How would you like to see passenger mounts work?

[Quench.7091]

Games that allow for passengers to ride upon another player's mount vary in the rules that they have for such mounts. How would you like to see these mounts work in Guild Wars 2? I've provided a poll with some questions to stir up some thoughts, but you can state what else you would like to see as well. The first two questions are multiple choice, so you can pick things that you would like to see.

[Donari.5237]

I find that most of the time ANet does a better job with such UI things than I do (not surprising).  So I'm not sure I could designate specific mechanics.  My goal would be to have it be quick and fluid to mount and dismount, and for the mount owner to have complete control over who gets aboard.  These concepts may oppose each other.  Even with a very fast designated hotkey (because having F pop up in the middle of something is annoying if you don't want to do the thing the F key allows so I'd want to be able to bind it to something else), things would slow down if passenger had to request and rider accept.  And then nasty people could spam the request.  Going the other way has the same problem with unwanted spam, plus the rider has to somehow quickly target the desired passenger to invite them.

 

Perhaps some way for the rider to set permissions would be handy.  Let the player choose if it's invite only, or anyone in the party, or squad, or guild, or ... (all your options up there).  And maybe the passenger would target the player and right click their portrait for a join-mount option.  And no one not on the permissions list could even ask.

 

Friday is the live stream on skiffs and fishing.  Seeing how skiffs work will probably help me; I do better iterating on concrete examples than trying to come up with something from scratch.

[Danikat.8537]

I think the mount's owner needs to have control over who can get on (including the ability to kick them off). It would be really annoying if you offer to take a friend somewhere, mount up and then before they can get on some random jumps on instead and you're left with no way to get rid of them and no way to get your friend on instead. It would also be very annoying to suddenly find yourself on a stranger's mount just because they happened to spawn it right on top of you when you were trying to do something else (like loot a world boss chest).

 

On that basis I voted for only party or sub-group members to be able to ride your mount. I think that covers all the other options - you can invite any of your friends, anyone in your guild or any other player you meet, even a total stranger to join your party, but it means at any given time there's a maximum of 4 people who could do it, which makes it easier to manage.

 

On that basis I think the controls can be fairly simple, getting close and using the interact key would be fine, but maybe a special action key would be better to avoid conflicts with all the things that already use the interact key.

[kharmin.7683]

Seeing how mounts are technically character transformations, I don't see how passengers could possibly work in the way that things are currently programmed.  Anet would have to re-program mounts from scratch or add specific mounts for passenger-ing (which I still don't see as possible given the current setup).

[Gibson.4036]

In a game where mounts are so readily available, I don’t understand the point. What would be the use of multi-player mounts?

[Danikat.8537]

 

Another thing I just realised is important: the second player should be able to dismount whenever they want, as well as being removed by the driver/owner.

 

38 minutes ago, kharmin.7683 said:

Seeing how mounts are technically character transformations, I don't see how passengers could possibly work in the way that things are currently programmed.  Anet would have to re-program mounts from scratch or add specific mounts for passenger-ing (which I still don't see as possible given the current setup).

 

They are adding specific mounts for it - the siege turtles. (And boats - those aren't being called mounts but I imagine they work in a similar way.) I have no idea how it could work, but I assume Anet figured that part out before announcing it. This is what the EoD release page says:

"Siege Turtle can bear two riders: one to handle the turtle, and another to operate the weapons strapped to its shell. Raise your own walking war machine and take a friend out for combat adventures!"

 

Maybe the second player is in something like the PvP spectator mode, where they're set to follow the first player and can't move themselves around, but have a few buttons to use the weapons. Or maybe it's an entirely new system someone developed.

 

38 minutes ago, Gibson.4036 said:

In a game where mounts are so readily available, I don’t understand the point. What would be the use of multi-player mounts?

 

I don't really see the point either, except that apparently the second player will control the weaponry, which makes it sound like the siege turtle can be used in combat for more than just a 1-off dismount attack. But I know multi-person mounts are a common request so there's clearly demand for them, even if it's just for the novelty value.

 

The common example given is to make it easier to lead new players around the map or get them to places they can't reach on their own. I don't know how useful siege turtles will be for that though because if they're anything like the GW1 version they'll be relatively slow and not that manoeuvrable. But I suppose it would be better than nothing.

[Gibson.4036]

10 minutes ago, Danikat.8537 said:

 

I don't really see the point either, except that apparently the second player will control the weaponry, which makes it sound like the siege turtle can be used in combat for more than just a 1-off dismount attack. But I know multi-person mounts are a common request so there's clearly demand for them, even if it's just for the novelty value.

 

The common example given is to make it easier to lead new players around the map or get them to places they can't reach on their own. I don't know how useful siege turtles will be for that though because if they're anything like the GW1 version they'll be relatively slow and not that manoeuvrable. But I suppose it would be better than nothing.

Ah, yeah, I definitely see the use with weapon users like the siege turtle. In an earlier skiff thread I was imagining players firing off skills at a world boss as the skiff pilot steers it out of the AoE circles.

The OP seems to be about loading up people just for transport, so that's what I was confused about. I suppose it would be easier to lead a HP train or the like if everyone could just jump on.  Or if there's a certain amount of protection involved, you could load up people in WvW and get them somewhere with less likelihood of being taken out on the way.

Interesting.

[kharmin.7683]

14 minutes ago, Danikat.8537 said:

 

They are adding specific mounts for it - the siege turtles. (And boats - those aren't being called mounts but I imagine they work in a similar way.) I have no idea how it could work, but I assume Anet figured that part out before announcing it. This is what the EoD release page says:

"Siege Turtle can bear two riders: one to handle the turtle, and another to operate the weapons strapped to its shell. Raise your own walking war machine and take a friend out for combat adventures!"

 

Maybe the second player is in something like the PvP spectator mode, where they're set to follow the first player and can't move themselves around, but have a few buttons to use the weapons. Or maybe it's an entirely new system someone developed.

 

 

 

Right.  There won't be people adding passengers to their roller beetles or skyscales.

[Blude.6812]

Not again!!! Let it go.

 

[Game of Bones.8975]

I'm sure they ran a bunch of beta tests before deciding to go for dual-mounts.

 

What if the "gunner" is the one in control? can that person kick the "driver" if they start going in the wrong direction or lag or afk?

Can a Gunner control movement if there is no driver?

What if there are solo players who can't find a person with the same mastery levels to operate the mount?