Why flying being gated behind rep grind makes no sense

[letsdothat]

If a minor grind like this is too much for you, you're playing the wrong game.

Lawyer talk here...yeah, OK. Pushing away just for the sake of pushing away. Good job.

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I do work as software developer. Not for Blizzard. Thing is, your logic that they should just let players have it once its a time basically leads to a logic, why would they even have a way to earn it? So, you either have a way to earn it, or you don't. Blizzard decided that it's better for game to have it. You are not obliged to have flying because whistle and fly paths solve most of problems. If you want that luxury of flying, you have to earn it. I don't see how this differs from any other game. Even in tetris, you try hard to pile blocks in a correct way for higher score. You grind reputation for flying.

OK, fair enough, I WANT to earn it. But, don't make me hate the game while doing so. NOW you understand?

[Raelbo]

I do not agree that there are any highly interesting exploration mechanics either; back in WoD, we had a lot of jumping puzzles which were kind of fun to do once, but now litterally all there is that flying "skips over" is a metric shit ton of mountains getting in our way, and some zones clustered with mobs that don't truly require any strategy anyway, just judging whether you can run through them or you should make a few stops to kill them.

Yeah. I wouldn't say that the main advantage of keeping us ground bound is to give us interesting exploration mechanics. It's more about the sense of immersion and discovering new zones. It's about entering the Swamps of Naz'mir and staring out over the waters and wondering what's out there waiting to found. It's about finding a way over the mountains of Drustvar just to see what lies on the other side (particularly pertinent for bear druids :P) and then being rewarded with an epic view. It's the sense of mystery and the unknown that makes it enjoyable.

This is why it's not an experience that is can be replicated because, by definition, once you get to solve the mystery, it's no longer a mystery. Once you get to know the unknown, it's no longer unknown. Which is why I find their fixation on flying so silly, because the problem they're trying to solve through withholding flying cannot be solved by withholding flying. In fact I doubt it can even be solved at all.

[Tang0]

So make it require honored. Revered is basically making casual players, i.e. the majority, hate their own game. I mean anyone with a brain knows that repetitive tasks that take a while to complete eventually would make anyone tired and burned out. This is true for anything in life, even the most beautiful girl walking naked in front of you every day for a month eventually stops turning you on.

Do the devs have a say in anything or are they really just slaves to the shareholders who need to be told new strategies of retaining players? Nothing is more ridiculous than this in the history of all gaming. No other grinding in any other game is as ridiculous as this. Great logic, instead of enabling player enjoyment of the game, they take it away. Genius.

You are crying like it’s gated behind exalted. Revered takes no grind whatsoever, just comes naturally. Will probably hit a couple emissaries along the way, making it what, 2 weeks at bare minimum effort?

What, pray tell, a self-venerated casual like yourself does, that you don’t have 15 minutes to spare. What would you use that flying for exactly?

[letsdothat]

I do. To be honest, I thought that Nazjatar and Mechagon is going to be pain in the as to earn it and then one day, I realized that one of them quests gives tons of reputation so I was fine with one week of grind. On top of that, I figured out to get one mount, and then at the end of quest line, it is another mount so it felt worthwhile. Now, it depends with what you are fine with.

I don't need another mount. I already have 300+ I don't know what to do with. I have my favorite mount and that's all I use.

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You are crying like it’s gated behind exalted. Revered takes no grind whatsoever, just comes naturally. Will probably hit a couple emissaries along the way, making it what, 2 weeks at bare minimum effort?

What, pray tell, a self-venerated casual like yourself does, that you don’t have 15 minutes to spare. What would you use that flying for exactly?

Oh boy, looks like I angered the whole dev team. You know what, like some people already said, you have your own theories and you refuse to not believe in them anymore. FINE, be like that.

[Shakana]

Oh I totally get why Blizzard want us to stay ground bound. And while I agree with parts of their argument, I recognise that they have a critical flaw in their understanding of the role that flying plays in the player experience.

