[New Player] Riding Skill Mechanic is bad

bigboss9191

This thread was already created this morning and I recreate it in order to be with compliance to the forum rules.

Ofc I read that there are threads for this already and I know how to use search but I want to post my arguments and my feedback because I just started the game. My biggest problem is that the mount speed and stamina is vital for PVP in Cyrodiil when I get dismounted too easy and when I want to run from a keep to another and arrive too late and too slow. So in order to have a fully competitive pvp mount I need to login 120 days and upgrade my mount daily. Also even worse if I want one day to make an alt because currently I don't want to make one I have to do it again from start. Seriously why this mechanic? It belongs to browser games or mobile games with refreshing energy and etc.

-People here telling in the forums to other people that we did it so you have to do it too. Really guys? Instead of making the game greater and attractive to new people you just want to punish new players too with this dull mechanic? To level your char to 50 takes a week. To level your mount to max takes half a year? Really?

-To the immersion argument... If you find that it's immersive to pay someone to teach you how to make your horse carry 1 more thing per day then I don't know what to say. Immersion would be that if you ride your horse more time and larger distances it becomes stronger.

-To the argument it sales crowns for lessons and ZOS getting tones of money.... Really for a store advertised as cosmetic store if you accept that a core game feature for PVP enjoyment is OK to be bought so people that don't care or value their 10 euros for 10 lessons I really don't find it either fair or damn right in a Pay to play game. It's not even a F2P game and has this stupid mount thing. I don't care for acount wide horse skins I am not a role player. This is an important pvp feature. They should find smarter ways to attract more money invested. And don't we already have DLC,cosmetics and ESO plus?

-Also I forgot the other argument by some people here, the one that " You have to earn some things " I don't want my toons to have it already " " I want to earn it to all my characters" . Seriously? If it was some fun mechanic I'd like to earn it. But sorry I have better things to do than log in daily just to teach my horse things. I agree that you have to earn some things but this is dull.

Let's be civil and please reply in a format like "I agree with the current system because of the X reason" or "I find it bad for the Y reason" with valid arguments.

ThePaleItalian

Are you subbed? You can use the crowns you get to buy packs of 10 skill points.

I have done it on 4 characters, yes it isn't fun, I get being upset, but it is something you need to deal with right now.

As for the Alt character, just make said toon, park them by the stable master and log in once a day to feed. That is what I did while I played my main.

I am not bashing you at all, I would like to see some type of catch up mechanic, maybe every 12 hours or account wide riding skills.

iNSiPiD1

I tend to agree with things like this. It's really unbearable to level an alt because of this, and what people do to counter it is unacceptably boring (create your alts and log in each day to speak with the mount trainer).

This game has a LONG way to go if it wants to be alt-friendly and compete with other modern MMOs in that department, and that's even after the removal of Veteran Ranks (which were horrendous for alts).

Danksta

Bottom line, they want you to buy mount upgrades from the crown store. It doesn't matter what any of us think, nothing is going to change.

Bouldercleave

1. I could not care less that riding lessons are sold in the crown store.
2. Immersion? Please. I agree with you 100% that it has nothing to do with immersion. You want real immersion - If you don't log on every day and feed your horse, he dies. How's THAT for immersion? I HATE people that throw immersion arguements, especially weak ones.
3. Again, I agree with you 100% 180 days to fully level your horse is just plain stupid. You should be able to level EACH aspect once a day. That would put you at 60 days which is MUCH more tolerable.
4. I also believe that upgrade times should either be far shorter or account wide. If you have to hammer out 180 days for full upgrades, it should count across ALL of your characters.

Just my 2c

Alpheu5

bigboss9191 wrote: »

-People here telling in the forums to other people that we did it so you have to do it too. Really guys? Instead of making the game greater and attractive to new people you just want to punish new players too with this dull mechanic? To level your char to 50 takes a week. To level your mount to max takes half a year? Really?

This mode of reasoning creeps its way into other parts of the game and potentially halts progress, because there's always someone that feels that everybody that does a task after them should have it just as hard. If a logical system replaces a less-than-optimal system, you'll still see people saying you should have to "earn" such and such, or "stop being lazy", etc.

It's very prevalent in the stamina/magicka balance discussions. Some spout, "Magicka was OP for over a year, now it's stamina's turn." It contributes nothing and only serves as self-justification for a player's ignorance.

Soraka

It is frustrating. I find in Cyrodiil that Rapid Maneuver helps a lot on my newer characters that aren't maxed.

JamieAubrey

This is why riding skills should be account wide but with the riding skills in CS, never going to happen

I managed to level a new alt to 50 in half a day and with only 1 riding skill and me being mostly a PvP player having a slow horse I might have as well walked everywhere

DeadlyRecluse

Unlimited mount feedings, but double the cost each training, resetting daily.

First training 250 gold, second 500, third 1k, fourth 2k, etc. etc.

