No flying on Argus - broken promise?

[MoanaLisa]

After years of having to read these threads I'm actually at the point where I sometimes wish Blizzard would just say "No flying. Never" and be done with it. Nice, clean, quick and really not subject to a lot of parsing.

Different developer perspectives on the same principle, "Flight as reward", are not necessarily contradictory. Do the content, acquire the reputations, play the game, get the reward. Definitions of what is and isn't fair are subjective.

[SirCowdog]

After years of having to read these threads I'm actually at the point where I sometimes wish Blizzard would just say "No flying. Never" and be done with it. Nice, clean, quick and really not subject to a lot of parsing.

They tried that. It didn't work because it's not what players actually want, no matter how many trolls repeat that flying is bad for the game.

And instead of being honest about that, they went straight back to being dishonest about their intentions. Good job, Blizzard. I don't know why people keep making excuses for them.

[Billy Idol]

Dev always breaks their promises, Long time ago say that there is no lvl beyond 100 and look now with there flying thing they do what ever they can i justify by dev cooler speach

[MoanaLisa]

They tried that. It didn't work because it's not what players actually want, no matter how many trolls repeat that flying is bad for the game.

And instead of being honest about that, they went straight back to being dishonest about their intentions. Good job, Blizzard. I don't know why people keep making excuses for them.

Because most of us don't care enough about flying to beat it into the ground for several years for a start. And others just enjoy the game. Most aren't making excuses at all. Most never read either of our posts.

[WowIsDead64]

After years of having to read these threads I'm actually at the point where I sometimes wish Blizzard would just say "No flying. Never" and be done with it. Nice, clean, quick and really not subject to a lot of parsing.

Different developer perspectives on the same principle, "Flight as reward", are not necessarily contradictory. Do the content, acquire the reputations, play the game, get the reward. Definitions of what is and isn't fair are subjective.

Well, we can also say, that they just can return flying forever, just to finally stop this discussion, and be done with it. But it would be enough for us, if Blizzard would implement fair enough compromise. Fair enough compromise - pro-flying players should also have some actual content to do, not just crumbs from a anti-flyers' table. For me ideal solution would be: unlockable flying during leveling (cuz no-flying on alts - is very bad thing) + one endgame location with flying or may be per-location Pathfinder.

[SirCowdog]

Because most of us don't care enough about flying to beat it into the ground for several years for a start. And others just enjoy the game. Most aren't making excuses at all. Most never read either of our posts.

It's not just flying, but rather the way in which Blizzard conducts themselves when dealing with it. As Musashi said, see the large by way of the small.

Flying is only one aspect of a larger issue that's become a pattern of behavior for Blizzard and other large game companies. I use flying as the context because it's what I care about, but it's the same argument as day 1 DLC, putting loot boxes in everything, advertising hype but delivering something else.

The list goes on. But I'll only say that it's not just me that's following this issue. You're a mod. Go and look at who creates the threads about flight. I guarandamntee it isn't me.

[WowIsDead64]

Because most of us don't care enough about flying to beat it into the ground for several years for a start. And others just enjoy the game. Most aren't making excuses at all. Most never read either of our posts.

P.S. It's extremely weird situation, when even moderator starts to use fallacies. "Most of us"? You know... Some players on official forums told me, that outdoor content is designed this way, because wast majority of players likes treasure hunting, and that I can GTFO, if I don't like it. And then... Yeah, statistics show, that out of 60% players, who have completed Argus campaign and 80% players, who at least have tried it (20% hate argus + 20% didn't like it) - only 3.5% of players care about treasures. So, you should be really careful with using "Most of us". Because actually don't know, who is majority and who isn't.

[MoanaLisa]

P.S. It's extremely weird situation, when even moderator starts to use fallacies. "Most of us"? You know... Some players on official forums told me, that outdoor content is designed this way, because wast majority of players likes treasure hunting, and that I can GTFO, if I don't like it. And then... Yeah, statistics show, that out of 60% players, who have completed Argus campaign and 80% players, who at least have tried it (20% hate argus + 20% didn't like it) - only 3.5% of players care about treasures. So, you should be really careful with using "Most of us". Because actually don't know, who is majority and who isn't.

I'm perfectly comfortable that "most of us" in whatever sense you like aren't beating the topic into the ground (which is what I wrote). Even here there are probably less than a dozen people that post all the time about this and have done so for months or years. That leaves "most of us" if you will.

