Oh look, another one of these threads.
As apposed to people who liked paying for flying with gold at max level in a game they pay every month to play and buy each new expansion? Those entitled people?
Iâm an ex Blizzard customer that wonât be giving any more of my money to support their games almost entirely because of the middle finger given me by the devs with pathfinder.
Soon Iâll be gone, my criticism will go silent, and my money will no longer support the game you seem to like yet claim people like me drag it down with our entitlement attitude.
Have fun on your ground mounts for many months of every new expansion before you get flying just in time to lose it again for grounded zone(s) followed by the next expansion with another pathfinder to repeat the nonsense all over again.
Pathfinder is just one of many examples of how out of touch the devs are with the players. They say they care about fun, and then ignore the obvious fact that flying is fun for the vast majority of players. If itâs fun at all itâs not less fun at certain points of the expansion as some claim by trying to say theyâre happy theyâre grounded for pathfinders duration. Thatâs just spin to defend a false narrative spun by devs to defend poor game design decisions many donât like at all. The days of me being any type of fanboy for Blizzard are long gone. That brand loyalty died in WoD when they removed flying without any discussion and when that blew up in their face they gave us the middle finger with pathfinder.
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We must wait because the devs dont care what we want nor do they care if the game bleeds subs over flying. They have to be right no matter what becauseâŚ
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Give it a rest. Itâs all just a way to get from point A to B, nothing more. Itâs not an âargument.â Itâs a fact.
The âZâ axis gives players access to sights and areas they wouldnât otherwise be able to reach. This is the natural result of enabling travel on the âZâ axis.
Flight provides no player with any in-game advantage other than the ability to travel faster and higher. To play the game, you actually have to do stuff. Quests, PvP, pet battles, dungeons, raids, etc. You canât do any of that while flying. Or traveling on a ground mount.
Both. Just. Means. Of. Player. Transportation.
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You are wrong. Youâre sticking your fingers in your ears at this point.
Hello, kettle? This is the pot speaking. . .
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One aspect of the flight argument when it comes to open world content that is often ignored is where open world content fits within the game play hierarchy within WoW. Open world content is the lowest form of content within the game. WoW uses a character progression model consisting of raiding/arenas > dungeons/battlegrounds > open world questing.
This was the basis of awarding flight at max-level. Questing was essentially a leveling experience and not end-game content. Once a player reached max-level and got a few pieces of instanced content gear, all open world content was trivial to the player. Flight wasnât a factor in trivializing mobs in the open world, they were already trivial at that point for geared players. Matter of fact, the reason one wanted to gear up was precisely so those open world mobs were made trivial.
Blizzard now wants everyone to think that open world questing is a compelling form of end-game content for players. All open world content continues to consist of dailies and reputation grinds at max-level, the same as always. And such content is still trivial once a player gets geared after a few weeks of max-level play. Nothing has changed in this regard because Blizzard will never upend the paradigm of instanced content being superior to open world content. It would destroy the nature of character progression.
So, what to do about those âneedlessâ mobs? Leave them for leveling and dailies. But letâs not pretend they suddenly are the be-all, end-all when it comes to game play. Or that simply withholding flight makes them immediately challenging.
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Neither of these claims I made.
Until Legion, we never went back into the level-up zones to do things like dailies, but now we donât just turn our backs to a zone when we finish them. In Wrath we never went back to Howling Fjord except to farm. In Legion we were in Highmountain and Stormheim nearly every day.
The world as a whole matters a lot more than it did, and those mobs arenât meant to be as trivializing. Instead of only dealing with high-level mobs that could actually threaten you in the max-level daily hub like Icecrown Glacier or the Firelands, the entire continent is your max-level daily hub.
Every expansion have had dailies for max-level characters, both in leveling zones and max-level zones since they were introduced in TBC. I can remember doing Wyrmrest Accord dailies in Dragonblight, for example.
The open world content design has not changed in this regard. Once a player is geared after a few weeks of max-level play, open world mobs are basically trivial. Otherwise, Blizzard wouldnât need to introduce new patch zones with more difficult mobs as the expansion progresses. They have to because players are blowing up the mobs. The location of dailies doesnât change their nature. Theyâre not particularly challenging nor compelling, hence the reason to lock a popular game feature such as flight behind them, to get players to do them.
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Level scaling was introduced in Legion, so that was the first expansion where there werenât only designated places for doing dailies at level cap. Sometimes they happened in level-up zones but only in specific areas like the Hodir dailies, not throughout the zone like they are in Legion and BfA.
THe entire continent is relevant for max-level content in ways that wasnât seen before Legion. Itâs disingenuous to claim nothingâs changed.
You still didnât address the point that the WQs are not compelling or, for some, even worthwhile content.
Iâve always been of the mind that locking flight behind this content in an effort to drive participation tells me that the content isnât worth doing in the first place. If it canât stand on itâs own without cheap coercion tactics, then there is a fundamental flaw in the development that runs far far deeper than any argument pro or anti-flight.
Speaking closer to the subject of this thread, however, for me Flight is not a matter of convenience or travel. It is one of control. Iâm someone who is fiercely independant. Having the perception that Blizzard is trying to âstrongly suggestâ to me how I can and cannot engage with content or trying to put systems in place to push me in to content I donât enjoy (looking at Legion pathfinder pt2) is simply not acceptable nor negotiable to me in any way, shape, or form.