Yes, one of the things that makes WoW so awesome is the sense of discovery and exploration while being immersed in their world. Flying absolutely breaks that. So in order to try and preserve that awesome sense of discovery and exploration and immersion, they want to keep flying out of the game.

What they don't get though is that the sense of exploration and discovery are transitory (with or without flying), and as a result, immersion stops adding to the game experience and instead starts to detract from it.

In short, exploring new content by land adds to the experience. But once you're familiar with the content, being constrained to ground travel becomes tedious. Blizzard's desire to withhold flying for as long as possible stems from their mistaken belief that players will enjoy the game more by figuring out what experiences we enjoyed the most and then making sure that we repeat that experience without changing anything. What they critically fail to take into account is how the stuff we experience today affects our future experiences.

I don't mind being a bit on the ground for like 1 or 2 months, after that i feel the need of having flying and the pathfinder part 2 always comes to late, by that time i'm already tired of being on the ground everytime and feels so liberating to be able to fly after. I don't mind that i get tired to be on the ground to want to have flying really bad, but at same time, i don't want to grind so much for it or wait a "decade" for it xD

[letsdothat]

Well okay, to me all mounts are same so I collect. But you see this is a problem that Blizzard faces, they have to please you, me and other 5 styles that people have. It's not easy thing. No matter how much easy is just to allow the flying.

Please...everyone already knows you represent Blizz no matter how much you try to make yourself sound like a Russian.

[Raelbo]

All you have to do in order to unlock flying is to play the game as intended, do all quests in the zones, and 1-3 hours of playtime per day doing WQs for 2-3 weeks.. And the shortest/cheapest sub time for the game is 30 days, plenty of time to get it.

Except when Nazjatar released, the race was on to get to revered ASAP. Which pushed a lot of players to grind it out - which is not how the game was intended to be played. It's intended to be played at each players own pace, which can range from doing every WQ and every daily and every rarespawn every day for a week, to doing the three dailies every 2nd or 3rd day plus 4 WQs for the emissary each time it pops up.

Pathfinder I was fine. We had months to get it done. There was no pressure to rush, rush, rush, grind, grind, grind. In Legion it was better handled. Like BFA, we had a lot of time to get the bulk of the work done, but once the last step became available it was pretty quick and painless and took less than an hour to finish up.

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I don't mind being a bit on the ground for like 1 or 2 months, after that i feel the need of having flying and the pathfinder part 2 always comes to late, by that time i'm already tired of being on the ground everytime and feels so liberating to be able to fly after. I don't mind that i get tired to be on the ground to want to have flying really bad, but at same time, i don't want to grind so much for it or wait a "decade" for it xD

Yeah, I feel pretty much the same way. We didn't need to wait nearly a year to get flying, even six months was more than long enough for all the benefits of being landbound to be fully exhausted.

[CiccioBello]

All you have to do in order to unlock flying is to play the game as intended, do all quests in the zones, and 1-3 hours of playtime per day doing WQs for 2-3 weeks.. And the shortest/cheapest sub time for the game is 30 days, plenty of time to get it.

Of all the things to whine about the game, this should not be one of them...

2/3 hours to make 4 f **** wq !?
Really, but what are you playing at?
In 2/3 hours I do WQ, Daily Nat end Mecca, a m + and if there is also a random BG. And I'm not a hard core game but a causal like you.
Honestly, I don't find anything wrong with the pathfinder and I think the flight is simply a convenience and nothing more.
The problems that afflict BfA are quite different.

[tylenol]

I do. To be honest, I thought that Nazjatar and Mechagon is going to be pain in the as to earn it and then one day, I realized that one of them quests gives tons of reputation so I was fine with one week of grind. On top of that, I figured out to get one mount, and then at the end of quest line, it is another mount so it felt worthwhile. Now, it depends with what you are fine with.

