (2) Will there be classes with speed buffs. For some reason I thought of mounts; My mind stopped listening to the video and went back into the depths of my memory where I recall how wonderful it was when MMOs were mount free.
I can remember how long it took to run places in EverQuest. Grouping with a Bard brought this feeling of pure ecstasy as the speed song kicked in and I felt so fast and free. I remember trying to get back to the RvR fight in DAoC and how crucial it was to group with a Bard, Skald, or Minstrel to have that run buff.  Without it you were so much slower, and without it you wouldn’t get back to the fight quickly — or you’d be left behind and ganked.
Not having speed or access to speed made having it better. Â Again I find myself going back to that feeling of opposition and deprivation adding so much value to the experience. Classes with speed had something to offer and filled a key role. Â That role existed because there weren’t prolific speed increases.
Mounts make everyone fast, shrink the world, and remove a huge dynamic layer from many systems. Mounts have become zany and an out-of-control arcade element.  Mounts are something sold in cash shops, earned with achievements, and akin to the prize you get with your tickets at the arcade.  They are an accessory yet can influence so much of a game’s design.
If the decision were mine to make in the future… I wouldn’t include mounts in my game.
Fair enough, but I remember when getting to level 40 in WoW to get a modest 40% speed mount was a Really Big Thing and took a significant amount of time.
I totally agree (although with the problems of flying mounts shrinking (and really, removing large parts of) the game world. It makes it much more like a city break holiday versus a road trip, you just don’t experience it the same way. But most of the problems are not with mounts per-se, particularly not land mounts, rather with rewards being given too early, too easily and providing too major a gameplay change.
In much the same way as giving your child an iPad for its 1st birthday, over-rewarding players makes them spoilt and cheapens the whole experience.
You ought to work for ArenaNet 😛
I’ll see your EQ Bard run and raise you Medding on a Mount. The day I got my first horse was one of the most exciting days of my entire EQ life. It ran slower than I did, it had the inertia of a steam-roller and it cost me most of my savings but when I was on it my cleric was classed as Sitting so he medded all the time. That made an incredible difference. Of course he couldn’t ride his horse in most dungeons where he really needed it most but you can’t have everything.
Anyway, I like mounts. Rather than restore the meaning of distance by not having them, why not just make them a lot slower?
I can agree with your sentiments here, but as Ultima Online was my first MMORPG, my view of mounts isn’t wholly dependent on them being an alternative to speed buffs or a large gold sink. I have always been fond of the ‘useful, but will permanently die and lose you gold’ over those others. I’d love to see an implementation of that in a future MMO, perhaps with animal taming as a new kind of tradeskill.
I think a better method would be to make mounts control like a tank and then make it so you are more vulnerable to certain weapons while mounted. Also, mounted combat! Also, your mount can be killed! I would much rather have that.
Well come on how can’t you not like mounts? 😛
Getting my PvP L. General mount was singularly the most memorable purchase I made in WoW and took me a long time to attain. It was an amazing feeling to finally ride around on something I worked so hard to get.
Perhaps you don’t like the implementation of mounts more than the mounts themselves, or am I mistaken? What if mounts marginally increased your speed, perhaps less than a speed buff, took time to get onto, and suffered defensive disadvantages?
Even back when I played WoW there was insta-travel between zones, which would make mount travel irrelevant by comparison.
I love mounts. Flying mounts I dislike, but I love ground mounts. Like others have mentioned, I’d much rather tinker with the implementation of mounts than get rid of them. Some of my happiest moments in MMOs have been obtaining mounts that I love or were difficult to earn. There’s also just a romantic notion about riding across a dangerous world on your trusty steed that I love. It’s silly, but for example in LOTRO I’m terribly attached to my boring old Bay Steed named “Bilberry”. Riding into the sunset in a beautiful landscape is truly satisfying.
Getting rid of them entirely is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
I really like how EQ2 does it — you have a mount, but you can also have a cosmetic mount. Or you can choose not to show your mount at all and simply look like you’re running really fast.
I also am a fan of TSW’s method– you don’t have mounts, but your out-of-combat-no-resource-cost sprint (which is essentially your mount) bumps up in speed as you unlock and buy the higher level versions of it.
No mounts!? Have you not read like any fantasy book ever? What about Artax, Morgenstern, Shadowfax, Star, Bree, Pips, Battlecat, etc. Worst idea ever. There are tons of counter play options for mounts such as giving them health ( so annoying when you get dismounted, and so satisfying when you get through that pack of mobs with a sliver of health left on your mount), or forcing you to feed them, etc. I also really love that above posters idea of having an animal tamer crafting option.
Themeparky immortal mount, meh.
Mounts ala UO/DF that can be left behind, die, etc, yes.
I prefer the Ultima Online way of mounts.
A commodity for sale in the stables at the outskirts of a city. Stick to the main roads as it is frail and can die from monsters. Afterall its a horse not a battleship.
It also makes the journey more exciting if your mount gets killed at times. Dont worrie they are easely replaced at the next stable. Oh and it also got hungry. You had to feed it.