Makes leveling it up much faster, but still maintains a benefit for logging on every day. Boom.

bigboss9191

JamieAubrey wrote: »

This is why riding skills should be account wide but with the riding skills in CS, never going to happen

I managed to level a new alt to 50 in half a day and with only 1 riding skill and me being mostly a PvP player having a slow horse I might have as well walked everywhere

That would please me a lot if it happened.

Kram8ion

I do have to agree about the "I did it so you have to go through it too" mentality to a new player, it's sort of a badge earned
A lot of other things in game have been fast tracked for new players already
Your mounts speed in pvp varies wildly anyway and when you have fully levelled mount you'll see
But anyway we welcome you

xeNNNNN

Alpheu5 wrote: »

bigboss9191 wrote: »

-People here telling in the forums to other people that we did it so you have to do it too. Really guys? Instead of making the game greater and attractive to new people you just want to punish new players too with this dull mechanic? To level your char to 50 takes a week. To level your mount to max takes half a year? Really?

This mode of reasoning creeps its way into other parts of the game and potentially halts progress, because there's always someone that feels that everybody that does a task after them should have it just as hard. If a logical system replaces a less-than-optimal system, you'll still see people saying you should have to "earn" such and such, or "stop being lazy", etc.

It's very prevalent in the stamina/magicka balance discussions. Some spout, "Magicka was OP for over a year, now it's stamina's turn." It contributes nothing and only serves as self-justification for a player's ignorance.

^ this.

damned if you do, damned if you dont. I would like to be able to upgrade my mount as much as i want in a day but the cost should increase as you upgrade.

Same principle as "damned if you do damned if you dont" as im one of the people who believe in earning stuff. But mounts are one of those things that are.......well just so tedious that you just cant be bothered then you get frustrated at the fact that you NEED to do it to even find using mounts remotely enjoyable. Its kinda sad really.

TequilaFire

What burns my cookies is after fully upgrading my mounts they seem to be be slower than they used to be after one of the patches. Not to mention hitting a pebble slows them down further for a few seconds.

Flynch

They should allow a riding skill upgrade every time your character levels as well as having one riding skill upgrade every 20 hours.

This would encourage more players to play their alts as well as stop players (new and old) from tearing their hair out in frustration at the time limitations.

Prof_Bawbag

TequilaFire wrote: »

What burns my cookies is after fully upgrading my mounts they seem to be be slower than they used to be after one of the patches. Not to mention hitting a pebble slows them down further for a few seconds.

It's particularly bad when you cross bridges or a small step in general. It just slows it down until you hit the stam button again (whatever that may be on your platform, it's R3 on PS4).

Like i said earlier before mods edited this thread, I think riding lessons should be account wide. I'd even be happy if it was one skill [speed] that was account wide. As things stand, 6 months (well, 4 months for the important stuff) per horse and it's something that can and does have a major impact in Cyrodiil.

Solus

I feel if you have the gold you should be able to upgrade them right there. Make the lessons only cost 250 gold each, but go up until you reach the max. The daily cool down reduces the cost. That way if you have the means you can level it completely in a day if you had the gold. Or just wait a few weeks to level everything if you dont want to deal with the multiplier.

This should also be an account wide thing, not per character basis. I only have one character, and personally dread having to do this all over again. Probably wont make another character honestly. Maybe just play one character for a full year, and then another character for a full year and build up a new character every year. Probably not though. Ill just stick with the character i have until i have like CP 10,000 and just power level classes i havent yet played to 50 and spend CP that way.

Nightblade is a fun class anyways.

*shrugs*

Teletesselator

Well, one thing the OP got wrong is that it needs 120 days. It doesn't! It needs 180 days to be fully upgraded. There's 60 stamina so you don't get pulled off your horse, there's 60 in speed, and there's 60 in item capacity. That's 180... not 120. :P

For the rest of it, I think I don't mind the 180 days to get the mount 100% functional. But on the topic of the alt character needing to do it all over again, yes, that's hideous!!!

This is for sure the second worst aspect of the game's design! The first being the list sorting and item management - another much longer, rant is needed for that!

Korah_Eaglecry

Oh no, the game requires me to log into it for 6 months to benefit from full riding skills. What a terrible MMO mechanic to actually expect a player to play for an extended period time.....

Wrecking_Blow_Spam

As someone who has a fully upgraded mount, doing it 1 day at a time I agree with you.

All mount upgrades account wide or
make it so there's no timer and you can spend the gold straight up (180 X 250 = 45,000)
Which is a decent gold sink. For 10 characters that would be almost half a million.

Also I don't like the "immersion" and "use crowns and waste real money, sucka!" arguments.

Shad0wfire99

I still remember how unbelievably disappointed I was when I picked up my first mount and realized that I was faster on foot. I'm with OP on this one.

lolo_01b16_ESO

I personally think slow horses are actually good for the non vet campaign. For us experienced players those ~60k gold you need for a mount + upgrades is quite cheap, so if there weren't any time limits, almost every alt in BWB would have a maxed out mount. For new players however, even just buying a horse is expensive. So any way to get around the time limit, even if it would require higher gold costs, would increase the gap between new players and experienced ones on a new character.
Imagine how a new player will feel, when the fight is always over when he arrives because he can't afford a faster horse.

