[Suggestion] Add a vanilla/free game mount for new players. (before steam release if possible)

[Ledi.9742]

what this would exactly accomplish besides giving new players a way to feel included to content of an expansion without having to actually pay for the expansion's content? the core maps are already designed to be played without mounts, so its not like mounts are mandatory for participating to the content in those maps. at worst they might miss some smaller events in map where the events happen to be the daily, but thats pretty much it.

while i do understand that it can be frustrating and make new players feel jealous for not having mounts like others do, i genuinely believe that not having mount to zoom through the content at record speed is in fact a good thing. it can help a lot with the learning process when player is forced to slow down a bit, and they cannot as easily just woosh past content they are meant to notice, pay attention to and participate.

in addition, its good to keep in mind that wanting mounts is actually very good motivator for players to purchase PoF. taking that motivator away by offering mounts for free is not exactly the best decision.

[SlayerXX.7138]

Place a number of raptor renting merchant across old Tyra. Usable with only the base game. If they want to go from a to b fast they can rent a raptor. If they have only the Base Game, I can´t imagine a better advertisement for Path of fire then that. You could also give them a Chat option to explain where they are coming from. Make the world more living without charging 200 gems🙂.

 

The merchant already exists. On winters day fore example there is one for the race usable without expansion. All they would have to do is give one employee a day to scatter them smart around the map. 

[Hashberry.4510]

Give them the speed boost when adjacent to a mounted player just like in WVW, it works great there.

 

[Noir.8561]

A daily-random - fully upgraded mount (De ja vu Drift Roller coster) , that can be used for 5 min and with 20 cd .

The cd is reduced with each completed event .

So 40% of their playtime , will be spent with mounts .

Can only used on a fresh account for 2months , and move to EoD to unlock the core Mounts .

They might rush and don't enjoy the beautiful scenery and the relaxed enviroment .... but the problem the "enviroment is too relaxed or barren areas like the Ascalon or Norm" and they better spent their time on more interesting stories like EoD ...

 

And reduce the 80 lvl max cap to 20 . I don't really know , but the number is forcing me to make a joke bout a monty python character ,called "bigus ...something".

Keep the 80lvl as an internal mechanic that unlocked stories/spells , but make it so every 2x bars for the 20lvl , represent a level for the 80lvl

Edited May 5, 2022 by Noir.8561

[Brandon Uzumaki.1524]

If they do that, it should be unlocked at lvl 80, core game was made to be played without mounts, giving a mount so early would destroy the exploration completely, unless Anet remove a lot of waypoints from core Tyria, then it would make more sense having a mount this early.

About the problems with mounted players completing events way to fast, Anet could just remove all damage from mount skills in level 50 and bellow maps, won't solve the problem entirely, but would help a lot at least.

Edited May 7, 2022 by Brandon Uzumaki.1524

[Cronospere.8143]

If you would add a "basic mount" it should have the speed of a warclaw. Only obtainable after a certain level and for at least 50g.. or a good collection. 
 

[Caliboom.3218]

3 hours ago, Cronospere.8143 said:

If you would add a "basic mount" it should have the speed of a warclaw. Only obtainable after a certain level and for at least 50g.. or a good collection. 
 

Because new players are totally gonna have 50g /s

[Cronospere.8143]

14 hours ago, Caliboom.3218 said:

Because new players are totally gonna have 50g /s

That's what im saying. There is no need to have a mount directly. The rediculous amount of waypoint in core tyria are there for a reason. But after playing the entire story. Coming into silverwastes and dry top. (LS S2) then yes i think a new player should be able to get a mount instead of waiting until he plays another expansion and 2 living stories before you get the ability for a mount. After playing core tyria, rhen yes i think you are able to get 50g. But i dont know, for me it was 8.5 years ago. 

 

You have to remember that, if you dont use the level 80 boost, it takes some time to level your first character. And certain story is locked behind a level cap. So you learn to play the game. Complete events, renown hearts, etc. 

 

[Zebulous.2934]

I always viewed mounts as ways to get around obstacles.  If they added a mount, what would it do mechanically? Movement options are well covered by the current mounts.

