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

[Deleted]

I don't need to take any such thing into consideration. TBC, Wotlk, Cata, and MoP all had flying and had zones and content which wasn't broken by flight.

Sure, I mean I'd like it if Blizzard overhauled the entire flight engine and really, FULLY used 3D space, but it's not really necessary to take it that far in order for the game to use flying instead of trying to ignore that it exists.

Oh, you mean how Blizzard throws a bunch of dazing trash mobs onto the ground EVERYWHERE right now? Right....that's somehow not a "shit show"?

Content won't be broken by flying in most cases(things like small puzzles to get a chest comes to mind but that's not really important). The problem with flying is that it allows you to skip everything in the world outside of the 10 mobs you need to kill for a quest. It's simply too convenient as it makes the game into mount, start flying in a direction, alt-tab, tab back in, fly straight down in the middle of anything, kill a mob, repeat. With the way things are right now you'll at least have a good while to go through the world and see the content that's there.

As for the mobs on the ground it makes sense. If you walk into a murloc camp there'll be murlocs on the ground. You can't throw mobs in the sky everywhere and expect it to look decently. Other than it looking decently it won't make sense.

Another thing is that the reply i made was about making flying somewhat challenging, which isn't really doable right now. I think that the current model where flying is unlocked partway through an expansion is good because it allows you to see things in the game and brings the convenience of flying back at some point. While you want to be able to fly from the start there are people who don't and at that point it's a matter of opinion more than anything else.

[Niwes]

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.



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

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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!"

imo nofyling is only useful if there is something dangerous on the ground (like elite mobs in vanilla or general mobs that kill you if there are more than 2-4). thats the reason why you plan your route, be careful, have dangerous moments etc. The whole immersion of noflying is dependent on how dangerous the world is.

if the world is like it is today, you will eventually get unmounted, brainless aoe kill a bunch of mobs, moint up again and go your way. so the only aspect of noflying is, that its just annoying.

or in short: noflying is only useful in a dangerous open world game. in a simplified streamline sandbox game, wow became, it is just annoying.

[Feuerbart]

So what's the definition? Is it "8 months from launch"? Then doesn't that show that what they mean by "flying is bad" is "flying is making you too fast, we want you to be slow for the first 8 months"??

No. That´s only your agenda. They don´t want us flying at all. So be happy the allow it due to tremendous uproar of the community when they announced it comming back. The definition is when they see it fit to reapear.

When you play Monopoly do you complain everytime you don´t roll a 6-6? That is what has become of too many wow players. Since 6-6 ist the max everything else is bad. But enough discussion you dont accept anything that is not your line of thinking anyway. Tollerance would bring this community miles further.

[Niwes]

to quote OP:

"i say: pisseasy content trivialized nofyling"

[Niwes]

No. That´s only your agenda. They don´t want us flying at all. So be happy the allow it due to tremendous uproar of the community when they announced it comming back. The definition is when they see it fit to reapear.

When you play Monopoly do you complain everytime you don´t roll a 6-6? That is what has become of too many wow players. Since 6-6 ist the max everything else is bad. But enough discussion you dont accept anything that is not your line of thinking anyway. Tollerance would bring this community miles further.

to be fair: if ppl wanna play monopoly or any other luck/rng based game, they play that. but ppl decided to play a mmorpg. and a mmorpg by its natural definition is not a monopoly game. nor is it a hack'n'slay, like Diablo. mmorpg is just the wrong game format for that stuff. and thats what a lot of players make upset, bc they dedicated theirselfes to a mmorpg, not to anything else.

[vipers]

Exactly this. If devs are not able to create good content with flying, then they are to blame for lacking mental capacities or for lazyness.

first they give shitload of epix and when they try to fix it they go lazy way and use Mobs Scaling With Item Level

[HumbleDuck]

Frankly, personally I don't like flying at all, actually I hate it.
But I understand if they want to advertise a feature they added despite what they think it would do for the game.

