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How to prevent aquatic mounts from making ships obsolete?
Kionashi
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Considering how fast aquatic mounts seems to be, Im afraid wasting money and resources on ships would be pointless
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Ships are also probably necessarily for high sea fishing and maybe for some underwater dungeons that might require air supply or some items that need to be transported by ship
I believe is confirmed that caravans can go trough water as well, so what is the difference between caravans and ships?
I was under the impression the caravan system woud utilize the ships. You sort of onload the ship with the contents of the caravan, similar how arche age did it with their trade packs.
But i think there is no confirmed info on that.
@Kionashi is correct. A caravan will automatically "transform" into a naval caravan once it reaches a body of water like a river or a sea/ocean.
Ships will have to be built by artisans and come in different sizes. These will of course be much more capient and faster than a regular aquatic mount.
So unless you're very cheap or don't have any guild putting efforts into shipwrighting, then you'll have to resort to aquatic mounts.
I fully expect some guilds to start running ferry services between the continents or areas of the same one.
The point of ships will largely be combat. You are not fighting against individual players, but against other ships manned by a number of players each.
Riding a mount up to a ship to attack it is literally the same as bringing a knife to a gun fight.
We don't yet know how much money and resources would be involved in acquiring an aquatic mount. For all we know at this stage, it might be cheaper and require less resources to build/acquire a little fishing boat. Likely it will all depend on what resources are readily available in any given area, and how many players are dedicated to making use of them. More players dedicated to breeding aquatic mounts, and they will be the cheaper/easier option, but more players dedicated to harvesting wood and building boats, and the boats become the cheaper/easier option.
For larger ships, you might as well ask "why waste resources on a caravan considering how fast regular mounts seem"? The answer is that ships will presumably cater to other needs that aquatic mounts can't - fishing, carrying cargo, warfare, perhaps even a nautical base of operations.
You need to pay your resources every single time for each caravan, whereas once you've built the ship, it's yours. The ships will likely have much greater offensive capabilities. The ships will likely look much cooler.
Also land mounts without summoning/unsummoning conditions make the open world experience feel rushed.
I understand that mount skins create major money for a company, but what if aqua mounts where only summoner abilities?
How great would be the naval content and how unique 1 out of the 8 classes would feel?
Sometimes it's best to promote exclusivity instead of convenience.
Quality over quantity.
And how dull and disappointing for the 7 out of the 8 archetypes.
I still don't understand the issue.
Naval combat will be more like sieges at sea than anything, and if you rock up to a siege without some sort of siege equipment, you aren't going to be that useful.
Appearing in a naval battle on a mount, you are not going to be able to do anything. You are unlikely to be able to board an enemy ship, you will have no way of damaging one, you will likely be a one shot kill for anyone that bothers.
Sure, you will be able to travel around the ocean faster than someone that can swim, but to what extent? You won't be able to carry much (as players can't carry much anyway), you won't be a threat to a caravan. All you can do is explore, and even that is likely to be slower than it would be if you were in a small fast boat.
After spending a few years in Archeage with their naval content and ocean mounts, my concern is more along the lines of whether Intrepid will be able to make a place at all for ocean mounts, not the other way around.
So Aquatic mounts are for individual transportation and caravans (since you need a mount to move your caravan) and ships are for battling.... wait a second....since you can't really fight while mounted, that means a caravan would probably need ships to defend itself while traveling at sea? that would make sense....
If I understand correctly, what can be purchased are skins that can be used for mounts, so there should be nothing to worry about, as players should eventually need to get their own mounts.
I'm sorry if I'm wrong.
Just because there is a need for mounts over land, that does not mean there is automatically a need for them in the ocean.
And yes, caravans will need ships to defend them at sea, since it will be ships attacking them at sea.
e.g. let ships get a slower acceleration, but higher top speed.
Also while mounts are purely for traveling, ships could see uses as a base of operation - for fishing etc.
And who knows if they don't have krakens etc. that require a group of players on a ship to fight?
Indeed.
If we work on the assumption that caravans in the ocean are ships, then this is how I see it.
If you want to transport goods from one location to another - ship.
If you want to attack an ocean caravan - ship.
If you want to defend an ocean caravan against those other ships - ship.
If you want to just cause chaos on the ocean - ship.
If you want to fish in the ocean - ship.
If you want to hunt fishing ships - ship.
If you want to defend fishing ships - ship.
If you want to take on naval combat - ship.
If you dont want to do any of the above, and want to transit from one location to another across water - probably still a ship, but a mount could work in a pinch.
This is why I *REALLY* dont see the issue of mounts making ships obsolete.
Why are you so sure of that? Already tried it on closed beta?
I haven't played AoC yet but I can judge by a similar experience from ArcheAge. Ships, especially big ones, are always pretty weak to assaults by individual players. If the mounts are faster, they will not completely make ships useless - but will pretty much limit their use to "ship-only" tasks. E.g. carrying cargo or fighting sea monsters in PvE.
