Making flying better

[gaymer77]

Quite simply, flying is now only allowed from set points in a zone.

Um isn't this exactly what fight masters are? You can only "use flying" when you talk to them and they send you to locations via flying mount and then when you land you can either mount up with flying mount (if flying is allowed in that zone) or ground mount (assuming you're high enough level to use mounts) or you walk. You literally described the flight point system.......

[Squigglyo]

I just find it funny that the people who have issues with flying dont have issues with every single other method of transporation.

Hearthstones teleport you directly to places.
Portals, especially as a Mage, can teleport you places.
A multitude of items can teleport you places.
The Whistle summoned a flying npc that would teleport you to a place.
Summoning teleports you to a place.
LFG/LFR teleports you to the place.


"Travelling is an essential part of an open-world game" yet you arent complaining about everything that skips that travel... I can pretty much teleport myself to every continent, every point of interest instantly. Half the items that do so with very little lore/reasoning, just do so 'because'.

But giving me the ability to fly myself to nearby places? With a mount that I can see, a mount I might hav quested to unlock or stolen from an NPC I killed, a mount that has litteral wings that I can control... So immersion breaking.

[gaymer77]

There is no "instantly teleporting" when you fly.

There used to be a small chance in vanilla if you ate deviate fish until you got the Party Time! buff and it would instantly place you at the destination point you selected for your flight from the flight master. It was the most OP thing in vanilla.

[gunnmen01]

Are you really so naive as to think that is how games work?
Do you really think raids would be as good if every boss could be instakilled with a readily available item? Do you think running legacy raids would be as fun if you got handed all the items when you ran in, or even if all the bosses were already dead and lootable for you convenience

Again you bring up things that have nothing to do with your attempt to reinvent the wheel. I never asked abut bosses, or legacy raids. I simply stated that your idea would force your will upon me and my idea wouldn't force my will upon you. Once again you are wrong. Don't like flying or want it limited....limit yourself.... don't force your opinion on me playing a game for enjoyment.

[MoanaLisa]

Because the current incarnation of flying is beyond broken a movement option.

A movement option is all it's supposed to be. Outside of some cutesy race stuff in DMF that's all it's designed to be.

[tacoloco]

Besides, I am willing ot admit I am not able to control myself from avoiding flying even if I think it is bad for the game, this is the same fatal flaw I have when I have quite content Blizzard doesnt add instawin option for raids, or gear vendors. Or why I am quite happy someone would stop me if I was addicted to Heroin.

I don't care if it sounds selfish, but I think it is bad form to expect teh players to engage in content if the developers give you options not to. At best it is a tacit admission from the developers that they don't have faith in their own product.

No. Just. No.

Flying is not, in any way, an instawin thing. It never has been an instawin, even back in TBC when the only requirement was getting max level and having the gold for training and a mount. By the time someone gets to max level and finishes pathfinder, they've completed a large percentage of the content and have probably seen most or all of the scenery. At that point, it's mostly just getting from point A to point B faster for someone's main. Yes, it shortens some aspects of levelling alts, but there is still plenty of content that has to be done on the alt.

And seriously, don't make references to heroin in a thread about a gaming feature. That does not bolster your argument and isn't a good look.

[Varitok]

Why not just make the game a lobby so that those who don't want to engage in the game can just teleport directly to raids.

Players who want flying the current way clearly don't want ot engage in the gameplay part of WoW.

"Stop playing the game different from me!!". That is the summation of your post. I go out into the world more with flying, I engage more with the rares, the WQ's, the content. Stay on the ground for all I care, I do not give a shit but stop taking away the way others play.

[Kyux]

The most boring part of wow is the travel. It actually stops me from wanting to play the game. I don't want to sit down to play the game only to have to wait 5 mins to get my character to where he needs to be and then to spend another 5 mins riding around a mountain. Travelling is not content. It is a barrier.

I disagree. Travelling is part of the game and a significant part of the RPG element. If you just want to do instanced content then travel is pretty much irrelevant. If you want to do WQs then there is already fairly minimal travel. Journeying to your destination to do a quest puts the World in World of Warcraft. No one would watch LOTR if Frodo just took a portal to Mt Doom. No one would play WoW if you were fed NPCs on a conveyor belt.

[rrayy]

There is a by far easier answer to flying. Max level, pathfinder part one....that's it. The people crying about flying, don't have to fly. Those who want to fly should be able to. You don't get to dictate how I enjoy playing the game. There is no reason to reinvent the wheel, it's not a broken system. It is a very simple system that works perfectly.

Blizzard game. Blizzard rules. You don't get to dictate how they set up their game. And no, it doesn't work perfectly otherwise Blizzard would use it. If you actually knew why people don't want flying in the game would know why simply not flying doesn't work. Players will not intentionally gimp themselves to play the game.

[Flatspriest]

I'm still trying to figure out how flying is detrimental to the game and totally broken. OP, you have not given any concise arguments to support your hypothesis and you only speak for a small minority of players if you think it is. It is a great QoL addition to a great many players who don't want to run around on a ground mount everywhere they are going. The current iteration is a vast improvement to what it used to be by forcing players to only use ground mounts in the new zones for an expansion until later in the expansion cycle. It also gives players something to work for and look forward to.

[Ielenia]

I mean more that you cna mount up and fly only from specific areas, but that you can then fly to anywhere normally. Flight points would still exist since they woulld be far more common than arreas that allow you to start flying and therefore a useful alternative instead of an evidently inferor version like what flying does now.

Regardless it was mostly to see if I could get some debate on ways ot make flying not so much noclipping without consequence, though that part of the debate disappeared like usual since players like their convenience far more than they like playing the game.

I mean, I'm not trying to be confrontational or anything, but what you're suggesting is kind of how flight paths work, right now. Go from point A to point B. Sure, you can't choose exactly where you want your 'point B' is.

