This is because these mounts have unique special abilities. Water striders can walk on water, golems can gather materials without dismounting, and yaks and mammoths have vendors so you can sell and repair.
WoW should spread out these special abilities to other mounts. Ideally, every mount should have one, and only one, special ability. That way you would have a variety of mounts to use in different situations.
Potential properties:
- Flying - can fly
- Fast - can move faster than normal
- Gathering - can gather without dismounting
- Vendors - has vendors
- Two-Seats - can carry a passenger
- Swimming - provides water-breathing and faster swim speed
- Steady - cannot be dazed or dismounted
Of course, this is a nerf to Sky Golems and some Two-Seats mounts as they effectively have two special abilities. Personally, I think the Sky Golem is a little too good, and could stand a nerf.
Another possibility is to come up with a few more properties, and then let each mount have two special properties. That would lead to a bunch of combinations.
I think making sure all mounts have access to special abilities would make it more likely that a wide variety of mounts are used, and reduce the importance of getting specific chase mounts. Personally, I'm a little tired of seeing everyone on water striders, and would like to use a different mount every so often.
Blizzard has some weird resistance to letting us have fun. They really didn't want to ever let us fly in Draenor. They wanted to remove the water strider after Pandaria (or force us to grind a new one). They didn't even give the *flying ship* mount the ability to float on water.
ReplyDeleteI'm generally with them on flying. It changes the game too much.
DeleteAs for the water strider, it's too much of a "must-have" right now. The easy path would be to bring it in-line with other mounts. I'm suggesting that all the other mounts be brought up its level.
The biggest reason I didn't instantly get the boat is its lack of float. Blizzard has this weird tendency make travel difficult in the open world and claim it is somehow beneficial to the game play or the feel of a real world. Waiting for the day they remove goblin gliders
ReplyDeleteYeah, the boat really should have been able to float.
DeleteBut travel should be difficult. Making travel too easy causes a lot of problems. It makes the world feel much smaller. It becomes trivial to avoid a lot of challenges.
Water striders, in essence, also allow to avoid things by riding around them on water, while otherwise the rider would have to swim around very slowly or fight.
DeleteDaze can be completely eliminated by switching to tank spec or the using leatherworking consumable, and partially by using azerite pieces with 30-second shield trait (as long as shield holds, daze cannot occur).
Man I can see it now, sky golem flying gathering mount, meat wagon gathering no daze mount, boat and airships flying water walking mounts. Rockets are flying bonus speed mounts. So many fun combos that make even basic mounts useful. Now I'm disappointed in my mounts even more. sky golem can only pick herbs, spurs enable all mounts to gather, no mount can skin or mine. And druid forms can skin or herb but mining reverts to human. The current setup just makes no sense.
ReplyDeleteWell, skinning would be a little weird, since you can't kill things mounted. So you're like following someone around on a mount and skinning their kills, but there's no real need to be on a mount.
DeleteThen everyone would use the fast mount, ignore the others and continue to complain that it gets dazed, that it doesn't have a vendor and they have to switch to a useless mount to sell something, that it can't walk on water and they have to use a useless mount to cross water.
ReplyDeleteMaybe. I think a small boost (~5%) wouldn't be that noticeable, especially if it was only on ground mounts (since Flying is a separate ability). But perhaps the 2-ability option would work better. You could always get Fast + Other if you really prize speed.
DeleteI'm somewhat surprised mounts aren't their own little mini-game, related to bonding and actions you perform with them around. They are just cosmetic buffs right now - not much more than a title in most 99.9% of cases.
ReplyDeleteSome zones feel like they were designed with specific mounts in mind - a seriously large chunk of the Horde zones are water based. Would be nice to add some variety to mounts and not "require" everyone to farm a water strider.
I'd also like to have a "no mounts allowed" zone around every flight master.
Yeah, Nazmir is pretty much all water strider all the time for me.
DeleteI think you can go too far with mini-games though. I'm thinking of non-combat pets, here. I used to like collecting them, but since Pet Battling was introduced, I've pretty much ignored them.
I read that list and suddenly felt like a really old timer. "Back in my day...." I started, and then shut up, realizing that I'd become old of those grumpy players who sit in trade chat and bitch all the time.
ReplyDeleteHa ha. Those are all mount abilities which have been in the game for several expansions now. But sometimes I agree, maybe it was better with just ground mounts. Though even then there were "fast" and "slow" mounts.
DeleteAs someone who hates nothing more in MMOs than travel.. I've always been super happy with flying.
ReplyDeleteThat said (and I know I haven't played in a while) I don't think I fall into these categories very much. I have a macro to summon a random flying mount (or I guess it was an addon that checked flying in the current zone and used random ground mount then) and I have the mammoth and the waterstrider on a bar. Only my Engineer Warrior uses the Sky Golem (crafted by himself, of course) as a permanent mount - and he's a Blacksmith as well, so no gathering. Sure, on the rare occasion I go out in the world to gather stuff, then I'll use it - but that's what it's for.
But maybe I'm the small minority here. Why would I have collected all those mounts if I didnt want to see them?
I have a similar setup, though my regular mounts are mostly paladin horses. But lately I've been defaulting to the water strider all the time, just because it works always. I kind of just want to stop using the water strider.
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