That’s a bad idea because then Blizzard would simply go “no air currents in this zone. Except that you can ride a flight master’s griffon in fine, no problem. but no air currents!”
Or you’d see “Sure, hop on the quest giver’s flying mount, air currents galore. No flying otherwise!”
Yeah, horribly bad idea.
Well I thought the OP had one of the worst ideas I’ve seen in a while, until I read your post.
It’s sad that you are probably right.
I’d rather be wrong, truth be told. But … Blizzard has built a reputation for stuff like that.
People continue to repeat that tired old excuse that “players will play more if they are forced to do boring, pointless, grindy content to access what they want.”
So are they playing more? If you include all the people who have entirely left the game since wod, when they started pushing features like removal or restriction of flight and accompanying grind to repeatedly earn it back, followed by pruning to make gameplay slower, level scaling, ilvl scaling, allied races with forced leveling grind, and more I no doubt have missed…
So how many people are actually playing more, given that the mau reported is independent of the number of subscribers, which is now a fraction of what it was at the beginning of wod?
How well exactly is that working? I don’t know anyone who is playing more. I know a lot of people who are either playing less or never log into retail anymore. Even my friends who quit during BfA and were planning on coming back for classic…haven’t.
As much as I want to agree, and I really do want to agree, there is expectation and there is reality.
And the unfortunate reality is that people do not seem to be leaving in any kind of numbers that might shake any sense loose in the development cages.
I suspect that the player-base follows a much more complicated trajectory than a simple “wandering off” scenario.
I do wish that producing fail after fail, as has been the penchant lately, would produce a predictable drop in attendance. But players seem impervious to that. They are largely unmoved. They keep logging in, they keep playing.
I have Felicia’ed on over to classic and it would take some act of developmental contrition to get me back on retail. But I am still giving them a sub. And at the end of the day what more of me is there to them?
WoW has a zombie population that shambles online no matter what happens in the game. The Devs know that they can do anything without losing. So they just make their own lives easier by pruning, taking things away, copy pasting WQs, rigging up old content with a skin and calling it new.
There are no more corners, they have all been cut away and we are left with the bland, soulless result.
And most people keep showing up. I keep giving them money to play in the same ballpark as my friends and family.
Maybe one day I will pass on to another game or a better place.
But until then I keep scouring the phoned-in efforts of the devs…
looking for brains.
Not saying its a good way of thinking. Short term, it may work. But long term, making players waste their Valuable Time? That’s how you LOSE customers.
When you don’t treat your customers as Valuable Commodities, you’ll find that some other company will treat them as a Valuable Commodity. And they’ll have a new customer as a result.
again I must ask. How so? as it is Flying mounts do nothing for ~half an expansion. With my idea We would have gliding flying mounts while leveling and then limited flying with a game mechanic until pathfinder. by the second pathfinder the limitation would be made virtually irrelevant except for the people who afk out of attack range for a period of time longer than it would take for the game to auto kick to the character select screen.
No, but people who complain about flying, and want ground only, are the first to whine about mount dazing
Then you shouldn’t be speaking or asking for changes to flying! now be gone!
The further you go to make flying less fun and useful, the more people you will drive from the game. So you’re okay with that?
how is that less fun? a game mechanic you have to think about how you are going to use it vs something that just exists, for free, with no effort.
in the same vain the retail starting level experience is the same. abilities are free and unlimited. its not a “playing the game” its a slogg of just getting passed it until the actions taken actually matter.
How is gliding less useful than no flying for 10 levels?
How is a little flying with a glide less useful than no flying for 6 months to a year?
How is 30 mins of flight with out having to land for a min or so less useful than No flying for 6 months to a year?
How is 1 hour of uninterrupted flight a relevant issue compared to finally unlocking it (assuming you completed pathfinder 2)
its a negligible annoyance at best. hardly an inconvenience.
No. If you don’t understand how nerfing something that is fun into the ground and making it utterly useless is “less fun”, then it sounds like you’re already a rising star in the dev department, where that is their specialty.
Go harass someone in real life with your ridiculous schemes for making useful things useless and adding major annoyance and slowdowns to everyday trivial tasks.
If you want to get many more people to quit, you’re doing it right. And since no one could actually be that detached from reality, it’s clear to me that’s what you’re doing.
that’s how it seems when I read your counter argument (or lack there of)
I fail to see how its not actually a major buff. is there some sort of miss communication here? im not advocating for slower flying.
If you cant see how my idea makes a useful thing actually use-able then we have reached a point where it would be best to leave it at “agree to disagree” U.U
I’m not seeing flight being not available but in name only, while being totally useless as a “major buff”. You call it “flight” but it’s worse than rp walking. But I’m sure that people who are stupid as you think they are will take your word for it that it’s a “major buff”.
This is my idea.
With it, in 9.0 flying mounts would be useful for getting over things where as they would be ground mounts and useless as flying mounts for half the expansion with the system we have now.
when pathfinder 1 is unlocked you would be able to fly for 30 mins. if you need more time, land for like 30 seconds and and take off for another 30 mins.
Remember during this time IF kept as it is currently you would have NO FLYING, NONE.
With pathfinder 2 it would be an hour long flight bar. if you need more time land for 60 seconds and take off for another hour.
need to get going quick? take off after 5 seconds after landing as you would have recharged 5 mins worth of flight.
Hop and go 1 second would give you 1 additional min of flight.
only in the final stage halfway through the end of the expansion would it be a minor nerf compared to the full unlocked version we have now. but ALL the time before unlocking that final part its a Major buff because we would for all intents and purposes have already had flying unlocked.
Well, using your logic, why not some sort of control system for ground mounts? So we have to pay attention to them and not get tossed off. Hey, maybe if we’re foolish enough to let our mount bolt, we’re locked out of mounting at all for ten minutes! Doesn’t that sound like fun?
No? But I’m sure it would just be a negligible annoyance, not an inconvenience.
Oh, if we don’t want free and unlimited, maybe they can add a mechanic to not fall off taxis, too. Because we wouldn’t want any aspect of this game to be too easy.
On the contrary, it means that I’m doing everything on the ground, and while it’s a bit less convenient, I’m not finding it a game-breaking experience. Other than the occasional mountain in my way, it’s not a big deal.
Exactly lol. That is perhaps the funniest part of the flight discussions. Flight master npc 1 says. Here champion, hero, general, ocommander, or whatever the devs like to call you lol. I know the flying mounts you have in your inventory cant fly until you get rep with irrelevant faction number whatever, but we flight masters have figured out a workaround that problem haha. So hop on my mount, and it will take you to my other pal flight master #2. And of course creepy Khadgar always saying hop on mount with me champion, and snuggle up close to me, because I know you cant fly by yourself, and it’s going to be a bumpy turbulent flight if you know what I mean. Btw champion, do you want to join the mile high club? The clowns(devs), cant even come up with story, lore reasons why you can fly on 95% of pixel world, but not the other 5% lol.
I think there are better ways to encourage no flying without removing it entirely.
For example, give players a stacking bonus to experience/honor/AP gained for every 10 minutes they remained grounded. The buff disappears as soon as you fly somewhere.
Another possibility (though less appealing) is to introduce a resource cost to flying mounts. For example, you have to fuel up (or feed) your mechanical (or organic) mount, and flying costs fuel (or food). This is the kind of thing I’d hope to see on a “survival server” where special rules exist such as hunger and thirst.
Simply making flying mounts move slower seems likely to piss players off rather than discourage them from flying. They’ll still fly everywhere, just hate it now.