[Evangeliste]

I'm laughing when trivialising combat got morphed into content then everyone parrots the morph. It's their game, they do what they wholly like. We only pay to use the service we don't own it so partly we are at their mercy.

[SirCowdog]

Content won't be broken by flying in most cases(things like small puzzles to get a chest comes to mind but that's not really important). The problem with flying is that it allows you to skip everything in the world outside of the 10 mobs you need to kill for a quest. It's simply too convenient as it makes the game into mount, start flying in a direction, alt-tab, tab back in, fly straight down in the middle of anything, kill a mob, repeat. With the way things are right now you'll at least have a good while to go through the world and see the content that's there.

That's because Blizzard has designed the content to be too simplistic. It doesn't even account for a flying player since WoD. Furthermore, even without flying, player just mount up with the barding buff to avoid dismount, drive through the enemies on their ground mount while ignoring everything but their objective. Then flightmaster whistle away when they're done. How is that effectively different from dropping in on a flying mount?

The issue you described is not caused by flying, but rather caused by overly weak and uninspired content design which was already trivial to begin with!

As for the mobs on the ground it makes sense. If you walk into a murloc camp there'll be murlocs on the ground. You can't throw mobs in the sky everywhere and expect it to look decently. Other than it looking decently it won't make sense.

Kaliri birds in Skettis made sense. They flew around...like birds...and aggro'd on you if you let them get too close. There were also plenty of caster-type mobs on the ground who would also shoot at you if you got too close. Also in TBC above enemy camps and cities were flying NPCs who patrolled around in order to keep flying players from the other faction away.

These are things that worked and made sense back in TBC. Are you telling me that after another 10 years of experience and increases in technology that Blizzard couldn't make it work today? Come on now!

Another thing is that the reply i made was about making flying somewhat challenging, which isn't really doable right now. I think that the current model where flying is unlocked partway through an expansion is good because it allows you to see things in the game and brings the convenience of flying back at some point. While you want to be able to fly from the start there are people who don't and at that point it's a matter of opinion more than anything else.

This is why flying needs to change in order to bring it more in line with ground mounts. There really should be a decision that the player makes, and that decision should be a real one. People choose what class to play, then what spec to play, then what talents to use. Flying or ground mount should be just as important and real of a choice as those things.

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imo nofyling is only useful if there is something dangerous on the ground (like elite mobs in vanilla or general mobs that kill you if there are more than 2-4). thats the reason why you plan your route, be careful, have dangerous moments etc. The whole immersion of noflying is dependent on how dangerous the world is.

if the world is like it is today, you will eventually get unmounted, brainless aoe kill a bunch of mobs, moint up again and go your way. so the only aspect of noflying is, that its just annoying.

or in short: noflying is only useful in a dangerous open world game. in a simplified streamline sandbox game, wow became, it is just annoying.

This is also why I've suggested that Blizzard maybe use a combination of phasing tech and the M+ mechanics to allow players to choose their open world difficulty. Think of something similar to how Diablo 3 works with their torment levels. It seems like Blizzard is toying with the idea of world scaling past level cap, but they kind of botched the implementation of it recently.

Regardless, you're correct. Unless the open world actually stops being trivial, it's very hard for flying to make the situation worse. In other words: Flying isn't responsible for trivializing content when that content is already trivial to begin with.

[Deleted]

Content won't be broken by flying in most cases(things like small puzzles to get a chest comes to mind but that's not really important). The problem with flying is that it allows you to skip everything in the world outside of the 10 mobs you need to kill for a quest. It's simply too convenient as it makes the game into mount, start flying in a direction, alt-tab, tab back in, fly straight down in the middle of anything, kill a mob, repeat. With the way things are right now you'll at least have a good while to go through the world and see the content that's there.

As for the mobs on the ground it makes sense. If you walk into a murloc camp there'll be murlocs on the ground. You can't throw mobs in the sky everywhere and expect it to look decently. Other than it looking decently it won't make sense.

