Weekly Update 265 – Mounted combat improvements and horse trading

This week we are happy to introduce a further extension of the player stalls system, which will become the first steps to implement a new branch of ingame economy, fully related to mounts. From now on, you will trade your horses using a stall and make some coin out of horse catching and training.

There are also a lot of changes and improvements for mounted combat, especially horse movement, hit detection, and related animations. The ways of fighting while mounted and versus mounted players will change, and become fairer between players on foot and mounted ones.

Earlier this week, we also officially moved to an updated client engine version globally. Our next focus is addressing your feedback and reports to find and remove any issues or bugs that the engine upgrade could reveal. But we have not found any critical regressions yet and are already receiving very positive feedback. Your reports and help are much appreciated!

And now, let’s move to the details of our weekly update:

The screenshot’s authors have been awarded. Vox, Apophys, Yurtin and Siegbert – check your Ambers!

Changelog v.0.9.6.7 Beta

Horse trading

From now on, you can sell horses via player-made stalls introduced in recent weeks. Stalls are receiving additional special slots where you can put your horses for sale. It will create a new branch of the ingame economy designated to create a horse catcher and breeder profession. With the upcoming changes to mounts, where they will receive additional colors and customization, the possibility to sell horses will be a great thing to have, especially when some types and colors of horses will be much more unique and harder to find in-game. Who would not want to have a black stallion, dotted gray mare, or massive Arabian horse with a black mane?

Please have in mind that you cannot sell a horse whose aging reached 100% and that the system needs good external testing, so we are hoping for your cooperation!

Mounted combat improvements

Regarding mounted combat, we have been observing it for a long time, and are still receiving quite contradictory feedback. Horses were able to bypass slows using jumps, desync a little or use strange and non-expected moves like running backward or changing movement vectors in air.

No slowing down related to hitting the horse was changed. Horses are being slowed down by every melee attack, like it was since the introduction of the horses.

Jump!

One of the most unexpected and problematic things in horses' movement was their ability to jump (Literally). Horses were able to spam jumping, jump backward, change direction in flight, and that just opened many ways to bypass the assumptions of the combat system and any tweaks that were introduced to balance the mounted and infantry combat.

From now on, we are blocking the possibility to spam jump while mounted, and introducing 3 seconds cooldown to jump (the same thing as in shield bash). Additionally, it was possible to bypass received slow when horses would jump downhill. Horses can jump longer than infantry, so they would beat longer-range faster and run away, bypassing the slow from hit and after combat mode expires during flight time. To fix that problem, mounts will now receive a slow after landing. Jumps should be used to beat any obstacles, not to be faster.

Horses used jumps and turn to do a small desynchro and instantly changed the vector of movement in flight, which made their movement unpredictable. Because of this, people were