Do you LIKE the Pathfinder Achievement?

[DarkAmbient]

Pathfinder is bollocks, just a way to inflate the time spent metric that Blizzard uses to impress the shareholders.

[Jaylock]

Pathfinder is bollocks, just a way to inflate the time spent metric that Blizzard uses to impress the shareholders.

"Hey I play a game so that I don't have to play it!"

Makes a lot of sense.

/s

[Pony Soldier]

I like the idea of it but not the execution.

It's just an achievement that forces you to grind rep to a certain level. In other words forcing you to do content regardless if you enjoy it or not which is not the way to do it. Being forced to do something you don't really enjoy doing is not fun gameplay. It's like being a little kid wanting to go play outside with your friends but you can't because your parents told you you have to do your chores and finish your homework first. That may or may not have been a good analogy but regardless it's not fun.

If they could just find a way to make it feel less like you're doing chores and more like just playing a game. Honestly it's just the rep grinding that bothers me. To me it just feels like busy work. Just something they require you to do because they can't think of any other way to unlock flying. If they put some thought into I'm sure they could make the Pathfinder achievement less of a pain in the ass.

[Aeula]

No. Too much pointless busywork for something that we should have anyway.

[Deleted]

I've been fairly consistent in pointing out that flight disconnects you from the world and makes the world feel far too small,

please point out your post on the official forum on the forum where you com,plain about the whistle and teleports on argus or else I call you hypocrite.

[Bloodyleech]

That I'd agree with jaylock, that's something new
I like the way it works, it gives you goals to work towards - it shows you missing parts of content that one probably doesn't think about. Maybe blizz could 3-part it, with different stuff to do in each part. After finishing each one you'll get something that has to do with this stuff, while you unlock something big when all parts are done (flying)

[whywhatwhowhenhow]

It doesn't bother me. You complete it by just playing the game anyway. I do think it's a better experience without flying though, atleast for the first 4-6 months. I don't think Suramar would have been half as good if you could just fly over it all. The whistle was a great idea, that's good enough for me.

I'll say yes. Need a poll.

[Soeroah]

I think it's the best system they've had so far for flying, especially with the flight whistle.

However, I think once content is no longer relevant the requirements should be reduced, or you should be able to just buy flying on a per character basis. Otherwise it sucks for newer players.

For example, when Argus dropped they should've halved all the requirements they could. When Legion comes out they should offer the ability to purchase Broken Isles flying per character as an alternative.

The "interim" reward should be better than just 20% mounted speed, too, IMO.

[Jujudrood]

The better question would be:
If Pathfinder did not have anything to do with unlocking flying, would you earn the achievement(s)?
I think I know the answer for most on this forum...

[Bloodyleech]

I would, as I do many achievements just because they are either done while simply playing (pathfinder now) or they are interesting (challenging, showing missed parts of the world and so on)

But y, many wouldn't care (even though it just requires normal playing)

[Azmoden]

So, is this another thread where Jaylock asks for my opinion, but insults and belittles me if my opinion differs from its (yes, its) own?

Who am I kidding, of course it is!

[SirCowdog]

lol. I get that you are trying to discredit me or something but you are barking up the wrong tree. If the old forums were still accessible you would be able to find a post from my old rogue complaining about flight about a month after TBC launched. I've been fairly consistent in pointing out that flight disconnects you from the world and makes the world feel far too small, As well as ruining any sense of difficulty or danger in the wild.

That being said I mostly kept my mouth shut, I don't like it, I don't do it as much I can help it. The only reason you see it so much now is because the topic is brought up every other thread. They made a good game design decision (imo) barring flight, but an equally good business decision in capitulating to the lazy masses by bringing it back with the achievement.

I'd like to point out your signature is hilariously ironic considering your first instinct was to attack me
"If you have to attack a person instead of what they're saying, then you've already lost the argument."

My first instinct was not to attack you. My first instinct was to argue the merits of flight. That was back in the beta of WoD when this idiotic idea was first floated by Blizzard, and I did so with polite, reasonable, logical arguments. But after years of hearing people parrot Blizzard's words back ad nauseum, I've given up being nice about it.

So to put things simply: I don't believe you. You used almost the exact same words as Ion Hazzicostas. And I don't believe him either. There's simply no way that you can show or prove such a stupid idea when flight was part of the game during it's most successful and popular years. The only thing flight is harmful to is the current design team's methods of stretching content.

So when I hear someone repeat the carbon copy excuse of "Flight takes you out of the world" or "Flight is harmful to the game", I just laugh and call a parrot a parrot. It's not an attack. It's not an insult. It's a simple statement of fact.

[therealbowser]

Yea it shouldn't have been gated the way it was

As a general guideline, the pathfinder achievement should be able to be completed in one day; ie, nothing is held back by daily content. Good Suramaritan and the Nightfallen reputation is heavily influenced by reputation that you are mostly limited on by day. Legionfall reputation at revered is less offensive (and can be done quite quickly, actually, now that most of the content is unlocked) but it still applies as well. I can't think of anything else off of the top of my head.

