Out of curiosity - What's the plan for mounts in future expansions?

[Agent Noun.7350]

Comparing Heart of Thorns and Path of Fire masteries is kind of interesting.

If you buy Path of Fire but you don't have Heart of Thorns, the only mastery you'd ever notice not having is gliding, and Path of Fire's maps were designed not to require gliding at all. Everything else--bouncing mushrooms, Itzel and Nuhoch things, Exalted things--is totally irrelevant in Path of Fire.

But what about mounts in whatever expansion comes after Path of Fire? Mounts provide much more powerful movement options than the Heart of Thorns masteries, and those abilities aren't contextual. Even if we don't count the griffon, the Path of Fire mounts give players exploration super powers.

How does ArenaNet plan to account for them in future maps? It's hard to see how these mounts don't devalue any future movement-related masteries, unless the next expansion's maps are somehow entirely in the air or underwater.

The best solution I can think of is to add less flashy versions of the Path of Fire mounts as core Tyria masteries leading up to the next expansion's release. That way, ArenaNet can design all future maps with the assumption that players have those movement abilities no matter what expansions they own. Either that, or future expansions might not have movement-related masteries at all, so mounts are just nice bonuses but don't let you shortcut anything you'd otherwise need a different mastery for.

Any predictions?

[Danikat.8537]

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for an underwater expansion.

But there are already examples of map design and new movement mechanics that mounts don't invalidate. The lava tubes and oakheart vines from Season 3 for example - none of the mounts can do the things those do so they would still be relevant. (Unfortunately they probably won't appear in future releases because otherwise players would have to own Season 3 to progress, and that goes against Anet's design. But something similar could be created.)

Alternatively maybe the addition of mounts will free them up to stop focusing on adding new types of movement mechanics and explore other things they could do with masteries.

[Ashen.2907]

I expect that the easiest thing to do with future expansions, in terms of masteries, would be new mounts with new masteries.

[Ohoni.6057]

I expect them to have something more along the lines of the HoT masteries, "nuhoc wallows" and "mushrooms" and "magma tubes" and that sort of thing that would allow Xpac3 players to earn travel across these maps, while PoF/HoT players could shortcut things a bit by using their mounts instead for at least some situations. I kind of doubt that they would tie new mounts into the new expansion, but it is true that making maps that do not have any traversal challenge to them would be a step backwards from HoT/PoF.

[PopeUrban.2578]

I'm hoping movement being the primary thrust of mastries is a thing of the past. It began to get tedious in ls3 the moment you realized that you were just gaining mastries to do stuff you could already theoretically do if they just change, say, a magma tube to a leyline or whatever.

I'd love to see more use of mastries that interact with the special action skill for certain enemy behaviors, mechanics like chak acid, or even harken back to the inspiration for the system and look at other ways to constrain movement like Metroid's Missiles or Bombs that open paths on their own, or the HoT stealth sight and jackal sand path mastries that allow you to interact with things that wouldn't otherwise even be there.

Part of that is taking a more holistic approach to Mastries like they did with mounts by thinking up player skills that could be used throughout the game. For example, what about context sensitive keys for things like corpse exploitation that are relative to enemy type, and having several of those enemy types be shared with existing content. E.G. "Gain a shard shield by discharging this ability over a branded corpse" to have a mechanic that is REQUIRED in the expansion to get past certain barriers, but also useful overall anywhere in the game you find branded. Or "Interrogate a low health bandit to learn a useful piece of information" that may be required to find secreat paths in an expansion on bosses, but functions like a treasure hunting kit anywhere there are bandits?

Since we have that context sensitive skill, it offers a great path to create a lot of new contexts for it that may or may not be specifically related to movement.

Its pretty easy to constrict movement. Mounts can't "skip" caves for instance, and mounts don't really break maps that much unless you're relying on terrain obstacles rather than other challenges to provide the gameplay of the map. We're starting to see more varied types of events and mastry points in PoF where the primary challenge is something other than "get here"

[Ohoni.6057]

@PopeUrban.2578 said:I'm hoping movement being the primary thrust of mastries is a thing of the past. It began to get tedious in ls3 the moment you realized that you were just gaining mastries to do stuff you could already theoretically do if they just change, say, a magma tube to a leyline or whatever.

I see where you're coming from on that, but I definitely disagree. Yeah, mechanically a lot of travel options boil down to "move you from point A, to point B," and they could use any options to do that, but each of them still had their own fun mechanics. Of the LWs3 options, the only ones I didn't like were the Torches, because those were just awful, and the Leyline rats or whatever, because you had to kill one every time you wanted to use those abilities. I loved the Bloodstone gliding and the Oakheart Hookshot.

I'd love to see more use of mastries that interact with the special action skill for certain enemy behaviors, mechanics like chak acid, or even harken back to the inspiration for the system and look at other ways to constrain movement like Metroid's Missiles or Bombs that open paths on their own, or the HoT stealth sight and jackal sand path mastries that allow you to interact with things that wouldn't otherwise even be there.

I imagine we will see more of those, the problem with them though is that they don't do much to expand on the previous portions of the game, since older enemies and areas likely won't have those mechanics to exploit. The only HoT thing of ANY value in core Tyria or PoF is the gliding, while the mounts are useful everywhere. I would hope that at least some of the Xpac3 abilities would be things you can use anywhere you go.

I actually had an idea as to what XPac3's unique gimmick could be though. . . Dragon's Watch! Instead of just having them as random NPCs in story missions, make them more like GW1 heroes, where you can choose to have any one of them active permanently like a mini-pet. They could help rez you, be useful in combat, etc., and you could unlock useful abilities for them (like Canach's mines or Kasmeer's portals), and unlock customization options like putting them in different outfits or dye combinations. It has a lot of cool potential features. They could have a lot of specific ability interactions that would make them useful in Xpac3 maps, but there would also be plenty of generic usefulness to each that could be cool for any place you go.

[Evil.1580]

@Agent Noun.7350 said:... unless the next expansion's maps are underwater.

Yes please :)

[Ameepa.6793]

Submarines or real flying mounts, depending where we go.

[Tony Nova.1832]

I want Charr themed mounts. Some sort of cyber tecno punk motorcycles, tanks, and jetpacks. The more gadgety the better :P