Is it healthy to gate flying behind "pathfinders"?

[Vampyrr]

Maybe they could move it up a little from where they do now, but what I DO NOT WANT is flying actually at release of a new expansion. It was crappy, and horribly immersion breaking to fight your way in on a quest, just to watch two guys land on the boss from the air, kill him and take off, leaving you standing there with your thumb up your ass. (Cata, if you don't recognize what I'm talking about.)

So, while I'm all good with making it simpler, I do not want automatic flying at release of a new area or expansion.

TBC was first expansion with flying and had no gating. Hell druids got it early.

[Murux]

Game has literally no players and dying very rapidly but you are wondering if its unhealthy to gate flying... rofl

[Vampyrr]

Flying was the game's biggest mistake from the get go. They surely didn't think of the long term implications of this failure.

The only failure is they never bothered to design anything with flying in mind. The game could be greater with flying if they bothered to design around that as a core feature which it is.

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It’s fine like it is. The poll language is stupidly biased. Lucky for you that you are unsubbed/not playing at all. You aren’t forced to do anything at all other than haunt this forum every day.

EDIT: I would be fine with no flying at all if 1) they did a proper world revamp and 2) fairly recompensed everyone who has bought flying mounts.

Maybe if we got a permanent 400+% ground speed mount

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Let's not pretend there isn't also a huge "anti-flying" sentiment, which is why they settled with this compromise.

I absolutely abhor flying, and feel it completely removes any sense of size and danger to the world, making the vast majority of the designed and built world, obsolete. Hence, i like this compromise... you enjoy the release of new content without flying, really in it, and then, a while later, you can just fly from A to B and ignore everything in between to your hearts content.

But again, sure, keep pretending its "unanimous" and they ignored all feedback.

You are likely the minority though in this matter.

[Kumorii]

Flying is, as others mentioned, one of the biggest mistakes. Not because it was implemented, but how it was implemented. Full control with helicopter movement made it such a powerful mobility tool that there is nothing you can "design" for it. Not sure how you can draw the conclusion that just because they let us fly they have zones designed with flying in mind?
Literally any zone whatsoever will be demolished due to how powerful flying is.

A fundamental design philosophy is that most things requires pros and cons.. that way you engage players. There are no cons with flying... Thus it becomes such a boring thing to do, but due to how powerful it is you are heavily enticed to use it.

Give flying some drawbacks and you'll see more people being on-board with having flying from the get go.

[cozzri]

Flying is, as others mentioned, one of the biggest mistakes. Not because it was implemented, but how it was implemented. Full control with helicopter movement made it such a powerful mobility tool that there is nothing you can "design" for it. Not sure how you can draw the conclusion that just because they let us fly they have zones designed with flying in mind?
Literally any zone whatsoever will be demolished due to how powerful flying is.

A fundamental design philosophy is that most things requires pros and cons.. that way you engage players. There are no cons with flying... Thus it becomes such a boring thing to do, but due to how powerful it is you are heavily enticed to use it.

Give flying some drawbacks and you'll see more people being on-board with having flying from the get go.

There really does not need to be any cons, just better balance maybe? What about games like City of Heroes, Champions Online, etc.? You play a hero and have the CHOICE to fly around (there's other super mobility options to choose from; super speed, super jumping, etc..)

The whole concept around having mounts, super powers, etc is to be the HERO and get to the action fast.

Moreover, the power breakdown doesn't feel good, we killed gods, but when we get to a new zone we can't fly because *reasons*
The gameplay loop just doesn't make sense and is really irritating to a lot of people.... I know I'm not alone on this.

[Kumorii]

There really does not need to be any cons, just better balance maybe? What about games like City of Heroes, Champions Online, etc.? You play a hero and have the CHOICE to fly around (there's other super mobility options to choose from; super speed, super jumping, etc..)

The whole concept around having mounts, super powers, etc is to be the HERO and get to the action fast.

