Mounts Afraid of Combat?

On Tuesday, 27 April 2010, this tidbit made it into the update notes for test:

Mounts will now be temporarily suspended while in combat.

Basically, in outside zones, mounts would disapear as soon as you enter combat and re-appear a few seconds after combat ended.  This had a general negative response on the official EQ2 Forums and led to speculation on how this would effect buffs.  Gninja responded with some clarification on the matter:

You would not lose any stats or anything you would have normally had your character will just no longer be visually mounted during combat the buff remains. Think of it like when you enter water on a mount.

This led to a few pages of responses, mostly negative, about this change.  Many people were asking for a new /hidemount command. EQ2 Senior Producer  SmokeJumper decided to chime in with some additional info:

Well, I guess it’s time to stick my head in the dragon’s mouth. Here goes nuthin’.

I’ve played with the system as it is currently on Live (rather extensively). I’ve also played the system that is on Test now.

It’s basically a change about “what looks best”.

The fact is, the Live solution doesn’t look very good. Especially if you’re playing a character with radical animations, like a Monk.

Also, we already have the conceit in the game, for things like climbing and swimming, where your mount turns off/on.

Additionally, there is no way that we can add the literally hundreds of necessary anims and hunks of code to make combat look spectacular while on a mount. (At least not with our existing task load for future features.)

So, the solution is to turn off the mount while in combat. You may ask, “When does the mount off/on occur?”

1) It doesn’t happen if you’re just aggroed. It only happens if YOU attack something.

2) We’re going to massage the code a bit (soon) so that your mount doesn’t immediately pop back in until a few seconds after you destroy your current opponent. That way, if you’re not using AoEs, the mount doesn’t keep popping back in before you can switch to a new target and continue fighting.

This system allows you to continue seeing the great combat animations and makes the game more visually appealing for all players.

Regarding the “/showmount” request…that’s not something we want to do either. If you’re getting the speed boost, other players should know why that’s occuring.

Regarding a graphics option to show the mount even while you’re in combat, we’re not doing that either. This is an aesthetic decision that keeps the game more attractive for all players. The currently munged animations that occur while riding look like (well, actually “are”) a bug. Since we don’t have time to create all the extra anims required to fix that in the perfect way (which would also make it *much* harder for us to create new mounts in the future because they would need all those extra anims also), we’re going to have to go with this solution.

We fully realize this won’t please all players, but it will result in a better looking game for most players, so that’s why we’re making the change.

This led to about six more pages of people mostly against this change.  Finally, on page 11, Smokejumper jumped back in to put out the fire with this news:

Late-breaking news on this feature! Basically, we hear ya. Here’s the details:

1) Mounts will still be suspended while in combat…by default.

2) However, there will also be a new graphic option that lets you set your view of mounts to one of three settings:

a) Default (mount disappears during combat, reappearing 5 seconds after you are out of combat).

b) You never see mounts at all. (Useful in raid situations or for low-end machines that are trying to get better framerate.)

c) You always see mounts, even during combat. (Useful for folks that like the way things look now and want to continue seeing things that way.)

NOTE: The mount settings are client-only, so they only affect what *you* see, not what everyone else sees. Their view is affected by their own personal setting.

Make sense?

Commentary:

I’m very glad to see that Smokejumper has listened to the players and decided to change this.  I was worried when I saw his first response to this because it basically said, “we’re doing this whether you like it or not”.  Glad to see that our new Senior Producer for EQ2 is willing to listen to the player base and change his mind on how a feature should be implemented.  Thank you sir.  Glad to have you on board.