[kamuimac]

this game has major issues and the only thing people can cry about are flying mounts and their entitlements to RNG drops.. sad

because thats the only reason things most of people care about

90% of players couldnt give less shit about stupid meaningless things like rng,legendaries or tuning

[WowIsDead64]

I'm perfectly comfortable that "most of us" in whatever sense you like aren't beating the topic into the ground (which is what I wrote). Even here there are probably less than a dozen people that post all the time about this and have done so for months or years. That leaves "most of us" if you will.

Players are different. Some players have higher tolerance for inconveniences, some lower. Same here - some players care more, some less. Yeah, "most of us" simply stated their opinion long time ago and stopped posting, cuz they don't have any desire to fight for what they like, some simply quit game and found something else to play. But it doesn't mean, they don't care. You should understand, that chain reaction effect may affect players' opinions: players, who don't like game, quit it and therefore lesser number of them post on forums - it starts to seem, like they're minority. And we should take their opinion into account, cuz they would return to game, if Blizzard would make changes.

[Atrea]

You're assuming they'll never enable flying on Argus.

You might find that they'll do it for 8.0

Just sayin'.

[SirCowdog]

I'm perfectly comfortable that "most of us" in whatever sense you like aren't beating the topic into the ground (which is what I wrote). Even here there are probably less than a dozen people that post all the time about this and have done so for months or years. That leaves "most of us" if you will.

And yet I see just as many posts from random people hating on flight or simply repeating nonsense rationalizations as I do those in support. There are just as many ground players "beating this into the ground" as anything else. Even your posts on the subject contribute to that.

You're assuming they'll never enable flying on Argus.

You might find that they'll do it for 8.0

Just sayin'.

Hazzicostas has explicitly stated that the way in which it's designed (with skyboxes and other artistic tricks) are incompatible with flying. So unless they decide to spend dev time to go back and remaster Argus to change how everything there works, I seriously doubt it.

[Dhrizzle]

I don't believe this is the case at all. TBC also released content in "the world" that was specifically designed for flying. Ogri'La and Skettis, as well as the Throne of Kil'Jaden(which could only be reached via flight or the portal scroll). It also seems unnecessarily oblique to refer the "the world" as only the non-patch areas of the open world, and calling no-fly islands something else.

It doesn't really matter what you believe though. The post considers TBC to be an expansion where you could fly in "The World" despite Isle of Quel'danas being an area with flight restricted. Same with Cata, MoP and now Legion. If you follow the logic that they can only refer to flying in "The World" if every single zone including those added in patches allow flight, then the only expansions with flying in "The World" are WotLK and WoD.

Regardless, arguing about the intended meaning of Blizzard's bizarre rationalizations before 6.2.2 is pointless.

"Bizarre?"

No fly islands were an attempt to extend the amount of time players had to spend on the ground into max-level content. Pathfinder solves that issue in a more elegant way because it can apply to all zones, and isn't as much of a blunt instrument.

Given Blizz's stated reasons for not allowing flight, it would be extremely foolish to expect the Pathfinder from the Broken Isles to extend to newly released content.

Again, I'm going to restate the point I made to @Crummy: For two years straight Blizzard made a concerted, consistent effort to communicate to players that Pathfinder was the way flight was going to be handled. The wording they used in forum posts, twitter, and live interviews always made it out that flying would be usable once the ground content had been played. This was because the problems that flying presented no longer applied.

Firstly I think you're making a mistake thinking Blizz have put that much effort into this whole thing, "concerted, consistent effort" implies more than the occasional blog or forum post explaining what they're doing and planning.

Switching to a completely different design method and treatment of flight after two years of reassuring players how things would work, without warning, is not an act of honesty. Rationalizing it with lawyeristic excuses such as: "This is Argus!" only makes it worse. That kind of rationalization is just as bad as telling players they can still fly in older areas. While technically true, it completely avoids the heart of the issue.

It isn't a completely different design method. Pathfinder was used to unlock flying in the Broken Isles. It does it's job of allowing them to design end-game content from day 1 that is tackled from the ground, then unlocking in a more interesting way than simply handing over a bag of gold.

This is not fixating on a single stray word. This is being lead to believe that flight would be treated fairly with TWO YEARS of consistent reassuring by the devs. I'm sorry you can't see that. Dropping a no-fly area into the mix without warning doesn't fit anywhere in anything they've said since they started preaching Pathfinder.

