Dragonflight Alpha/Beta General Discussion

[Nyel]

I really hope Blizzard doesnt make an expansion where flying is required without also revamping flying. There currently is no mechanic inherent to flying that is in any way conducive to gameplay, and mixing current flying with open world just leads to the open world being made pointless.
The teleportation networks shown in SL would be mostly meaningless, same with most of the treasures. The very idea of zones like Bastion for instance is heavily built around the concept that you explore it from the ground. The fact that it is floating and the inhabitants can fly is the very reason the zone works so well when you yourself cannot, it gives the developers organic reasons to have treasures out of reach requiring clever use of mechanics to find.

The game is being held back by the current version of flying, and unless the very mechanics of it changes to add some inherent weaknesses and strengths compared to other modes of transportation then adding flying will only ever diminish the open world.

If the contintent itself is designed with flying always being present and where flying is a mandatory part, I don't see any problem. Sure, if they design the continent the same they do with the others, flying is just the convenience. But if your vision for Dragon Isles incorporates the gameplay attached to flying, it's something different.

This could easily be down by e.g. giving the player the moment he steps onto Dragon Isles a dragon companion / mount. You can only use that to fly there and it's slow. You need to level up your companion and you can even customize it later on (which Dragonflight its from, gender, flying style etc.). Flying isn't unlocked from the go, your working towards it in every zone with your dragon companion. You start with slow flying (slower than the fastes ground mount speed) and can slowly upgrade it if you fulfill different tasks etc. It's really easy to give players a new flying experience (at least for Dragon Isles) that would work and be incorporated in the game mechanic. Heck, your Dragon companion could be one of the new gameplay features for the expansion (that's cosmetic; character progression is another system).

[Sondrelk]

If the contintent itself is designed with flying always being present and where flying is a mandatory part, I don't see any problem. Sure, if they design the continent the same they do with the others, flying is just the convenience. But if your vision for Dragon Isles incorporates the gameplay attached to flying, it's something different.

This could easily be down by e.g. giving the player the moment he steps onto Dragon Isles a dragon companion / mount. You can only use that to fly there and it's slow. You need to level up your companion and you can even customize it later on (which Dragonflight its from, gender, flying style etc.). Flying isn't unlocked from the go, your working towards it in every zone with your dragon companion. You start with slow flying (slower than the fastes ground mount speed) and can slowly upgrade it if you fulfill different tasks etc. It's really easy to give players a new flying experience (at least for Dragon Isles) that would work and be incorporated in the game mechanic. Heck, your Dragon companion could be one of the new gameplay features for the expansion (that's cosmetic; character progression is another system).

Just slowing flying down wouldnt erally fix much of anything except maybe whenever you want to go for a short distance fast. The main issue with flying is that it removes open world movement nuance. Things like a fliff ceases to be an obstacle. For a flying continent espeically you cannot really do things like have a smaller island off the side that is impossible to get to, or which contains a challenge, the inclusion of flying trivializes whatever it was supposed to be.

A better form fo flying would have to solve the biggest issue that has plagues it since its inception, that of no content being feasibly built around it that doesnt itself need to remove flying to function like it should.

Flying as it exists doesnt allow for any middle ground between using it and not. When you use a flight point it has inherent limitations. It's fast, but also point to point, this means that content can be built with it in mind, placing it nearer points of interest to strengthen it, or having an area without a convenient flightpoint to enhance the feeling of being in a hostile area.
Flying doesnt have that currently, either you have it and can use it to bypass challenges, or you cannot use it at all. A better option might be to make using it in unintended areas challening, or to give it a slow ramp-up to emphasize how it is supposed to be used over longer distances.

Ideally flying should at least be difficult to maneuver precisely, and require effort in taking off. That way the game could emphasize how some areas are better suited to flying than others, and more organically create challenges where maybe you can get anywhere with flying, but not leave easily. Or conversely make it difficult to get into an area except on foot, but create a designated area within that allows flying away easily.

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Any gameplay system needs inherent limitations, otherwise there isnt any way for the game to innovate and make hte content more fun.

Take the airship in Icecrown. Because of flying it is relegated to a slightyl cooler than average quest hub. Since there is no limitation on flight the airship is deprecated on arrival since there is nothing it can give that flying doesnt alreayd give you.
Had flying not been a part of the game however then the airship would have been an absolutely iconic part of Icecrown. There are no flightpaths anywhere but the outer rims of the zone, so having something high above that you can jump off of with parachutes would have made it probably one of the iconic zones for emergent gameplay.
But as it stands the airship is a gimmick, a neat setpiece whose only features worth remembering are the occassional battles done solely for the spectacle, and the neat feature that you are in a slightly different spot than you were when you landed.