I thought I might like an additional mount just for the possible skins, but then I realized that the mounts can have any animal skin Anet cares to make: turning jackles into elk, gryphons into pegasi, and rabbits into sparrows.  

In some mmos mounts are a matter of prestige, I don't really see that in Gw2.  I suppose the skyscale is prestigious, but only because they time-gated it.  The Gryphon could be a display of wealth I suppose.
 This isn't WoW.  If you want a mount skin badly enough you just buy it when it rotates into the cashshop.  You don't spend days farming a raid or a dungeon.  Even the mount skins from the gatcha chests eventually get sold at the statuette vendor. 
If it really will sell the game, that's cool, add another mount.  I just don't see why a free to play mount should make a person feel special.  

[DarcShriek.5829]

I recommend that if you want the premium features of this game, that you actually buy the game.  It's a fair price, especially when it's on sale.  Asking to receive premium features for free seems rather selfish to me. 

[sincity.2160]

I tried to get into GW2 several times. I love MMOs and have sunk a bunch a time in all of the big ones, but I got burned out on GW2 before getting to 80 everytime. 

 

This time, I used an 80 boost just to get the first mount. After that I parked my boosted alt and went back to a low level. It completely changed the early game for me, all for the positive. I never once felt like I was cheating my experience. Got my thief to 80, cleared the Central Tyria zones, and am at the end of the last personal story quest. 

 

Mounts are one of the coolest things about GW2. Forcing players to boost or level to 80 and then access the expansions out of order to get a mount seems really silly. Giving players a taste early absolutely makes sense. 

 

 

[Teratus.2859]

Easiest way to achieve this goal would be to make the Warclaw serve as a core game starter mount by making it available to unlock for all players without them needing Path of Fire or any living world episodes..

This is something I have suggested many many times over the years.

 

It's the perfect choice for a starter mount in PvE due to it's existing shortcomings (weaker jump and run speed)

It's shortcomings serve to entice players into buying Path of Fire/End of Dragons to obtain the better PvE mounts, while still helping to diminish the mobility gap between players who have mounts and those who do not, thus making it easier for currently mountless players to still partake in group events, boss chains etc that they may miss out on due to being too slow to get to them.

It will serve as a huge end game reward and a massive incentive for players to go in to and experience WvW content, especially those without expansions.

If all had access to the Warclaw then you may even see more people buying choice licences to specifically get Warclaw skins as well.. so possible financial benefit as well.

 

There's plenty of good reasons to do this if you ask me, I think it's something Anet should definitely consider doing before the steam release as well.

Edited May 8, 2022 by Teratus.2859

[Izzy.2951]

I think this is needed, but only a ground mount like raptor, and without the masteries if you want your raptor to jump more etc then buy PoF. This way also people wont do PoF 1st mission and then continiu with core game story, its a WIN-WIN

Also people will want the masterys and Griffon, skyscale, Springer... that will lead in more sells for PoF. They actually included this with eod..

Edited May 8, 2022 by Izzy.2951

[AgentMoore.9453]

Stopping back in to say that they are (evidently) now A/B testing temporary mount trials like they've been doing with experience gain rates. Some new accounts, upon hitting level 10, get a temporary-use Raptor which can be ridden around for a while as a preview, similar to the banker golem that comes with each new character (on a digital deluxe/collector's edition copy of GW2) and expires after its timer runs down.

[Rogue.8235]

Throughout this entire thread, there seems to be an important premise missing.

 

The free-to-play core game is a demo, not the end product.  Guild Wars 2 is a buy-to-play game with no subscription.  Granted, the GW2 demo is longer-lasting and more engaging, but it is still a demo.

It only makes sense that you have to buy the game to gain full access to the game for something that is buy-to-play.

 

As for new players with the expansion, they are also locked out of all their utility skills, elite skills, traits, and elite specializations until they've unlocked them.  Mounts are no different.

 

[JayHog.3280]

I'd say that players should get a mount, but they're only allowed to use it in completed maps. So it's more of a convenience around the world than as an excuse to explore faster.