Basically it will make the fact of building a ship and sailing it by solo player or a few players a "LOL NOOB" moment. Because all the players will just ride pink dolphins into battle or something.
Would you be able to crew a masted sail-ship solo? Or would you need a crew to help you sail it?
Speed-wise, if a dolphin can keep pace with a motorised boat (which you can see on the nature shows!), then I can easily see it outpacing a sail ship. Why should it not be faster in-game? If you give all the benefits to the boats, then aquatic mounts become irrelevant.
Instead of just looking at it from a Shipbuilding-only point of view, try to think about how it can blend with Animal Husbandry. They're both important.
Because Archeage already shown how this (mounts/summoned single pilot "rides" being better than the ships) can break the game balance. Why build ship when you can just all ride mounts?
They mounts should be slower than ships - and don't worry, they will still be used. Because solo players or new players also want to travel the seas. There is no reason they should have to save for a ship to do so - but there is also no reason for their mounts to be faster than ships.
In Archeage, at start people used donkeys and boats to solo travel and move cargo even when they hadn't had a trimaran ship. That was a slow way, but in encouraged people to save res and build their ships. But then devs there added various "aquatic premium mounts", such as Jetski, Motorboat and Dolphin. And this basically killed usage of normal ships.
This may have been justifable in AA, at that stage an old game with shrinking playerbase. But in AoC, at start, there would be plenty of players to man even big ships. No reason to make water mounts OP and discourage shipbuilding.
And the reason for aquatic mounts to be faster than ships is because sea creatures are faster than sail ships.
Aquatic mounts & ships exist for different purposes, I don't even see the need to compare the two and claim which one is "better".
Sure, aquatic mounts are more nimble, probably cheaper & easier to acquire (just guessing), can be used solo and hence more convenient -- when your goal is to TRAVEL the seas. Travel, only.
But apparently there're a shit ton of stuff that can only be done with ships, a good chunk of them being group contents:
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Ships
And the "Ships in Ashes will be weak against mounted players coz that's the case in another game" argument is nothing but irrelevant. Ashes and Archeage are different games, they CAN have different mechanics, different implementations, and different game balance regarding naval battles. And, frankly, we don't know much about naval battles in Ashes yet. Who knows if the devs won't give each ship an "I win" button that simply kills all mounted hostile players nearby instantly?
Let's wait for more details before trying to claim "ships are crap" again. For now I see no reason that mounts will make ships obsolete or vice versa. They have different purposes, they excel at different tasks, they can and WILL coexist.
Aquatic mounts are for short transit time, think, rivers, lakes, ponds. As well as underwater exploration, which there will be a significant amount of underwater content.
Aquatic mounts will never take away from the tasks and usages of ships, they supplement them in their usage.
It's a toolbox, you reach into the box and use the right tool for the job. Would you summon a Galleon to cross over a lake you find yourself wanting to cross? No, you would not, in fact, you CAN'T. As to summon ships you need an established shipyard that's part of a coastal node. So, seems like an aquatic mount would be very handy.
Aquatic mounts will not hurt ship building profession, the same way ships do not hurt animal husbandry. They do different things for different purposes.
I say this with no disrespect, it's an observation, but it seems like those concerned with aquatic mounts, or who don't like them? wtf?, are individuals who do not fully understand these systems in the game. I would encourage learning more about the game, and working towards comprehending it, before criticizing it or jumping to conclusions and proclaiming there to be major flaws in the system.
in AA, the aquatic mounts cash shop mounts were overtuned, because it was just one of many very simple way of making the playerbase spend money which, in the end, was what AA was all about. They were actively interested in selling these advantagous things in the cash shop, which is why they were that overtuned in the first place.
This doesn't translate in any way into AoC though. The developers do not have a vested interest in making them a must-have as they do not profit from it at all.
In the Topic of Aquatic Mounts vs. Ships it comes down to one simple thing: Balance.
At this point in time, assuming that one will be downright better than the other, based on no game related information at all, is pure speculation.
Its quite curious to see, that some people on these forums seems to have nothing better to do than thinking about all the things Intrepid could possibily do wrong. They must be either very bored or have a severe lack of faith in Intrepid. Either way, here's a hint. Everything that requires some sort of balance can be severely fucked up by Intrepid. Is it worth discussing until they have fucked up that balance or at least stated their intend though? Certainly not.
I prefer people pointing out what could go wrong now that we are in Alpha and everything is subject to change instead of having faith and waiting until Intrepid falls in that pit when we were in Beta and with little room to correct course.
Current sail boats (specifically the AC75 class) are sailing up to speeds of just shy of 100kph. This is with 11 people on board.
While there are some fish that can swim faster than that - though only slightly - I can't find any informaiton on fish speed while carrying a passanger.
@Noaani would you mind quoting accurately?
News to me.
Warth is my alt-account.