Skyscale mount mechanics (not about timegate)

[Graymalkyn.8076]

How about an option (could be a mastery) to actually be able to scale the wall you are clinging to? Rather than just stick to it, you could walk up it. This might actually add some relevance to the mount.

[LucianDK.8615]

@Graymalkyn.8076 said:How about an option (could be a mastery) to actually be able to scale the wall you are clinging to? Rather than just stick to it, you could walk up it. This might actually add some relevance to the mount.

With the third mastery you can jump up the wall, but it takes a lot of endurance. So you can do it twice.

[Kidel.2057]

The more I use this mount (mastered), the more I feel like a third stamina bar would solve a lot. And it wouldn't be a gamebreaker.

And again, make the grab bound to a button, not automatic (or at least less automatic).

[crazyhusky.2985]

@makagoto.1204 said:

@"crazyhusky.2985" said:I got skyscale and leveled it up to max.Its rather weird, I still think the griffin and springer are better in terms of height and flight.congratulation on being the very first person to finally complete all the chores. I mean there isn't even a youtube video out yet showing this achivement fulfilled, is it even possible with all the timegating around it?But why should you believe the springer is better in terms of height if you can simply test it like i did and wrote about in this thread?Then there is also the secondary mastery that suggest you can climb at least a little...

Its 3rd mastery that allows for the climb but its not really a "climb" more of wall leap/flight.

I'm taking about better in terms of speed. Generally people want to get up a cliff ASAP and the springer gets up most ledges quickly.For example lets say there is rare foe above you on a cliff and you need to defeat it for something, but there is large group attacking the foe, so you need to quickly get up there to hit it.The springer can easily vault up there no problem. It may take 2 jumps, you get up there quickly.The skyscale however acsends rather slow in comparison to the springer and can only go far up before you need to cling to a wall or land to recharge flight meter.

For general use the springer is still better than the skyscale in scaling up most cliffs, the skyscale has it uses in places.

[Zok.4956]

@"Kidel.2057" said:The problem is that the mount is mostly a vanity item for chilling afk in LA, not a real useful mount.

After flying around several hours in Dragonfall using the Skyscale with maxed out mastery I believe, the problem is more, that a lot of people have only tried the rental Skyscales and base their opinion on that.

With the Skyscale I can fly/climb a lot of walls/rocks in Dragonfall on a nearly direct way, where I have to make bigger detours with Springer/Griffon when I want to reach the same destination. So, from my experience, it is not required, but is a really useful mount for map travelling in Dragonfall because it opens up alternative ways.

As you can see it's impossible to go over that ledge with the Skyscale. Even if you release [W] it bounces off, and it's to far to land on it with [C].Meanwhile the Springer can do it just fine.

With a little practice (and mount-ability 2 - decrease and with turning around 90 degrees) I can land on a lot of small ledges/steps were I couldn't land before (when I was using the rental ones) and if the Skyscale has still a little endurance left, it can wall jump above the ledge and land on (top) of it.

"wall climbing" with the Skyscale feels more like "mountain climbing" where you are high in the sky/wall and are planning your next steps carefully.

Another issue I have is that the decrease in altitude if you try to move horizontally seems worse then gliding.

I do not think that it is worse than gliding, but the altitude decrease should be decreased. :)

[Kidel.2057]

@Zok.4956 said:

@"Kidel.2057" said:The problem is that the mount is mostly a vanity item for chilling afk in LA, not a real useful mount.

After flying around several hours in Dragonfall using the Skyscale with maxed out mastery I believe, the problem is more, that a lot of people have only tried the rental Skyscales and base their opinion on that.

With the Skyscale I can fly/climb a lot of walls/rocks in Dragonfall on a nearly direct way, where I have to make bigger detours with Springer/Griffon when I want to reach the same destination. So, from my experience, it is not required, but is a really useful mount for map travelling in Dragonfall because it opens up alternative ways.

As you can see it's impossible to go over that ledge with the Skyscale. Even if you release [W] it bounces off, and it's to far to land on it with [C].Meanwhile the Springer can do it just fine.

