Basic mount suggestion

[Lady Celtaine.3760]

I'll preface this with saying I'm not a ftp player and I have all mounts myself bar warclaw but only due to lack of interest in wvw. And this is probably beating a dead centaur but...

 

After talking to others in map after watching a ftp player get to an event too late because people with PoF got to it on mounts and flattened it in about 5 seconds I realised I had seen this happen umpteen times before when going back to core game maps and would like to put forward a suggestion of a core game mount. Because tbh I feel sorry for them.

Hear me out before you grab pitchforks and light torches. Not giving ftp players anything fancy, you get what you pay for, but imo anyone so hard up for cash they can't afford full game shouldn't be put at such disadvantage as a punishment for being broke. Because the scales of fairness in old maps aren't just tipped in the favor of PoF players they're broken. Plus a taste of what a full PoF mount would be like is just great incentive to save up and buy expansion by way of "free samples". (Dolyaks were mentioned and are reasonable since we've already see Norn riding dolyaks on the loading screen of Hoelbrak since day one.)

 

We say to people just trait and rune up for perma swiftness like the days before mounts but when trying to give this advice you find they have chars that are not great profs to do this with or they already invested what little gold they already had into another rune set and remember not all profs can do so with traits/signets or are capable of it until high level to unlock 6 rune stat bonus so it's not a viable solution for a lot of them who already filled their 2 char slots with slow run prof characters at mid level.

 

IMO a basic mount for ftp and core game heroic edition players wouldn't even need any special mount movement abilities, just a speed boost to rival a slow PoF mount. As I said you get what you pay for but PoF mounts in core maps have made it pay to win when it comes to dynamic events, and GW2 promised not to be pay to win.

The balance can be repaired with no harm to Arenanet's business model, so why hasn't it?

If it was we wouldn't see so may players sad they can't get to events for their dailies. And lets face it, it's pretty sad when a player has to be disappointed something as mundane as the daily seems hard and not for want of effort.

 

Post edit since it came up in comments: Another viable option would be rent a mount like as was discussed regarding wvw, maybe a couple of silver for an hour of having a mount just so the ftp players could get round to things like the daily events quicker but still limits access to things like mounts for the majority of game play.

[Samnang.1879]

sis back in high school i get a daily budget of $5 per day... i skipped lunch for a whole week to get what i want...

ppl these days can't even do that? the expansions are only like $15 at 50% :dead:

[Lady Celtaine.3760]

> @"Samnang.1879" said:

> sis back in high school i get a daily budget of $5 per day... i skipped lunch for a whole week to get what i want...

> ppl these days can't even do that? the expansions are only like $15 at 50% :dead:

 

When I tell people I saved up by quitting smoking that's different, it's not healthy to skip meals.

Also not taking into account how unhelpful it is to people already at the end of their budget.

If that was your situation I'd expect you to have more empathy not go "I'm alright Jack I got mine and you can go whistle".

[Trise.2865]

And this is better than using a speed buff skill because...?

 

I'm not being sarcastic, I genuinely want to know.

[Blocki.4931]

People get around faster, but the actual content requires them to not be on a mount so it's okay. More incentive for people to buy the expac, which they should since that is required for all of the ongoing content too.

[Lady Celtaine.3760]

> @"Trise.2865" said:

> And this is better than using a speed buff skill because...?

>

> I'm not being sarcastic, I genuinely want to know.

 

Because setting up a build for speed detracts from maxing out it's potential for combat and wastes time swapping skills before a fight. Not that the core game is hard at max level but getting decent gear is harder to come by.

[Samnang.1879]

> @"Lady Celtaine.3760" said:

> > @"Samnang.1879" said:

> > sis back in high school i get a daily budget of $5 per day... i skipped lunch for a whole week to get what i want...

> > ppl these days can't even do that? the expansions are only like $15 at 50% :dead:

>

> When I tell people I saved up by quitting smoking that's different, it's not healthy to skip meals.

> Also not taking into account how unhelpful it is to people already at the end of their budget.

