Blizzard said flying trivialized the content then advertises as a feature!

[Deleted]

Stop bitching their argument here is actually pretty solid. Though flying is very comfortable it severely disconnects you from experiencing the world, since you skip most of it. Thus their idea to have people properly "experience" the world content before making it just a background wallpaper through flying is a decent way to deal with it.
However the time needed before you can unlock flying can be argued as (way) to long. Since after half a year of world quests everyone who has played for that long just wants to get things done and doesnt really "experience" the world anyway.

[Niwes]

its marketing.
they lie, they stretch reality, they do not care for what was said previously

they just want to sound and look cool

marketing produces the biggest bullshit i have ever come in contact with in my proffessional career. (software development)

TL;DR marketing is just a bunch of shit with very very very few exceptions which are really remarkable and make an impression.

exactly this.

i am a sw dev too, and have exp exactly the same

marketing aims to all that mentally retarded idiots out there, forgetting very fast what has happened yesterday and can be catched by a lot of bling bling and some key words in fat letters.

and it offers the illusion to companies like blizz, that they can save money by going the "least possible effort" route in development and game design, build cheap shit, and selling that shit to millions just by a giant marketing campaign. and since that shit works with all the retards out there, we, as customers, get cheap shit instead high quality.

or in short: marketing is cancer.

[SirCowdog]

I see no problems here at all.

It's because you aren't looking.

Putting flight behind a wall of requirements that makes it so that flying is virtually worthless isn't what people who enjoy flying want. Flying that can only be used on content which is completely spoiled by flying isn't what people want either.

Experiencing zones the way they were created.

Oh, you mean how during TBC through MoP was? Where flying complimented, but did not utterly destroy, the content.

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exactly this.

i am a sw dev too, and have exp exactly the same

marketing aims to all that mentally retarded idiots out there, forgetting very fast what has happened yesterday and can be catched by a lot of bling bling and some key words in fat letters.

and it offers the illusion to companies like blizz, that they can save money by going the "least possible effort" route in development and game design, build cheap shit, and selling that shit to millions just by a giant marketing campaign. and since that shit works with all the retards out there, we, as customers, get cheap shit instead high quality.

or in short: marketing is cancer.

The thing is, Legion's open world really isn't that terrible. It's pretty good for what it is. The problem is that it is trying to be a super good ground game in a world with a history of flying players. People don't just forget a playstyle that they had the better part of a decade to get used to just because Blizzard says "Look at this cool ground stuff!"

[mmochump]

I'm pretty much done with not having flying for excessive months after an expac launch. I get it;Blizzard wants us to see all the shiny those millions in development bought...but after a month or two, I've seen them. Being dazed and having to deal with a mob train that I want absolutely nothing to do with is not content, it's just a huge anger inducing pain in the butt. There's very high odds I will be buying the next expac, a month sub and then lapsing till they announce the flying patch, I just can't accept them holding flying hostage anymore.

[Deleted]

Of COURSE it would suck, because you'd be flying over areas designed without taking flight into consideration.

But consider zones that presented challenges to flying players in the same way Legion currently does for grounded players. Wouldn't be so "bland and silly" then.


This is the intellectual blind spot that people always seem to run into when arguing ground vs air.

Because having to do things in a 3D space as opposed to the "2D" ground things we currently have is an inconvenience. Resources located in the air would just be an inconvenience. Same goes for fighting mobs. Then you need to take into account whether or not the WoW engine can do that kind of stuff properly. There's also the issue of making things look good. You can't have the sky littered with mobs at every altitude so you'd need to limit how high mounts can go more than currently which would only make things in the sky more visible. Now throw in a bunch of mobs to make flying "challenging" and you're looking at a shit show, at least from my PoV.

[rda]

Because having to do things in a 3D space as opposed to the "2D" ground things we currently have is an inconvenience. Resources located in the air would just be an inconvenience. Same goes for fighting mobs. Then you need to take into account whether or not the WoW engine can do that kind of stuff properly. There's also the issue of making things look good. You can't have the sky littered with mobs at every altitude so you'd need to limit how high mounts can go more than currently which would only make things in the sky more visible. Now throw in a bunch of mobs to make flying "challenging" and you're looking at a shit show, at least from my PoV.

How games ever evolved from 2d 16-color sprites...

[Deleted]

Blizzard wants to completely remove it but can't. They introduced it as a way to fix the messed up flightpaths that were later fixed in WotLK. Since they can't remove it, they will at least comercialize it and cut loses.