Moreover, the power breakdown doesn't feel good, we killed gods, but when we get to a new zone we can't fly because *reasons*
The gameplay loop just doesn't make sense and is really irritating to a lot of people.... I know I'm not alone on this.

how can you balance if there are no cons? That's what balance sort of entails...
Don't know of the games you mention or how they work, so I can't comment on it.

Yes, that is the point of mounts... doesn't mean it has to be without cons. Ground mount have cons compared to flying. No full mobility, slower, riskier etc etc.
as you can hear no one is against mounts. Most are against the completely overpowered state flying is implemented with.

I separate gameplay from lore. The reasons why we can't fly doesn't bother me in the least. Gameplay first, lore second. Flying gameplay is boring... that's all there is to it. Make flying more engaging and more people will enjoy it. Now it's almost like a teleport, nullifies the world terrain. Auto-fly to the next area etc etc. No thought, just point where you want to go and grab something to drink while you get there.

I mean, even any sort of fortification or bastion where you have to kill key targets inside are just noise, fly over everything, land kill the guy, fly off... Any sort of world design just get destroyed by it. Unless you make most things "inside", in which you can't fly... then people complain you have to "fight" through to your quest objective.

in the end it's too late for blizzard to change how flying works because players will be vehemently against anything short of what we have... At least pathfinders make the world and zone design actually relevant for a little bit. Not saying it's perfect by any means, they do make it frustrating at times, especially with density in certain areas. There are possible improvements for sure.

[hulkgor]

You are likely the minority though in this matter.

How exactly did you come to this conclusion? Any numbers you care to share?

[Kalisandra]

Flying is, as others mentioned, one of the biggest mistakes. Not because it was implemented, but how it was implemented. Full control with helicopter movement made it such a powerful mobility tool that there is nothing you can "design" for it. Not sure how you can draw the conclusion that just because they let us fly they have zones designed with flying in mind?
Literally any zone whatsoever will be demolished due to how powerful flying is.

A fundamental design philosophy is that most things requires pros and cons.. that way you engage players. There are no cons with flying... Thus it becomes such a boring thing to do, but due to how powerful it is you are heavily enticed to use it.

Give flying some drawbacks and you'll see more people being on-board with having flying from the get go.

It follows then that ground mounts must have drawbacks compared to walking/running. While they do (and they're the same that flying mounts have), they are not ones that are relevant to a means of long distance travel.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

I like the Final Fantasy XIV approach to flying. A few key points you have to discover on the map (they do it by clicking on things, WoW could probably do it with map exploration) and then a key point or a few key points during the questing in the zone to eventually unlock flying for the zone. Now doing it zone by zone in WoW is tickery because the zones are seamless and FFXIV they are individual so it probably would have to be a expansion wide achievement. So in something like WoW you would have to explore the whole map on the ground, complete the quest "stories" for each zone, and then you might as well be able to fly.

Pathfinder would be a lot less of a problem if patch content came out a lot faster. But with WoW it seems like they can never pull it together and get things rolling at any decent pace so... they probably should abandon the whole gating behind a patch part of it. Just doesn't make sense if it takes you 6-8 months to get us the next patch. Because of that I kind of am against pathfinder now. I would like it if they could move.. but that's a pipe dream.

[Vampyr78]

Yes it should be locked by some form of pathfinder but that requirement should be removed for current expansion when next expansions comes out. It often requires content you're gonna do anyway so it's not realy that much of a grind. Also that way both sides of the flying argument get what they want for a littlbe bit.

[Caerule]

Blizz doesn't want or like flying. And why should they? It's much easier to design content without it. It makes the world feel emptier. They get tons of complaints from PvPers wanting world PvP. It's in their every advantage to not give us flying. So when people started to campaign against flying in MoP, they excitedly hopped on that train, just like I warned at the time.

Blizzard is more likely to remove flying, than to make it more available. The compromise lets us have this popular feature, once Blizzard is satisfied the ground content they designed has been exhausted.

Do I like being unable to fly? No! I love flying. I love it so much! But if gating it is the price for it being in the game at all, then I'll gladly pay it.

[Ringthane]

Healthy, as in making one sick if they can't fly? No, I don't think that's a problem really anyone has. And if they do, they have bigger problems than being able to fly in a video game.