With a little practice (and mount-ability 2 - decrease and with turning around 90 degrees) I can land on a lot of small ledges/steps were I couldn't land before (when I was using the rental ones) and if the Skyscale has still a little endurance left, it can wall jump above the ledge and land on (top) of it.

"wall climbing" with the Skyscale feels more like "mountain climbing" where you are high in the sky/wall and are planning your next steps carefully.

Another issue I have is that

the decrease in altitude if you try to move horizontally seems worse then gliding.

I do not think that it is worse than gliding, but the altitude decrease should be decreased. :)

I have a fully mastered skyscale btw. I still stick to my opinion: slow, clunky, doesn't have more potential energy than springer.And remember that Dragonfall is supposed to be designed with Skyscale in mind.

Also since this mount will be relatively rare, no map will be like Dragonfall (regarding the Skyscale) in the future. The mount needs to shine on its own.

With a little practice (and mount-ability 2 - decrease and with turning around 90 degrees) I can land on a lot of small ledges/stepsThat's exactly the issue. A mount like that shoule have a better design and not rely on "turn 90 degrees" (so that auto grab does not kick in).I've been doing the exact same thing for days, it maes no sense.

The mount may be even better without the grab at all.

[Zok.4956]

@"crazyhusky.2985" said:I'm taking about better in terms of speed. Generally people want to get up a cliff ASAP and the springer gets up most ledges quickly.For example lets say there is rare foe above you on a cliff and you need to defeat it for something, but there is large group attacking the foe, so you need to quickly get up there to hit it.The springer can easily vault up there no problem. It may take 2 jumps, you get up there quickly.The skyscale however acsends rather slow in comparison to the springer and can only go far up before you need to cling to a wall or land to recharge flight meter.

There is a legendary boss (after the meta in Dragonfall is completed, I dont care about its name) high up on an cliff. It is too high for the springer and there are no ledges. But everytime I do the boss there are around 5-10 players trying to jump up the cliff with the Springer but without success (no one succeeds there with the Springer).

Without the Skyscale you have to find a nearby wall, that you can break through with the roller beetle to get to the other side and on the other side are several "steps" for the springer. But with the Skyscale I can just fly directly the cliff/wall up and I reach the boss much faster.

[Heibi.4251]

@LucianDK.8615 said:

@Graymalkyn.8076 said:How about an option (could be a mastery) to actually be able to scale the wall you are clinging to? Rather than just stick to it, you could walk up it. This might actually add some relevance to the mount.

With the third mastery you can jump up the wall, but it takes a lot of endurance. So you can do it twice.

Yep. I was practicing on a wall with the third mastery just finished. Was easy to grip the wall build up endurance and then go higher and higher up the wall. The bunny can't land on shear vertical surfaces and keep going up. It needs a ledge. The wall is the ledge for the skyscale. May not be super fast but it will get you up there.

My only gripe: The breath weapon dismount is the real problem. The targeting is nonexistent and it doesn't fall where you really want it. Wish we could get a target area so we could abort the attack or re-target.

[LucianDK.8615]

@Heibi.4251 said:

@LucianDK.8615 said:

@Graymalkyn.8076 said:How about an option (could be a mastery) to actually be able to scale the wall you are clinging to? Rather than just stick to it, you could walk up it. This might actually add some relevance to the mount.

With the third mastery you can jump up the wall, but it takes a lot of endurance. So you can do it twice.

Yep. I was practicing on a wall with the third mastery just finished. Was easy to grip the wall build up endurance and then go higher and higher up the wall. The bunny can't land on shear vertical surfaces and keep going up. It needs a ledge. The wall is the ledge for the skyscale. May not be super fast but it will get you up there.

My only gripe: The breath weapon dismount is the real problem. The targeting is nonexistent and it doesn't fall where you really want it. Wish we could get a target area so we could abort the attack or re-target.

At last someone is seeing it. The skyscale does have climbing advantages over the bunny, whom is dependent on ledges.

