Guild Wars 2

Mounts are finally introduced and they come with fun mechanics. That said, there can be more content build around mounts that keeps people busy.

It is already possible to color mounts so that is good, but it would be even better to let people catch special mounts (skins), or craft them or even breed them or have them as a reward for completing a dungeon or as a rare drop from a mob (what then will be the mount).

That sort of contents tents to keep people playing for a much longer time. With the gliders most new skins where added to the shop, but that does not add any new content to play.
Last NCSoft (Q2 2017) result showed another drop, and while that is not the worse (between expansions income can be lower) it is important to keep people busy to stick around to buy the new expansion. Something where I think HoT failed. These sorts of things well help a lot keeping people busy.

Only doing this for mounts is not enough but it is a good start, and a good moment with the introduction of mounts. Then they can keep selling new glider skins. The mount hunts will keep people playing and then some of those players might buy the new kite skins.

Not having these sorts of collection activities (what is very different form the ‘collections’ GW2 has now) means people will get bored much faster after completing the story or even running around a little and having seen most of the new stuff.

We’re already getting a version of this.

Anet have said the mounts themselves will be obtained in-game, presumably through the story. Then each one has a mastery track to give it new abilities. And mastery track means you’ll need to gain mastery points to activate each tier.

The only difference is it’s not tied to specific content. You don’t have to go and beat a specific champion to enable your raptor to jump further (or whatever), you can get the mastery points from any of the content which offers it. Which allows people to ‘customise’ the process. If you hate raiding/don’t have time/whatever you can still unlock the same mount abilities raiders can, by doing something different like adventures or story achievements or whatever.

Danikat.8537:

We’re already getting a version of this.

Anet have said the mounts themselves will be obtained in-game, presumably through the story. Then each one has a mastery track to give it new abilities. And mastery track means you’ll need to gain mastery points to activate each tier.

The only difference is it’s not tied to specific content. You don’t have to go and beat a specific champion to enable your raptor to jump further (or whatever), you can get the mastery points from any of the content which offers it. Which allows people to ‘customise’ the process. If you hate raiding/don’t have time/whatever you can still unlock the same mount abilities raiders can, by doing something different like adventures or story achievements or whatever.

True, but this is about abilities for a mount. And let’s hope they will make these abilities unlocks also in a better way than they did with the gliders (I never completed all maps of HoT simply because I did not have the required glider abilities to get to those places, and just leveling those abilities was not that fun).

However I am talking about visual looks. Different type of raptors, or there can be a kangaroo skin to replace the springer.

I did see how you have to unlock the raptor, what was not that interesting (you need it in a story-part and then just jump on it, complete that story-part and you have it). But they can do much more with this, like I said in me OP.

I wouldn’t mind there being easier versions of precursor crafting for mount skins. Basically you do certain activities and gain certain items to craft a special item that is used at a specific location that summons a monster (in an instanced location) that you then defeat and then tame as a mount.

But like I said in the other thread, I personally am not a fan of having, for instance, a horse as a raptor mount skin. Any such options I’d prefer to stick to their original motif (so a variant raptor skin may be a feathered raptor or an armored raptor or a multi-color raptor with more dye channels).

Leo G.4501:

I wouldn’t mind there being easier versions of precursor crafting for mount skins. Basically you do certain activities and gain certain items to craft a special item that is used at a specific location that summons a monster (in an instanced location) that you then defeat and then tame as a mount.

But like I said in the other thread, I personally am not a fan of having, for instance, a horse as a raptor mount skin. Any such options I’d prefer to stick to their original motif (so a variant raptor skin may be a feathered raptor or an armored raptor or a multi-color raptor with more dye channels).

I guess how different skins should look is another discussion. I was more talking about how to get them.

I like the idea of a horse model for the raptor just because it’d be the complete opposite of how most games do it. Usually the horse is the starter mount (and usually a plain, brown horse with other colours available later) and something like a raptor would be the super-special “end game” reward/cash shop mount. So I think it’d be funny to get a raptor for free and then have to earn or buy a horse.

But I think you’re right that in general they should stick to the existing models for the mounts and just release different kinds of raptor, bunny etc. But maybe they could do a few variants where it makes sense – for example I’d love to see a griffon skin for the bunny, they already have an animation where they launch themselves upwards so it’d work and be a nice alternative.

Maybe that could be a compromise – different kinds of raptor, bunny, manta ray etc. sold in the gem store and then new models like horses, griffons etc. as in-game rewards.

(I keep wanting to add ‘as long as they don’t make them random rare drops from bosses or something’ and then reminding myself that it’s highly unlikely Anet would do that and at worst it’d cost lots of tokens only obtained in one area. Annoying but still better than being the people on my other MMOs forum talking about how they’re so sick of doing the same dungeon over and over, never knowing if they’ll ever get the drop they want, but as soon as they do they’re never, ever going back there again because the repetition has made them hate what used to be one of their favourite parts of the game.)

There was at least one more mount shown in leaks (the owlgriffon), so it’s entirely possible that there will be some ways of obtaining alternate mount skins. Gemshop, most likely.

Danikat.8537:

I like the idea of a horse model for the raptor just because it’d be the complete opposite of how most games do it. Usually the horse is the starter mount (and usually a plain, brown horse with other colours available later) and something like a raptor would be the super-special “end game” reward/cash shop mount. So I think it’d be funny to get a raptor for free and then have to earn or buy a horse.

But I think you’re right that in general they should stick to the existing models for the mounts and just release different kinds of raptor, bunny etc. But maybe they could do a few variants where it makes sense – for example I’d love to see a griffon skin for the bunny, they already have an animation where they launch themselves upwards so it’d work and be a nice alternative.

Maybe that could be a compromise – different kinds of raptor, bunny, manta ray etc. sold in the gem store and then new models like horses, griffons etc. as in-game rewards.

(I keep wanting to add ‘as long as they don’t make them random rare drops from bosses or something’ and then reminding myself that it’s highly unlikely Anet would do that and at worst it’d cost lots of tokens only obtained in one area. Annoying but still better than being the people on my other MMOs forum talking about how they’re so sick of doing the same dungeon over and over, never knowing if they’ll ever get the drop they want, but as soon as they do they’re never, ever going back there again because the repetition has made them hate what used to be one of their favourite parts of the game.)

“Maybe that could be a compromise – different kinds of raptor, bunny, manta ray etc. sold in the gem store and then new models like horses, griffons etc.”

No need for a compromise, they have the expansion now to generate income (while time between expansion need to shorten a little more). Keeping people busy like this ensures people keep playing and so increases sales on expansion.
Also they can keep selling glider skins.