5 Seconds is Way Too Slow (Change Flying Style)

[Shadybolt-thrall]

@Tricefallen-azshara

The point here is to remove the unnecessary 5 second time lock that was not a thing for 2 years.

[…]

But what’s your point?

@Shadybolt-thrall

If your only use for Skyriding is for the speed, but want the utterly broken convenience that TBC provides, then you just demonstrated the main primary reason for this change.

What you are complaining about is the intended way it is supposed to work. If you can use Skyriding then use it. If you want to use TBC flying or can’t use Skyriding, use it. If you want to swap between them, do that - folks shouldn’t do that on the regular and as a direct result to dissuade people from doing it, a 5 second cast timer exists. If you still want to do it then 5 seconds is the price of admission to having both the speed and broken utility TBC provides.

Because most folks are gonna stay in just one of these modes, or otherwise change their mode so infrequently that the cast time doesn’t matter.

This is my point.

How folks interact with the entire world was distinctively warped by how folks used flying. Heck we even had an example of it in Dragonflight when a design oversight caused an uproar on these forums: time rifts.

What people do when they have the ability to sit just out of reach of harm’s way but still be around an activity, is that people choose to not engage with the activity. With Skyriding(/Dragonriding) folks have to land meaning that there’s a lot fewer convenient places to afk, so when that happened in Dragonflight because of poor game design and environment building … the same thing happened.

Folks just sat afk and didn’t help with the activity, leading to frustration for some and just a general attitude of “not my problem.” Because… it wasn’t their problem. Folks who were there for the final portal were there for the final portal. Why engage in an activity if it is pointless towards the endgoal?

Compare that to the Tuskkar cooking event. Or the Researcher’s Under Attack. Or the assault on the Dragonbane keep. Or the frozen-futurist world.

When people are given a tool that is TOO convenient, people opt for that. This is a well-documented psychological and honestly just straight up logical human behaviour. In the real world we see this effect when it comes to incentives for people to use other vehicles than cars that it isn’t enough, you also need to desensitize unnecessary car usage.

In WoW it is the same thing with TBC flying, which is why Blizzard has spent over a decade trying to solve these issues when the player base flat out refused to do much than anything but afk in the sky rather than play the game once we got access to those tools. Flying on it’s own ain’t the problem, it is how people have used it over the years. That’s why Skyriding is fine, it has issues, but none so egregious that ever existed by players having access to a mobile afk platform that quite literally warped and reshaped how people played the game.

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All of this is why this is a question of human psychology and game design. Not opinions because there’s not much to discuss here; this change is objectively good for the game’s overall health, regardless of whether people like the change or not.

Heck, Hirai’s post here demonstrates part of it as well.

@Hirai-moon-guard

@Shadybolt-thrall

Yes, ya’ll who keep making these threads and then refusing to even remotely understand why or how these changes are good for the game. All just because of “but mah toy.”

Oh, so you’re one of those anti-fly people.

There’s no “those” people. This is human psychology and folks not wanting their toys taken away from them. Regardless of however damaging those toys are.