> If that was your situation I'd expect you to have more empathy not go "I'm alright Jack I got mine and you can go whistle".

 

sis... if u feel sorry for them, you'd tell them (ftp) to get the 2 expacs... cuz they are missing out on 80% of the fun.. playing the core game alone = bored within 1-2 years.

[Cragga the Eighty Third.60]

Maybe some kind of super speed buff could be made available from a vendor or something? Or speed up the travel toys? It seems more reasonable and likely than throwing a sub-standard mount at the FTP people. Not much difference between getting there too slow on foot and getting there too slow on a pack dolyak.

[Lady Celtaine.3760]

> @"Samnang.1879" said:

> > @"Lady Celtaine.3760" said:

> > > @"Samnang.1879" said:

> > > sis back in high school i get a daily budget of $5 per day... i skipped lunch for a whole week to get what i want...

> > > ppl these days can't even do that? the expansions are only like $15 at 50% :dead:

> >

> > When I tell people I saved up by quitting smoking that's different, it's not healthy to skip meals.

> > Also not taking into account how unhelpful it is to people already at the end of their budget.

> > If that was your situation I'd expect you to have more empathy not go "I'm alright Jack I got mine and you can go whistle".

>

> sis... if u feel sorry for them, you'd tell them (ftp) to get the 2 expacs... cuz they are missing out on 80% of the fun.. playing the core game alone = bored within 1-2 years.

 

You seriously think I haven't suggested that already only to be told how broke they are?

 

Also I'm not your sis.

[Lady Celtaine.3760]

> @"Cragga the Eighty Third.6015" said:

> Maybe some kind of super speed buff could be made available from a vendor or something? Or speed up the travel toys? It seems more reasonable and likely than throwing a sub-standard mount at the FTP people. Not much difference between getting there too slow on foot and getting there too slow on a pack dolyak.

 

Honestly not a bad idea either. I'm not in favor of just throwing tons of free stuff at ppl but just to make it a tiny bit more fair would be a boon to the in game community as a whole.

[Lady Celtaine.3760]

> @"Lady Celtaine.3760" said:

> > @"Cragga the Eighty Third.6015" said:

> > Maybe some kind of super speed buff could be made available from a vendor or something? Or speed up the travel toys? It seems more reasonable and likely than throwing a sub-standard mount at the FTP people. Not much difference between getting there too slow on foot and getting there too slow on a pack dolyak.

>

> Honestly not a bad idea either. I'm not in favor of just throwing tons of free stuff at ppl but just to make it a tiny bit more fair would be a boon to the in game community as a whole.

 

Another viable option would be rent a mount like as was discussed regarding wvw, maybe a couple of silver for an hour of having a mount just so the ftp players could get round to things like the daily events quicker but still limits access to things like mounts for the majority of game play since it's not like you can get a lot of gold in core maps anyway.

[YoukiNeko.6047]

Or they can just wait for promo and buy the game?

If you can't find $15 for a game you play, then you should really think of something else to do. (Like getting a job?)

Back in the day I couldn't afford to play GW1 and WoW, so I didn't. Instead I used that time for different things (studying).

And as far as I know mounts are only a problem when there are daily events.

[kharmin.7683]

Mounts are the incentives to purchase the necessary content. Please continue to support the studio by purchasing content.

[Lilyanna.9361]

Nope. No reason. And once again, using the term 'pay to win' for literally every situation but an actual pay to win situation seems to be people's defaults these days.

 

If someone can't afford a game, it is not the company's responsibility to give them access to EVERYTHING. That includes a subscription based game, f2p game, buy to play game whatever. Gw2 has one of the most FAIR f2p to date and I actually got into the game through experiencing that f2p. They do not need everything handed to them to experience, the point is to entice them enough to want to support and purchase. Plain and simple.

[Yamazuki.6073]

> @"Lady Celtaine.3760" said:

> You seriously think I haven't suggested that already only to be told how broke they are?

 

They're too broke to afford 15-20$, but had the money for the required internet connection, and a computer to run the game, as well as have enough time to be playing an MMORPG. Definitely doesn't seem odd.