Flying completely removes the little "danger" and inconveniences of world content has left.

The same way millions of people are unhappy of its parcial removal, many millions are happy about its parcial or complete removal.

What danger? If I want danger, I will pull more mobs, or tackle enemies which are group targets by myself, just like I do now.

And regarding inconvenience: It would be a good thing if this inconvenience would provide us a sense of immersion. Unfortunately, all I think of when I get to spend longer with travels and detours is the layout of a supermarket - where you also are sent into a maze so you travel longer, and thus probably spend more money on things which you don't need. Same thing goes for WoW zone layout in WoD, and even more so in Legion. These mazes don't exist to make our game experience better. They exist to waste our time. This is exactly the same reason why we still have flight masters instead of a portal network. Sitting passively on a flight path again kills some of your gaming time. They do everything now to keep us longer in the game.

Ground play is OK while leveling, where you actually discover new zones. But when you are into the endgame, with its constant repetition of the same things (farming, WQs / dailys, etc.), this "inconvenience" becomes toxic.

[rda]

They do everything now to keep us longer in the game.

If someone somehow fails to notice the *deliberate* attempts to make players sub for significantly longer than what would be warranted by content with 7.2 in its face, they are hopeless.

[Deleted]

creating inconveniences to present them as challenges is a terrible game design.
Exactly what Blizz is doing.

Also this. PvE should be about us fighting enemies, not about slogging through mud etc. If I want some kind of that game, I would go play a survival simulation.

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Oh look another post that proves this topic has nothing new to explore. Same old people saying the same old things. Boaring.

And you conveniently do the same while having nothing to contribute. Congratulations.

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if it is added from day one, or even during leveling yes it trivialized content

the way they did it in wod and legion though is that you get it AFTER you done the content for quite a fair share before being able to fly over it

It does not, get it into your head. You don't have flying in dungeons and raid, and this is all that matters. If open world is somehow a challenge for you, than you must be bad at this game.

[Deleted]

I really don't understand all this threads about something so easy to solve/see:

- MoP and prior, they had X subscribers, no need to gate things to keep subs up;

- From WoD to now, they have Y subscribers, they need to slow down people to keep the subs going.

I mean, it seems a rational solution from a Company to maximise profit without sacrificing something but player time (or they can make realistic size landcape so you need 10 minute to go from A to B even with flying mount). Because, if you want to be honest, flying just speed up things, nothing more, nothing less. Forget all the bullshit about immersion, world pvp, secret caves, and so on. For 90% of players flying is just something that speed up daily WoW actvities. But you can play the game just fine without it.

We have two idiotic side: 1) Fly ruins the game it shuold be removed forever/ 2) Not fly ruins the game i will unsub because of it.

I stay in middle: "I can't fly? Oh well, i will just be careful or buy the saddler. They added fly back? Good, i don't see why i shuold not fly now that i can". Everything else is just bla bla bla.

[Allenseiei]

What danger? If I want danger, I will pull more mobs, or tackle enemies which are group targets by myself, just like I do now.

And regarding inconvenience: It would be a good thing if this inconvenience would provide us a sense of immersion. Unfortunately, all I think of when I get to spend longer with travels and detours is the layout of a supermarket - where you also are sent into a maze so you travel longer, and thus probably spend more money on things which you don't need. Same thing goes for WoW zone layout in WoD, and even more so in Legion. These mazes don't exist to make our game experience better. They exist to waste our time. This is exactly the same reason why we still have flight masters instead of a portal network. Sitting passively on a flight path again kills some of your gaming time. They do everything now to keep us longer in the game.

Ground play is OK while leveling, where you actually discover new zones. But when you are into the endgame, with its constant repetition of the same things (farming, WQs / dailys, etc.), this "inconvenience" becomes toxic.

By "danger" i currently mean player encounters, since WoW outdoor pvp is for keyboard headsmashers but you can also skip the intended way to deal with certain zones. You can just fly unhindered, grab whatever is there and leave. In PvP servers you completely negate any player encounters except for the moment you unmount to finish whatever you're doing. Some people like this ofcourse, but many others don't.

You actually think there are mazes in the zones lol. I guess you are the type of player who wants things fast and now and have this mentality where WoW is an evil company that wants to take our money. In this topic about inconveniences its completely subjective and we can argue all you want, however its really sad that you keep saying that "they want to keep us longer in the game" when you are already paying a monthly subscription. Like they owe you to play this game and you are forced to play and you just want to end it asap.

