Dragon Riders

[Hal`cyon Sskyler]

Well right, but it sounds like they did some internal experimenting allready to try it? With the talk of riders appearing like they were strung along behind the dragon? That's all I'm happy about.

This was never said and shouldn't be assumed. There's a lot you can say about adding X feature by just from having a fairly abstracted understanding of how the game works.

Latency (lag) needs to be considered because in any dragon mount situation you are combining your latency with the latency of another person in a way where lag will be more apparent to both involved. No matter how you are "treated" by the server the rider won't get position updates until the server receives the new position from the other person, processes it, and then relays that information to you. If either connection starts to hiccup you're going to see artifacts that detract from the experience. As an example, if you ever play Horizons with another person in the same room you'll notice a sizable delay if you watch yourself move from the other person's computer depending on your internet connection. It doesn't take insider knowledge to observe that.

It's certainly possible to overcome such obstacles with time and money, but this idea combines a lot of effort from many sources. Properly adding dragon riding would require significant new artwork in new animations, modification to the client to provide a basic interface for the feature as well as handling how to attach a biped to a dragon model, no small task, simulation work regarding how characters should behave when riding, and possibly changes to the server to better handle position updates.

Finally, there are considerations to be had as to how giving bipeds access to dragon riders would affect gameplay. Bipeds without access to a dragon are going to perceive a sudden disadvantage. One thing I've observed for a while is that in all MMORPGs if you give any group even the most insignificant advantage you're going to upset someone who does not belong to that group no matter the circumstances. People will bicker amongst each other when a dragon refuses to give a biped a ride or acts maliciously.

Think of how easy it'd be to grief people with this ability. Dragon goes to New Trismus and gives out free rides to new players. New players bite because who wouldn't want to take a ride on a dragon? Dragon drops player into the ocean. Player is upset, dead, and isn't having fun. There's no way to prevent this. No matter the circumstances you're giving a player the ability to kill or seriously screw with another player at their discretion. That type of behavior is pretty darn funny from a dragon perspective, but it will create all kinds of hassle for customer support and hurt player relations in general.

[Shian]

In games like Vanguard, you have to be a certain level in order to use a mount. New player griefing can be circumvented.

[CallakDW]

Latency (lag) needs to be considered because in any dragon mount situation you are combining your latency with the latency of another person in a way where lag will be more apparent to both involved. No matter how you are "treated" by the server the rider won't get position updates until the server receives the new position from the other person, processes it, and then relays that information to you. If either connection starts to hiccup you're going to see artifacts that detract from the experience. As an example, if you ever play Horizons with another person in the same room you'll notice a sizable delay if you watch yourself move from the other person's computer depending on your internet connection. It doesn't take insider knowledge to observe that.

The problem though is not with the latency, to my understanding. The problem is with keeping rider and dragon together. If rider and dragon became as one creature instead of two when mounted, as far as the client is conserned, then no matter how much latency there was, they would not seperate on anyone's screen. Just in reality the pair might seem a little farther behind on one PC than on the other. This is a much more acceptable varience than having the rider seem to trail along after the dragon. We see this sort of thing anyway with current player positioning.

[CallakDW]

Think of how easy it'd be to grief people with this ability. Dragon goes to New Trismus and gives out free rides to new players. New players bite because who wouldn't want to take a ride on a dragon? Dragon drops player into the ocean. Player is upset, dead, and isn't having fun. There's no way to prevent this. No matter the circumstances you're giving a player the ability to kill or seriously screw with another player at their discretion. That type of behavior is pretty darn funny from a dragon perspective, but it will create all kinds of hassle for customer support and hurt player relations in general.

It's a crying shame that this is a factor.

[Pharcellus]

1) It is trivially easy to keep Dragon and rider together. In Second Life, we use a "vehicle"; a saddle which is basically just a fancy method of connecting the two (or more) avatars together as one object that move in unison. It is not a huge coding design issue to make that happen.

2) "Griefing potential" is not a reason by itself to avoid adding a feature. Any feature you add can be griefed to one extent or another. It's rather ludicrous to presume that suckering newbies in for a quick ride to their first death would far outweigh the potential fun factor of having Dragon riding in the game (though I am personally not a fan of such a thing). It is no different than someone sucking newbies with items or anything else. They will learn, and any Dragons who partake in such shenanigans will quickly become ostracized.

[CallakDW]

1) It is trivially easy to keep Dragon and rider together. In Second Life, we use a "vehicle"; a saddle which is basically just a fancy method of connecting the two (or more) avatars together as one object that move in unison. It is not a huge coding design issue to make that happen.

It's also been done over and over in much more space/time critical games than HZ. Tribes II, UnrealTorunament, just to name a couple out of a plethora of FPS type games that do this.