Flight is just the tip of that iceburg what with all the varying mechanics in place to micromanage players.
Itâs further to the point that I look at everything up to MoP and everything from WoD on as two entirely separate games. Iâm not going to play the latter.
Would I like to see flight become more useful and deep? Sure I would. First we have to get the dev team past this perception of theirs that flight is bad. I dont foresee that happening until the dev team rolls over.
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At this point, Iâm going to bow out because as you said weâre talking past each other.
The final point I was making was that it doesnât matter the location, the nature of dailies has not changed since they were introduced in TBC. They fit within the hierarchy of WoWâs content model I described. While they do have their place in content, they are neither overly compelling because of their repetitive nature nor particularly challenging by their design.
Attempting to change their nature since Warlords and make them into something they are not at end-game is symptomatic of why we are where we are in BfA.
Weâve sacrificed player agency over movement within the open world to lock players down in repetitive daily quests, weâve sacrificed the ability to choose a race at the character creation screen to lock players into reputation grinds, weâve streamlined gear so that players cannot customize it in any meaningful way, weâve gutted professions since if you donât want players to customize their gear, you donât need meaningful professions, weâve removed most of the RPG elements that used to keep players involved in content, weâve sacrificed meaningful gear rewards by removing tier sets, and weâve warped all the content design to support an alternate progression system in Azerite.
Weâre now grinding our characters rather than grinding the content and we donât even get a choice anymore about how we want to play.
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If youâre not doing WQs or leveling alts, whatâs the big deal about flight-right-nao?
Pathfinder works beautifully for my lowbies still doing <BfA content. Legion Pathfinder let my monk and DH work on their Breaching the Tomb stuff for their class mounts. One quest in particular, collecting energy balls in the air around Tomb of Sargeras building is ridiculously difficult without flight.
BfA 8.0 is still a small area with lots of FPs and whistles and boats and tiny dragon fliers so it hasnât been that inconvenient to get around.
Of course we all want flight, we like our independence, but most of us will wait nicely until itâs patched. Itâs nothing to get all huffy and freak out about.
Itâs a video game - itâs shouldnât make you develop medical conditions from that stress-rage-anger.
Calm down and eat a snickers. =)
I absolutely do not agree with that.
Who said anything about âFlight Right Naoâ as you so ridiculously put it.
I certainly didnât, nor am I angry about the state of flight. To assume that I am is to assume that I have feelings.
I donât.
Iâm one of those people that feel nothing in any strong manner one way or the other. To be clear, I do feel but not much. What I do feel mostly is disappointment at the failure of design and the change for changeâs sake system that seems to be working through this game since WoD launched.
So long as they keep pushing like they are, I see no value in participating in the later expansions. Flight isnât the only reason, but it is the most visible.
So Instead of âFlight Right Naoâ it is more âTake your expansion and shove itâ.
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UhhâŚthe title of this thread?
Kinda talking out both sides of your mouthâŚfingers? You obviously have strong feelings as your words read âannoyedâ.
You know, itâs always been basically: Play or Donât. Thereâs nothing more really. People can write angry posts here and make youtubby complaints but ultimately itâs your own decision to keep playing this game. I for one, have no problems with BfA (or any xpac since vanilla) so Iâm still here. Sure there have been lulls in several xpacs when I ran out of things to do but I stay subbed and go play another game. Thereâs nothing wrong with that - you canât expect any one game to keep you amused for life.
Take a break and see what happens.
edit: dude isnât even a playing subscriber. Shouldnât have wasted my breath-text.
Iâm suspecting you lack the credentials to determine mood from words, but thatâs fine if you wish to believe that.
Whatever the case may be Iâm already a non-sub and have been for 8 months. Iâm only here because non-subs are able to post at this time. Certainly I think I would enjoy getting back in to this game, but not in itâs current state.
For the time being, though, Iâm having a lot of fun with other games like Conan Exiles, Empyrion, Space Engineers, and Ark.
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I think this is appropriate and support it.
All the arguments have been hashed out, you either feel one way or you feel the other so I wonât bore you with another repetition.
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Note Bolded, note response was fixed for author.
Why because author doesnât pay my subscription thus he has no rights to speak for ME.
Flying is a FANTASTIC REWARD for ME! I get a lot of enjoyment out of it.
Only thing holding me in this game right now are my friends and as they continue to dwindle and disappear the enticement to continue to stay wanes A LOT.
Let the developers hold their breath until they are blue in the face, when the stock continues to drop and so do the subscriptions maybe the VOTING stock holders will end the battle over Flight in this game with pink slips.
Just look at your ques to get a Tank for Dungeons & Mythics. Sadly, NO developers. Shoving out more tank drops in game is NOT going to fix the problem. People that were tanks have likely unsubscribed. Probably due to boredom and frustration.
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I never said I spoke for the people who like flying or that they were wrong for doing so, or that I wanted to force people to enjoy the game the way I do.
I did say that flying is a cheap, shallow game system that offers nothing in the way of character progression or meaningful decision making and could do with a lot of improvement. If thatâs your metric of fun, you have a much lower bar than I do.
I also said Iâm not surprised the developers donât want to try and improve the system given the propensity of the pro-fliers to whine about the slightest restriction to their aerial water wings.