Why flying being gated behind rep grind makes no sense

[Dhrizzle]

What you just said might cover what the devs would LIKE to do in a perfect world. But the harsh reality of Acti-Blizz is that profits come first. This has been true for a long time now, and has been illustrated in a very ugly way with recent events.

If you think otherwise, then you haven't been paying attention, and might want to get away from under that rock you've been living under.

It never fails to amaze me how far you're able to stretch logic and reason. Blizz enforce rules about their livestream which proved controversial and annoyed a lot of people, therefore they must have a magic algorithm that declared "no flight = more money." All because you can't accept the fact people might like different things from open world content and Blizz aren't willing or able to create a whole parallel set of content that pleases you.

[Charge me Doctor]

Why do you think I put it in marks? It's not strong enough. But you could easily see in zones where beasts shred you out of the skies, or lightning frying you if you hang around too long, or increase the dangers of guards to gun you down.

Yeah, idk, mobs in the air are the whole can of worms by itself since there is no combat mechanics while flying, so it's like fishes in water but worse, because of lack of some sort of tricky aggro-conditions. Inveronmental dangers are cool, but they're nigh impossible to implement in current engine (remember MGT-Kael fight? Or any AoE effect in Vashj'ir?). Ground-to-air solutions sound more reasonable, but it doesn't solve a "fly high up and beeline to a quest marker" problem.

I still insist on that current model of flying (especially in case of druids) is too powerful for a player, it just shouldn't be like that. Swimming has breathing bar and it impeads your movement and that makes swimming more dangerous (mobs are faster and you have limited time under water). While current flying model is opposite of that - it GIVES you speed, allows you to "swim" everywhere without any limit.
And at this point adding any penalties to flying to make world activities more engaging will be met with "it's artificial roadblock to boost time spent ingame by players!" or similar bullshit. Simply adding things like "'member wintergrasp?" zone that'll drop players off their mount won't work. Adding cast time a bit longer won't work either. Making flying into a consumable won't work . And restricting flying whatsoever won't work either.
IMO, pathfinder is the only reasonable "solution" for this problem, until we'll see huge "FLYING REDESIGNED" slide on blizzcon presentation with a real solution, which should be a flying 2.0

[dojichan]

If nothing else it's Occam's Razor.

Which is more likely:

That the devs of WoW honestly and truly believe that removing a beloved feaure, and forcing players to re-earn it every expansion with a laundry list of disassociated tasks, followed by a nonsensical and unnecessary multi-month delay..... somehow magically makes the game more engaging and enjoyable for everyone?

Or that the profit-driven, number crunching, multinational corporation with a fiduciary duty to increase profits has calculated down to the penny that Pathfinder will ultimately generate more money despite the irritation it generates among the players.


Gosh, I wonder which one it is?

When you phrase it in a biased POV it will always look like a simple Occam's Razor.
Beloved feature is very subjective. I for one hate the feature (For example). The only people with accurate data on if it is beloved is at best blizzard. Using forums or blogs or magazines are all sources with a very small subset of players.
We are forced to re-earn everything every expansion...That has been the nature of mmo-s.
The fact that you find the task disassociating is also subjective.
Nonsensical and unnecessary is what is being discussed in this post. You are assuming the thing you are trying to prove. That is just bad logic.
So your first thing is just logically unsound.(independent of if it happens to be true that flying delay is nonsensical or unnecessary)

You second one is quite a bit of large assumptions; Which is a bad choice when you are trying to do occam's Razor. In addition the latter could be true and not match the point you are trying to make.
For example they could calculate that the irritation is very low among players and that the gain in player experience is very high. Thus "calculated down to the penny that Pathfinder will ultimately generate more money despite the irritation it generates among the players." is true but it is true because pathfinder is a solid design choice. For example

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2) ability to actually test replacements for flying / various iterations / mechanics that limit flying. Because while players have access to flying they are not going to not use it, so things like pathfinder are great testing periods for devs to get unbiased information from players about flying and what design changes are good or bad.

I never thought about the testing advantage of temporarily disabling flying. I mean when they tested jet packs as a limited for of flying in mechagon I loved it. I could never of experienced it and they could never of collected data on it. The portals of WOD were probably a similar test. So far they have not found a something they like better then pathfinder/unlimited flying. I wonder what the data says on jet packs.