[Kidel.2057]

The problem with the fire breath is that it's designed to be used comfortably from land. But in normal gameplay we are always going to be above the monster with a Skyscale.

It's very hard to target the actual monster, so instead we have to aim at a non-existant target. It should at least get a preview ring, or simply attack in front of the player considering the angle..

There is also another issue.If you mount the skyscale with Air Rescue after using a branded tornado or a ley line that points upwards (like the ones in Dragonfall dutring the meta) you'll start with a full red flight meter, and lose altitude very fast.

[Neeja.4579]

@Kidel.2057 said:The problem with the fire breath is that it's designed to be used comfortably from land. But in normal gameplay we are always going to be above the monster with a Skyscale.

It's very hard to target the actual monster, so instead we have to aim at a non-existant target. It should at least get a preview ring, or simply attack in front of the player considering the angle..

I agree. Basically unusable except from the same height of the enemy.

There is also another issue.If you mount the skyscale with Air Rescue after using a branded tornado or a ley line that points upwards (like the ones in Dragonfall dutring the meta) you'll start with a full red flight meter, and lose altitude very fast.What? Really?

[Rattengeist.8165]

@Neeja.4579 said:

@"Kidel.2057" said:There is also another issue.If you mount the skyscale with Air Rescue after using a branded tornado or a ley line that points upwards (like the ones in Dragonfall dutring the meta)

you'll start with a full red flight meter, and lose altitude very fast.

What? Really?

This also happens if you fly with the Griffon, use the Jump of Faith and then mount up the Skyscale. It will not have any "flight juice" and slowly fall to the ground. For me this is perfectly acceptable because otherwise I would be able to perfectly reach everything I want with minimal effort.

As for the mechanics, once you have the third mastery and get used to it you will climb small walls like a champ. People just need to give the Skyscale a chance and get used to it. Today I literally got faster up the smaller cliffs in Dragonfall with the Skyscale then people on Springers. I was pretty impressed. The Skyscale is also faster (if you use the endurance bar roll) then the Griffon while gliding. So the Skyscale is the perfect match for a quick speed burst when you travel from cliff to cliff. During the Dragonfall meta I managed to jump faster from cliff to cliff then people mounting/dismounting from Raptor to Griffon etc.

I am suprised how well the Skyscale works on short distances. For me it's perfectly fine and fits in my personal niche that I needed ("faster gliding/flying when not able to gain superspeed as griffon on short distances or when travelling from cliff to cliff"). I give the mount a 9/10, the collection was absolutely worth it. I use all my mounts depending on the situation and the skyscale has now a great spot.

[Bast.7253]

@Graymalkyn.8076 said:How about an option (could be a mastery) to actually be able to scale the wall you are clinging to? Rather than just stick to it, you could walk up it. This might actually add some relevance to the mount.

It would make too much sense. It’s much better to have a mount just cling to a wall while being locked out of regaining adrenaline or cooldowns and have their only option be to fall back down to a lower ledge. ?

Maybe they should have the flight bar switch to a climb bar while climbing so that you can only climb a certain distance and then when you jump off it switches back to a flight bar and resets the canopy or something. Idk.

I can’t tell if they just didn’t put enough thought into it and Frankenstein’d something together, or if they overthought it and put so many restrictions and added so many weird mechanics to it that they made it extremely unintuitive and clunky.

[Kidel.2057]

@Rattengeist.8165 said:

@Neeja.4579 said:

@Kidel.2057 said:There is also another issue.If you mount the skyscale with Air Rescue after using a branded tornado or a ley line that points upwards (like the ones in Dragonfall dutring the meta)

you'll start with a full red flight meter, and lose altitude very fast.

What? Really?

This also happens if you fly with the Griffon

What do you mean? The griffon has no flight meter or max altitude. If you hop on Griffon after an ascending ley line or tornado you keep fplying in a perfectly normal way.

To me this is kind of unacceptable. It means you can't combine gliding masteries with skyscale.