Those 2 weren't bad, I came back and had flying within 5 or so days, getting flying isn't bad simply because you are sort of forced into the activity that unlocks it then you have to wait months and months till they add the 2nd part so if you stay subbed (their goal with all the carrot on a stick content) then without thinking about it you'll probably unlock part 1 but if you play a month or so then unsub and come back 8 months later....it's garbage because your only options are world quests and the occasional table mission.

I think Blizzards reason for Pathfinder is bullshit, I personally don't really care about their art department, if I wanted to see amazing scenery then I'd chuck a dart at a map of Europe and buy a plane ticket, tie flying to whatever the achievement is for completing all the quests in a zone because by then I've already seen everything and don't need to see it again on alt after alt (if I was dumb enough to play alts this expansion)

[Vampyr78]

It doesn't take that much grind to get flying. Most reps in Legion and BfA are desinged for more casual play(You get a lot of rep by playing a lttle bit 2-3 times per week and individual world quests don't give you much). It makes perfect sense to unlock certain thigns as you progress through the game. Otherwise there would be little to no reason to do certain content and people would complain that there's nothing to do.

If you don't want "grinds" then you play the wrong kind of game. MMORPGs, especially older ones were desgined to be gindy from the start.

Also, flying is bad for any quest designer in wow. They make this quest where you have to fight through mobs or put some visual story on the ground and then player just flies above it so they can't appreciete the work that has been put into this little piece of content. If you make something you want people to see it so it makes sense for Blizzard to gate flying so players can see the work that has been put in to the zones.

If I were to implement gated flying I would do it differently. It wouldn't be available in current expansion until prepatch for the next expansion drops and it would be free. But that would be too extreme for some people.

[Acherus01]

2/3 hours to make 4 f **** wq !?
Really, but what are you playing at?
In 2/3 hours I do WQ, Daily Nat end Mecca, a m + and if there is also a random BG. And I'm not a hard core game but a causal like you.
Honestly, I don't find anything wrong with the pathfinder and I think the flight is simply a convenience and nothing more.
The problems that afflict BfA are quite different.

1-3 hours, the OP is casual, and talking about casuals. Hence why I gave an answer for casuals. Learn to fucking read and understand context.

[Catscratch]

Flying only enables me to skip countless unnecessary mobs. Go there killing 20 mobs, kill the quest mob, go back killing 20 mobs back. That's annoying. I never supported the idea that flying killed the game. That's lazy devs talking. "we can't design a game properly so most wanted aspects of the game are BAD"

[letsdothat]

Nothing like this exists in the ENTIRE history of gaming outside of WoW retail. Someone had to do it I guess. Well, you succeeded Blizz, you drove away players also faster than any game in the ENTIRE history of gaming.

[Nurvus]

The hardcore no-lifed it in a record time anyway, so gating didn't stop them from zooming through it. The losers are the casuals who support this game, yet they get treated with repetitive boring chores every day leaving them no time to really enjoy the game. It makes absolutely no sense.

I quit several times and even when I reactivated, I played once, or twice max per week, no longer than 1 hour a day and couldn't stand looking at the same zone anymore.

Who thought of this anyway? What's wrong with simply just not giving flying to anyone until a certain time has passed rather than make people hate your own game. This is beyond ridiculous.

First off I want to say that I think flying should've never been taken away at all after it was introduced in Burning Crusade, but at the same time, I acknowledge why it was - it dramatically changes how players engage content; it enhances the concept of cherry picking to an absurd extreme, to the point where players behave like grasshoppers in every quest and spend most of their time in the air or in an instance to the point that the world feels empty all the time.
That being said, Blizzard has definitely chosen the easy way out - removing Flying - instead of giving the whole mounting system a proper revamp so that they didn't have to do stupid shit like taking stuff away and then giving it back.

Despite all that you seem so focused on complaining that unlocking flying without being a "no-lifer" you are unable to enjoy the game, that you seem to not notice you are assuming you need to unlock it within a certain time-frame of said "no-lifer" - did you even entertain the idea of putting the enjoyment of the game before the unlocking of flying?
Because if you do, you will naturally unlock flying over time.