 

So new players still have to travel on foot, but if they don't buy Path of Fire, they can still use it to get to certain game objectives or events.

[Bastrii.3047]

Hey. I'm actually one of the new players who came to the game and saw everyone on mounts. I actually didn't like how long it took to walk everywhere, and I quit for a few months to play literally anything else. I honestly felt kinda punished for not buying an expac, and that really turned me away for a long time. Funny, I played Runescape, a game which only gives you the ability to walk - and I can't play this game which expects me to do the same thing.

 

I finally returned when my friend heard my woes, and bought me Path of Fire just to get a mount on a random level 80. I had 0 idea of the lore, and felt so disconnected from the gaming just unlocking a mount to make the game feel... *playable*, that I ended up deleting this level 80 character in the end.

 

Then I hit the issue of leveling a character to max, only to discover the build I wanted to play was... super, super lacking. (Dragonhunter with a Longbow and Staff, I really liked the idea of it - but it never worked for PvE.) Equipping that bow and finding out that my damage was now... well, terrible, and I had to manually aim so many abilities further killed my motivation to play the game.

 

I quit the game again, for over a year. I had actually complained on the forums that I felt like Dragonhunter's longbow needed a serious redesign. IMHO, it still does, but that's just me.

 

I only managed to rejoin the game after taking a break from another MMO. I made a Ranger, even though I knew that Longbows were also pretty trash on them, bought the newest DLC, and got another free level 80 boost. I bumped it to max, and started to grind out druid. The playstyle is better, but...

 

*Sigh.* As a new player, I would have gotten so much farther on my own with a mount available to me earlier in the game. I would have played the game longer, I would have probably bought DLCs earlier. I would have spent a lot more time doing things in-game. Instead, I felt unnecessarily restrained by not having access to a quality of life change, that I just lost all will to keep playing and quit.

 

I agree with OP. I read up that horses do exist in the Guild Wars lore, and it would be easy enough to implement them. I believe horses should have a basic charge for an engage (knockdown a few enemies in a straight line before jumping off the mount, low damage without raptor mastery) and a gallop button (12 seconds of galloping sounds fair before entering recovery). I would probably use the horse more than the raptor, because I think horses look much cooler than raptors. At level 80, mastery would include +15% toughness, an additional stamina bar (increases gallop duration to 24 seconds), a buff to the engage to grant 3 stacks of might for each enemy you trample for 12 seconds, and the final mastery would share the +15% toughness to your other mounts.

[kharmin.7683]

1 hour ago, Bastrii.3047 said:

 Instead, I felt unnecessarily restrained by not having access to a quality of life change, that I just lost all will to keep playing and quit.

 

 

So, you should also get free legendary gear, too?

[Bastrii.3047]

2 minutes ago, kharmin.7683 said:

So, you should also get free legendary gear, too?

I don't see how you equate moving around the world faster to easier combat situations. There's no equivocal value there at all. One is a general time saver by reducing the least fun aspects of the game, the other literally changes the difficulty of the game dramatically. A quality of life change would be things that cut down on the least fun aspects of the game. Combat is fun. Cutting down on it via raw power makes it less fun, unless if you're rising to meet harder challenges - which you need DLCs and higher levels to even *do*, and the knowledge to reach this harder content.

Let me give an example of quality of life changes, and how the effect the general populace. I've played tons of MMOs that went through quality of life overhauls; I'll use Archeage as my core example.

In Archeage (later patches) you had to do a bunch of daily quests. These were mandatory to increase your power. It was also a massive time burn; 2 hours every single day, and you had to do it. This led to massive player burn out, and only the most dedicated would have time for it every single day. None of them were optional; if you missed several sessions of this, you were now behind several hundred points in gear score.

The devs changed this by compacting the dailies into weeklies; they now took around four hours to do all together, but you could space it out throughout the week. This led to better player retention overall.

