Locking "steady flight" behind Pathfinding is an accessibility issue

In Development The War Within Beta Test
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I have no idea what their reasons are but it was a deliberate decision so they have to have reasons

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I would love to know what they are.

Players generally fall into 2 camps here.

  1. They don’t care, they prefer DR anyways.
  2. They hate it, they prefer regular flying (or use it often) - no explanation given.

You could argue 2 is no longer a majority, sure, but why the mystery? Who is actually benefitting by this implementation? Who benefits from the lack of communication here?

This just feels like an unnecessary L.

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63

Do they? I’m not so sure.

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64

There’s some arguments in this thread that are incorrect. My choice of the best nonsensical argument was “If you can’t fly then you can just ride a mount like you used to have to do”. The TWW zones assume you can fly. It is impossible to ride to many areas where quests occur.

What I don’t understand is people for whom this does not affect at all making arguments against access. If it doesn’t affect you then move on. Have a nice day.

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65

Their intent was not to “punish” you. Stop playing victim.

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66

Then why is static flight still locked when Dragonriding is available from the beginning? Still haven’t seen a good reason for it.

It’s a valid accessibility or comfort concern. I’ve had several people I played with who could otherwise do content (Heroic raiding, M+ up to around KSM, etc) who just don’t find themselves wanting to engage with the world content because of Dragonriding, and would rather just not deal with it by not playing Retail at all.

If we’re going to have Dragonriding up from the start, we might as well have static flight up from the start as well.

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67

Probably because Blizz considers Sky Riding to be the default and they want players to be used to that fact.
In particular new ones.

The Dawnbreaker Dungeon and the new Aerial combat come to mind.

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68

they could just set dragonriding as the default then. no need to make people jump through hoops in order to use the other option. if someone wants to use steady flight instead that should be their own choice, not something blizzard holds out of reach until they’ve done an arbitrary set of actions

also i’m pretty sure you’re just coming up with possible reasons yourself. you don’t know blizzard’s reason–or if they even have a real reason beyond “well that’s how it’s been since WoD”

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Of course. This is a forum where we air our opinions if you didn’t know.

Pro tip…when someone says…

that signifies they aren’t sure and it’s an opinion.

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ah. i read the phrasing there as “blizz thinks X, and that’s probably why Y,” rather than “blizz probably thinks X, and if they do then that’s why Y.” my bad then

i feel my other point stands tho. the idea of limiting everyone to avoid confusing new players seems silly

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Regular player flight was added with the Burning Crusade expansion in 2007.  Dragonriding wasn’t added until the Dragonflight expansion in 2022.  For fifteen years I had no problem with regular flying because it was slower and steadier, perfect for someone like me who is more sensitive than most to motion sickness.

Dragonriding completely upended that.  Now suddenly I’m being treated as second-class whereas before everyone was on an equal playing field.  The current situation is absolutely unacceptable, and all you’re doing is ironically being an able-ist yourself.

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I don’t consider that to be a reason at all. Not speaking to you specifically but more to Blizzard’s viewpoint- the playerbase is aware time and effort went into Dragonriding, but not everyone playing this game wants to relearn the flying aspect of this game. Dragonriding is a neat addition, but it’s not a groundbreaking innovation. Certainly not worth alienating people.

If this trend continues I’ll basically be playing with a smaller pool of friends who don’t always stick around for an entire season. :confused:

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The good news is that there are no quests in TWW that require dynamic flight that you cannot also opt to use a vehicle instead. You are still very much able to use your ground mounts to navigate the world.

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“The Fourth Seat” in Chapter 2 of Isle of Dorn expects you to fly to Freywold Village. There is no ride along nor a vehicle option.

Ground mount took 3m30s to gallop there. Flight master would have been 45 seconds if they offered it as a quest option to fly there. Skyriding took 40 seconds.

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In other words, classic Blizzard spite.

“oh you dont want to dragonride you say, well you can run there. The roads that way, it will be annoyingly long tho. A flight path? Why would we do that? You have dragon riding.”

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76

The point isn’t that you can’t walk.

The point is that static flight exists as a system, and if Dragonriding is going to be available three quests into the new expansion, there is absolutely no reason for static flight to remain locked as well.

Speaking as somebody who loves Dragonriding, this is the wrong answer. “Just ride your horse” while watching people fly above you in the same content is wrong. There’s no reason for static flight to be disabled until you complete the main story thread and explore the zones.

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77

Just doing some of the side quests in Dorn, I’ve been sorta looking at the overworld ground pathing as I go, and… it looks miserable as hell.

In the second area, you’d literally be wading through tides of mobs to get to main quest objectives. I’m glad I’m comfortable with Dragonriding, but some people are not.

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So the entirety of the MSQ can be completed within an hour or so to unlock normal flying?

Or will be it dragged out over months with quests and zones time gated behind future patches?

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The bigger problem here is that normal flying isn’t available when Dragonriding is.

There’s really no decent reason to allow one and not the other at this point, unless the intent is to force people who don’t want to engage with Dragonriding to either force themselves to do it or deal with playing through an expansion designed with flight in mind, but without flight.

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“The good news is that there are no quests in TWW that require dynamic flight that you cannot also opt to use a vehicle instead. You are still very much able to use your ground mounts to navigate the world.”

That is not the case. There are dozens of quests where flying is needed. I am most of the way into the third zone on my highest character - and have needed dynamic flight constantly - and more often in the third zone.

Sure there are times you could use a ground mount but it would not be fun. For example in some areas in ringing deeps there are areas packed with hostile mobs. You have to fly over them to a ledge a few times. Riding a ground mount through them would not be ‘fun’.

I sat with my friend with one arm for hours this week and helped with hotkeys, their mouse and the UI and which mount to use. It took some time but they are getting proficient now and have decided to persist. However, there is no solution for people who get motion sickness or who have different abilities than my friend.

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