Flying is not gameplay and has not been gameplay since Burning Crusade when it was a literal vehicle to different quest hubs.
Flying is a broken convenience mechanic that enables exploitative use of the Z axis in unproductive ways. Furthermore, if the only reason you want flying is to reduce the time it takes to do ‘chores’, then Blizzard needs to make those things feel more like gameplay.
The older WoW gets, the more dated mounts are becoming. Mounts are nothing more than pixels, sound, and animation that amount to a very pretty movement and speed modifer. Games that incorporate mounting are doing it in ways that impact gameplay or extend your character’s capabilities.
Mount Equipment could just be the beginning.
It’s time for mounts to get a revamp. If Blizzard can create an entirely new mode of gameplay for Battle Pets, they can create a meaningful system for Mounts. The only thing stopping Blizzard from making mounts an actual extension of our characters is the desire for it.
Edit: I’m not saying remove flying. I’m saying flying and ground mounts are so bare and shallow that it’s boring and could benefit from new systems. They are almost unchanged since they were added to the game, with the first change in 10+ being the Mount Equipment interface.
Also I know that everything in the game is pixels and animation. The difference is that’s ALL mounts are.
Our characters are nothing more than pixels, sound and animation that amount to a very pretty movement and speed modifier with the added ability to damage other pixels.
Just stop already. Nobody had a problem with flying until the devs turned it into an invented problem.
I’m gonna be that guy – I like the Pathfinder model.
I agree that there are drawbacks to flying in terms of gameplay – largely in severely limiting player interaction with other players in a variety of ways.
However, there is a time when flying being available is appropriate and fun.
I don’t necessarily think that they’ve gotten it right with how Pathfinder has been timed in terms of content patch cycles, but in terms of its basic design, it’s a good system, and I like it.
While it would be nice to see stuff like actual mounted combat, where different mounts have different attacks that you can use as a cooldown, that’d be amazingly fun.
That said, when I see stuff like this:
…I just find myself missing the post dislike button, because I know this is just a veiled attack against flying. Flying is loved by (dare I say) most players because guarantees more time spent engaging content and less time traveling to said content. As much as I like the idea of mounted combat, I wouldn’t give up the convenience of flying quickly to content I actually want to engage in just to have it.
Sorry. For all the dirt-pounders, there’s always Classic.
They need to get rid of the idea of waiting until Part Two to allow flying. Make Part One more challenging (actually challenging and not just tedious), that would be a much better solution. Then have other Pathfinder achievements to unlock flying in new areas that get added.
I agree. Part Two tends to just add more grumble-inducing busy work. I could see Part One being more robust and requiring more effort than a mere rep grind, though. While I didn’t like Draenor Treasures, something like that which doesn’t have a time gate would be ideal.
Could the ever-more-vocal “make everything a challenge” lobby perhaps butt out of quality-of-life stuff, at least.
Like, enjoy your “challenges” but realise that not everybody plays a MMO for the same reasons that you do. This ain’t DarksekiroSoulsbourne, despite the devs’ best efforts to replicate that trend via the latest systems…
Not really interested in a big flying revamp. But I’d say to let people have flying up to their ground mount speed and pathfinder(if they want to stick with it) unlocking maximum speed. I think that’s just way more reasonable. I feel in modern gaming, it’s better to give more freedom to players when making a game that you want to be played by all. Walking from places to places work in a game that doesn’t have much content, but I don’t feel modern wow is that kind of game.
As for mounted gameplay, they tried with argent tournament and I don’t really want to see that as the main way I use my mounts. Make it a mini-game if you must, but that’s not how people should travel.
Well, let’s be real, there is something to be said for making the journey itself require some effort. I’ve gotten a character to 60 in Classic, and just like when I first started playing the game, the sense of accomplishment I felt was much stronger than it is now.
Additionally, I have a lot of really strong, positive memories of people helping me out, and sometimes using the environment to take revenge on someone who had killed me.
For example, when I was leveling my Warrior in Classic, as I was questing in Alterac Mountains, a warlock eight or nine levels higher than me killed me a few times, on his way to farm the elite ogres there.
He wasn’t strong enough to beat them without chain-fearing them and kiting, etc, so I waited behind the corner of a building where he couldn’t see me until he ran in my direction away from a pursuing ogre, and then bumrushed him. Ogre killed him for me, and I got to feel like a clever badass for a few minutes.
Flight does remove player-to-player interactions, and challenge forces a playerbase to band together. The problem is, consistent challenge doesn’t introduce any sense of accomplishment. At some point, the player needs to overcome situations which previously would’ve felt challenging or even hopeless.
Finding a good balance between the two is the key to a rewarding player experience.
Our characters are cutomizable with gear, specializations, talents and professions. There’s agency and development in our characters. What our characters do is entirely based on choices we make throughout the game as they gain in power and experience.
Mounts offer none of this. They’re only cosmetic, which is why I indicate that they’re just animation, pixels, and sound since they’re nothing more than that. Even battle pets are more than just some animated pixels that follow you because there’s a whole gameplay element unique to them.
Convenience is not game play. This is like describing fast travel as gameplay.
Guild Wars 2 includes mounts that have navigation abilities. Mounts in Conan Exiles can be used to augment combat and carry things.
Or I’ve been playing since Vanilla and had arena rating back before the revamped it. But okay.
That’s more or less what I said.
I’d like mounts to be more than what they are. If they can gamify battle pets they can do that to mounts too.