Lowering the gold costs of mounts and training would solve the issue I talked about above, but considering the inflation we already have, I don't think any gold sinks should be removed untill we get a bigger gold sink (housing^^)

An idea to solve the issue with slow horses on vet campaigns could be a renting service. There are stables at the home bases of each alliance in a war zone. So why can't a soldier just rent a strong horse for his missons. That would make sense from immersive pov and would help people with untrained horses.
I'm currently thinking about a renting price of maybe 5-10k AP/h. That would make sure that everyone who does serious pvp can afford them, but there is still a strong reason to train your own horse and don't rely rented horses forever.

SanTii.92

One if not The game system that bothers me the most

Alpheu5

DeadlyRecluse wrote: »

Unlimited mount feedings, but double the cost each training, resetting daily.

First training 250 gold, second 500, third 1k, fourth 2k, etc. etc.

Makes leveling it up much faster, but still maintains a benefit for logging on every day. Boom.

I started doing the math to see how much this would cost if you were to try and level up everything in one go, but by the 13th general lesson the total cost up to that point was 2,047,750 gold, so I laughed and put down my calculator.

Bossdonut

The only way to counter the stupidity is make your alts now and log in daily. Park them by the horse trainer. Takes a few min but by the time you feel like leveling them they might be at 30 speed. Makes a big difference.

Wolfshead

Well to be total honest 120 day is that hard to login and to " train" it is very simple to be honest you can do as i do. I dont play everyday do to my work schedule so i see to that i login at stable and i login and "train" my riding skills and then i logout and honest it dont that long to do very day.

So tell me it is hard and tell me that i dont have time for i just dont buy that people dont have 5 min very day to spare login and click few mouse/joypad click do this for "train time" is just 20 hours.

Osteos

The slow horse is the worse thing about alts. Deadly in Cyrodiil. Even if you could buy one of each category a day it would be a vast improvement.

driosketch

Leveling horse skills for four new alts right now. Might I suggest 20 days into speed, followed by 20 into stamina, and then maxing speed. This will take some of the edge off as you're starting out. Giving you first a ride speed faster than walk, plus a pool of stamina to work with while you finish leveling speed. It'll take a little over a month to start, under 3 to have a serviceable mount for Cyrodiil. After that think of the rest of the lessons as bonus, and time will fly by before you know it.

idk

@bigboss9191

Since you acknowledged seeing people post they have done it, leveled up a horse I am going to turn this around. I have leveled up not one, but 8 horses without a complaint, including 3 in the last 6 months.

So, why do you think you should have it easier than the rest of us. Being new to the game is not the answer because everyone has been new to the game at some point and most people will not go for some entitlement answer.

As you are already aware, you can level up a horse to max in one day using what is available in the crown store. You can say it is not fair or not right, as you have, but saying it does not make you right. It was a SMART choice of Zos to add the training lessons to the crown store and your argument actually make the case for how smart it was for Zos to do so.

At the end of the day, it is your choice to level up your horse or not. If you choose to level it up you will do the daily feedings or go to the crown store. You will not be giving an easier route for leveling up your horse.

Bossdonut wrote: »

The only way to counter the stupidity is make your alts now and log in daily. Park them by the horse trainer. Takes a few min but by the time you feel like leveling them they might be at 30 speed. Makes a big difference.

As much as you want to call it stupidity, it is not and it is part of the game you have chosen to play. Additionally, Zos will not make riding skills account wide. It is not going to happen.

Iselin

Once upon a time we trained horses' abilities not character's riding skill. The change happened about a year after release as they were getting ready to launch the crown store with all of its mount skins.

Either way, it has always been overly grindy when you compare it to anything else in the game except learning crafting traits.

Learning how to use siege weapons takes 5 minutes. Becoming an expert swordsman takes maybe 10 days - less with all this crazy double XP at the moment, but learning how to ride your horse faster without falling off and carrying more baggage takes 22 weeks. It's nuts and it has always been.

Waseem

new player? make 8 characters, with classes and min/max racials put all near stables and level riding skill everyday
thank me later

Acrolas

It's a diminishing returns issue, not a core mechanic issue.

Assume an MMO has 10 years of life to it. Roughly 3650 days. 180 days out of that 3650 days is 4.9% of the total life of the game. You come in two years later. Roughly 2920 days. 180 days out of that is 6.2%. Come in five years late and 180 days out of 1825 is 9.9%.

If only we were so lucky. The average player probably only sees themselves sticking with a product for 24 to 36 months. 912 days. 180 days is 19.7%. Almost 20% of the time you expect to stick with the game spent training a horse on one character.

That's why the lessons are in the crown store. To counter the diminishing returns. People who come in later can still feel like they only spent a small percentage of the total remaining life of the game performing an incremental task.

Those are your options. Either pay to make up for lost time, or plan to stick around long enough to make the time training seem like a small fraction of the game's total life.