Why do people keep thinking blizzard does anything without the pure and unaffected aim to make people subscribe for longer. THe entire gameplay loop of WoW, is not about fun,

Why do people assume that making the game fun isnt a way to make people subscribe for longer?(see classic for example)

[Shiny212]

Why do people assume that making the game fun isnt a way to make people subscribe for longer?(see classic for example)

Dude, where did anyone say that? That'd be great, that would indeed be what blizzard USED to do. Now, they don't care about that, the entire gameplayloop is designed without fun in mind. It's to make you sub as long as possible.

[Dhrizzle]

Dude, where did anyone say that? That'd be great, that would indeed be what blizzard USED to do. Now, they don't care about that, the entire gameplayloop is designed without fun in mind. It's to make you sub as long as possible.

You could argue the same has been true since Vanilla dropped, why else would raid bosses drop a few random pieces to be shared between the whole group instead of giving you all the relevant loot on your first time through?

[Ton00]

its to keep you subed longer that simple

[dojichan]

Why do people keep thinking blizzard does anything without the pure and unaffected aim to make people subscribe for longer. THe entire gameplay loop of WoW, is not about fun, it's not about anything other than "how can we make the highest number of players subscribe for the longest possible time". The entire way you accumulate reputation in the game now is constructed to achieve this, and "rewards" for your wasted time are flying, new rac..reskinned races etc. A carrot on a stick at best, more accurately a rodent treadmill.

When someone writes a paragraph to make a point it contains a few things:
Topic
Supporting evidence

You topic appears to be "Blizzard only does things to make people subscribe for longer"
Your support is -Wow is not about fun. -Entire thing is about tasks to waste your time.

Dude, where did anyone say that? That'd be great, that would indeed be what blizzard USED to do. Now, they don't care about that, the entire gameplayloop is designed without fun in mind. It's to make you sub as long as possible.

Your first comment strongly implied that "Making wow fun is not how blizzard tries to make people subscribe for longer"
Your 2nd comment strongly implied that "making wow fun is not how blizzard tries to make people subscribe for longer"

I observed that you believed this and thus responded to this implication.
"Why do people(you) assume that making the game(wow) fun isn't a way(current plan/goal) to make people subscribe for longer?"
My comment wasnt a general response about all games but specifically about wow and blizzard.

[RemasteredClassic]

I am glad many of you see things as they truly are: Blizzard's not interested in making WoW fun anymore, but as a cash cow they can use to milk the players whom they totally despise and couldn't care less if they retained. They know people come and go and that's enough for them.

High risk high return, greedy business men.

[SirCowdog]

...Or they've dabbed into this design and it turned out to be not fun.

Not fun according to who?

Because as has been stated countless times: The two most populated expansion, that many consider to also be the best expansion, both had flight as part of the design. While it's only correlation, it's the strongest evidence we have to define such a subjective term as "fun".

I don't believe that it's a problem with the world being poorly designed, it's the implementation of flying itself. See mechagon pre-flying for example, you had "limited flying" there, but for some reason it was "limited" by time, not by functionality and was as boring as regular flying.

I would argue that Mechagon is a rather weak and lackluster zone, and is the real source of why you perceive flying(in whatever form) to be not very good there. Despite having some hills and low buildings, it's almost entirely a 2-dimensional zone, with only a handful of flying enemies that are largely inconsequential.

Compare this to even something as far back as TBC Skettis, with a combination of dangerous ranged mobs on the ground, credible threats in the air via Kaliri Birds, and terrain with multiple levels and rope bridges.

This is what I mean by Blizzard being lazy and designing a weak open world. When content over a decade old has more depth to it, there's a problem. And it's not flying.

Then, when you remove current flying out of the picture completely, you have two important for future of this game things:
1) freedom to design new things (mobility-related mechanics, like grapling hooks, paddlers, flight paths; intricate terrain routes, easter eggs)
2) ability to actually test replacements for flying / various iterations / mechanics that limit flying. Because while players have access to flying they are not going to not use it, so things like pathfinder are great testing periods for devs to get unbiased information from players about flying and what design changes are good or bad.

#1 can exist at the same time as flying, although perhaps not in the same zone. See my points about being fair and creating zones which cater to both flying and non-flying playstyles. This does NOT have to be a binary argument. We can all have our cake and eat it too.

#2 can be iterated upon just like every other feature in the game. One of the biggest points of my arguments in other Flying/No-Flying threads is that the base mechanics of flight are completely unchanged since their introduction in TBC. That's a definite flaw, to be sure, but one that could and should have steps taken to improve upon. Unfortunately that's not happening, because Blizzard being so stubborn and trying to pretend that flying doesn't exist. There is not iteration. There is no testing.

As for Pathfinder being unbiased info? LMFAO!!!!