Imagine for instance if Flying was momentum based, and didnt allow you to gain height easily. In such a system a zone like Highmountain would be incredible, jumping off the highest peak, gaining speed and seeing how far you can go. Stormheim is supposed to be windy, getting to Highmountain from sea would be impossible normally, but maybe there are updrafts you can make us of if you know where to look.
Suddenly you might have inadvertently created an entire gameplay loop based around starting from a low position, using game mechanics in a fun way to gain height and speed, and then being rewarded for it.
Now what might only be intended as a convenience has gameplay attached, gameplay that can be rewarded properly. Flying wouldnt be hitting autorun and angling your camera where you want to go, it would require skill and finesse to do right, something players can learn and get good at. And for those that cannot be bothered, or those that really need to go answer the doorbell while also getting across a continent, the flight paths are still there, taking you across the landscape with no risk and no input required beyond the initial click on where exactly you want to go.

[Lady Atia]

But...
It doesn't mean any of those things.

For one, not every zone needs to be floating.
They could make 1-2 zones on the ground or partially floating and the rest in the air.


Whether a zone has shores or water masses depends entirely on zone design.
Nothing stops the zones from having a big sea/lake/rivers and therefore murloc filled beaches on it.

Hell, if anything floating islands having a rich and flowing water sources is almost a given, as that's the most common depiction of magic floating isles in fantasy.


We would be using airships instead then.
Like literally every other fantasy franchise that has air islands.

This is a non-issue.

You could also have the isle from the Black Flight beeing a real isle, as it makes sense for the Earthwarder - and after that the other zones would fly in a spiral form which would look dope as hell.

[Syegfryed]

The problem at this point with Dragon Isles is, if they’re not floating and just are another basic continent in the ocean, I’d be massively disappointed.

Dragon Isles, something where Dragons reside, and it’s not in the air? For a race that’s born to fly and whose individuals are usually massive? (Sure they can transform into other races, but why would dragons do that on their home island?)

plottwist: dragon isles are islands inside the ocean or in another elemental plane

that is definitely the lv of bullshit Danouser would pull to divert attention/expectations and think its a mastermind idea

[draugril]

plottwist: dragon isles are islands inside the ocean or in another elemental plane

that is definitely the lv of bullshit Danouser would pull to divert attention/expectations and think its a mastermind idea

They already laid the groundwork for the mundane with that cheesy Chromie story about choosing her "mortal" form. It made those forms important between the dragons themselves, not just for interacting with the mortal races.

[Syegfryed]

They already laid the groundwork for the mundane with that cheesy Chromie story about choosing her "mortal" form. It made those forms important between the dragons themselves, not just for interacting with the mortal races.

right, but i don't see the connection with what i said.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Errm, just spitballing here, TL;DR: I think you can do cool stuff with the setting, but there are some issues.

I think I would mix dragon isles' degree of otherworldy-ness a bit. I would make one (albeit somehwat smaller) zone where we arrive on the shore of an island with a massive tower in the middle. I would maybe even try to turn the "island shrouded in mist" thing a bit around and make it so that the island isn't uncloaked, like Pandaria and Mechagon, and instead you kind of get whisked away if you fullfill some critera (I guess Wrathion would lead us there with a McGuffin he found). Once you arrive you quest your way towards the tower which essentially would be revealed to be a transport gateway / bridge to the actual dragon isles high in the sky. So I would start it out mystical, yet "down to earth" and escalate it from there. I would make the actual landing point on the isles then a city like suramar, but abandoned and in disrepair, from that point out I would bit for bit let the player reclaim the city while adventuring out onto the islands and "claiming" them. During the adventure more and more congregations of the dragon flights would join us and reclaim their heritage (or something along those lines).

I guess the most difficult thing would be how to flavor the isles to each of the flights. How to make an isle for the black flight without just turning it into a mine with shiny stones and metals? How to make the blues not just another coldarra .. though I think a proper expansive snow biome was missing in the last 8 expansions. Make bronze just another desert? Pretty much the only asthetic that screams at me is the one of the reds with vermillion redoubt autum woods and the valshara like woods for the greens (practically the dream on Azeroth). Having them too diverse will just make them feel too disconnected though. Even if you bring them close together and let them overlap, it may look weird and disjointed.. I guess you could stagger them somewhat to create a kind of gradient. Think of them being connected by some river that ends in a waterfall down to the next isle. Something like the winter isle at the top where the river starts, then you go over into the forest of the reds, the jungle(?) of the greens, the desert of the bronze and the earth and lava zone of the blacks? Feels like I'd be introducing a subconcious hierarchy here though, which seems kinda the wrong thing to do.