[Bast.7253]

And I honesty don’t think this game would suffer from free flight in the same way that wow did, because it’s open world is generally designed better and is more interesting to play. With wow, you’re just trying to get to quest objectives as fast as possible because the quests themselves generally are copy and paste and stagnant. Not to mention if you’re on an extremely imbalanced pvp server where the only way you can achieve anything is to make yourself unable to be ganked and camped.

[Rattengeist.8165]

@Kidel.2057 said:To me this is kind of unacceptable. It means you can't combine gliding masteries with skyscale.

I mean when you casually fly with the griffon (not in a tornado) and then use the Leap of Faith midair to mount up the Skyscale. The Skyscale then also has a red endurance bar and falls to the ground. The midair rescue ability of the Skyscale seems to be rather limited

[Ototo.3214]

One thing that's kinda confusing me about the mount is that they described it as having a "canopy" around it that it can fly in and would only lose height if you hit the "edge" of that canopy. This gave me the impression that if you fly to the edge then fly backwards to inside the canopy, you'd regain some of the green bar again, like the green bar was just sort of telling you where the edge is. Except it doesn't do that, it's like you lose some of the canopy if you hit the edge. Still messing around with it though.

[Kidel.2057]

@Rattengeist.8165 said:

@Kidel.2057 said:To me this is kind of unacceptable. It means you can't combine gliding masteries with skyscale.

I mean when you casually fly with the griffon (not in a tornado) and then use the Leap of Faith midair to mount up the Skyscale. The Skyscale then also has a red endurance bar and falls to the ground. The midair rescue ability of the Skyscale seems to be rather limited

Ah I see. It's even a bigger problem. I could understand starting with an empty meter (it's basically equel to gliding), but why fully red?

It makes no sense. Like they never even tested it in Dragonfall meta.

[Jora.5471]

@"cptaylor.2670" said:And I honesty don’t think this game would suffer from free flight in the same way that wow did, because it’s open world is generally designed better and is more interesting to play. With wow, you’re just trying to get to quest objectives as fast as possible because the quests themselves generally are copy and paste and stagnant. Not to mention if you’re on an extremely imbalanced pvp server where the only way you can achieve anything is to make yourself unable to be ganked and camped.

For existing zones, it wouldn't suffer as you already seen everything. For new zones, exploration will suffer a lot. You don't get to appreciate the little details that is added to the zone as all you will do is fly over everything. If you want to get to the next objective. the best way is to fly up high and ignore everything on the ground. The interesting stuff is on the ground and not on the air. However, there is no obstacles in the way in the air. It is the path of least resistance that players will take.

[Kidel.2057]

I really don't understand why I can't use skyscale with 0 flight juice (that is on par, if not worse, than normal gliding) from a gliding-obtained altitude. Why does it have to be negative when using air rescue? Makes no sense.

Must be a bug or an oversight. Can a dev please clarify on this?

[Tails.9372]

@"runeblade.7514" said:For new zones, exploration will suffer a lot. You don't get to appreciate the little details that is added to the zone as all you will do is fly over everything. If you want to get to the next objective. the best way is to fly up high and ignore everything on the ground. The interesting stuff is on the ground and not on the air. However, there is no obstacles in the way in the air. It is the path of least resistance that players will take.

That's what players are already doing (using the mounts to speed around the map to unlock all the important stuff), people who want to "appreciate the little details" will do that regardless and they are much more inclined to do so the less tedious it is for them as evidenced by the amount of players who said that mounts "made the HoT maps playable" for them. This is pretty much a non issue here.

[Bast.7253]

@Tails.9372 said:

@"runeblade.7514" said:For new zones, exploration will suffer a lot. You don't get to appreciate the little details that is added to the zone as all you will do is fly over everything. If you want to get to the next objective. the best way is to fly up high and ignore everything on the ground. The interesting stuff is on the ground and not on the air. However, there is no obstacles in the way in the air. It is the path of least resistance that players will take.

That's what players are already doing (using the mounts to speed around the map to unlock all the important stuff), people who want to "appreciate the little details" will do that regardless and they are much more inclined to do so the less tedious it is for them as evidenced by the amount of players who said that mounts "made the HoT maps playable" for them. This is pretty much a non issue here.

