A lot of people like the idea of mounts. I’ve liked them to an extent, but, I always felt mounts to be kind of boring. I remember in GW2’s development there being an interview about how the developers of GW2 are also action game fans.
When most people think of action games they probably think of like Devil May Cry or something. But I moreso think of first person shooter games. One aspect that is in quite a few first person shooter games are vehicles. Guild Wars 2 already has a system in place where your skill bar can change. We could utilize that by giving vehicles their own skill bar. If you want to get really fancy you could have vehicles that could house multiple people and give different skill bars depending on what seat you’re in (think how the Scorpion in Halo has 2 seats for the driver and for the turret gun). I really like driving vehicles in those games.
You may be thinking that vehicles have no place in a fantasy game like Guild Wars 2. However some things to take into consideration are the facts that we already have vehicles in Guild Wars 2 (we just can’t use them) and a vehicle doesn’t necessarily have to be something mechanical. For instance a vehicle for a sylvarri could be a living plant that the sylvarri fuses with.
Given the fact that vehicles would have abilities I don’t think that just everyone should have one at all times. They should be something fairly special to use (not super rare though). Doing something to balance vehicles could in turn help overall map balance. I think ArenaNet doesn’t seem too keen on the idea of everyone having mounts because of the waypoint system. Having a powerful mount like a vehicle gives ArenaNet an excuse to limit the availability of them.
