The Current Situation:
During last weekend's territory reset, for the first time we had a large number of battle mounts in fights. Based on our observations and all the player feedback, we think that the battle mounts currently don't match our intended vision. The original vision were very powerful support units in larger group fights. However bringing the same mount in big numbers, should NOT scale your power significantly up. And also they are designed for big group fights and should not be that strong in small skirmishes.
Which leads us, to the two main problems with their current state in the game:
1) Contrary to the desired design, bringing multiple mounts to one battle, significantly boosts your fighting power. Which has the risk of devolving into a game of who brings the biggest number of battle mounts.
2) A group of battle mounts are highly mobile and safe, they can just dive into an enemy zerg or roam the open world to gank on their own. And even when caught of guard, they are still extremely powerful on their own against small groups.
Short Term improvement (the hot fix)
To bring the Battle Mounts back on track, on their original design, we will have to re-evaluate and rebalance them to achieve the desired impact on the game. We will tackle this battle mount balance in two steps:
In the short term, which means next patch, we will make adjustments to address the raw stand alone power of the mounts and their ability to chase down or gank enemies on their own.
This includes the following adjustments:
Bring mounts back to their original design (next content update)
For the next content update we want to fully reevaluate the mount design and will make bigger changes to their spells. To bring these mounts in line with their intended role: A strong support for big fights.
In general we will increase their AoE radius, increase duration of the effects, but reduce their impact on a single target. So, one mount can easily keep large numbers of the enemies debuffed / Dotted. This will allow one mount to still have a big impact in a large fight, but reduces it's impact in small skirmishes a lot. And since these effects don't stack, it will also reduce the incentive to bring multiple mounts to one fight drastically.
Additionally with this update we will also introduce on a new ballista mount, which will be a more affordable battle mount, which will help medium and smaller sized guilds to counter battle mounts of big guilds.
Note that the changes in the next patch will be a hotfix for now. The Battle mounts will get a bigger overhaul in the next content update. And some of the parameters might be changed again.
Cheers,
Retro
Continue reading...
During last weekend's territory reset, for the first time we had a large number of battle mounts in fights. Based on our observations and all the player feedback, we think that the battle mounts currently don't match our intended vision. The original vision were very powerful support units in larger group fights. However bringing the same mount in big numbers, should NOT scale your power significantly up. And also they are designed for big group fights and should not be that strong in small skirmishes.
Which leads us, to the two main problems with their current state in the game:
1) Contrary to the desired design, bringing multiple mounts to one battle, significantly boosts your fighting power. Which has the risk of devolving into a game of who brings the biggest number of battle mounts.
2) A group of battle mounts are highly mobile and safe, they can just dive into an enemy zerg or roam the open world to gank on their own. And even when caught of guard, they are still extremely powerful on their own against small groups.
Short Term improvement (the hot fix)
To bring the Battle Mounts back on track, on their original design, we will have to re-evaluate and rebalance them to achieve the desired impact on the game. We will tackle this battle mount balance in two steps:
In the short term, which means next patch, we will make adjustments to address the raw stand alone power of the mounts and their ability to chase down or gank enemies on their own.
This includes the following adjustments:
- Remove the CC Immunity (they will still be immune to displacement effects, but can be stunned and silenced)
- Reduce their walk speed
- Making mounts immune to buffs from other players. (Empowering Beam on Battle Mounts is way too powerful)
- Reduce the damage output of the Flame Basilisk
Bring mounts back to their original design (next content update)
For the next content update we want to fully reevaluate the mount design and will make bigger changes to their spells. To bring these mounts in line with their intended role: A strong support for big fights.
In general we will increase their AoE radius, increase duration of the effects, but reduce their impact on a single target. So, one mount can easily keep large numbers of the enemies debuffed / Dotted. This will allow one mount to still have a big impact in a large fight, but reduces it's impact in small skirmishes a lot. And since these effects don't stack, it will also reduce the incentive to bring multiple mounts to one fight drastically.
Additionally with this update we will also introduce on a new ballista mount, which will be a more affordable battle mount, which will help medium and smaller sized guilds to counter battle mounts of big guilds.
Note that the changes in the next patch will be a hotfix for now. The Battle mounts will get a bigger overhaul in the next content update. And some of the parameters might be changed again.
Cheers,
Retro
Continue reading...