Exactly. If people are interested in seeing those little details, they will either way. And even at that, the story is pretty short and people like myself rush through the content to finish the story anyway and then go back and actually explore later. There isn’t a traditional quest system so the only time people will rush or skip from point a to point b, is to catch an event or complete a story objective. And with the story objectives being a one off it doesn’t really have any impact.

[Ototo.3214]

@Tails.9372 said:

@"runeblade.7514" said:For new zones, exploration will suffer a lot. You don't get to appreciate the little details that is added to the zone as all you will do is fly over everything. If you want to get to the next objective. the best way is to fly up high and ignore everything on the ground. The interesting stuff is on the ground and not on the air. However, there is no obstacles in the way in the air. It is the path of least resistance that players will take.

That's what players are already doing (using the mounts to speed around the map to unlock all the important stuff), people who want to "appreciate the little details" will do that regardless and they are much more inclined to do so the less tedious it is for them as evidenced by the amount of players who said that mounts "made the HoT maps playable" for them. This is pretty much a non issue here.

Current mounts still require you to interact with the environment though, unrestricted flying doesn't. People already complain that the open world is too easy, this would make it braindead. And the people that want to enjoy the "little details" would essentially be forced to also fly right over everything with everyone else if they want to get to events and stuff without taking 300 years. Imo, losing interaction with the maps is a big negative.

[Jora.5471]

@Tails.9372 said:

@"runeblade.7514" said:For new zones, exploration will suffer a lot. You don't get to appreciate the little details that is added to the zone as all you will do is fly over everything. If you want to get to the next objective. the best way is to fly up high and ignore everything on the ground. The interesting stuff is on the ground and not on the air. However, there is no obstacles in the way in the air. It is the path of least resistance that players will take.

That's what players are already doing (using the mounts to speed around the map to unlock all the important stuff), people who want to "appreciate the little details" will do that regardless and they are much more inclined to do so the less tedious it is for them as evidenced by the amount of players who said that mounts "made the HoT maps playable" for them. This is pretty much a non issue here.

Those players are exploring the zones. They hit obstacles, then they find ways around it, they get to appreciate what the environmental team puts out. However, It is a different view from the air, a big void of nothingness. This is a big issue that will kill off exploration just for the sake of convenience.

What I like about Skyscale right now is that Skyscale do have to interact with these obstacles if they want to achieve perma-flight(wall launch recharges flight juice). They can't fly through the void only to descend on each and every POI they miss.

[Tails.9372]

@Ototo.3214 said:Current mounts still require you to interact with the environment though, unrestricted flying doesn't.

Not really, the roller beetle lets you speed past most of the content and when in doubt just go to the highest point in sight and use the griffon. I pretty much had no interactions with "the environment" when I first joined Dragonfall cause obstacles are easy to avoid if you know what you're doing. The only kind of maps where this approach doesn't really work is stuff like TD but these are also the kind of maps where unrestricted flight is the least useful.

@Ototo.3214 said:People already complain that the open world is too easy, this would make it braindead.

That has more to do with the enemy / meta design than everything else. You're not going to kill the WB by flying around its head 500 times.

@Ototo.3214 said:And the people that want to enjoy the "little details" would essentially be forced to also fly right over everything with everyone else if they want to get to events and stuff without taking 300 years. Imo, losing interaction with the maps is a big negative.

Now this is just nonsense, the skyscale is one of the slowest mounts in the game and simply giving it unrestriced flight wouldn't change that fact. Saying that people would be forced to use it if they don't want to take "300 years" is just a flat out lie.

@"runeblade.7514" said:Those players are exploring the zones. They hit obstacles, then they find ways around it, they get to appreciate what the environmental team puts out.

There is a difference between "get to appreciate" and "get annoyed by", you're romanticising your own viewpoint way to much here. Like I said those who want to appreciate the environment will do so regardless. Everyone who is saying that he "can't appreciate what's on the ground cause flying exists" (even tho ground travel is faster the overwhelming majority of the time) is just making excuses.