[SirCowdog]

As a general guideline, the pathfinder achievement should be able to be completed in one day; ie, nothing is held back by daily content. Good Suramaritan and the Nightfallen reputation is heavily influenced by reputation that you are mostly limited on by day. Legionfall reputation at revered is less offensive (and can be done quite quickly, actually, now that most of the content is unlocked) but it still applies as well. I can't think of anything else off of the top of my head.

The entire point of Pathfinder, in Blizzard's view, is to make the existing level cap content last longer. If you go back and read through the blue post history you'll see that they repeat this concept a few times.

Letting players complete Pathfinder in the launch patch goes against that, and would force them to design content that takes flying into account instead of ignoring it until it doesn't matter (usually when new ground-only content is released to invalidate the previous stuff). And they don't want to do that either.

This is why they keep playing these games where they don't tell you when Pathfinder can be completed, changing the conditions, and releasing stuff like Argus where you can't fly at all. They keep beating around the bush instead of actually dealing with it, in an attempt to keep stringing players along.

[Polarthief]

It would be fine if it came alongside the content, e.g., if we had "Pathfinder Part 2" as PART of 7.0, not fucking 7.2. I really don't mind doing everything for the first time on land, but what I do mind is doing everything on land, having no more content to do, and STILL being locked to land.

Also, don't put long time-gated content in the achievement. Let it be things I can grind out as quickly as I want. Examples:
- Complete every dungeon
- Explore everything
- Do every quest that is part of the zone's questline, and then some
- Complete ~50 WQs
- Complete each Emissary at least once (short time-gated, non-RNG, content like this is fine. This would take at most a week in 7.0)

Do NOT put in content that can take awhile, such as getting non-grindable reps (every emissary) to exalted or questlines that are locked behind weeks-months of waiting (Legionfall).

[therealbowser]

The entire point of Pathfinder, in Blizzard's view, is to make the existing level cap content last longer. If you go back and read through the blue post history you'll see that they repeat this concept a few times.

Letting players complete Pathfinder in the launch patch goes against that, and would force them to design content that takes flying into account instead of ignoring it until it doesn't matter (usually when new ground-only content is released to invalidate the previous stuff). And they don't want to do that either.

This is why they keep playing these games where they don't tell you when Pathfinder can be completed, changing the conditions, and releasing stuff like Argus where you can't fly at all. They keep beating around the bush instead of actually dealing with it, in an attempt to keep stringing players along.

You are totally misunderstanding my point here. The concept is not that you can do it in a day, the concept is that you are not held back by daily content. You can make it so all of the content takes hours and hours but that you can do it at your own pace; being artificially held back for weeks because of a boring reputation grind that you can only increase slightly every day is not fun.

To be honest, I am okay with Legionfall's reputation requirement because of how it's designed -- slow early on, much faster later once all quests have been released. My issue was simply with Good Suramaritan. Likewise I like Draenor's reputation, with the exception of the Arrakoa reputation in Tanaan Jungle which felt forced for the same reason to a much smaller scale.

[Namalia]

Without the reputation requirements, yeah. Pathfinder would be fine.

As it stands now? No. Legion pathfinder is one of the reasons I quit twice during Legion and haven't resubbed after the 2nd time.

[oplawlz]

I would like it if they removed all timegated aspects. As you say, the concept is fine, the execution is garbage.

[SirCowdog]

You are totally misunderstanding my point here. The concept is not that you can do it in a day, the concept is that you are not held back by daily content. You can make it so all of the content takes hours and hours but that you can do it at your own pace; being artificially held back for weeks because of a boring reputation grind that you can only increase slightly every day is not fun.

To be honest, I am okay with Legionfall's reputation requirement because of how it's designed -- slow early on, much faster later once all quests have been released. My issue was simply with Good Suramaritan. Likewise I like Draenor's reputation, with the exception of the Arrakoa reputation in Tanaan Jungle which felt forced for the same reason to a much smaller scale.

I mostly understood your point. I was simply trying to point out that Blizzard isn't interested in letting you work at your own pace, because for many people "your own pace" means No-Lifing it for a few days or a week and being done. If they let players do that they lose subs as the content gets exhausted and people go play other things until new content is released.

Hence time-gates like you described that literally can not be accomplished quickly. They require you to log in repeatedly over the course of many days or weeks. If Blizzard was able to make content that was actually engaging, but also took many hours to complete, they wouldn't need time-gates to begin with. The simple truth is that it's easier to stretch content with mechanics that "artificially hold you back for weeks" than it is to make content with enough depth to keep players occupied for so long.

This is one of the primary reasons why they don't want to let players have flying. Being grounded forces your face into the mud where you have to slog through more terrain, more mobs, more STUFF(which you might otherwise not even care about) - which in turn also stretches the content.

[therealbowser]

Then we simply disagree. I understand extending the period for some time -- a week of daily content perhaps is acceptable, plus lots of ingame content so you can fully appreciate the world on foot -- but making it last an artificially long time to 'force' you to appreciate it is just bad design and nothing is going to convince me that isn't the case. If you have to be 'forced' to appreciate it, then it isn't worth appreciating.

I believe the goal should be making you fully appreciate the world and the hunt for treasures on foot at least once before being able to fly; not to be artificially held back by repetitive content before you can fly. If you feel differently, that's fine; I simply disagree.