If all the people flying over it wanted to experience the world at ground level, wouldn’t they just do that instead of flying over it?
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No.
PF wasnt needed.
It exists for the sole reason that they were REMOVING flight entirely, players rebelled and PF was a tantrum tossing response.
It should never have been created. It was NEVER needed in this game.
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Nonsense. we couldnt get flight BEFORE until max level and grinding out gold so we DID experience the content, just didnt have to grind to X rep level with every stinking group in the game.
Secondly…stealth allows me to ‘skip’ content EVERYWHERE in the game, not just outside, so if we’re using that silly argument again, stealth is the worse offender.
I can literally…and have many times…stealthed right passed all that ‘content’ to the single target I needed to hit, then stealthed right back out…literally skipping EVERYTHING.
I cant do that indoors with flight. I can with stealth.
If one likes PF, fine, I get it. Another achievement…woohoo…but lets please stop this ‘flight is skipping content’ joke.
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Maybe for you.
Personally, I enjoy experiencing something admirable over and over. For instance, I still enjoy just riding thru Elwyn Forest. I also often find as the old becomes familiar and the dominant elements fade to the background, I see new things to enjoy.
Look, I am not saying: ‘Pathfinder is awesome, let’s throw a party for it’; I am saying: ‘There is value in it, if you choose to look’.
I have been on-again-off-again questing with three characters under level twenty (one is now over) which has forced me to slow down and really re-experience certain zones and that has improved my gaming experience and increased my enjoyment immeasurably. Yes, I miss riding because I love riding but I also love being so immersed in the world.
Pathfinder 1 is. Anything after that is just a cheap way of prolonging content for the sake of not being able to create compelling content.
Your entire argument is basically that pathfinder is good because it forces you to do content that people are tired of doing.
You know a better solution would just to make engaging content that people want to do.
How about letting everyone fly from the start but, without the required rep, you get bombarded with rockets that stun and damage until you get the rep required to be respected enough to openly use their air space? No need for Pathfinder to lock it behind rep and something something immersion.
EDIT: meant to reply to the OP and not a specific person.
Some of my most memorable moments happened in 8.0-8.1 doing invasions. It was so much fun having these grand wpvp battles; flying took that away the moment it became available.
Nothing wrong with flying, it brings a different set of opportunities, but I’m fine with it not being immediatley available but a reward to those that spend time in the game.
It ain’t even that time consuming, you can get it done in a month or two which is reasonable for an account-wide convenience.
I don’t’ understand what you mean by ‘skipping everything’. Just because you didn’t fight a bunch of mobs, doesn’t mean you weren’t there, in the middle of the experience.
I created my first Rogue (gnome, presently level 20-something) recently and get a huge kick out of stealth but I am still experiencing the world when I am in stealth, sometimes more so because I can stop in an enemy’s stronghold and really see the whole picture without worrying about being attacked.
How can they be tired of questing through new zones, experiencing new stores, meeting new characters?
If that’s tiresome to them then they shouldn’t even be playing this game.
yeah but yet if Blizzard imposed a “pathfinder” on stealth classes you can bet the rogue/druid forums would be on fire
To be honest I don’t really care if the space between WQ’s is empty. I’m not paying attention to people out there anyway. The WQ spaces? Those are about as “populated” as they have always been before and after flying.
I think a lot of people, a lot, conflate the decline of people being with flying when a large part of it is just the cyclical nature of an MMO. WoW has, barring it’s formative years, always come in the “high spike, slow decline” format. Players come in droves for the launch of an expansion, and then filter out over time (this effect was progressively getting worse leading up to Legion, and may have continued getting worse, we don’t know).
What makes the most sense:
- That people are showing up less and less to World Quests because there are simply less people overall.
- That people are showing up less and less to World Quests because they don’t need anything from them.
- That people got flying and suddenly don’t do World Quests.
- Some combination of 1 and 2.
- “Other.”