 

I find that asking for volunteers to teach people how to budget makes far more sense. As even just saving a few dollars a month would get enough for PoF pretty quickly. If a few dollars a month for 2-3 months is going to make them starve, they either need another job instead of playing games, or are lying about being broke and spent the money on other extras.

[Tails.9372]

I doubt we're going to get a new mount for non PoF players. Every major meta event has a waypoint nearby and with the end of season 4 new maps are not going to be desined with mounts in mind anymore.

[EmmetOtter.8542]

Why should a F2P player be on par with other players?

Look at the many differences between the accounts

https://help.guildwars2.com/hc/en-us/articles/230165307-Guild-Wars-2-Account-Types-Free-Core-HoT-PoF

 

To me its obvious that F2P is a try-before-you-buy type of account and not a i'm-broke-and-can't-pay. Before someone drops any sort of cash for a game, they want to know if they enjoy it. Not having a mount isn't the end of the world, nor even "unfair", but it is encouragement to pay up.

[starlinvf.1358]

The long and the short of it is this..... Mounts and Gliding are just QOL aspects in Core Tyria. They are only required in their respective Xpacs, because the maps were designed around them. You may be inconvenienced, but you aren't at any "to be taken seriously" disadvantage. GW2 players got by just fine for 2 years without gliding, and 4 years without Mounts.

 

If the best argument you can come up with is "my build is less optimal because of mobility skills", I ask the question of "What are you optimizing for?". Core Tyria is NOTORIOUS for its low difficulty, and this has only gotten more substantial with Core specs getting upgrades along side Especs, the introduction of Ascended gear stat boosts, nearly every class getting skill reworks that resulted in overall power creep, many Core Metas being retrofitted to be mechanically easier, and an on/off effort to dissuade "Tag farming" champs.

 

Next we look at areas of the game where Optimization is important.....

 

Core Tyria - Fractals, Dungeons

HOT- Raids

POF - Raids

 

To completely shut down the argument of open world Optimization-- show me one build thats so delicately optimized for open world combat, that the substitution of one Utility skill will cause it to completely fall apart. Hard mode- same question, but the gearing can't afford to have a Sigil of Speed in one of the weapons to give it psudeo-permaswiftness.

 

What I take here is that we're trying to assume/imply that F2P players are incapable of solving simple challenges using what is arguably one of the most flexible buildcraft systems in the MMO market, because they are facing too much difficulty in the least challenging content block of the whole game. You might "feel sorry" for them, I don't. And its not because I'm an ass; its because they're under no real mechanical pressure to have a mount in Core Tyria in order to function. I can, and do call out the devs using Dark Patterns to push players in specific directions, and back porting stuff in non-pof maps for the Skyscale is in that list to make it look important and trigger FOMO. But in spite of that, players are capable of getting by just fine, especially at their own pace.

 

This doesn't get said often enough, but later content blocks are built more around sinks and farming then new activities. Every LS chapter comes with new skins and some kind of mastery toy.... but along side it is massive gold sinks and long winded collections/achievements to obtain them. The truth is Core Tyria, and by extension F2P players, are under no demand to perform anywhere near optimal level. And all of Core Tyria's most difficult challenges are usually solved by team work anyway.

 

The OP, like so many modern gamer, don't understand a situation well, and end up making blanket assumptions based on their own perspective. Wants are confused with needs, jealousy is breed from an ill-developed sense of parity, comparisons made while disregarding context, and try to act inclusive while also protecting the status they've eked out when threatened. Ping ponging between a Meritocracy and a Socialist philosophy.

 

F2P players have a rare opportunity to be non-competitive in the open world space, without the constant "End Game" pressure to fill out achievements, maximize everything, and grind because the game has no idea what to do with us anymore. The F2P aspects, aside from TP and chat restrictions, are enjoyable within its scope. But once you get the full version of the game, it opens up into the best the game has to offer..... but with it comes a price of all the worst things the game does to shape those behaviors.

