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Riding Horses - Controls should be like boats

When riding a horse, the horse's head is a permanent fixture directly in your way.  This makes both fighting from horseback and viewing the landscape needlessly difficult. 

  • When someone is actually riding a horse, they can turn their head/torso to face sideways.
  • There are many images of classic horse archers, and they shoot sideways will riding along their target, not over the horse's head while riding at their target.   
  • Mounted fighting is never done with an opponent underneath the front of the horse, the rider always strikes to the side
  • When riding along a path, one often looks out to either side, to view the scenery.

So:  Horses should steer like boats, so that the rider can look, swing, shoot, etc. independently from where the horse is facing.  This would allow riders to strafe targets with arrow fire, strike targets with weapons effectively, and navigate downhill without being blind to the terrain, etc.

 

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    Registered User commented
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    I like this suggestion. This is something I've always wanted for a while, but you know, I couldn't find the right words to explain it. However, I believe that certain adjustments have to be made to horses since such a feature would make cavalry combat unstoppable vs players on foot unless you do something like an infantry square lol.

    Implement a stamina feature OR give horses their own hunger bar

    • Whichever works best, the goal is to create a penalty for riding a horse too long.
    • Giving horses a stamina feature warrants a new attribute similar to the likes of speed and jump, or it could rely on another attribute such as max health. Perhaps the horse can become exhausted if ridden for more than x minutes, where x is the horse's max health or stamina value.
    • Giving horses their own hunger bar is an alternative to stamina, and might give purpose to the useless feeding animation now that they have a reason to eat grass. If their hunger is low, the horse cannot move at full speed, similar to players' sprint.
    • If a horse is dying from hunger, there must be a unique damage sound or animation. It shouldn't be confused with other effects like Wither or Poison.
    • Adding a hunger bar for horses might demand consistency to add this feature to every other animal, but from a lore perspective this merely demonstrates the bond between player and horse.

    Horses shouldn't be able to do sharp turns without losing momentum

    • Yaw turns should be done in a manner similar to boats.
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    Registered User commented
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    Absolutely. I know horses in real life can strafe but it feels a little janky in minecraft. Imagine riding across the savanna on horseback while being able to look around and enjoy the view. I should be able to tilt my head to the side and do drive by attacking without losing momentum with a horse just like on boats. The only downside of riding horseback would then be the inability to strafe (and water). The devs could copy/paste the boat controls into horse controls.

    I think it would make horse riding more enjoyable. Riding along the plains. Circling mobs while attacking. Falling into holes because we were looking at that mountain in the distance.

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    Registered User commented
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    I've also been saying this for awhile, and now that we're getting new mounts this should definitely be looked at!