[Tiradon]

its to keep you subed longer that simple

Yea this and make you play

[SirCowdog]

It never fails to amaze me how far you're able to stretch logic and reason. Blizz enforce rules about their livestream which proved controversial and annoyed a lot of people, therefore they must have a magic algorithm that declared "no flight = more money." All because you can't accept the fact people might like different things from open world content and Blizz aren't willing or able to create a whole parallel set of content that pleases you.

Typical Dhrizzle: twisting things and trying to apologize for Blizzard.

Look bro, they've been really shitty for a long time, and the recent mess surrounding China is just bringing things more into the open. Don't even try to defend what they did to Blitzchung as normal enforcement of a rule. Another team did the exact same thing, except in an US-based tournament, and got no punishment. Why? China. Money.

As for your comment about people liking different things? What a FUCKING joke. Yeah, people like different things. Too bad Blizzard is only giving one type of open world any attention. And even the "ground-being-moar-bettar-expureeunce" is just a thin veil to excuse stretching content and milking players. The people who want flying or a better overall game are being slapped in the face and told to like it.

[Jurwi]

The hardcore no-lifed it in a record time anyway, so gating didn't stop them from zooming through it.

Gating is there so casuals have to spend more time grinding it, thus subscribing longer. Blizzard does nothing based on the hardcore players.

[Nobleshield]

Honestly, flying should have just followed the way they used to, where you needed to be max level and that's it. The needless rep grind is obnoxious and does nothing but piss people off. The usual argument is "see the content" but by the time you've unlocked it you've seen the content so why keep seeing it after you've seen it once? At most maybe require explorer and doing all of the zone storyline (that way you "see the content") but the rep grind is bullshit.

[SirCowdog]

Beloved feature is very subjective. I for one hate the feature (For example).

And when did you start playing WoW? Even today, right now, flying had been a part of WoW for longer than it hasn't. I remember entire crowds of people cheering at Blizzcon when flight was announced. I remember MOST people enjoying the use of flying during TBC and WOTLK. The only people who bitched and claimed they hated it were low-level gankers who got mad when they couldn't get a kill.

And besides, I've cited the only hard data that players have available to them to support the approval or popularity of flying. And there's plenty of circumstantial evidence to support that No-Flying and Pathfinder aren't nearly as good as people would have us believe. WoD and BfA are currently fighting for the title of worst expansion. Legion is a small bright spot, but even Blizzard admits they failed with the timing and release of flight in it.

Multiple threads criticizing Pathfinder, and the entire no-flying doctrine, have continuously popped up since its inception in WoD. Personally, having been part of the discussion since the very beginning, I've seen a steady trend of increased disapproval for Pathfinder over the years. Many of the people who initially supported and approved of No-Flying have changed their minds in regards to pathfinder, or at the very least expressed dislike for the long delay between actually finishing the tasks and re-gaining flight.

We are forced to re-earn everything every expansion...That has been the nature of mmo-s.

The fact that you find the task disassociating is also subjective.

Do we have to re-earn mounts we already gained? Do we have to re-gain previous levels? Do we have to re-gain gold? Do we have to regain old achievements? How about talents?

Besides which, almost no one is complaining about having to re-earn flying. The complaint is about how the tasks required have almost nothing to do with flying, and how even after all the work has been done, flying is still not unlocked. This is why the laundry list of work that Pathfinder requires is disassociated from flying, not because of my personal subjective opinion.

[Dhrizzle]

Typical Dhrizzle: twisting things and trying to apologize for Blizzard.

Look bro, they've been really shitty for a long time, and the recent mess surrounding China is just bringing things more into the open. Don't even try to defend what they did to Blitzchung as normal enforcement of a rule. Another team did the exact same thing, except in an US-based tournament, and got no punishment. Why? China. Money.

Bullshit, like a lot of the people getting all outraged over this I suspect it's less to do with caring about Hong Kong and more to do with having beef with Blizzard and seeing this as a way to splurge vitriol over the internet. It should be obvious to anyone who gives a bit of thought that Blizz were slow to punish the US team because there's a shitstorm going on among people who have decided E-Sport events should be a place for political protests, but when the team started complaining they weren't getting enough attention and should receive the same punishment they did.

Out of interest do you think Blizz were right to punish Blitzchung and politics should be kept out of e-sport streams, or do you think they were right to put a bit more thought into the rules when the US team protested, or do you not care and just want to moan whatever they do? Bro.

