Why not have creatures we can ride on

Flying creatures like pegasus, winged dragon or gryphn. Maybe some land creature that could make you move faster like a horse or unicorn?

These would be awsome to come accross at higher levels of the game.

Aesthetically would be awesome, but pretty much unnecessary. I mean, our travel times are nill, just open the map and *poof* you are there.

But if there was a quest to get a pet drake or bone dragon, that would be cool--something to play fetch with at the guild hall.

I don't think its high on the to-do list right now. But, its always a welcome addition in future expansions.

Yes, but imagine how much space six dragon-riding characters would take. Now if one of them gets stuck in a tree...

i want a flying pig i will call PIGASUS with big tusks and flaming from both ends so i can flame an enemy coming and as i leave even faster

i think riding stuff is excess, plus riding is in L2, if u wana ride, go play L2. also, since u can tele to start of each quest, there's no point in riding someting lol. well maybe as the game goes on, they will add riding. u should go suggest it in during beta testing lol.

The warping is extremely useful but you lose alot because you don't actually take in the amazing graphics nearly as much. The bonus ... warping gives this game the opportunity to be scaled as the largest world to play in ... with quicker travel times you know. So it's a small lose to say run from bastok to san d'oria (FF11) ... gain warping from one place to the other. Flying on a creature would be cool but all of a sudden your character maps go way up ... unless say you choose a flying blob. Cool idea to have a horse, pigasus lol, or whatever. Have you brought it up to anyone officially yet?

would a flying carpet be close enough to the blob you mentioned?

customize with dyes and patterns
put a 5-10 foof high flying limit on it along with a 5x running speed limit soyou can still enjoy the scenery

shoot from the sky for real *carpet bombing*

You know ... that would work ... a carpet is say no more than character clothing and now clothing is made a breeze in gaming. Heehee ... imagine 15,000 online at once flying carpets hehe ...

and the bandwidth would be actually less as you would have only a sitting animation and rippling of the carpet to deal with instead of the polys in the running animation

have a roll up your carpet animation entering a city toss over shoulder and walk like usual

think that is worth mentioning as an official suggestion?

EDIT

what about using it to cross terrain (selectively and non mission breaking) that is impassable now?

if you have mouhtns how is it going to work strategically for the PvP? It will also be hard to change all the model animations as well as create new ones. Ranger pets would probably become useless... the whole balence of combat and movement will also totally be changed. This game is not a MMORPG, so don't be requesting MMORPG-like things for it.

"feature" creep.

That's why they don't implement a bunch of the wholly unneccessary and out of flavor stuff suggested in this forum. In adding it you're subtracting from the whole by adding needless complexity and in the end you just have a mess of features that doesn't make anyone happy.

Peace,
-CxE

Implementing mounts doesn't have to mean implementing them in the same way that they're done in a typical mmorpg. They don't have to offer speed increases, or have anything to do with travel at all. The appeal of having mounts lies more in simply being able to ride something than in going faster. Make them some sort of elite skill that enhances attack power, or defense, or allows the character to make a certain type of attack. The "mount" part of it only needs to be a graphic. It doesn't have to change basic game functionality in any way, shape or form. Just because all of the other games out there use rideable creatures a certain way doesn't mean this one would have to.

i think mounts could be useful for the people who like to explore since you can only teleport to places you have already been.

the flying carpet is a great idea. maybe have an avis flying carpet rental agent outside of the towns in explorable areas. if you make them rentable and pve only at first. slowly ease it into the game. i especially like the idea that flying carpets could go over land and water. also, maybe even have a time limit. for example, "this carpet only has 1 hour charge after that it becomes part of your inventory and you have to return it to a carpet dealer before you can rent another." all kinds of ways to implement it. make it useful. keep it toned down.

I think, for the sake of game balance, the best way to do mounts would simply be to make them skills (probably elite skills) like pets or anything else. Each one could do something different. Maybe a warhorse could offer certain passive bonuses in combat, or allow you to stun your opponent. Another kind might offer a temporary speed boost similar to the warrior's sprint ability.

Flying mounts seem a bit too radical to me, at the moment. Being able to fly would completely change almost every aspect of exploration. Land mounts, if implemented as skills and not simply tools for traveling faster, wouldn't really change anything.

Lunarhound

would you still want a mount if everybody right from the start could pick up an identical mount of choice from the local stable for a small rental charge ?

or do you think they should have to be very advanced/pay a bundle to get one?

I dunno. I can see it being done several ways. Maybe you could get them through specific quests or find and tame them in explorable areas, the same as you do with pets. Maybe you could buy them from certain skill trainers. I can see it being done any number of ways, maybe depending on the type of mount.

However they're done, I think making them skills that manifest, visually, as rideable creatures would be the way to go. They could even be class-specific.

Here are some ideas:

Mounts that increase defense or offense in melee.
Mounts that increase ranged offense or defense.
Mounts that increase elemental damage or resistance.
Mounts that protect from areas that cause damage when walking on them, such as swamp water.
A mount that can give a temporary speed boost, similar to the warrior's sprint ability.
A mount that can add a temporary dodge bonus, similar to the ranger's dodge ability.

It could go any number of ways, and if they're implemented intelligently, they don't have to interfere with basic gameplay mechanics any more than any other new skill would.

I like the idea of adding small bonuses to and achieving this by a extremely advanced quest. Only having horses is a good start. I know If my shadowbane looked just like yours ... mentally that would suck ... but it opens a door to the race thing again. If eventually in expansions they have another race ... they could indeed add other transportation, not necessarily air ... although it'd kill me to see 1000 alladin's fighting in the sky. Maybe like giant lions or chimeras. then we could really start getting into some custom work. It could be fun.

Also if something like this would work well with the game ... you could manage the balance of characters. Currently warriors are great to learn but pretty much a painful profession to play because hey ... your the tank ... your gonna go first ... it's your job. Currently necro/mesmer and elementalist/mesmer seem to be the superior profession as they are not really the healer, nor the tank and host an arsenal of fun. Hypethectically speaking, if this trend evolves 7 months after release you could foresee a warrior shortage, maybe as hard to find as clerics. We could balance that out by giving a weaker profession exclusive access to a superior stead. Thanks for letting me ramble!

Maybe it might be. It's definately something worth bringing up for future growth prospect. With hundreds of thousands playing last beta 250,000 i think ... the release should host millions ... there number one will be bandwidth and stability, but after they achieve this ... maybe just maybe they can build these ideas into expansions. It's well worth it!

Wow, I am seeing lots of great ideas in this thread. Awesome awesome awesome.... I have an idea/thought. Certain mounts could ass a skill that only that mount has like a magical aura that helps you and your teammates. YOu could completly customize it to. That would be awesome. And mounts would be like very hard to get. Like make a quest to get it some how. It would be really fun getting it and really cool getting something as cool as a mount to show you have acomplished something. Like when you move on in the storyline from that quest, the next area sort of requires you to have a mount to accomplish. Plus, like what Lunarhound said, they just look cool.