The way wow uses mounts makes it feel like an automated speed buff potion or spell. Not like a living companion you are riding on.
Darkfall did mounts the best way possible – Make them expendable and killable. The whole “magically spawning your best riding friend over and over and over” is about the dumbest mechanic I can think of (same with unbreakable gear). When benefits stop coming at a cost, they tilt the balance.
Agree with Syncaine and Zyler
Your horse should be a character in the game just like you are. When you aren’t riding it you should have to park it somewhere. Hitting a button and POOF there’s a horse under you is ridiculously gamey. Yes these are worlds with dragons and wizards, but you can still be immersed in them if they aren’t full of gamey nonsense like this.
If it was not for DAOC RVR, I probably would have believed that mounts are just fine. in DAOC, people were “running” so slow…it is amazing if you go back to DAOC and see how slow the characters actually were. The speed buff from the speed classes was a true blessing…yes – it may made it feel like a requirement but it made every skald/bard/minstrel feel special and loved. It didnt just seem like a small buff but it was a significant difference. It made the character feel “powerful” (not in the sense of damage but utility). I would not want to see that diluted by giving everyone access to some speed.
In an RVR environment, I don’t think there is room for mounts. I prefer to see specialized characters that feel powerful (damage/utility/ or survival etc.) as opposed to homogeneous characters that all have access to the same abilities and the power difference between characters is minimal. If you do want to implement a speed class that feels powerful and you also want to give people mounts…the difference in speed from the speed class to the mount needs to be substantial which would make the speed class ridiculously fast…the world would shrink…and the different between the speed class and people without mounts would also be ridiculous. It seems to me that you can only have one or the other…or render any speed class mediocre (as far as speed utility is concerned).
One might argue that giving some speed to many people makes more people happy than giving a lot of speed to a few…that is true…however, that is also what most modern MMOs are all about…and the reason why we have a bunch of uninteresting modern MMOs that people play for 1-2 month…
Mounts were added for the same reason as a lot of quality of life improvements.
An ex girlfriend of mine summed it up nicely one day, seeing me playing WoW;
“Why is it you’re always running…”
She was questioning why I’d bother spending so much of my time playing what amounted to a ‘running simulator’, instead of actually engaging in the engaging parts of the game.
She was spot on.
When you first start exploring the world of an MMO, it’s interesting and exciting. The second time, less so.
The 50th time through a zone, ffs, I just want to get where I’m going. Anything less is just wasting time. Time is perhaps the single, most precious commodity human beings possess. Can’t earn more of it, once it’s gone, it’s gone.
Now days I use what I call my “Fun to Time Ratio” theory. That is, how much FUN can I extract from an experience, given the time I’m investing in it.
I’ve almost universally found MMO’s are MASSIVE time sucks, that spread the moments of “fun, engaging content” between vast swathes of “busy work.”
I liked mounts in UO.
I actually quite liked the gliding in Aion. I wan’t fussed on the area where you did a lot of combat flying, the abyss or whatever it was called, but I really liked the way you could navigate by finding flight points. It didn’t seem too far fetched and didn’t really shrink the areas that much.
I think mounts are awesome !
Imagine mounts you need to breed up, feed, that can die, that stay in the world not just disappear.
You could have wagons pulling your crafting supplies (like trade packs in archeage)
Or ships ! (Ships are a type of mount)
I have an idyllic mount system in my head too, but that has never been implemented. UO had one of the better mount systems, but I would have taken it even further. Since the intricacies of such a system would force the game into being a sandbox of enormous scope, I can’t say it’s right for every type of game.
The one thing that could have made UO’s mount system even more interesting was have less available at NPC stables.
I remember when I first started playing, seeing some guy come into town with like 10-15 horses following him. He sold most at the bank, to players for those not that didn’t play UO. You can’t actually sell anything to the bank 😉 I thought it was one of the coolest things.
Would have been another nice touch for player interaction.
I generally liked the mounts in EQ. They were expensive, or at least where when I played. And even though they were quicker than not having anything you had to pay an obscene amount of money to get one that was faster than another players speed buff. And like someone else mentioned the limitation to outdoor zones was a real factor.
In WoW mounts felt pretty decent until they put in the flying mounts. And I have to say that I liked the aspect of exploring areas from the air. But the lack of mobs in the air kind of ruined it. I remember playing Might and Magic 6, probably close to a decade earlier and that game had flying monsters in some zones so that flying wasn’t always a free pass. MMO’s should do the same thing.
I say make mounts just as slow as running as you would without one, or slightly faster. That way, the world wouldn’t seem smaller but yet you could have a mount. I find myself not really a fan of games without mounts I think because I have always had them since day 1. But yes, I agree they have become way too off the chart in some games. I think flying in WOW has decimated the game to some degree, and bet f they could do it again, they wouldn’t.
To echo what a few have already said, I love ground mounts and do not like flying mounts. Flying mounts may look really cool but completely change the dynamic of a game. Ground mounts should be difficult to get. I think that starting characters should be able to run a little bit faster and mounts should be a little bit slower. It should not be such a huge difference that if you do not have mount you feel like you are crawling.