As for your comment about people liking different things? What a FUCKING joke. Yeah, people like different things. Too bad Blizzard is only giving one type of open world any attention. And even the "ground-being-moar-bettar-expureeunce" is just a thin veil to excuse stretching content and milking players. The people who want flying or a better overall game are being slapped in the face and told to like it.

You know it is possible to accept that preferences can vary from person to person but at the same time realise that Blizz will not cater to every single set of preferences. Sometimes you get lucky and they introduce features you like, sometimes you're unlucky and they cut out things you used to enjoy. It doesn't mean you have to pretend your opinion is the best and anyone disagreeing has to be either a mindless Blizzard follower or lying to cover for their magic algorithm that distils something as finicky as player preference into cold hard cash. And geez, with the slap-in-the-face comment you're becoming a parody of yourself here.

[rrayy]

I still insist on that current model of flying (especially in case of druids) is too powerful for a player, it just shouldn't be like that. Swimming has breathing bar and it impeads your movement and that makes swimming more dangerous (mobs are faster and you have limited time under water). While current flying model is opposite of that - it GIVES you speed, allows you to "swim" everywhere without any limit.
And at this point adding any penalties to flying to make world activities more engaging will be met with "it's artificial roadblock to boost time spent ingame by players!" or similar bullshit. Simply adding things like "'member wintergrasp?" zone that'll drop players off their mount won't work. Adding cast time a bit longer won't work either. Making flying into a consumable won't work . And restricting flying whatsoever won't work either.
IMO, pathfinder is the only reasonable "solution" for this problem, until we'll see huge "FLYING REDESIGNED" slide on blizzcon presentation with a real solution, which should be a flying 2.0

I would hardly call swimming uder water more dangerous. The beathing bar goes very slow and you can basically finisht eh entire quest you need to do before it runs out and the mobs are hardly that much faster. Swimiming is no more dangerous than being on the ground in the open world.

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Gating is there so casuals have to spend more time grinding it, thus subscribing longer. Blizzard does nothing based on the hardcore players.

YOu in no way spend more time grinding it. YOu spend the exact same amount of actual play time whether you played every day or a couple of days a week. ANd no players aren;t subscribed longer either as it does not take more than a month to complete if you play every day. The players are the ones causing themseves to have to be subbed longer because they don't play more than a day or two a week. People need to stop with the BS myth.

[Acolyyte]

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.

If it's not fun, simply stop playing. It's that easy. The rep grind for flying is laughably easy as it stands. I would honestly prefer it if flying was much much harder to get, or not in the game at all. It fucking ruins world pvp.

This is the major problem with retail. I want shit to take a long time, it's an RPG. Wow is at its best when everything is at a snail's pace, giving you time to make small, incremental upgrades to your character and to really explore the game and the people you play it with. I keep seeing these threads about retail that basically boil down to "GIMME IT. I don't want to have to do anything, just gimme!" And that's gross.

Classic is where its at right now.

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Flying is way less fun than you think it is honestly. It involves mounting, flying upwards, pointing yourself towards an objective, then going afk. I think that flying is cool SOMETIMES, but overall it kind of ruins world pvp...unless i can get a net shot on your ass.

I'm enjoying classic more atm, you can run but you can't fly, and I will catch you eventually

[rrayy]

If it's not fun, simply stop playing. It's that easy. The rep grind for flying is laughably easy as it stands. I would honestly prefer it if flying was much much harder to get, or not in the game at all. It fucking ruins world pvp.

This is the major problem with retail. I want shit to take a long time, it's an RPG. Wow is at its best when everything is at a snail's pace, giving you time to make small, incremental upgrades to your character and to really explore the game and the people you play it with. I keep seeing these threads about retail that basically boil down to "GIMME IT. I don't want to have to do anything, just gimme!" And that's gross.

Classic is where its at right now.

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Flying is way less fun than you think it is honestly. It involves mounting, flying upwards, pointing yourself towards an objective, then going afk. I think that flying is cool SOMETIMES, but overall it kind of ruins world pvp...unless i can get a net shot on your ass.

I'm enjoying classic more atm, you can run but you can't fly, and I will catch you eventually

Then go play classic. And by the way, you are not the arbiter of how much something is fun for anyone else but you.

[erifwodahs]

It is good as it is now. I mean we have had whistle for last two expansions, it's like flying, just you can go afk. That is my opinion. Other people have it different. Also blizz won't listen to radicals anyway "delete flying" or "flying from day one" people.

[Snackpack]

It's timed with new content patches, so they want you to play the new content and/or stay subbed longer. Like it or not, it makes sense.