That's the thing that puzzles me in this kind of post - every one that complains about their inability to fly speak of it as if the game can only be enjoyed once they can fly.

What makes you NEED it NOW?
Does seeing one such "no-lifer" flying bother you so?

[Zentail]

Remember. All the complaining you see online about things like this are literally the vocal minority and the majority actually agrees with the decision. Disagreements is when you hear about it. Just like someone won’t leave a good review, but they’ll leave a bad one on a food joint.

If you saw (literally) 1,000,000 people post/comment/like/whatever a post like this, that would truly show how terrible the system is. And while no, I’m not a fan of it either, I have to acknowledge that I’m part of the minority.

[Florena]

I don't mind rep grinds for flying.

My only issue with flying is that they artificially hold it back until later patches.

I see no reason why they shouldn't have allowed flying in the broken isles in 7.0 after you complete pathfinder part 1. Then make pathfinder part 2 for the broken shore. And in BFA, allow flying in kul'tiras/zandalar for pathfinder part 1, and Najatar for part 2.

I don't mind having to do content to unlock flying. But once you've done that content, just unlock it in the base expansion zones instead of making you wait a year for it. I feel like FFXIV handles flying unlocks better, but even if blizzard doesn't want to do it zone by zone since WoW zones aren't all separate instances, they could at least unlock the base flying for a new expansion without waiting half a year or more.

[Devilyaki]

Just find it stupid that my dragon just all of sudden forgets how to fly at the start ... Bit odd..

[Acherus01]

Lawyer talk here...yeah, OK. Pushing away just for the sake of pushing away. Good job.

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OK, fair enough, I WANT to earn it. But, don't make me hate the game while doing so. NOW you understand?

Dude the game is a MMORPG, grinding is literally one of the fundamental aspects of the game design, if you can't handle it, the game isnt the problem - you are.

[Linkedblade]

The hardcore no-lifed it in a record time anyway, so gating didn't stop them from zooming through it. The losers are the casuals who support this game, yet they get treated with repetitive boring chores every day leaving them no time to really enjoy the game. It makes absolutely no sense.

I quit several times and even when I reactivated, I played once, or twice max per week, no longer than 1 hour a day and couldn't stand looking at the same zone anymore.

Who thought of this anyway? What's wrong with simply just not giving flying to anyone until a certain time has passed rather than make people hate your own game. This is beyond ridiculous.

That's funny because that's all you need to do is play a hour a day for a few weeks. That's honestly a reasonable pace. And it's gated behind content that people would be playing already. If loving on everyday is too much, you can still get it, it will just take a bit longer.

And tbh that hasn't changed since flying was introduced. The original gate was reaching level cap and getting the gold needed to purchase the skill. It was like that in wrath. Same in cata, mop. Now they hold out a bit longer and you just have to play the game. And you get it, no skill required, no gold to waste.

[letsdothat]

It doesn't take that much grind to get flying. Most reps in Legion and BfA are desinged for more casual play(You get a lot of rep by playing a lttle bit 2-3 times per week and individual world quests don't give you much). It makes perfect sense to unlock certain thigns as you progress through the game. Otherwise there would be little to no reason to do certain content and people would complain that there's nothing to do.

If you don't want "grinds" then you play the wrong kind of game. MMORPGs, especially older ones were desgined to be gindy from the start.

Also, flying is bad for any quest designer in wow. They make this quest where you have to fight through mobs or put some visual story on the ground and then player just flies above it so they can't appreciete the work that has been put into this little piece of content. If you make something you want people to see it so it makes sense for Blizzard to gate flying so players can see the work that has been put in to the zones.

If I were to implement gated flying I would do it differently. It wouldn't be available in current expansion until prepatch for the next expansion drops and it would be free. But that would be too extreme for some people.

Again, another dev who does not seem to understand the basic idea of this discussion: GRINDING IS OK, just not the type that makes me do THE EXACT SAME STEPS for HOURS every day for a whole month. Incredible.