Hello,
I imagine this topic has been beat to death and it’s not my intent to flog a dead parrot but does anyone have a bit of insight they can share regarding why the devs build in so much non-flying time in an expansion? (Btw, this is also not a rant nor a whine — but just a question.)
On a whim I went back and visited Tanaris Jungle today and it reminded me of how dang much fun it was doing dailies, ganking, and getting ganked when it was all in 3-D.
I fully realize that the devs want everyone to cover (on the ground) all the terrain created for the current or any expansion before taking to the air and just quickly flying over it. I completely understand that and I completely agree. But why do they cause that part of it to go on for sooooooooooo long?
I just completed Pathfinder Part 1 but I’d taken an extended break from WoW and didn’t jump back in and start leveling from 110 until this past August. But as we all know, you cannot complete Pathfinder 1 without traveling to every corner of Kul Tiras & Zandalar by ground repeatedly — and it made me realize that you poor blokes who’ve been playing continuously have been in every nook and cranny far more than I have. And we all still have I-don’t-know-how-many-more months to wait for Pathfinder Part 2 to be released and the time it will take to complete those requirements before becoming airborne.
By the way, this post is not really about travel time because it seems like the flightpath layout can get you pretty much anywhere in about the same amount of time it would take on your own flying mount. Instead, my question relates to the loads and loads of extra fun there is — in doing just about everything — when you’ve got flight. I don’t know what percentage of an Expansion’s life (as the latest Expansion) is flight-capable but I would love to see it tipped more in the direction of the latter.
Thanks
6 Likes
why? to make it take longer to burn through content so you stay subbed longer
any other reason is either in addition to this, or a lie
Part 2 wont come out until after 8.2 drops. It would be nice if they dropped it now, ya know, to boost player morale, but we both know that wont happen
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At the rate it’s going you can expect it around June.
Quite honestly, might be worth just letting your subscription lapse until then.
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Because flying ruins the game, they’ve said it multiple times. They want players to enjoy the game without flying. That’s why they’ve added flight whistles, more flight paths, etc.
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I do admit that although I am feeling that there is slightly more to do with the emissary quests giving more rewards, it would be better if could fly, I mean I just got max level in FF14 Stormblood and I’m flying everywhere to do everything…just not in the old zones, or capital cities but that’s no big deal when the majority of quests you can do in current content you can fly.
They don’t want you to fly on the tiny little land masses. They want you to try to find obscure paths with low res maps, navigate gullies, cliffs, and bridges, and hopefully catch the occasional stun from a worthless trash mob. That way you will feel totally immersed in this fantasy world. Because most high fantasy involved your character being a raving idiot who can’t find his way around the world or rides blindly through packs of monsters. Particularly if said hero has a stable full of mounts that could fly him to his objective.
But this way you get to do things more slowly, and for some reason they think that will outweigh the tedium of the current, unrewarding system and keep you subscribed and playing that much longer.
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In FF14 you have to fly to reach certain areas
That seems more like an opinion than fact. Different players have different ideas as to what’s “ruining the game”. For me, Warmode could be considered “ruining the game”, as some of the most interesting talents, and a balanced levelling speed, are locked behind a gamemode I hold no interest in. For someone else, Mythic+ could be considered “ruining the game”, as it favors certain group compositions, and could leave some classes/specs out entirely.
For some, the lack of flight is preferable. However, allowing flight provides players with the option of using flight or staying to the ground. Thus, there’s more reason to say “ruining the game” with flight disabled, as it entirely removes player’s choices and forces everyone to take the same path, whether they like it or not.
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I was gonna say WoW devs may be too lazy to design content that lends itself to flight, but given what I’ve been reading lately, I think the dev team is simply stretched too thin and the talent has been reassigned elsewhere.
This game is long in the tooth and they seem to be looking at other markets to invest man hours into. As long as they can rake in revenue via expansion sales WoW will stay viable, but not heavily invested in on their end. That’s why we get things like raids with so many levels of difficulty and Mythic +. Lots of mileage out of far less content.
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Blizzard says they want players to experience the game without flying, fact.
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Sure, but how many of us are there who are really enjoying it fully, ie aren’t continually looking lovingly aloft longing for the day of liftoff? (hehe — sorry but the alliteration just seemed to fit.)
My point is that, like a few other things in life, once you’ve had the full experience, you’re not really content without access to it all the time.
2 Likes
This is funny. They want you to enjoy it without flying, so they’ve added more flight paths.
What they want is you to enjoy it without having any control over travel. They want you to not see how small the are you are adventuring in actually is. They think it slows consumption of open world content but it actually makes it boring that much faster, because nobody wants to play a game where every few minutes you are basically /afk on a flight path as opposed to flying yourself somewhere.
Lazy and undermanned development is all this boils down to.
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Blizzard is wrong. Flying was a run away success. Labyrinthine landscapes are not. Taking away flying while making travel suck is a mistake. It just needs to be part of the game, or they need to make the map easier to get around. The game is clearly not better for it, they are trying to slow progression.
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But they mad getting around the map a ton easier…you can literally press a button and be teleported to the nearest flight path…
Then why not have player-directed flight?
Is the game really better off when the quest objective is 5 yards from the flight master?
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Alright, but since that’s the case, why disable players from utilizing flight themselves? Since players can just teleport around the map freely, with the only downside being a low cooldown timer between teleports, then what, exactly, is the harm in letting players take more time manually travelling through the scenery in the air?
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Because: pride, hubris, and spite.
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No, they didn’t. You gotta climb and fight up a mountain to realize you need to fight back down to get to a cave. It’s an utter waste of time. They don’t even put quest markers at the mouths of caves. If people were having so much fun walking around, they wouldn’t be using flying anyway.
There’s addons for that, bucko…