If groundplay is OK, then what about new zones in the patches? Should they magically make them unavailable to fly?
Discussing flying vs no flying is unending, so we should end this by saying we agree to disagree.

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I really don't understand all this threads about something so easy to solve/see:

- MoP and prior, they had X subscribers, no need to gate things to keep subs up;

- From WoD to now, they have Y subscribers, they need to slow down people to keep the subs going.

I mean, it seems a rational solution from a Company to maximise profit without sacrificing something but player time (or they can make realistic size landcape so you need 10 minute to go from A to B even with flying mount). Because, if you want to be honest, flying just speed up things, nothing more, nothing less. Forget all the bullshit about immersion, world pvp, secret caves, and so on. For 90% of players flying is just something that speed up daily WoW actvities. But you can play the game just fine without it.

We have two idiotic side: 1) Fly ruins the game it shuold be removed forever/ 2) Not fly ruins the game i will unsub because of it.

I stay in middle: "I can't fly? Oh well, i will just be careful or buy the saddler. They added fly back? Good, i don't see why i shuold not fly now that i can". Everything else is just bla bla bla.

They already used other ways to slow down the pace of players. Dailies that are locked behind reputations is one of them, since they can make sure they last the amount of time they want. This was done for example in the Trial of the Crusader, back in WotLK as a time gate. Remember how they also locked wings of raids by weeks? I do. Remember the 2-3 item drops per 40 people in raids? Minimum gear requirements for bosses that required weeks of prior clearing? Valor points? Limited attempts? etc.

[Arbs]

I really don't understand all this threads about something so easy to solve/see:

- MoP and prior, they had X subscribers, no need to gate things to keep subs up;

- From WoD to now, they have Y subscribers, they need to slow down people to keep the subs going.

I mean, it seems a rational solution from a Company to maximise profit without sacrificing something but player time (or they can make realistic size landcape so you need 10 minute to go from A to B even with flying mount). Because, if you want to be honest, flying just speed up things, nothing more, nothing less. Forget all the bullshit about immersion, world pvp, secret caves, and so on. For 90% of players flying is just something that speed up daily WoW actvities. But you can play the game just fine without it.

We have two idiotic side: 1) Fly ruins the game it shuold be removed forever/ 2) Not fly ruins the game i will unsub because of it.

I stay in middle: "I can't fly? Oh well, i will just be careful or buy the saddler. They added fly back? Good, i don't see why i shuold not fly now that i can". Everything else is just bla bla bla.

I just go with, I will grab flying when I do. It isn't a burden on me to not have it & having it is a nice thing to have.

But I do remember before gold inflation, Buying flying training was a big deal & you felt proud about it regardless how quick you got it. I feel if they brought back buying flying training instead of the achievement or actually doing something to get it than so many people would complain it is to expensive. Even if it was just 10,000 cause of inflation. But back in 2,000 for Expert Riding was expensive, I remember getting your Epic Mount training in Vanilla was expensive.

Like I don't think flying trivializes content at all, but people want to skip everything & finish everything so quickly. That sometimes their needs to be gating not as excessive. But in small form, like weekly caps on valor type of gating. It just seems some players don't want to stick around longer than a month & want to cramp everything in that month & be done with it.

[Berengil]

The Broken Isles, barring some spots in Highmountain and Suramar City (which was designed to make you think on your feet and learn where the baskets are), are laid out well enough that I didn't mind not flying while leveling up

Laid out well? Whut?

As usual, see something on your minimap you need to get to, and then you have to ride out of the way and halfway around a mountain to get to it. While clipping on roots and rocks and other crap and having to be constantly hitting the space bar. To jump over things that any mount should be able to ride right over.

Suramar? F that place. In its behind. With an iron stick. Trying to find the way down or up to the next level of the city, avoiding 35436575278 elite mobs patting everywhere, treasures and rares that I can't be arsed to try to find because: where the f is it? it's right here on my minimap. I did the absolute bare minimum to complete the story there. I'll be back in a few days when I unlock flying to actually explore and get the treasures and hunt the rares. You know, when I don't have to poke into every corner looking for the way to go.

[Lord Pebbleton]

Maybe because no one would ever shut up about flying not being allowed in the Broken Isles?
First you make them desperate by screaming at the top of your lungs to have it back, and when you do get it, it's something shameful.

[Deleted]

Who exactly as the ads intended for? Are they reaching out to the millions that left game because they took away something and now using it as a carrot to come back?

Well, based on the IQ of whiners and the level of their skill to read i'd say it's aimed at them.

