Pets & Horses A Better Way Of Upgrading Horses.

To briefly sum up this thread: Horses would no longer level up both speed and jump simultaneously, and would require different actions for each statistic. They would also have armour, health, attack and better breeding depending on their tier.

Horses in their current state gain experience simply by being ridden around, and the chances of you getting an upgraded horse seem to be extremely little. After some thinking about horses, I came up with a few ideas to change the way horses are upgraded.

Basic Levelling:
The way you can currently "Level Up" your horse is by riding it around. After a certain amount of time, your horse will "Become Stronger" and gain 1 point in the Speed and Jump category. The idea I came up with would change how these would increase. Running around would still increase the Speed statistic, seeing as your horse would still be getting exercise. However, in order to gain "Jump", your horse would need to perform a certain amount of jumps, or jump certain distances. This would mean that your horse would level up in two different ways, from running certain distances and jumping certain amounts.

Spoiler: Upgrade Messages

Health:
Horses' health is currently just a display, and isn't used for anything as the horse doesn't take damage. My idea would be to implement a way of horses taking damage, and have their health depend on their tier.

A Horse would take damage if its rider is attacked (it takes a portion of the damage too), or it falls from a great enough height. When a horse is attacked, it will take 50% of the damage inflicted to its rider in hearts, and would slowly regenerate this health over time. If a horse's health reaches 0, then it will despawn and have a tag saying "Your horse is currently healing" on its saddle. The horse would then be able to be respawned when its health reached maximum.

Tier Health:
Brown: 10 (5 Hearts)
Black: 20 (10 Hearts)
Chestnut: 30 (15 Hearts)
White: 40 (20 Hearts)

Spoiler: Horse "Death"

Armour:
Horse armour would be a rare drop or find, and would reduce the damage your horse will take by either 25, 50 or 75%. Powders would enhance the armour with different abilities too.

Golden Horse Armour:
Golden horse armour would drop as rare as a "Unique" armour from mobs, and would be able to only be found in Loot Chests of level 3 or 4. Golden horse armour would reduce Mob Damage by 25%.
Iron Horse Armour:
Iron horse armour would drop as rare as a "Rare" armour from mobs, and would only be able to be found in Loot Chests of level 3 or 4. Iron horse armour would reduce Mob Damage by 50%
Diamond Horse Armour:
Diamond Horse armour would drop as rare as a "Legendary" armour from mobs, and would only be able to be found in Loot Chests of level 4. Diamond horse would reduce Mob Damage by 75%

Red Powder:
Red powder would add a 12.5% chance of setting an attacked mob on fire at level 1, and a 25% chance at level 2.
Green Powder:
Green powder would add a 30% chance of deflecting 50% damage of an attacking mob back to it at level 1, and a 60% chance at level 2.
Blue Powder:
Blue powder would reduce fall damage by 40% at level 1, and 80% at level 2.
Attacking:
When riding a horse, it is very hard to attack mobs, due to the interference of the horses hitbox, and the inability to cast spells. My idea would be to allow a horse to "attack" mobs if it rides through them at a high enough speed. When a horse runs through a mob, all mobs within a 4 block front-facing radius would be damaged for a certain amount of their health depending on the horse tier. If the horse jumps into a mob, they would also be knocked back a certain distance depending on its tier.

Brown: 10% of Weapon Damage, 3 Block Knockback.
Black: 15% of Weapon Damage, 4 Block Knockback.
Chestnut: 20% of Weapon Damage, 5 Block Knockback.
White: 25% of Weapon Damage, 6 Block Knockback.

Breeding:
Horse Breeding, in it's current state, makes it extremely hard to upgrade your horse to the next tier. My idea here is to instead change the breeding from a constant chance to a chance based on the horses level. If a horse is bred with very low statistics, it has a much less chance of creating a better horse. However, if a horse is bred at it's maximum statistics, it has a much higher chance of breeding the next tier, and a lower chance of the previous one.

Key: LT - Lower Tier Breed Chance, HT - Higher Tier Breed Chance, ST - Same Tier Breed Chance.

0% of Max Stat: LT: 25% HT:25% ST: 50%.
25% of Max Stat: LT: 20% HT: 35% ST: 45%
50% of Max Stat: LT: 15% HT: 45% ST: 40%
75% of Max Stat: LT: 10% HT: 55% ST: 35%
Max Stats: LT: 5% HT: 70% ST: 25%
Note: These values would only increase when the stats reached their certain point (eg: 40% of max stats would have the same breed chances of 25%) .

This thread is still a little rough around the edges, so feel free to leave a suggestion or constructive criticism, as it would really help!

Edit Log:
Changed Horse attack from "% of Mob Health" to "% of Weapon Damage"

 

I love it. It's basically everything I wanted out of the horse system, and I don't think it should be hard at all to implement.

 

I love the idea! Along with the final poll answer

 

*bumpbecauseweneedthis*

 

I like everything except for the horse attacking system. If jumping into mobs causes 10% damage to the mob, then boys battles would be incredibly easy. I suggest fixing the attacking portion to deal damage based on the weapon you are holding in your hand.

 

It's a great idea and it definitely should be implemented however, horse breeding is already affected by the level of the horse. making it more likely to get a better horse when breeding with horses with higher stats

 

WOO good idea 101%

 

*BUMP CUZ THIS IS FREAKIN AMAZIN!*