Flying: Why must we wait until 8.2?

Community General Discussion
1139

Ding Ding Ding! The end game content isn’t enjoyable to a good number of people. It’s daily work and chores that get boring after a while. Flying helps ease that and at least brings a little fun into it. (YES people think just flying around in the air is fun) Ground travel, due to mob density and world design, piles on frustration to the boring work that is max level content. When you are frustrated, you aren’t having fun. It’s as simple as that.

Not only do they keep us on the ground longer now, they made being on the ground a royal pain in the you know what. Id rather run around in the old world then WoD and Legion. Being stuck on the ground there is insufferable. You couldn’t even pause for a second to pull out your map and check something because every second a mob was on you. Getting lost cause of bad world design, while getting gang jumped by every mob in a 10 foot radius makes me want to rage quit.

5 Likes
1140

There are players who do not enjoy sky swimming (flying). Blizzard makes the game a middle ground by having flying later in the expac. And no, the “they can just not fly” does not work in a world with open world content. I find it interesting that people like flying but do not like underwater zones, which work similar to flying.

1141

Swimming stinks because it’s slow. I don’t mind it when I have toys or add ons that make me swim at a much faster speed in the water. When I can swim fast, swimming isn’t really all that bad. But being super slow and having to watch your air (unless you are undead) is annoying.

1142

The water zones had high speed movement and fast mounts like flying so I think that what you are saying is the case.

1143

Right. Standard swimming in this game isn’t really fun, for me, because it’s really slow. But when we can use tool and mounts in game to help speed up our swimming, or let us move around easier, swimming isn’t such a bad thing and I don’t mind having to do it then.

3 Likes
1144

That depends on the player and what they get out of the game.

You’re making an objective statement upon a subjective subject. It’s not fun to you. It’s fun for others. Not to mention, it’s supported in the lore and for some players it increases their immersion and improves their game time. Can it be improved? Sure. But one cannot say it’s not fun for many players. It was after all, the most requested feature for the game according to Blizzard back in 2009 for Cataclysm. Somebody was having fun with it.

8 Likes
1145

All I’m gonna say is don’t get your hopes up that flying will be available day 1 of patch 8.2. I predict it will be more or less the same thing that happened in Legion: there will be a pathfinder part 2 achievement which will involve completing a dozen or so questlines parts, and each part will be time gated / released 1 week after the other. So really it will probably be a good 2-3 months after 8.2 before we actually get flying in BfA - just in time for 8.2.5 or 8.3 to be released with a new zone(s) (think broken shore or argus) where we will never fly, but where we will spend most of our time for new dailies etc.

1146

You guys all have feet right?

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1147

LOL

3/10 but -5 because it’s not Sunday.

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1148

And arms:swimming_man:

But no wings hence :small_airplane::flying_disc::flying_saucer::bird: required.

1149

I’m arguing objectively, not subjectively.

I assure you I’m speaking about the objective facts of flying. I’ll define what I said in hopes that it clarifies my point:

Player Decision-Making: When choices made by the player have a direct impact on their performace. For comparison, consider class specialization, talent builds, armor set ups, Azerite trait selection, the selection of Troops and Champions for Missions, the Command Table Research options, etc.

Character Progression: Character power gains. New learned abilities and talent selections while gaining levels/honor, new Azerite traits and power with the acquisition of artifact power, reputation gains, access and ability to craft better profession items, acquisition of currency toward a desired reward, battle pet levels, etc.

Strategic Thought: The gameplay system requires at least some degree of strategic thinking, or any situation in which the player is presented with a series of choices and has to weigh the pros and cons of their decision. This ranges from solo-play decisions about which World Quests to tackle and whether to do them alone or with a group to raid settings where the raid leader considers new strategies for a difficult boss encounter.

This is how I’m attempting to objectively define flying. So if it’s truly so subjective, then you’d be able to show how I’m mistaken about any of the three points I listed above. As a caveat, I’m going to say that the choice of which flying mount a player decides to use does not invalidate my claim in the first point because the choice is arbitrary and doesn’t have an impact on gameplay at all, because all flying mounts essentially do the exact same thing.

