I’m not sure what “solid arguments” there are that you are referring to.
Devs like pathfinder because it requires players to continually replay low quality content before they will be permitted to fly.
The idea that devs are dilettantes whose feelings would be hurt if we don’t gaze lovingly at the underside of the same copy-paste tree canopy hundreds of times; or that players who take flight points stay engaged while ordering pizza or accepting liquor deliveries, while those who fly are always tabbed out on autorun…
Or that people would skip the same pointless trash mobs that devs value so little that there is no reward for killing them thousands of times…
Or that somehow trivial content stays relevant if people are forced to do it as a condition of earning back flight yet again.
Oh, yeah. The game would be much stronger if the playerbase were reduced to a small fraction of what players remain. Sure, that works.
Pathfinder may stroke your ego. But it’s bad for business. For all the players who have left over it, how many have come back because it is now possible to re-earn flight with massive meta achievements in multiple expansions?
lol You think the WoW playerbase whines?
Check out the Dead by Daylight forums. These players are rated most toxic of all gaming history.
These forums have nothing on them.
When the devs needed time after release to finish the world for flying. They like to take their time with this because you know Blizz doesn’t make enough money to pay more devs.
It is obvious the world was not ready for flight in WoD, they admitted as much if I remember right. And with Pathfinder in place now they don’t really worry about getting it done.
Its more about level and zone design mattering. Who cares whether you’re in a mountainous area, or a desert, or a forest, if you can just flying over it? Flying throws all that terrain design, which is gameplay, out the window.
Is the achievement a little excessive? Maybe. Is the time gate too long? Yes, I would say so. But it should be present in at least some form.
Yeah lol. Skipping mobs with your Hearthstone is often the wrong move in Classic, because mob XP isn’t garbage like it is on Retail. It’s actually rewarding to take out stuff that’s in your path.
Pathfinder was invented and added to WoD after release because the player base (paying customers) were lead to believe that flying would be part of WoD, like all xpacs except classic.
It was real outrage and unsubbing that got them to change not a change of heart or admission they deceived customers.
There were NO arguments given at the time of pathfinder being added until Legion was announced and we were told pathfinder would be kept because of the “art” and “we want to gate it” was first given as an excuse.
Later people said pathfinder would help with PVP…it did not.
Just remember the facts - Pathfinder was added to make good on the promise of flight in WoD. No rational was given.
Much later blizzard said we want to you experience the content and not swoop in and kill stuff. LOL
Back before WoD, Blizzard had expressed wanting to remove flying entirely. The development team thinks it hinders the content they can design.
People begged for them not to- many people offered that they would gladly work for it by completing ingame content as long as flying was available.
Blizzard wanted to remove flying. Pathfinder is the compromise, and yet people are still unhappy about it.
I am neutral on flying- whether we have or it not, I’m enjoying playing the game, but…
I really prefer unlocking flying by completing ingame content (that I was already doing…) rather than spending my gold.
I don’t remember about Legion, but in WoD, by the time I went to check my progress on Pathfinder, most of it was complete already. It’s just how I play the game naturally.
Here’s the thing about that: I don’t go out into the world without flying at all. It’s too inconvenient, and quite often they’ve designed the zones to be too frustrating to traverse without flying. And frankly, for BfA I barely even played at all because of Pathfinder.
It doesn’t cause people to slow down and enjoy the world and the work the artists put into it, it causes people to either stop going out into the world as much, or stop playing the game out of frustration over flight taking too long to open up. People play the game and go out into the world WAY MORE after Pathfinder is finally opened up. We have seen that be the case for the past 2-3 expansions.
I pretty much already answered that. I don’t have to worry about grinding a bunch of gold out for flying; I already have it.
If I create a new character tomorrow, POW, that character already has flying in WoD, Legion, and BFA. I don’t have to do anything, and I can concentrate on enjoying the character or learning the spec or following a different storyline, or whatever.
Not talking about designing it around flying, talking about making what is on the ground interesting and fun. What’s fun about those same things being at a slightly different altitude that I can’t get to otherwise?
Okay but they haven’t improved world content. It’s the same questing from 2004, but now with the “bonus” of mob XP being worthless and the raw gold drops being even more laughable.
If they’re not going to put in more effort than they did with Jade Forest it needs to be as skippable/speedrunnable as Jade Forest.
I agree somewhat. If they made the content easy to get around, no running for 10 minutes and looking at 3rd party sites to find the one hidden path to get up a mountain side to get a quest, it would be an improvement.
But max level I don’t want to kill 30 mobs to get 1 item for a WQ, so I love to swoop in and get the objective. Killing those mobs have no reward, but it slows the game down.
This is where you lose me. Blizzard has caved on decisions that ended up hurting the business end of things before. It’s not like Pathfinder is the hill they’ve decided to die on just because; if it was really that bad and the numbers showed that Pathfinder was the impetus for the exodus that so many of you are determined to paint it as, it would be long gone by now.
Edit: that is to say, someone’s boss who makes actual Decisions would have said “That’s enough. Fix it now.”
I think difficult terrain to traverse is what I’m looking for, but I’d agree that it’s better if there’s a reward at the end beyond the same WQ I’ve done many times before with “meh” rewards. Interesting content at the end of the journey, with more variance, and better rewards. So it actually feels worth the effort of not just swooping in.
This is perfect then. You can get your enjoyment out of the difficult, yet beautiful, terrain. Do this all you want from the very first second of the new xpac.
I would like to have just a few frustrating weeks while I level with knowing at max level I don’t have to do this because I do not find that playstyle enjoyable.
For me, flying does not negate content, it actually has me playing more. Before flying was given back to me I would do 4 WQ and that was it, could not handle how slow and frustrating traveling was, and many days I would not do it at all because the zone was horrible. Now, I do the WQ every day and more than just 4, I do lots of them. I play more with flying then without.