The main issue I'm seeing is that you're still "grounded" after landing, meaning that you'll still have to use your ground mount to travel around the WQ area, or even to return to the closest flight point, so there isn't much of a gain here. You just saved a small bit of time to get there. To move around the place and to return you're still confined to ground mounts.

[Redroniksre]

The issue with your solution is it would feel very clunky to play with, and as someone else had already pointed out, is basically just flight taxis. I've personally felt that the big problem is that you can just AFK through flight and come back when you are close (and hopefully don't overshoot). Adding a need to keep yourself in the air (be it flapping/gliding or something else) or the additions of wind direction to speed/slow you down i felt might keep people at their keyboards rather than just ignoring the travel portion of the game.

[kenn9530]

It's called playing a video game.
I am not sure what social circles you frequent but I am fairly confident that you don't get players engaged by encouraging them to NOT play your game.

You do realise that ground mounts limit the experience and makes players avoid the content because it just isnt rewarding enough to spend that time, the majority of the playerbase want to be able to do things quickly so they can do the actual content they enjoy in the game, making players spend 10 mins getting to a quest instead of flying there in 2 mins doesnt add anything to the gameplay.

The main content i do is instanced so we want to get to there as fast as possible to do that content, flying mounts means you get access to your preferred content faster.

[oldgeezer]

The game is filled with small moments of gameplay like these. Do you run through a mob pack or around it. Maybe you have immunity to daze, or an absorb shield. Maybe the enemies are overlevelled. Maybe you just run through and kill them if you get dazed. Maybe you see an ore node on a cliff, do you run to get it despite it requiring a bit of finesse or do you ignore it since it might take significant time to get to it.
That's not even mentioning the very obvious things like the treasures in zones dependant on learning to use the enviroment, whether to get down a wall without dying, or searcing for the correct mushroom to climb.
With flying all these small moments of gmaeplay devolve into "mount up and go straight to X".

Do terrain puzzles count as gameplay? Technically, perhaps, but fun gameplay? No. Likewise groups of mobs. Far better to just fly over/around them if you choose. If you want to run along the ground and find the missing path up a mountain, go for it. This is why I generally avoid world content in Revendreth. The zone is just too tedious to navigate on the ground.

[Tertullian72]

With every expansion, I reach a point where I play less and less until flying is activated. Shadowlands is now in that stage for me. If the "flying must be gimped/removed because it kills immersion/I can't gank people/I hate it but can't stop using it" crowd ever wins Blizzard over, I'll probably just stop playing altogether.

Of course, their brief attempt to do so during WoD should have it clear that these people should be ignored, but you never know.

[tacoloco]

I'm still trying to figure out how flying is detrimental to the game and totally broken

It isn't detrimental to the game, despite OP saying it is.

[Tazr]

Flying as it exists in WoW needs to be changed, the version we have is so stupidly broken as a movement option that the only possible way to balance content around it is to completely remove it.....


Further discussion on alternatives to the current flight system as a whole welcome.

Allowing flying at level cap is fine for PvE. You've done the content, you've seen the ground. If you want to fly after that, knock yourself out. They can always turn off flying for each new content zone released, until players have completed all content on at least one character.

If that's not enough, there IS a way for everyone to get what they want:

Devs could add a character "flag" for non-flight, that puts the anti-flying crowd in a separate shard or mode. People that like flying can still fly, with all the pros and cons, meanwhile anti-flyers can run around on ground mounts to their heart's content, knowing they aren't adversely affected by flying players.

This could work in War Mode AND non-War Mode. However, if that's not acceptable to the PvP crowd, Devs could ban ALL flying in War Mode, which fully removes the "flying sucks in world PvP" complaint. Devs could even rig things, so that deliberate PvP in NON-War Mode prevents flying until the PvP flag is removed, with the player automatically dismounted if they attack on a flying mount.

In non-War Mode, lack of flight should only be incurred after DELIBERATELY flagging oneself and attacking a PvP NPC/flagged player (vs. a random PvE mob). Randomly wandering too close to something you didn't know was there (and being force-flagged) should NOT count. Frankly, you shouldn't get force flagged in non-War Mode AT ALL, so far as I'm concerned, but as things stand: flying in non-War Mode SHOULD still be allowed when a player is force flagged, so long as they don't initiate PvP combat. Self-defense also should not count. Hopefully this would also serve to prevent trolls from exploiting this feature and force flag areas with a goal of harassing unwitting PvE players.

[kuroneko-san]

Besides, I am willing ot admit I am not able to control myself from avoiding flying even if I think it is bad for the game, this is the same fatal flaw I have when I have quite content Blizzard doesnt add instawin option for raids, or gear vendors. Or why I am quite happy someone would stop me if I was addicted to Heroin.

So the fact that you dont have an willpower to do something is an excuse to remove that from reality?
Sorry to disappoint you but world dont work this way... after you age 3

I don't care if it sounds selfish, but I think it is bad form to expect teh players to engage in content if the developers give you options not to. At best it is a tacit admission from the developers that they don't have faith in their own product.

Thank god its not you who develop wow. Or anything at all.

[arkanon]

It isn't detrimental to the game, despite OP saying it is.

Could it possibly be that people have differing opinions on it? It has not reduced my enjoyment of the game at all over the last 15 years, but i wouldnt go so far as to say that anyone who says it has is wrong. I disagree with some peoples reasoning for it being a negative, such as "it killed world pvp", but i do believe there are some out there who simply do not enjoy the idea of flying, or are unhappy it was added to the game.

[oldgeezer]

Yes.

You may not like it, but others do. Your opinion is not indicative of the whole.

Well, good for them. And what's stopping them enjoying these fun and exciting terrain puzzles when flying is enabled?