You can have fun with literally anything you want. That doesn’t mean that it’s what it’s meant for, or that being ‘fun’ automatically cloaks it from objective evaluation about whether or not it’s a good system or is equally engaging or engaging for the same reasons.

Ever see the movie Billy Madison? It’s about a delinquent who begins the movie playing pranks with burning bags of dog poop and tricking his neighbors into stomping it out. Billy and his two friends are having a blast. It demonstrates you can have fun with literally anything, even burning bags of dog poop, especially if you’re sharing the experience with friends.

There are also players up in arms about this closing of an experience exploit, claiming that it’s another example of Blizzard hating fun. So this ‘but it’s fun’ argument is a bad one, because whether it’s with an exploit, a bag of dog poop, or a method of travel that is pure convenience, there’s no solid definition or limitation on what constitutes fun. It’s a non-starter. And as long as people keep insisting, ‘no keep it like it is because it’s fun’, then flying will never be improved.

1150

I agree 100%, and I would extend this to ground mounts and all other movement speed increases as well, including the basic run command.

  • Choosing to run when a ground mount is available is impractical.
  • Choosing to RP walk when running is available is impractical.
  • Ground mounts and running are conveniences that don’t offer any engaging character decision making, progression, or thought. They aren’t fun and could be greatly improved so that they can be a more meaningful gameplay choice.
3 Likes
1151

You’ve constructed a fantastic straw-man.

1152

I’m not kidding, there are no downsides to running or using mounts. There is no endurance meter, and your character can’t get tired. You don’t have to take care of your mounts, and they can’t get hurt or killed. There is no decision making in using these features at all. People like you just want to zip around for maximum convenience without thinking or making choices, and I’m sick of it.

4 Likes
1153

Except it isn’t valid. Prior to WoD, the game had zones designed with flying in mind. They’re trying to stretch as little content as possible, as long as possible. That’s the only reason they’re gating flying behind Pathfinder Part 2. Part 1 was a compromise, Part 2 is basically a temper tantrum because they couldn’t do away with flying entirely.

6 Likes
1154

One of the biggest topics on here…
and yet…
No flying!

1 Like
1155

This whole flying deal is stupid af. If you have flying design content around it instead of pretending it doesnt exist. Whole pathfinder thing is just a stupid grind.

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1156

flying damages immersion? I remember when they designed around the zones with flying in mind, which increased the immersion. I really do not think it is about immersion, but about being cheap, and using less resources towards development, and putting an extra time sink in attempt to pad metrics.

8 Likes
1157

Again, you’re attempting an objective analysis of what you consider “fun” on a vastly subjective and individual topic. You can list all the game design principles you want when it comes to a game feature and yet there’s no tangible measure for what is going to be considered objectively fun for every player. For example, let’s take the Azerite gearing system with the three you’ve outlined above. You could make the argument that it requires player decision-making that has a direct impact on their performance, it inherently involves character progression in a planned, laid-out system, and that it requires strategic thought on the part of the player for the choices to be made and in how they go about acquiring the gear. Is the Azerite gearing system therefore a “fun” system for players? Many would say, absolutely not.

Game design is both a science and an art form for this reason. You can tick all the boxes off for applying design principles and game design theory and still not be able to capture the essence of why something might be considered fun for one player versus another because it involves the individual senses and emotion. I would even argue that this is something Blizzard has forgotten a bit of late. Your argument (and it is a good one which in many ways I agree with) is that flying in its current form is not a good system for the game. The thing is, it doesn’t have to be. If your primary aim is to keep players engaged in your game and flying does that for at a good portion of your player base, there’s a reason for its existence.

10 Likes
1158

If you want to be “immersed”, then don’t fly. The actual reason they don’t want you flying is to milk more play time out of users. Flying makes everything faster.

7 Likes