[Kiivar86]

All the zones look very distinct and thematic. This means however that I t starts to look increasingly artificial the more you look at it. Humans are after all not living in a blue forest, or gothic castles.
With more grounded zones it's easier to get immersed. You look at the forest and think that this is a forest like the ones you have likely seen already. With zones like Bastion you have to first mentally accept the zone as "reality" before you can get immersed. It's an additional layer of fake you have to accept. You have to get past that it is a game, that it is stylized, and how you control the game in addition to accepting theh zone itself. With more grounded zones you just have to accept the first layers.

From a story perspective you also have to mentally make the connection how this all ties back to Azeroth, which makes it difficult to accept how this is World of Warcraft.


Zones looking less distinct is a definite con for zone variety when it is on Azeroth, but it also makes it easier to go from one zone to the next without having to mentally readjust to the new visuals.


When wow runs out of landmasses the can just revamp. They already recycled outland once into Draenor, so it isn't nearly as impossible a feat as one might think on a smaller scale.

Hm, I see what you mean now, though I don't agree.

You can only do the same sort of forest, desert, etc so many times before it gets boring. This is a fantasy game, after all. Variety is better than the same-old same-old. I just don't agree with the way you think, unfortunately.

The problem at this point with Dragon Isles is, if they’re not floating and just are another basic continent in the ocean, I’d be massively disappointed.

Dragon Isles, something where Dragons reside, and it’s not in the air? For a race that’s born to fly and whose individuals are usually massive? (Sure they can transform into other races, but why would dragons do that on their home island?)

Where did this idea of the dragon isles floating in the air even come from, anyway? Last I recall the concept art was an island sitting in an ocean with that giant mollusk/octopus/old god-esque structure.

Did I miss something?

[Raetary]

Where did this idea of the dragon isles floating in the air even come from, anyway? Last I recall the concept art was an island sitting in an ocean with that giant mollusk/octopus/old god-esque structure.

Did I miss something?

Fan speculation.
Its dragon themed islands, so people want them to float.

Would also give us a rather unique continent, as we never really had proper floating islands.

Nobody even considers the old concept art anymore, for one we only have that one single piece of art and its almost 2 decades old.
It's outdated and barely worth taking into account, especially as the only thing it portrays is a single building along an empty shoreline.

[Cosmic Janitor]

It's outdated and barely worth taking into account, especially as the only thing it portrays is a single building along an empty shoreline.

Also we already had a hentai mountain in the meantime.

[Nyel]

Another story issue I personally would have with Dragon Isles is why Deathwing didn't approach them. Instead he was approaching Wyrmrest etc. Or did he went to the Dragon Isles and basically torched / destroyed them as well and the Dragons were rebuilding it in the last years?

[Hitei]

Where did this idea of the dragon isles floating in the air even come from, anyway? Last I recall the concept art was an island sitting in an ocean with that giant mollusk/octopus/old god-esque structure.

Did I miss something?

For these threads at least, the idea gained traction during 8.2 when people were speculating about 9.0 and we had the Sylverian Dreamer mount, a feathered dragon, alongside the fact that in 8.0 the flying hozen model had been added and was seemingly only used for a couple random NPCs in Dazar'alor. EbaumsTipster in particular suggested that the two might be connected and that we were getting a bunch of feathered animals because the hypothetical Dragon Isles might be flying islands.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Another story issue I personally would have with Dragon Isles is why Deathwing didn't approach them. Instead he was approaching Wyrmrest etc. Or did he went to the Dragon Isles and basically torched / destroyed them as well and the Dragons were rebuilding it in the last years?

I mean it would depend on what the dragon isles actually are at the end of the day. Are they just some old place that was lost? Are they a place of power? Are they just a place of history? I mean we aren't even really sure what the point of wyrmrest is besides a shared space. There were 5 tiny pocket dimensons and that was pretty much it.

[Nyel]

I mean it would depend on what the dragon isles actually are at the end of the day. Are they just some old place that was lost? Are they a place of power? Are they just a place of history? I mean we aren't even really sure what the point of wyrmrest is besides a shared space. There were 5 tiny pocket dimensons and that was pretty much it.

