8.2 Mount Equipment and Water Strider

Community General Discussion
469

:scream:
On a serious note, I believe that the typical wow player is very curious with this change.

I also believe that if you asked, the majority of them do not realize that the strider is going to lose its ability to water-walk.

You might need to hold off on the discussion until 9.0 hits. A few weeks after 8.2, the majority of people will have earned flying and will not really care about mount equipment.

However, when 9.0 hits and they lose flying, that will be a different story.

Most will adapt, and others will not. This is the main reason that subscriptions continue to drop. And the reason Blizzard has changed their primary measurement from Subs to MAU.

Blizzard continues to mess with things people have earned and enjoy, instead of fixing core issues within the game. A perfect example is the mage tower. People loved the mage tower, however, Blizzard did not reinstate it even as the two new elements they added failed. It would have been an easy add since they could have left the current bosses in it, but because it wasn’t in their plan and would take people to Legion content, they would not consider it.

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470

Agreed. There should be a form of mage tower every patch now, imo, easy win.

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471

Moving forward, I’m operating on the assumption that anything and everything I work for in this game will be taken away eventually.

The bright side of that is that it makes it easier to play less, invest less, and not care so much.

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472

Patch 9.0 will take away the rest! :sob:

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473

If you don’t like how it looks, there’s zero reason to use it once 8.2 goes live.

I don’t mind, it means my toons with herbalism can just use this as their exclusive mount for everything:

474

Except the Sky Golem cannot use the new mount equipment, so you will still have to swap out mounts, depending on the circumstances.

They should have done the same thing with water striders – exempt them from using the new equipment, and keeping their special ability. But oh, no – we can’t have that, can we? Blizzard has been trying to squash that bug for a few years now, and they finally succeeded.

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And furthermore, once this change goes live, I’m going to keep posting here on the forums, requesting that ALL other mounts with special abilities need to be nerfed, too. It’s only fair.

Sky Golems, Yaks, Tundra Mammoths, Underwater mounts, all of them. Nerf them into the ground.

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476

And here comes the derailing of the subject by way of going off topic, and with a twist. :roll_eyes:

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477

LOL or maybe I know how I felt more than some rando on GD?

FYI the Strider WAS going to lose it’s Water Walking in Legion until the usual QQ-fest on the forums popped up.

480

(comfort hugs) pay no mind to the mean man. They come to these forums and act mean in the hopes that you will report them. They know that too much reporting gets the whole thread locked.

While yes we are repeating the same boring thing over and over. It does not make us any less right about pulling away something we earned. I did do all that grinding to earn a ugly bug mount, I did it to get something that waterwalks so I could waste away my days gliding along the coasts exploring.

They are removing something I earned to get me to play more and I am within my rights to complain and say it will have the opposite effect they are looking for.

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481

An annoying, lazy, unfair and unnecessary idea then.

And now with slight improvements? Still quite annoying, lazy, and unnecessary.

However, since I’m apparently willing to sacrifice water walking for a 10% net mounted ground speed bonus, I can’t say it’s a total loss.

What’s next?

Will Blizzard strip all the 5% experience bonuses off of heirloom gear? Randomly replacing it with lame passive bonuses like :

  • cheaper xmog on heirlooms,
  • better chance for silver from mobs killed or
  • 10% exp bonus but only from “exploration experience”
482

I don’t want this thread locked though. It has became quite a good thread to discuss about the Mount Equipment.

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483

Blizzard does not seem to understand that players will consume content at a fast rate no matter what they do. Doing moves like this to artificially extend content does not work. The only thing it serves to do is annoy us and ensure that we don’t repeat that content on alt’s.

They are shooting themselves in the foot with these moves.

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486

I pasted this over from another thread:

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487

Giving negative feedback about changes to the game is not QQing. They took the water-walking ability away in the Legion Alpha, and many players protested it.

