I don't think people cheering on the new flight system understand it

Community General Discussion
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Even the animations are ripped straight from the two most contentious mounts in gw2: griffon and skyscale. Having played gw2 and having both a skyscale and griffon there, I already know what this new expansion’s “flying” will entail.

So how does it work? It’s incredibly limited. Let me look into another game’s past and this game’s future to tell you:

The griffon requires height and you to press the space bar rhythmically to beat is wings. You have to do it just right or else you lose altitude. Then in order to gain speed you need to dive until you see a graphical effect before swooping back up.

There is one kink, the mount has a stamina bar and when you can beat your wings and how far you can go is a juggling act.

This works… sometimes, it would just require something with a map height of storm peaks or grizzly hills to be able to get enough clearance to cover even the distance between towns in a wow-sized zone.

If there is one benefit, it’s VERY fast. In fact it’s so fast the speed is only capped by the engine’s maximum server tic speed. While you can only travel over one small area from the starting point of the top of a mountain, you will get to your destination in seconds.

skyscale is like a very low quality drone that can’t go more than 20 feet from it’s controller. A VERY tiny stamina bar. You are allowed to fly like a bell-curve over the area you first took off from. Any distance above a pre-defined threshold and you leak stamina like crazy, any distance past a certain point and you leak stamina like crazy; the closer you are to the ground the farther you can fly.

When you run out of stamina you start sinking and have to land. you CAN land on walls and stick there immobile, but your stamina will not refill; this is not recommended as simply jumping off the wall chunks your stamina by one-third to one-half a bar.

Ultimately you can hover indefinitely, but anything higher than the goldshire inn / org auction house and you will be ready to crash. As far as distance, a full stamina bar will take you from the org bank to around the org auction house.

There is “combat” with both of these mounts, but it’s not like you think. you can press the 1 key while on the mount and it jumps out from under you and does an aoe attack on whatever is in front of you. That’s it. The skyscale one is so bad because the attack doesn’t land in front of you but more 10+ feet ahead of you, and so it goes over the head of anything you want to hit.

These attacks do hundreds of damage, maybe a single percent of a common mob out in the world.

I have already seen animations for skyscale hovering and griffon diving just lifted straight into the alpha footage here; even the little white streak animation as you dive (to show when you need to let go and swoop back up) is the same. Therefore I don’t expect what you get in dragonflight to be even slightly different to what I have already describe above.

The more you know.

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It looks like the GW2 drake trailer. Sure.
Why do you think that means it’ll work exactly the same?

You’re reading off GW2 systems. They’re completely irrelevant here.

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Well I explained that actually:

In the alpha footage the animations are exactly the same. blizzard even prominently shows diving (the gryphon’s main gimmick) complete with the same graphical effects. Meaning not only do certain drakes dive, they have a swoop mechanic too.

It’s not hard to extrapolate that what you have there is what you are getting here.

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you already know, wow, you must have a good farsight, maybe try with the lotto numbers next time please?

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Complaining to complain. Another one of these threads. Gotchya. :+1:

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I think it sounds and looks cool.
I think the new race does too.
And if Ion werent grounding my flying mount collection in the content for two years, Id buy and play it in a NY minute…as it stands…two more purchases aint happening

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Full disclosure: I’ve played a TON of GW2. I really, really enjoy the griffon. I know it’s not the best possible way to get around, but it’s a lot of fun, for me. Finding spots to leap from, aim for, leap again… yeah, sometimes I miss and flop around like an idiot, but when it works, it feels so ALIVE.

That said, I can’t stand the skyscale. I’ve only used it as part of the storyline, so it probably gets better with more mastery unlocks, but that first taste was more than enough to discourage me from even bothering to collect it.

And on a small tangent: the roller beetle is HILARIOUSLY fun, I wouldn’t mind if WoW stole that, too.

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Well if what you are saying is what they are planning it doesn’t sound very exciting, but more of an added chore.

Who knows though, maybe they have another plan in mind.

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uh ok? Doesn’t mean it will work exactly the same.

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It takes like 20+ days and about $30 worth of currency to get the skyscale. I had 9 max level characters grinding the shards you need for each zone, and would have quit if I had to do it all on one character.

Unfortunately it was designed the way it is on purpose so it doesn’t replace all the 5+ other mounts you have.

Conversely, the other ones are free, and the griffon costs $20 worth of gold with only a small quest. It’s absurd how hard they shot themselves in the foot over that.

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There wasn’t even gameplay footage…pretty sure an interview with Ion he states he’s excited for alpha. Meaning they’re still at the concept stage for everything.

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You haven’t even seen enough to know this, but even if it’s ripped from it, so what?

Every great idea Blizzard has had before these botchfest expansions have been based on improving another game’s idea.

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It doesn’t stop there.

the “scandal” of 2021, was basically a mirror of riot games’ scandal of 2019, and the collapse of wow in cata was a carbon copy of everquest’s collapse in 2001.

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OK, I laughed.

But still, we haven’t seen anything yet. We can and should hold Blizzard’s feet to the fire, but we haven’t seen anything of even remote value yet.

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All I really care about is that it is available from the launch day. No waiting for an arbitrary patch cycle to get flying. It’s a new kind of flying? OK. I can only do it with my new mounts? OK. IDC.

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Are you expecting to ever see anything of remote value or are you going to temper your standards by release?

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I do, but I intend to be very critical when I see something I don’t like, too.

We really just haven’t seen enough. I think the evoker model sucks, but apparently there’s more to that coming. Everything else we just have no basis to form an opinion.

The problem is it’s a lot of good ideas that fall on proper execution.

Dragon riding could be more fun than flying, or the literal worst thing ever. The prof changes could be a step in the right direction, or they don’t go far enough and botch it. The talents can be great or they overbalance them and ruin any variety. It’s just too soon to tell.

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I never played those games so it’ll be new to me if it is like that.

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I was happy at first but the more I think about it the more I suspect they are going to make flight as painful as possible. Wouldn’t surprise me if starting out the mounts are little more than demon hunter wings. I don’t want to have to play an arcade game every time I try to fly and I really hope that isn’t how it works out.

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Oh it’s very input and timing intensive in gw2. Just getting around everywhere turns things not only into a jumping puzzle but a rhythm game.