I think 1 + 2 makes the most sense combined. Less players plus less things they need. I don’t bother doing WQ’s in Zuldazar/Kul Tiras these days unless it’s very specific. Is that because I already got flying? Well… no, not really. I stopped doing those once I hit exalted; the bonus boxes hold no appeal to me so I’m not targeting them (which means unless I actually want the reward from something I have no long-term desire to do it).
You don’t see me doing Nazjatar and Mechagon, either. You could make the case that it’s because I have flying but my argument is largely that they’re very isolated self-sustained bits of content that provide no proper reward at this point. I did them regularly, even after flying, when it awarded gear and such; but now 8.3 is out and I’m doing that stuff.
However as the expansion goes on I’m doing that stuff less and less. Not because I have flying, but because the rewards seem less appealing when I’m not working towards anything. There’s no new content to prep for, visions are not interesting for as long as they need to be, and I actually find the aesthetic of Uldum/Vale to be really, dreadfully, upsettingly, boring, tacky, and ugly as sin.
I’m very tired of “secondary rewards”. Make new content for rewards, stop trying to make me do the same thing 8 times for 8 rewards.
You know what contributes to burn out? Having to do the exact same thing over and over to get a reward, and then later having to do it all over again without variation to get a new reward.
It’s boring and empty. Which is why a lot of people just don’t bother with world content once Blizzard has squeezed them dry. They might do World Content if it was worth doing, but… it’s not.
Arguing that flying makes it worth doing, well… it belies the issue that the content itself isn’t worth doing. At that point you’re putting a reward behind a very clear grind; the grind itself offers no reward.
I think Pathfinder is a terrible system meant to encourage us to do as much as possible and keep us “busy” while we wait.
It’s like your boss telling you to tidy your desk and rearrange the magazines so that you look busy. He doesn’t care if you’re being productive and if it creates a healthy work environment, he just needs you to look “busy”. No one likes that in a job and no one likes it in a game. Let’s stop pretending it’s a good design.
See, i feel like you’re being purposefully obtuse.
Pathfinder doesnt just open up after you finish all the new content. There are many more restrictions and lets not forget the 1 year or so delay.
Pathfinder is fine but the time gate is stupid. Explore all the new zones - fine, Rep grind - fine, quest grind - fine. Then after those 3 things flying should be available. Plain and simple.
Why can’t this apply just to warmode? WM already offers additional bonuses and perks, why can’t that be enough. Want to fly? Turn WM off.
Instead PvE players are ground into the dirt when they aren’t even part of the warmode crowd.
But pathfinder doesn’t care about PvP or PvE…
I don’t think pathfinder is any kind of reward but instead an additional chore-list of mandatory items that just wears away at the will to play.
Continual time gated grinds that are guaranteed to last the entire expansion such that flying becomes the afterthought the devs always wanted it to be.
If the content isn’t good enough, that isn’t something that can be fixed at the pathfinder level. That needs to be addressed at the development level.
Pathfinder isn’t trying to be good for the game. It is trying to press players down into the only existing molds and ensuring they can do nothing but obey.
It is the kind of ‘illusion of choice’ one might find on a small fold out table with three bent cards.
With its ability to strip away player agency, remove all options and force players into a regimented and predictable activity funnel, pathfinder is certainly good for the devs.
Unfortunately, the devs are not good for the game.
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So you enjoy riding through Elwyn Forest once in a while. This has zero to do with the sort of pseudo content that we “experience” when we clear the same road of the same trash packs every time we enter a zone, stopping only to get stuck on rocks and pebbles.
Pathfinder would be fine if each patch with a new zone(s) had it’s own pathfinder, and you unlocked flying as soon as you got one patch’s pathfinder achievement, rather than having to wait 7+ months to be able to fly.
This. Once all the quests and achievments have been met it should be unlocked. If they want to create another island or landmass that needs to be unlocked in the next patch then fine. But we shouldn’t have to wait for close to a year to unlock both.
Well your opinion is 100% wrong. PF is nothing but spite toward the playerbase.
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its the same argument they use against flight.
personally I dont see it that way for flight or stealth…but if they use it to hate on flight, then it applies to stealth…skipping is skipping…the mechanic used isnt the point.