The main part of the initial blue post response was:

Our initial change was aimed at letting people feel more free to choose the mount that they felt looked coolest, whether in new content or while leveling alts. But as we’ve clearly heard from your feedback, removing the water-walking functionality from pre-existing content feels like we’re taking away something that you have worked hard to earn, and that cost outweighs any benefit from potentially broadened cosmetic options.

So, in the next Alpha build, we’re restoring the ability of Water Striders to walk on water in all pre-Legion content (Azeroth, Outland, Northrend, etc.). The restriction on the mounts’ water-walking ability will now only apply to the Broken Isles and future content beyond that.

They then received more feedback about this change:

We don’t have any concern with water-walking as a concept, and the various player abilities and consumables that provide it are a great source of convenience. We’re not trying to make travel less convenient, or restrict player freedom. We observed what seemed like a potential problem, explored some solutions, and clearly the cure has proven worse than the disease. Thank you for your feedback.

Had this been about “choice”, they could have easily added water-walking mounts into the game in Legion. But they didn’t. They could have made their “Boat” float on water like boats should, But they didn’t. Kind of makes people think why not? :thinking:

The difference between then and now is the fact that they added a distraction. If you have read the pro-strider posts, you would have learned that there are a couple primary reasons for our negative feedback.

  1. The new item is a consumable, allowing ease of removal/restriction in 9.0
  2. People put in work to get the mount for the special ability. We do not want it taken away.
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488

Lol…

Patch 9.0: The Final Death

Expansion starts with a leap into a volcano filled with voidiinfused lava sharks. Swift horrible death.

In the spirit realm, players discover that Wraith-Ion, the boss of all the death-demigods (helya, bwonsamdi, lich King. Etc) has risen and eaten all the spirit healers.

Resurrection isn’t possible. Progression isn’t possible. You can relive moments in your past (run mythic+ dungeons) but the only reward are soul bound (haha) “ectoplasm points” which is the only currency in the game now for everything. Ghost mounts, ghost xmog, ghost pets.

Welcome to the after life.

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489

Thanks for posting this. I hope someone at Blizzard goes back and reads the text you quoted, especially this line:

Given what they’re doing now, that quote is particularly salient.

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490

Thank you.
It is important to note that they said it was about player choice, but they never thought about adding additional water-walking mounts, only to take away the water-walking ability.

Legion was took place on a bunch of Islands, which would have made sense to introduce additional water-walking mounts. BFA is the same. Yet, they did not do this.

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491

Mainly because Blizzard enjoys taking things away than adding anything.

And players did have a choice. There was also the Elixir of Water Walking, or Shamans/DK’s. But most people thought that there was only the Water Strider to walk on water while mounted.

But the Mount Equipment really isn’t going to add anything.

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492

“overuse of striders”

Let’s see…how often do I use my strider, in a COASTLINE or SEAFARING emphasis expac?

If the strider was available right before Wrath, would you see this same “overuse” after the Kaluak part of Dragonblight? Probably not. It’s the terrain design. You need huge spaces of not-coast not-lake to see less strider use…as well as not-steephill, if you want more people choosing not to use flying.

“rebuy to change, rebuy every alt, rebuy every expansion”

As this sounds like it is going to be another iteration on Garrison Follower Equipment, are we getting bigger craftable bags for mats a clothie can solo for?

While things can still change before it goes live, I’m not sure feedback on beta/ptr is listened to anymore. In particular recent beta I seem to remember a lot of people pointing out that Drustvar needed to have positive examples of witches too. I live in New England, so that zone on Live…yeah.

What worries me about the mount equipment thing is that people I know playing PTR are delighted with simply being able to use their voidstrider to waterwalk.
I think of large mounts like the mammoths and the AH mount waterwalking, and cringe.

If enough people are viewing it as “not having to use the strider” and not addressing the assorted problems we have raised, the new mammoth train will be waterwalking brontos.

I’m all for making more of the mounts relevant, but not by taking away obvious functions and putting nonsense ones on others. There are better ways to do this.

Wonder if it’ll be renamed the “Everything except Water Strider”?

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