It is starting to really feel like you guys do not want to debate about the ENTIRE proposal. I hear either one person reading, Buff, and flipping out about it, or one person reading Slot, and flipping out about it.
This entire idea would require a large change to the balancing of horse stats, but these suggestions are not entirely ludiscrous as many of you are proposing.
I have played quite a few horse class characters, I'm guessing around 20 or so, and probably over 100 infantry based classes. (I took heavy advantage of skip the fun back in the day) And I noticed that horse archers were ruined by this severe armor degradation to your aim. I also noticed that people on plated chargers didn't necesarrily have a consequence to them riding it OTHER than its cost. This cost not only made rich players extremely powerful, (due to they are the only ones who can afford this machine) but it also made it so that no new player can ever hope to ride one until they have played for 300+ hours.
As for this slot system ruining your build of lance, shield, sword. We can't have a horsemen running around on a plated charger with 2 shields turtled up on him and stomping around the whole damn place, that is just rediculous. There are many accounts where I see naked peasants riding a plated charger turtles up with shields....And let's face it, if I were new to this game and saw that crap, I would be discouraged from playing due to the sheer stupidity of it.
I understand many of you like to read 1 line and flip about it, but the goal of this game is to have fun, and the system as I currently see is preventing players from using the full "fun" potential of horses.
Horse archers can finally look cool again with a little bit of armor, but they will have reduced quivers when using a higher rated horse (due to slots). Knights can no longer ride a tank, get the horse killed, and still be a death machine with all of their current equips that they had while mounted.
There needs to be an alternative consequence to riding a horse, other than the generic "it costs more so rich players can have fun." A class is not something you should have to require an alternate expense account for, and it should also not be a grandmaster class when it is aqcuired.
It's not like I have been playing this game for 20minutes, and I raged at horses, or liked horses or something. I just see that there is alot more potential for a balanced class, that can be playable to a more broad avenue of players.
These are not personally feeling towards horses, this is a response to the multiple horse balancing issues that have been going on for well over a year.