 

Full disclosure... I'm Old. I remember a time before endless progression was the norm. I remember when playing 2 different games was entirely normal, because neither tried to monopolize all your time, or made you feel punished for not devoting all your free time to it. So let me congratulate you on your altruism to worry about the plight of the common F2P player, and their sub-optimal life style. Their lives would be so much better with that non-special mount that only goes slightly faster the normal, but still not faster then the other mounts with their myriad movement abilities.... the very thing you claimed to create the situation you are trying to solve.

 

So I offer this bit of advise...... Get the WarClaw and use it in Open World PvE. Because there it has the baseline mount movement speed, and a fraction of the Raptors leap range (a consequence of some bad planning). I can tell you right now, all it accomplishes is furthering the resentment an F2P player might have; because its in no way competitive, made all the more frustrating knowing what the other mounts are capable of, and feels like nothing more then a token offering whose sole purpose is to bait you into wanting "the real thing" even more. That is what a F2P mount you suggest is going to be like..... a Dark Pattern spawned out of good intentions.

[ShiningSquirrel.3751]

I already suggested this back in Feb. The response was so bad I had to ask the mods to close the thread.

[ragingpuma.4618]

Best thing for them to do is just get to the event early. Look at the wiki to find out the event times. When i came back to the game after years of not playing and saw everyone running around on mounts, I too was annoyed so I bought the expansions so i too could get mounts. The game is way more fun with them.

[DeanBB.4268]

I have multiple Core-only accounts and always manage to get dailies done -- at least when I have the time to pursue them on multiple accounts. A mount is not necessary in PvE or WvW.

[runeblade.7514]

I agree.

 

The reasons:

 

* In further expansions without mounts, ANet won't have to balance map design for players with no mounts vs players with mounts. Players without mounts will say the zone is too big and empty. Players with mounts will say the zone is too small and has nothing to do. Allowing access to mounts for everyone normalize this.

* A basic mount with only a speed boost can open up a gem store shop for all kind of skins. This mount would be designed to minimize animation requirements as possible and maximize the ability to adapt to all kind of skins that wouldn't work with the existing mounts. There could be a skin for Moa, Dolyak, Spider, Charr-slaves, Charr Tanks, Golems, etc. The possibility is endless.

* By making it basic, it wouldn't be considered useless as non-PoF players can use it.

* To make it prestigious or in other words, make core players work for it. Just put a questline as long as Skyscale.

* This can encourage non-pof players to buy PoF for better mounts.

[Trise.2865]

> @"Lady Celtaine.3760" said:

> > @"Trise.2865" said:

> > And this is better than using a speed buff skill because...?

> >

> > I'm not being sarcastic, I genuinely want to know.

>

> Because setting up a build for speed detracts from maxing out it's potential for combat and wastes time swapping skills before a fight. Not that the core game is hard at max level but getting decent gear is harder to come by.

 

Oh, it's a troll thread. Gotcha.

[Teratus.2859]

> @"Trise.2865" said:

> And this is better than using a speed buff skill because...?

>

> I'm not being sarcastic, I genuinely want to know.

 

Not all builds have access to speed buff skills.

 

Swapping out skills or restricting my build to take a specific traitline for speed boost was always a big annoyance for me pre PoF.

Mounts allow me to run any build I want without having to make sacrifices for speed.

This means I no longer get stuck in combat with the wrong skills or traits equiped thanks to some random enemy shooting me as i'm running past.

[Lady Celtaine.3760]

> @"ShiningSquirrel.3751" said:

> I already suggested this back in Feb. The response was so bad I had to ask the mods to close the thread.

 

I can see why, some have had a decent civil input on this and that's great, we don't have to agree to discuss. The patronising cattle-plop from others however just because they dislike the idea is somewhat disappointing from a community that is usually known for being one of the less toxic in gaming. Especially the ones who seem to have either not read the full original post or seem to misconstrue my words as though I somehow believe freebies should fall into people's laps for no reason. Ultimately it's just a suggestion. Not sure why some people get so bent out of shape about it.