Sound business decision? That's another question. But when I think of healthy or unhealthy things, this really isn't one of them.

[Ielenia]

TBC was first expansion with flying and had no gating. Hell druids got it early.

Yes, but in TBC, the basic flying speed was jut 60%. You would actually go faster on land than on air. Max flight speed was only max-level and cost a lot of gold, too.

[Powerogue]

At the end. Is it healthy to gate flying behind "pathfinders"? For several xpacks in a row flying is held as hostage in order to force players to do 100% content. It causes bad behavior:

That's not even remotely true. Flying is easily unlocked by playing casually and they've lowered that bar more every expansion. The idea is that you play the game "the intended way", navigating the zone and its obstacles and monsters, then, much like catch-up gear, and "I've seen this before" dialogue options, flying allows you to skip over that on your alts and once that freshness has expired and you really just want to get from A-B at the fastest time possible.

It works. For me at least. I'm actually all for more Maw-style zones which take us down the additional peg of nerfing access to mounts at all. A mount with anti-daze and the engineering mount motivator is still quite a shift in difficulty from that, and I did like how we could just Grand Theft Auto ourselves mounts off the local NPCs, added flavor that reminded me of the grapple gun in Stormheim (which we also got).

So long as navigating a zone is fun and interesting, I'd rather do it than fly, at least until that novelty wears off.

[WowIsDead64]

That's not even remotely true. Flying is easily unlocked by playing casually and they've lowered that bar more every expansion. The idea is that you play the game "the intended way", navigating the zone and its obstacles and monsters, then, much like catch-up gear, and "I've seen this before" dialogue options, flying allows you to skip over that on your alts and once that freshness has expired and you really just want to get from A-B at the fastest time possible.

It works. For me at least. I'm actually all for more Maw-style zones which take us down the additional peg of nerfing access to mounts at all. A mount with anti-daze and the engineering mount motivator is still quite a shift in difficulty from that, and I did like how we could just Grand Theft Auto ourselves mounts off the local NPCs, added flavor that reminded me of the grapple gun in Stormheim (which we also got).

So long as navigating a zone is fun and interesting, I'd rather do it than fly, at least until that novelty wears off.

This is how it should work, but current implementation doesn't work for me, as "fresh" period is way too long. It sounds more like "flying is given to you, when it's already irrelevant" and it's not good compromise. Plus we have "no flying forever" locations, I can't enjoy.

[DarkAmbient]

That's not even remotely true. Flying is easily unlocked by playing casually

People often say this, but it's a bit disingenuous. Put it this way: would the average player fulfil the Pathfinder requirements just by levelling to 60? Because if not, then the system objectively makes you work more for flying than simply buying it with gold once you ding. Now, someone who intends to exhaust all the content anyway may well gradually attain the Pathfinder achievements via casual gameplay over several months, but what if I didn't intend to do that? Then I'm held hostage by Pathfinder.

[Yutilk]

yes it sets a barrier of entry for those that need it.

[Zelk]

people are really in this thread complaining about zones having verticality and mobs in them huh

[Kehego]

people are really in this thread complaining about zones having verticality and mobs in them huh

basically. people want every zone to be like tanaris.

lmfao

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People often say this, but it's a bit disingenuous. Put it this way: would the average player fulfil the Pathfinder requirements just by levelling to 60? Because if not, then the system objectively makes you work more for flying than simply buying it with gold once you ding. Now, someone who intends to exhaust all the content anyway may well gradually attain the Pathfinder achievements via casual gameplay over several months, but what if I didn't intend to do that? Then I'm held hostage by Pathfinder.

no no, its very very easily unlocked.
you literally just explore the map and actually play the game.

If that's being held hostage, flight simulator 2021 has good reviews on steam

[DarkAmbient]

no no, its very very easily unlocked.
you literally just explore the map and actually play the game.

If that's being held hostage, flight simulator 2021 has good reviews on steam

When I dinged 60 I'd explored the map and played the game but flying didn't unlock for me, maybe you played a different game.