Another thing is that the reply i made was about making flying somewhat challenging, which isn't really doable right now. I think that the current model where flying is unlocked partway through an expansion is good because it allows you to see things in the game and brings the convenience of flying back at some point. While you want to be able to fly from the start there are people who don't and at that point it's a matter of opinion more than anything else.

And how exactly is it bad to skip some mobs to get to a quest? I mean, i did not do any of the outdoor content for a long time just because of all the hassle you had to go through in order to get anywhere. There is nothing immersive about having to walk to a FP and alt tab for the next few minutes and read up on something because the FP takes ages.

There are plenty of zones created with flying in mind, and its not that hard to make birds instead of murlocs. The problem here is lazy design, not that we can fly.

How it works currently is just another prime example of time gating, they know people love to fly, so they won't give flying until later so they can milk some more. If it was truly about "experiencing the game as intended an immersion" then all that would be needed is to have people do the quests and discover everything.

[Deleted]

Flying can be GOOD or BAD based only on how the game is CURRENTLY set.


If you have a Quest MOLDED around a NO-FLYING scenario, you get the usual stuff, walk, run, get schwifty, kill enemies, infiltrate and get the item.
BUT when you release FLYING, all of this get skipped, you just soar to the zone, dive, get the item and fly away.



You can let everybody fly since day 1 of the XPAC or just UNLOCK it at MAX LVL -no gating no achiv no preq just get like a perks for max lvl- so people can enjoy the levelling experience through the beginning and then at 110 can cheese WQ flying over and click an item.


Also making some "no fly zone" quest can be cool to counter the "ez mode flying" mode for some quest.

[Niwes]

That's because Blizzard has designed the content to be too simplistic. It doesn't even account for a flying player since WoD. Furthermore, even without flying, player just mount up with the barding buff to avoid dismount, drive through the enemies on their ground mount while ignoring everything but their objective. Then flightmaster whistle away when they're done. How is that effectively different from dropping in on a flying mount?

The issue you described is not caused by flying, but rather caused by overly weak and uninspired content design which was already trivial to begin with!




Kaliri birds in Skettis made sense. They flew around...like birds...and aggro'd on you if you let them get too close. There were also plenty of caster-type mobs on the ground who would also shoot at you if you got too close. Also in TBC above enemy camps and cities were flying NPCs who patrolled around in order to keep flying players from the other faction away.

These are things that worked and made sense back in TBC. Are you telling me that after another 10 years of experience and increases in technology that Blizzard couldn't make it work today? Come on now!



This is why flying needs to change in order to bring it more in line with ground mounts. There really should be a decision that the player makes, and that decision should be a real one. People choose what class to play, then what spec to play, then what talents to use. Flying or ground mount should be just as important and real of a choice as those things.

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This is also why I've suggested that Blizzard maybe use a combination of phasing tech and the M+ mechanics to allow players to choose their open world difficulty. Think of something similar to how Diablo 3 works with their torment levels. It seems like Blizzard is toying with the idea of world scaling past level cap, but they kind of botched the implementation of it recently.

Regardless, you're correct. Unless the open world actually stops being trivial, it's very hard for flying to make the situation worse. In other words: Flying isn't responsible for trivializing content when that content is already trivial to begin with.

yep. agree to nearly everything. its the simple truth.

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suramar was dangerous (at the start of the xpac, and at least for most of the non tank classes). suramar was closely and contorted. suramar was an ideal example where noflying has his spot. a world, made like suramar, is exactly made for noflying. there flying really trivializes things and just dont fit into.

on the other side, the open world is not dangerous (anymore, since classic/TBC). it is not closely. and there is always a way around. and even if you get dismounted, so what? kill 10 mobs per aoe grind and mount up again. just annoying. this is exactly NOT the place for noflying.

imo, blizz should more clear and dedicated design to the goals of flying/noflying. design 60-70% of the world with flying in mind, with a lot of pisseasy aoe grind mobs, and let ppl fly after reaching level 110. design 30-40% of the open world as noflying zones, where you know that "now you enter a dangerous zone" so you have to be careful, plan your route and die a lot if you dont take noflying serious.