 

Traveling through Tyria isn't a fun experience. It's slow. It's boring. You're traveling at a snails pace. But if you buy PoF, you can do one mission - ruin the intro to the expac - and skip all the crucial leveling just to get a mount. OP has a serious point. Movement through the world isn't good. Not with the sheer cliffs and slopes often preventing most movement. I want you to go make a new character, and don't use any mounts. Walk. See how quickly the game starts to drag on when you can't cover any sort of ground besides teleporting (so you're just sitting through a loading screen to travel, instead of experiencing the world you so preciously believe should be traversed on foot).

 

One last thing to note: Just because YOU walked doesn't mean all players should. The first few hours of the game are the MOST IMPORTANT for player retention. The game lost me in a few hours, and it was only through the charity of friends did I come back at all. And it was still difficult for me to stay, because I had no way of knowing inside the game what builds did what, what stats were optimal, why every weapon I wanted to use was terrible for PvE... I had to look up guides, and even then, my build is still trash because I'll die before I use an axe.

 

This game has very few ways of retaining new players, when new players are often stuck wondering how to do basic things you'd know within five hours. Quality of life changes like mounts would do wonders for opening the world up for newer players. The only saving grace and reason why players return is the fact that this game has no cost once you buy the expacs. It's yours forever. Servers are free to join.

[Fuchslein.8639]

17 minutes ago, Bastrii.3047 said:

I don't see how you equate moving around the world faster to easier combat situations. There's no equivocal value there at all. One is a general time saver by reducing the least fun aspects of the game, the other literally changes the difficulty of the game dramatically. A quality of life change would be things that cut down on the least fun aspects of the game. Combat is fun. Cutting down on it via raw power makes it less fun, unless if you're rising to meet harder challenges - which you need DLCs and higher levels to even *do*, and the knowledge to reach this harder content.

Let me give an example of quality of life changes, and how the effect the general populace. I've played tons of MMOs that went through quality of life overhauls; I'll use Archeage as my core example.

In Archeage (later patches) you had to do a bunch of daily quests. These were mandatory to increase your power. It was also a massive time burn; 2 hours every single day, and you had to do it. This led to massive player burn out, and only the most dedicated would have time for it every single day. None of them were optional; if you missed several sessions of this, you were now behind several hundred points in gear score.

The devs changed this by compacting the dailies into weeklies; they now took around four hours to do all together, but you could space it out throughout the week. This led to better player retention overall.

 

Traveling through Tyria isn't a fun experience. It's slow. It's boring. You're traveling at a snails pace. But if you buy PoF, you can do one mission - ruin the intro to the expac - and skip all the crucial leveling just to get a mount. OP has a serious point. Movement through the world isn't good. Not with the sheer cliffs and slopes often preventing most movement. I want you to go make a new character, and don't use any mounts. Walk. See how quickly the game starts to drag on when you can't cover any sort of ground besides teleporting (so you're just sitting through a loading screen to travel, instead of experiencing the world you so preciously believe should be traversed on foot).

 

One last thing to note: Just because YOU walked doesn't mean all players should. The first few hours of the game are the MOST IMPORTANT for player retention. The game lost me in a few hours, and it was only through the charity of friends did I come back at all. And it was still difficult for me to stay, because I had no way of knowing inside the game what builds did what, what stats were optimal, why every weapon I wanted to use was terrible for PvE... I had to look up guides, and even then, my build is still trash because I'll die before I use an axe.

 

This game has very few ways of retaining new players, when new players are often stuck wondering how to do basic things you'd know within five hours. Quality of life changes like mounts would do wonders for opening the world up for newer players. The only saving grace and reason why players return is the fact that this game has no cost once you buy the expacs. It's yours forever. Servers are free to join.

You know, everyone got trough this phase. Do you know, that before POF no one had mounts and we had to do EVERYTHING on foot? Crazy, i know. And yeah, i personally think, this is a good argument. Because you say Traveling trough Tyria isn't fun, what has the same feeling as an argument to me. Its quite subjectiv.

When you don't want a game because you find the world boring, i don't believe mounts will be the solution to  your'e problem.

[The Boz.2038]

13 minutes ago, Fuchslein.8639 said:

You know, everyone got trough this phase.

