Is it healthy to gate flying behind "pathfinders"?

[aceperson]

The two have vastly differently designed zones and world content. Comparing the two is kinda pointless. I do agree that you should get flying faster in wow, dont get me wrong, but flying only makes getting to profession stuff and FATEs faster while in wow it allows you to skip a lot of other things than just travel.

that piece of nuance doesn't escape me. but ff14 shows that they are methods of getting players to explore your world before being able to fly without being annoying or require a stupidly long grind. that's my main point. wow couldn't do a similar system because of the world differences. though i would guess that a simple work around would be tying the explore zone achievements to a meta achieve that gives flying. similar to ff14 but suited to wow.

[kranur]

I think it's fine to be locked behind pathfinders (that are not absurd time gates) but with a twist - be available from the start, not introduces in x.1 patch or whatever.
Full exploration, main questlines and maybe honored rep with the factions is enough to be able to fly.

[CalamityHeart]

My only problem with Pathfinder is that I think it should be made available to earn in the .0 patch and not tacked onto a future patch. I'm not sure if I remember correctly, but isn't flying going to eventually be a thing in Zereth Mortis in 9.2? I feel like something like that should be the standard going forward. When new zones come out, whether it's a new expansion or a new patch, the means to earn flight in those zones should be available in that same patch. Flight is something that I personally think should be earned, so Pathfinder itself, and whatever grinds or hurdles that come with it, I don't have much of an issue with.

[Xath]

Is the problem the 3-4 weeks of pathfinder grinding for your average player at the start of an expansion? When most of it is stuff you do at endgame naturally anyways?

Or is the problem that the devs decide when we get it since it's "gated" behind the 0.1 or 0.2 patch? Most of the time half a year or further into the expansion?

It's both but it's more the petulant fit of we don't like flight even though we don't actually play the game. Ion isn't even bothering to get carried now hasn't killed a boss past mythic nine while his guild is long done with content.

[Murux]

Game is nearly dead and even developers are raping each others.. yet you are here wondering about flying.. just rofl

[AngerFork]

I do think there should be some sort of initial gating for flight so as not to force speed leveling, but it takes way too long as it stands currently. Perhaps we have something that we have to collect over 2-3 weeks (which can be gathered from base expansion level) that gives us flight when all of them are turned in.

[pahbi]

I don't begrudge the dev team from wanting people to travel through a zone a few times just to see all the hard work they put into building zones.

IMO a month after expansion release + max level + some gold fee should get you flight.

[saixilein]

There is no reason to not allow flying after you are max level, like we've had it for the longest time since at least wrath (when I started playing).
I really don't want to hear about immersion in an mmo with repeatable content. It's ridiculous. I really don't want to insult anyone, but what kind of person feels immersion after leveling up? Doing dailies? World quests? For the umpteenth time?

Agree.

If I wanna do the Questlines and all i will do it. But if they force me to do it i will pass for sure. Didnt got flying in wod, legion and bfa, because i really dont wanna do boring quests, daylies and grinding rep every fcking day.

[Niwes]

In the end you will have the flight in Zereth Mortis thanks to the decryption system.

So, it's looks like flying is going to be added to 9.2 content. It's great news, because Blizzard are going to break that old silly made up "no flying in locations, that aren't connected to main map" restriction. So, they admit, that flying isn't something bad and content can be designed around having it. It also can be sign of long awaited "separate pathfinder for every content patch" system.

I want to remind you, that flying:
1) Important factor for casual/alt-friendliness of game. Not all players want ground content to be challenging. Not all players treat going from point A to point B as content. Not all players like treasure hunting. Etc. Some players want to simply do their daily objectives and that's it.
2) It's great motivation to do things, as flying mounts are great reward. Flying mounts are much more desirable, than ground ones.

But...

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:
1) Players feel, that game is incomplete without flying
2) Players have to rush towards getting flying instead of just enjoying content
3) Players are forced to do content, they don't like
4) Players have to stay unsubbed not to spoil their experience in case of time-gating/catch-ups

So. If flying isn't that bad, Blizzard admit it and it's added at the end, then may be "pathfinders" aren't needed?

imo it depends on the point of view. there are 2 of them:

1)
you can call it „best of both worlds“ or „a good compromise“

2)
you can call it „halfbaked“ or „a compromise that makes none of both worlds happy“

its a) subjective if you are more of a pro-flighing player or more of a pro-ground mount player. both parties have good pro and con arguments and it comes down to personal taste.

and b) it depends heavily on who you are and what you are doing in wow.
example1:
you are an old veteran Vanilla player like riding ground mounts, take care of mob groups and like using the terrain, while only playing 1 main char at all. this guy maybe has above viewpoint 1.
example2:
you play very early a lot of alts, like to login, fly to, do your shit, logout. maybe that guy find steady taking care of mob groups annyoing and already did all zones x times with x chars. and maybe that guy dont like achievements and rarely do some. maybe this guy has more of above viewpoint2.

i personally be not exactly sure, what my own viewpoint is. even as 16 years uninterrupted subbed player i maybe have a bit more of viewpoint2, but i also like doing achievements. but i hate timegated stuff. in the end of the day its heavily subjective and depends a lot on who you are and what you are doing in wow.