[Maudib]

It trivialises it AT THE START that is their main point, and unlocking it requires you to play the game before trivialising it.

So... help me out here... what content did I level in? I mean... if flight is allowed at max level, didn't I experience most of the content already getting to max level? Suramar could easily have flying guards making it more challenging for people who enjoy flying.

And yet Blizz says "after the content is consumed" flying is made available. So that means the game is over now? How long will we have to repeat this content until the next expansion then?

If flying messes with immersion and the way they intend on you experiencing it.. why do alts get to level with flying from level 100 once the main achieves it? With this reasoning, wouldn't they want you to experience the content with the new classes and abilities? I don't get it.

It's like they tell you how special your new little puppy is... teach you how to feed it, care for it, train it... then they shoot it and then give you a bag of puppies with a rock in it and throw it in the creek.

The point of this thread is simple... Blizzard made some bullshit case for why flying was bad for the game... locked it behind a fairly long gating system... then come out advertising this sweet new feature. Just like games now are having content removed then sold back to you as DLC.


Which is better? Allowing me to fly after leveling to max level on every toon, or making me wait 8 months before I can fly on my main... then ruining the "immersion" for my alts?

[Deleted]

here is the real issue man:

you demanding links is only acceptable when you have done your very own personal extensive search and found nothing, thus leading you to believe there must be some sort of potential hidden or super obscure statement.

when you ask for proof about a statement that is easily sourcible, you simply look like bad (or incredibly lazy) and come off sounding like "show me a link" is you only counter-argument.

Doesn't work that way at all. If you post an argument, you need to support it with evidence.

I don't know why everyone thinks I have some sort of snarky ulterior motive. All I have ever said is to provide a link so that everyone is on the same page. Go look at my first post in this thread. Those are my exact words.

However, I'm totally shocked that this is the calibre of people I'm dealing with on these forums. People who are so hyper defensive and idiotic that they believe that providing evidence to support their claims isn't necessary. That's just basic common sense thrown out the window.

[Celadir]

Yeah, but WoW designers think it trivializes content. Don't you agree? Probably not.^^

Myself, I think that flying makes things WAY more convenient (like you), but I can understand it if it is gated if designers think it means *overall*(so for the majority of the playerbase) a better gaming experience.

It would absolutely trivialize the content, no argument there. Agree 100%.

From a design standpoint, rogues, druids, mages, priests, and demon hunters all have class mechanics that allow players to essentially do exactly what flying would in terms of trivializing content:

1. Stealth through mobs directly to objectives
2. Slow-fall, levitate, and glide off of a mountain to completely avoid obstacles and/or mobs

This is where my confusion occurs because certain aspects already implemented make the content less important from day 1. I leveled as feral and had an exponentially easier time questing when comparing myself to other players without a stealth ability. I'm happy with this expansion, but I also have basically had the advantages of flying (trivializing content) since launch.

[Raelbo]

They know full well that flying is a great feature desired by many players.

The entire reason they are holding flying back for a long time is because they know it is a great feature desired by many players. They are holding it back as a cheap way to try and make people pay for longer, or return to the game if they managed to unsub.

Sorry, but I can't agree with this conclusion. It flies in the face of what Blizzard have actually said and it just doesn't seem like a very sensible approach.

While it is clearly true that with WoD and Legion they have brought flying in later in the expansion because they understand that it is a feature desired by many players, I cannot take seriously the notion that they withheld it in the first place as a strategy to get people who left because because of a lack of flying in the first place. It just doesn't make sense. If you assume that people are going to come back with the introduction of flying, that means the reason they left in the first place was due to a lack of flying. Which means you're better off have flying there from early, not losing them, and not running the risk that they don't come back when you do re-introduce flying.

Besides which we already have a far better motive for their actions: They genuinely believe that flying is bad for the game because it breaks the immersion. They allow the return of flying because they sense that due to people liking the feature so much, it will be better to compromise and allow it back, because in the end that will retain more subs than withholding it even longer for "the good of the game".

Now I personally thoroughly disagree with Blizzard's notions about why flying is bad for the game. I can accept their arguments about immersion at the start of the expansion, but by the time someone has played through the content for Pathfinder Part 1, I see no further benefit to withholding it any longer. But that is a very different argument from claiming they're being disingenuous about it.

[Leih]

The developers think it trivialises content and would prefer it was removed; the marketing team know very well that it's popular and are going to advertise the shit out of it when it comes back to the game.

You guys do know that Blizzard is a corporation with different departments and not just 2-3 guys in front of a computer?