That is the legitimate problem, though.
Everyone on foot disadvantages nobody. 
Some people on foot? Good luck getting to events, calls on map, anything, with the constant in-your-face reminder that you are really, really, really slow.

[standardFoe.2983]

Most complaints ITT are that core Tyria is slow and boring for newbies. Well as another said core Tyria is an introduction to the rest of the world in GW2 and we have all been there. I've played since before PoF and was f2p for over a year before buying HoT and still managed to get multiple builds to lvl 80. Basically you just follow the hearts and story it's not rocket science. So, seriously if anyone  has trouble leveling get searching there a lot of really great guides out there.

 

I agree that Anet could include more information on how builds work in game, but that complaint is just screaming into the void, asfter 12 years it ain't coming. Get online and search, are you incapable of reading wikis or watching twitch or youtube, there are some seriously great player made content guides. Gw2 is a complex game, in a great way because it teaches players to pay attention to builds and mechanics and the environment, but it can be overwhelming. I take a lot of breaks because of my disability and also tend to be really bad at mechanics so I die quite often. Sometimes all we need is to be patient both with ourselves and with whatever we are trying to accomplish in-game.

 

Maybe there aren't enough fancy, arbitrary perks to keep you around but the rest of us actually enjoy the game, i.e. build crafting, comabt, events, stories and fashion wars of course! It's not perfect but the devs have created an amazing world and if you don't enjoy playing without a perk attainable through effort (and yes some money because Anet has bills too) then maybe find another way to spend your gaming hours.

 

edit. Well if it annoys everyone so much to get ganked in group events, go buy the expansions earn the mounts yourself and then be the ganker not the gangkee. Why should the devs rework content to make things easier for a small minority of people who get frustrated by having to make an effort.

 

Edited May 24, 2022 by standardFoe.2983

[mythical.6315]

17 minutes ago, standardFoe.2983 said:

Most complaints ITT are that core Tyria is slow and boring for newbies

How would players new to the game feel that the game movement is slow?  What do they have to compare this to?  I’d understand veteran players feeling this way as they’ve experienced the core game with and without mounts. 
 

What do you mean by boring?  How would having mounts make core Tyria less boring?

[Klowdy.3126]

On 5/2/2022 at 1:39 PM, Erise.5614 said:

I mean. To be fair. It's fine to leave new players wanting and looking forward to a certain unlock.

So long as the experience in the moment is solid too it's all good. People starting out really aren't the problem when we are talking mount unlocks. 

Personally I'm most concerned about story chronology. Pushing players into story content far beyond where they are within the story, leaving them confused by what's going on. But also having it recommended to go through that to unlock the best gameplay features asap. It has a risk of having them disengage with the story and ultimately loose interest more easily. Not a huge risk. So there is a valid question whether it's worth it or how much effort should be put into it. But potentially reducing that is a more valid goal than getting level 2 players onto mounts asap. No matter what form that may take.

It doesn't seem much different from instanced content like dungeons, raids and fractals. You just keep killing the same big enemies over and over somehow, even though the story would only tell it once, or going back through LW episodes. If you look at it like you are a new adventurer, starting off in the current timeline (most recent story added), and that there are "magical" ways to send you back to relive the past, it isn't as jarring.

 

One thing I've always thought would help is having a rundown of all the stories the way LWS1 used to be. If people could spend 15 minutes getting an ingame rundown of everything, people who haven't been through everything could decide if they want to catch up, or play the story, without feeling like they've missed something important to the overall narrative.

[Fuchslein.8639]

1 hour ago, The Boz.2038 said:

That is the legitimate problem, though.
Everyone on foot disadvantages nobody. 
Some people on foot? Good luck getting to events, calls on map, anything, with the constant in-your-face reminder that you are really, really, really slow.

Well, when someone feels this way, then get pof and get your'e mount. No free mount for f2p peeps needed. Mounts are the Nr. 1 Selling point of pof.

A free mount for f2p peeps would need to be so toned down that i doubt any new player would like this. So why waste recources.

Edited May 24, 2022 by Fuchslein.8639