Edit:

as a small comment to one statement in your text, i wanna say that i often see the problem in „Not all players want ground content to be challenging“ exactly in the word „challenging“. since its mostly just AoE mob killing, where mobs not really can kill you, for many ppls it not feels like „challenging“ and more like „annoying“. maybe more ppl would like it, if it has more of the „2 mobs can kill you“ nature of Vanilla 2005. idk…

[Etna-the-Undying]

The only reason i would want a flying mount is so i can do the quests faster, so i can get gold faster. Or so i can farm notes faster to again make more gold faster. From a player that just wants to enjoy raiding and pvping and doesnt care much for solo content. I would love to have Flying mount from the start so i can enjoy the stuff i like the most faster. It doesnt mean i dont enjoy questing it just means that slow questing hurts the ability to do what you enjoy the most because you still need to farm some gold in a fast way.

[Bee76]

Yes. Flying shouldn't even be in the game. They've admitted as such. However, this compromise is fine. After the content is completed and mostly irrelevant, then you can have flying for your alts or whatever.

Uhm, no one is forced to use a flying mount. If ppl prefer to experience that "awesome" ground content, they can do it. But i am forced to not fly until pathfinder comes out. I HAVE to experience their bad ground content design.
Flying is fine, they are not willing to create content for flying mounts like in BC.

As a compromise, i would suggest some kind of "buff"- Ground players can choose not to use a flying mount and recieve a buff on world content like warmode. Or double the wm buff on ground players.
But there should be the possibility to buy flying before pathfinder. Make it expensive like 1 million gold per char, people who are not interested to pay that much can still wait for x.1 patch and pathfinder.

[Tonkaden]

Uhm, no one is forced to use a flying mount. If ppl prefer to experience that "awesome" ground content, they can do it. But i am forced to not fly until pathfinder comes out. I HAVE to experience their bad ground content design.
Flying is fine, they are not willing to create content for flying mounts like in BC.

As a compromise, i would suggest some kind of "buff"- Ground players can choose not to use a flying mount and recieve a buff on world content like warmode. Or double the wm buff on ground players.
But there should be the possibility to buy flying before pathfinder. Make it expensive like 1 million gold per char, people who are not interested to pay that much can still wait for x.1 patch and pathfinder.

Why make it more convoluted. The flying has been like this a long time now. You think everyone would be used to it by now. Id honestly rather just see them remove flying all together in the current expac and develop the content around it, then once the prepatch for the next expac hits or maybe a mini patch before it, enable it.

[Candlewick]

Delaying flying simply adds pointless travel time to content that is simple grind X for Y resources.

They delay it to draw it out but it has no gameplay purpose beyond that.

[Rageonit]

ff14 has shown that gating flying isn't a big deal. the issue is how long the grind for pathfinder is and how long you have to wait after getting it to fly. so basically it's a design issue. and with this team, i doubt it will be fixed.

Gating flying for a longer period of time also shows very well how destructive flying is for potential design ideas. Take, for example, topography: Revendreth has many unique travel options (to an extent nonexistant in any other zone to date, I think); but as soon as we got flying, people (me included) stopped using them, because why would you, if it's faster to fly? So allowing flying on release kills the potential ideas for unique topography and travel options. And topography can be linked to things like questing (it opens up different options if getting to a certain point on the map is an actual challenge). Game with flying (at least the way WoW does it) is more... samey, less creative. You COULD do something more with flying itself, but I think Blizzard isn't keen to do that (people have troubles with 3d movement - Vash'jir was a great example of that in the past, many people hated it for 3d movement & fighting).

- - - Updated - - -

Delaying flying simply adds pointless travel time to content that is simple grind X for Y resources.
They delay it to draw it out but it has no gameplay purpose beyond that.

I think you couldn't be more wrong.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

Its not "healthy" for there to be flying in the first place, so what ever happens after that I will struggle to care about.
They should just bite the bullet and remove flying permanently, or actually dedicate to making Flying worth something other than a way to fly over all the ground content.

[Trumpcat]

I don't mind not having flying at all. Seems the best game in the world is doing fine without.

[GhostShaman]

There really isnt a point to gate flying at all anymore. With the push for esports and competitive raiding, nobody really cares about what is going on out in the world. Everything is a queue system or an esport.

Personally I think the "compromise" should be 1 pathfinder and never a part two that is TBD. Let the players choose what and how they experience the content. I am never a fan of gating anything for the sake of slowing progress to increase dev times. It just leads to bad user experiences.

[FelPlague]

I quit playing the game in 2017. If pathfinder wasn't a thing i'd still be playing. I'm thinking that i'm going to try the next expansion, but if they're assholes about the pathfinder I just won't bother.

"if pathfinder wasnt a thing id still be playing" you do know.. shadowlands does not have pathfinder right?
you literally unlock flying just by doing the main campaign...

[Deadite]

"if pathfinder wasnt a thing id still be playing" you do know.. shadowlands does not have pathfinder right?
you literally unlock flying just by doing the main campaign...

Yeah a year later. That i think is most peoples problem with path finder. You jump through the hoops and grind the wanky reps and you still have to wait a year. As you say tho this time they did not add a part two and make you grind more reps than add another couple months onto the tally.

I guess that is not a problem for some of the folk in this thread. Simce they seem to hate flying i am sure they are still running about on ground mounts and not flying. Amirite guys?

[cparle87]

There is no reason to not allow flying after you are max level, like we've had it for the longest time since at least wrath (when I started playing).
I really don't want to hear about immersion in an mmo with repeatable content. It's ridiculous. I really don't want to insult anyone, but what kind of person feels immersion after leveling up? Doing dailies? World quests? For the umpteenth time?

We'd had it longer with pathfinder than without it by this point. And yes, you are insulting people for liking things you don't.