[Deleted]

And how exactly is it bad to skip some mobs to get to a quest? I mean, i did not do any of the outdoor content for a long time just because of all the hassle you had to go through in order to get anywhere. There is nothing immersive about having to walk to a FP and alt tab for the next few minutes and read up on something because the FP takes ages.

There are plenty of zones created with flying in mind, and its not that hard to make birds instead of murlocs. The problem here is lazy design, not that we can fly.

How it works currently is just another prime example of time gating, they know people love to fly, so they won't give flying until later so they can milk some more. If it was truly about "experiencing the game as intended an immersion" then all that would be needed is to have people do the quests and discover everything.

The problem with birds is that you can't put them all over the sky without it looking shit. Also, i don't really get it how they can milk some more if they delay flying. People who consider flying to be that important most likely don't play without flying anyway. As for experiencing the game, a lot of people don't consider mount, fly, drop down in the middle of wherever the fuck your quest mobs are, kill 2 of them, mount, fly back. All you're seeing of the game in that case is your mount and the 2 mobs you actually want to kill.

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The issue you described is not caused by flying, but rather caused by overly weak and uninspired content design which was already trivial to begin with!

Kaliri birds in Skettis made sense. They flew around...like birds...and aggro'd on you if you let them get too close. There were also plenty of caster-type mobs on the ground who would also shoot at you if you got too close. Also in TBC above enemy camps and cities were flying NPCs who patrolled around in order to keep flying players from the other faction away.

These are things that worked and made sense back in TBC. Are you telling me that after another 10 years of experience and increases in technology that Blizzard couldn't make it work today? Come on now!

1. Even if you are right about the content being too simple and easy to skip i don't see making skipping it even easier as a good solution. As things are right now you at least get to see the scenery if nothing else, but a lot of people actually get to see and do things they normally wouldn't even if they are easy to do or simple. Things like chests around the place, rare mobs, random NPCs talking shit, etc. add up to make things livelier.

2. In some cases flying things make sense. In a lot more cases they don't. If your argument is that because in a handful of scenarios flying enemies worked it can be used anywhere then i'm not even going to entertain that thought.

[Feuerbart]

to be fair: if ppl wanna play monopoly or any other luck/rng based game, they play that. but ppl decided to play a mmorpg. and a mmorpg by its natural definition is not a monopoly game. nor is it a hack'n'slay, like Diablo. mmorpg is just the wrong game format for that stuff. and thats what a lot of players make upset, bc they dedicated theirselfes to a mmorpg, not to anything else.

I fully agree to your sentiment. But that includes killing minions on the way to the bossmob in the encampment. RPG. And the convenience of flying comes much later. So in the end both sides get what they want.

[Elim Garak]

Not really.

That seems pretty clear, the second quote in particular.

From 4th quarter 2016 results if you would like to read for yourself. The point being of course that whatever people think the game is apparently doing pretty well despite the constant kerfluffle over flying.

http://files.shareholder.com/downloa...ith_Tables.pdf

Eh, it just says that release of Legion increased monthly active users by 10% in 2016, and by 20% in 4th quarter as compared to previous years 4th quarters.

It's actually VERY SAD metrics. Considering that WoD ended with sub 5m subscribers. 10% of that is just 500k. Although it has more to do with monthly player activity than subscriptions themselves. And considering the timegated nature of everything in legion - players basically required to play each day to stay current. Huge happy achievement that led to player burnout this early into expansion.

They just presented that as growth, because it is growth, but, you know, relativity...

[SirCowdog]

1. Even if you are right about the content being too simple and easy to skip i don't see making skipping it even easier as a good solution. As things are right now you at least get to see the scenery if nothing else, but a lot of people actually get to see and do things they normally wouldn't even if they are easy to do or simple. Things like chests around the place, rare mobs, random NPCs talking shit, etc. add up to make things livelier.