Sure, but as a former aspect Deathwing would have pretty much known everything about the Dragon Isles I guess. And if there's nothing important, why should we visit them now (aka in the next expansion)? I think there needs to be a very good reason why we haven't seen or heard anything about them in Cataclysm, the expansion that was the most about dragons. Another Kul'Tiras / Zandalar situation for the Dragon Isles wouldn't just work from a lore perspective.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Sure, but as a former aspect Deathwing would have pretty much known everything about the Dragon Isles I guess. And if there's nothing important, why should we visit them now (aka in the next expansion)? I think there needs to be a very good reason why we haven't seen or heard anything about them in Cataclysm, the expansion that was the most about dragons. Another Kul'Tiras / Zandalar situation for the Dragon Isles wouldn't just work from a lore perspective.

I mean you could just say that access to them was lost when Deathwing scammed the aspects out of their power for the first time when creating the dragon soul. Deathwing was already mad when he made the thing and he only got mader and dumber afterwards.

[Hitei]

Sure, but as a former aspect Deathwing would have pretty much known everything about the Dragon Isles I guess. And if there's nothing important, why should we visit them now (aka in the next expansion)? I think there needs to be a very good reason why we haven't seen or heard anything about them in Cataclysm, the expansion that was the most about dragons. Another Kul'Tiras / Zandalar situation for the Dragon Isles wouldn't just work from a lore perspective.

Why would you assume there's nothing important because Deathwing didn't bother with them? He had specific goals in mind that had nothing to do with whatever function the Dragon Isles have, so he didn't go to them. We didn't go to them because we were busy trying to fight the twilight's hammer, black dragonflight and elemental forces across two continents.

If you have a fully working FTL capable spaceship in your garage, and right now you're in the kitchen trying to make dinner because you are hungry... there's not much point in going into the garage and getting in that spaceship is there? It doesn't mean that spaceship isn't something insane, valuable and important, but it isn't going to help you cook dinner at all, so there's just no reason to involve it in the process.

[Kiivar86]

Fan speculation.
Its dragon themed islands, so people want them to float.

Would also give us a rather unique continent, as we never really had proper floating islands.

Nobody even considers the old concept art anymore, for one we only have that one single piece of art and its almost 2 decades old.
It's outdated and barely worth taking into account, especially as the only thing it portrays is a single building along an empty shoreline.

For these threads at least, the idea gained traction during 8.2 when people were speculating about 9.0 and we had the Sylverian Dreamer mount, a feathered dragon, alongside the fact that in 8.0 the flying hozen model had been added and was seemingly only used for a couple random NPCs in Dazar'alor. EbaumsTipster in particular suggested that the two might be connected and that we were getting a bunch of feathered animals because the hypothetical Dragon Isles might be flying islands.

Alrighty, so just fan speculation based on...pretty much nothing, then. Just wanted to make sure I hadn't missed something. It seemed like some folk were so sure that I thought there was something more than that.

While the concept art certainly is old, it is the only real concept art we have. Otherwise we have, what, a few mentions of it, a few islands on some equally old maps, and that's about it, yeah?

[Cosmic Janitor]

Alrighty, so just fan speculation based on...pretty much nothing, then. Just wanted to make sure I hadn't missed something. It seemed like some folk were so sure that I thought there was something more than that.

While the concept art certainly is old, it is the only real concept art we have. Otherwise we have, what, a few mentions of it, a few islands on some equally old maps, and that's about it, yeah?

The only thing of "substance" we have - and the quotation marks need be emphasized - is pretty much just the few mentions of the place. The outdated maps and 50x50 screenshots of even more outdated concept art is as good as nothing, since Blizzard has changed things so much over the years. It's pretty much a blank slate besides being related to their namesake.

[Alanar]

I think you guys were right unless the next expansion is in Kalimdor, which I doubt, sounds like we're going to visit Elune's cosmic realm...

The pieces are assembling...



Gardens of Life, or whatever that s***t is called... Even Dragon Isles would've been better... I'm so disappointed...

Or just 9.2..

Nazjatar and nya lotha says hi.

[Raetary]

While the concept art certainly is old, it is the only real concept art we have. Otherwise we have, what, a few mentions of it, a few islands on some equally old maps, and that's about it, yeah?

This doesn't really mean much.

Pandaria was based on 1 hero unit that's primarily meant to be a joke and the Shadowlands had a vague 1 paragraph description in the chronicles, yet we still got expansions out of them.

The fact that the concept lacks fundamental details only adds to its potential.

Also, while the floating thing is just fan daydreaming, Blizzard (contrary to the belief of some) actually does browse through community ideas and takes them into consideration.
If we are loud and persistent enough, they might (internally) pick up on the floating isle concept, at least to some degree.