There have been some concerns about the mounts of Age of Conan Hyborian Adventures. A while back Svein Erik "Sharum" Jenset addressed some of the concerns on the forums and updated players on some of the things in the works to make our trusty steeds a bit better. This week he has updated his post on the official forums with new information. Some of the topics touched on involved mounting speed, being dismounted when talking to an NPC, mount damage, and several others.

Greetings again my fellow Hyborian Adventurers!



Over the past few weeks theres' been tons and tons of feedback coming in about our Mounts and Mounted Combat. Many improvements have already been patched out to the Live servers based on this feedback, and there is more to come! We've discussed a lot of different approaches to several issues lately, and I wanted to take the time to make a post here and share a few details about upcoming changes and, hopefully, in the process answer a lot of questions you as players might have.



A) If you've started mounting up you loose all control over your character until you're done



We're currently looking into changing this so that moving will cancel the process of mounting up.



B) Mounts and their abilities generally do too low damage



First of all, allow me to clarify that the damage you do when mounted on a Siege Mount such as the Killer Rhino or War Mammoth is intentionally low when fighting against other players or PvE monsters. The main component of the damage these mounts dish out is "siege damage" and players/PvE monsters are naturally resistant to such damage when compared to "normal damage".



When it comes to the damage you inflict while mounted on a Horse, and without going into specifics, I can promise you that it is currently being investigated and re-evaluated by our System Designers. When they are done, and based on their findings, the necessary adjustments will be made to ensure that we feel these abilities and attacks deal the appropriate amount of damage.



C) Whenever you talk to a NPC you're automatically dismounted



Let me start of by saying 'Yes, I understand why you might find this as cumbersome' and 'Yes, we're currently looking into whether or not we can change this'. However, while changing this might seem like a small thing, there's a lot of technology involved with regards to our dynamic camera placing during NPC interaction that needs to be checked and, in some cases, tweaked for this to work. I cannot guarantee when this change will happen, or if it even will take place, but we are looking into improving the current solution and making it so that you don't have to re-mount every time you're done speaking to an NPC.



D) I'm unable to cast any kind of spells while mounted



This report caught me a little by surprise when I first saw it as mounted spell-casting is one of those things that worked "straight out of the box" when we first implemented it. Rest assured that tracking down whatever bug that is currently preventing casters from working their magic while mounted is something we take very seriously and hope to have addressed sooner rather than later.



E) Dismounting takes too long



One of the hottest topics on these boards recently has been how long it takes to dismount, and how easily it is to get killed if dismounting while in combat. While this is true to our design, where mounted combat has a lot to do with gaining extra mobility at the cost of certain other factors, we take the feedback we receive very seriously and have mapped out a solution that we hope players will feel go a long way towards remedying this issue. As it currently is every character that is a member of the Rogue archetype have access to a Quick Dismount ability.



Now, before you all de-rail right here by saying 'But that ability doesn't work' let me just jump in and say that 'We're on top of it, we're fixing it'. However, to get back on track, we're going to give said ability out to every character regardless of his or her archetype. You will still have to stand still in order to use it, it still won't be a instant "poof" off your mount and it will have a cooldown to it; but we're taking this step in the hopes of making players feel less "doomed" because they want to dismount while engaged in combat.



To keep with the original design where members of the Rogue archetype, due to their naturally higher dexterity (and I use the word as a adjective here, not as a reference to the in-game stat), would be more nimble and able to quickly dismount we're revamping their version of the Quick Dismount ability and allowing them to use it while moving. I'm not going to go into further details about this revamp for the time being as, during the process of testing and balancing, many of the finer details might change.



I'm going to cut my post off here, but before I go I would also like to point out that these are but the most immediate changes we have planned to this part of our game. There will be many more updates to come, and we will of course take your feedback into careful consideration before fleshing out and implementing these updates. Stay tuned for future updates in this thread as soon as I have more concrete information to share!



Again, thank you all for reading, and I'll see you in Hyboria

  • You can both parts of the full update here.
  • Discuss it on our forums.

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Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

About The Author

Stacy "Martuk" Jones was a long-time news editor and community manager for many of our previous game sites, such as Age of Conan. Stacy has since moved on to become a masked super hero, battling demons in another dimension.

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