That's because simply dropping flight into a world that wasn't built for it is a terrible idea! Pathfinder is flawed from the beginning! It doesn't solve anything. It just flips the flying switch from off to on. Pathfinder doesn't even really explain WHY flying suddenly works. It's completely nonsensical.

Chests are revealed with an addon. There's no good content there. Rare mobs are still there if you're flying. So are random NPCs talking. The only difference is that Blizzard could be adding in things to that atmosphere like airships, dragons/griffons/whatever to spice things up. Remember in TBC when there was a dragon flying over part of Shadowmoon with an entire quest line leading into the unlock of a faction? Remember in WotLK when there was a quest hub on an airship that patrols the zone? That stuff was WAAAAAAY more epic than some chest with a 30ap token hidden in a stump.

But really...why not have it all? Why does it have to be one or another? Use both ground and air to make the game feel more alive. FFS, we have alien space ships invading, but we're still stuck in the dirt chasing squirrels and stealing their nuts? lol?

2. In some cases flying things make sense. In a lot more cases they don't. If your argument is that because in a handful of scenarios flying enemies worked it can be used anywhere then i'm not even going to entertain that thought.

Exactly my point! Don't use it everywhere. Have some areas with flying, some without. Look at previous expansions from TBC to MoP. Most of the world had flying. But there were also entire zones without. And even in the zones that did have flying there were still caves and other indoor areas. It would NOT be at all difficulty to go back to that formula, but with a little bit of a more modern approach. There is literally no reason why this couldn't be done.

[Deleted]

SO much salt, I don't mind pathfinding and I certainly enjoyed unlocking flying :P

[rda]

That seems pretty clear, the second quote in particular.

From 4th quarter 2016 results if you would like to read for yourself. The point being of course that whatever people think the game is apparently doing pretty well despite the constant kerfluffle over flying.

http://files.shareholder.com/downloa...ith_Tables.pdf

Eh, it just says that release of Legion increased monthly active users by 10% in 2016, and by 20% in 4th quarter as compared to previous years 4th quarters.

It's actually VERY SAD metrics. Considering that WoD ended with sub 5m subscribers. 10% of that is just 500k. Although it has more to do with monthly player activity than subscriptions themselves. And considering the timegated nature of everything in legion - players basically required to play each day to stay current. Huge happy achievement that led to player burnout this early into expansion.

They just presented that as growth, because it is growth, but, you know, relativity...

I meant to say that those "growth" numbers were not at all impressive.

I posted a thread on them when they first appeared:

-------
From the first page:

* World of Warcraft MAUs grew 10% in 2016 and over 20% year-over-year in the fourth quarter on the back of the successful third-quarter launch of Legion.

* World of Warcraft saw an increase in total play time for the quarter, surpassing the Q3 expansion launch quarter and all non-launch quarters in the last four years.

I love the words they are choosing, and most of all the things they are choosing to report on.

Translating from PR-speak:

* WoD was a bad expansion which lost a ton of people. 2015 was a terrible year. Legion added enough people in the end of 2016 so that 2016 is better than 2015.

* Legion launched on the border between August and September. That means Q3 got one month of Legion and Q4 got three months. The number of people playing declined sharply after launch, but the second three months were still larger than the first month (partly because we encourage purchasing gametime in portions larger than one month).

Happy for Overwatch, etc.
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http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...WoW-translated

These reports of success are like Holinka's reports on PVP participation about a month ago: "things are fine, X people were on the ladder in Legion season 1, that's OK by <this metric I just made on the spot>".

Well, Legion season 2 just ended, PVP participation dropped ANOTHER ~40% compared to Legion season 1.

What a surprise, right? Only for those foolish enough to not see the complete dishonesty of Holinka's artificial metric (the dishonesty is here: he specifically tried to find a metric on which the numbers looked kind of not so bad - obviously, it ended up being bogus because that's not how you analyze).

[Fabinas]

I am very pro-flight and I just said some similar things in the post above yours but I do think I should point out that pro-flight (even with all the changes it has caused) is still not necessarily a majority.


The pro-flight sentiment was clearly enough to bring about changes, but Blizzard would probably be willing to buckle on a point long before it reached 51% (a true majority). Numbers as low as 20% or maybe even 10% might be enough to achieve what happened as long as it appeared that the financial losses were going to be real and long-lasting.


I am not saying that pro-fliers are NOT a majority... just that they would not need to be in order to cause the changes that we saw happen.

I don't really disagree with you. Maybe majority (as the contrary meaning of minority) is taken too literal in my context. I presume WoW players belong to one of 4 categories :
1) the ones passionate about flying to the point of unsubbing with the announcement of the flight removal,

2) the practical ones, who will probably unsub sooner or later if flight is permanently removed from the game (i put myself in that category),

3) the people who will keep playing whether it exists or not and

4) the ones who unsubbed when Blizzard took their flight removal decision back.

The context of my use of word "majority" is that the no1 and 2 categories may not be the literal majority (51%) of WoW players, but their number is substantial enough because they are ready to back their position towards flight with abandonment of the game because of it. The category 4 is no longer playing WoW (and is probably so miniscule we never saw a single specimen around these forums, feel free to point it to me if i'm wrong). That means the no-fliers are diluted inside the (probably, only Blizard knows) literal majority of category no 3.

I can only surmise that the no-fliers would NEVER quit the game because of flight existing (else they'd be in category no4), hence their opinion is actually irrelevant to Blizzard. They cannot, don't want or are not enough to back up Blizzard's decision removing flight going forward, because they will not unsub over the matter like pro-fliers did or do. In THAT context, they are certainly LESS than the pro-fliers. Being less vocal or actual (by unsubbing) means they really don't care enough, and merely participate in those discussions, not to convince us, but to troll.

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Not really.




That seems pretty clear, the second quote in particular.

From 4th quarter 2016 results if you would like to read for yourself. The point being of course that whatever people think the game is apparently doing pretty well despite the constant kerfluffle over flying.

http://files.shareholder.com/downloa...ith_Tables.pdf

I'm sorry, i don't give a shit, a fuck and a penny for official announcements for shareholders and vague statistics, like MAU's (meow's?). What you point at me is just the same marketing shit they pulled with the OP's linked advertisement. No actual sub numbers, no judgement about WoW metrics. It's like the statistic lie of one upping his yearly sales from 2 injimagings to 3, and then claiming a successful year of 50% more sales than last year.

You can, of course, use them, but i'm not convinced Blizzard is happy. The dumb shareholders (which are gamblers, by the way, and they gamble more if things are shown in a positive way) may be happy. We don't know if Blizzard (meaning the directors and the heads of the company) is with WoW metrics, though.

[Deleted]

The problem with birds is that you can't put them all over the sky without it looking shit. Also, i don't really get it how they can milk some more if they delay flying. People who consider flying to be that important most likely don't play without flying anyway. As for experiencing the game, a lot of people don't consider mount, fly, drop down in the middle of wherever the fuck your quest mobs are, kill 2 of them, mount, fly back. All you're seeing of the game in that case is your mount and the 2 mobs you actually want to kill

Euuh yea that might be your opinion about birds looking shit and all, i think it is nothing more then a hand wave from your end. It can be done without any difficulty and it can look great, maybe not in your taste, but that doesn't say much.

So you do not get how saying one thing and doing another thing isn't milking the people? Wod it was " you will get flying after an epic quest" but the reality was, "you will get the quest after numerous patches". Allot of people kept playing in the hopes that it would be "soon" but that just not happened. And in legion it was "we will do it better" but they did not.

And "people who really like flying do not play without it" is a total figment of your imagination. There are allot of people who just want it back badly but won't unsub over it.

All in all it comes down to "but i do not like flying", fine do not use it. But none of the things you said have anything to do with immersion in any way, it is just that you do not like flying.