You literally used the fact Ion sometimes referreed to "Legion Pathfinder" instead of "Broken Isles Pathfinder" as a gotcha that somehow proves your ridiculous idea that Blizzard are running some sort of deliberately deceptive scheme.

No amount of saying that we should have expected otherwise because of actions before Pathfinder changes that. The entire point of reassuring players and having a consistent and unified message was to avoid the mistakes of how previous expansions were handled. Using those previous mistakes as a defense for a No-Fly Argus is just ridiculous.

What makes you think previous expansions were "a mistake" in Blizzard's eyes? They seem quite happy with the way no-fly zones worked out in other expansions, so why wouldn't they bring it forward to Legion?

The fact is you had no reason to believe that Pathfinder would apply to every single piece of content or zone released during patches in Legion. At best you can make a guess, and given Blizz's reasons for restricting flight and the way previous expansions had been handled the most likely guess was for Argus not allowing flight. However you're choosing to ignore this so you can assert your flawed assessment is the only possible conclusion from Blizz's statements, all so you can continue to dismiss actual reasons for the decisions and continue to attack the devs as being dishonest or deliberately manipulative.

As I said earlier, it's a sad attitude and one that leads to many devs (not just Blizz) refusing to talk about their work as it's not worth the hassle of upset forum warriors crying about broken promises.

- - - Updated - - -

You're assuming they'll never enable flying on Argus.

You might find that they'll do it for 8.0

Just sayin'.

Highly unlikely. Apart from the fact it would break the skybox Argus is probably going to be the peak of open-world endgame content until the end of the expansion, at which point there'd be no need for anyone to take their characters back.

[Fabinas]

Because most of us don't care enough about flying to beat it into the ground for several years for a start. And others just enjoy the game. Most aren't making excuses at all. Most never read either of our posts.

It's not the only subject they have been dishonest or straight ahead choosing a path contrary to what they have stated. The thing is that with the WoD flight shenaningans (flight at 6.1, flight later than 6.1, no flight onwards, ok guys pathfinder then) the can of worms has opened and the current dev team has lost most of its credibility.

Examples: ilvl world mob scaling, keeping the 4 legendary drop cap secret. Minor one: We want warlocks to double down on their strengths-proceed to swap talents so you cannot get both dark pact and soul link. No reason to try and justify those. Even if they had their reasons, they should have either kept their damned traps shut, or not proceed with the changes.

[MoanaLisa]

It's not the only subject they have been dishonest or straight ahead choosing a path contrary to what they have stated. The thing is that with the WoD flight shenaningans (flight at 6.1, flight later than 6.1, no flight onwards, ok guys pathfinder then) the can of worms has opened and the current dev team has lost most of its credibility.

Developer credibility is irrelevant. The game is what you judge against. What developers say when they discuss how they think about the game in the future or why they have done something isn't black and white. Nothing really is. It's all gradations of grey with different points of view presented as a summary.

Thinking about design evolves. Saying that developers have no credibility is a great argument for developers to point at and then say nothing at all. This entire argument about what developers promise and whether they have any credibility is immediately solved by what's in the game. You like it or you don't. You buy it or you don't.

I don't know of anyone at all that avoids a game they genuinely enjoy because a developer said something about it that never came to be quite true.

Your signature signals better than anything what you think of Blizzard. And that's fine. But it also means that it's unlikely that you'll view anything in a more-or-less objective way. That's fine too. But this belief that developers need to only speak truth about future events is sophist*.

*http://www.dictionary.com/browse/sophism

[huth]

Sadly, I strongly suspect that they CAN afford to not deliver on the expectation of flight, which is exactly why they did Argus the way that they did.

It seems that they did actually deliver on the common expectation of flight. Your expectation simply isn't common to the point where i've yet to meet anybody outside this thread expressing even minor surprise about it not being available on Argus.

[Fabinas]

Developer credibility is irrelevant. The game is what you judge against. What developers say when they discuss how they think about the game in the future or why they have done something isn't black and white. Nothing really is. It's all gradations of grey with different points of view presented as a summary.

Thinking about design evolves. Saying that developers have no credibility is a great argument for developers to point at and then say nothing at all. This entire argument about what developers promise and whether they have any credibility is immediately solved by what's in the game. You like it or you don't. You buy it or you don't.

I don't know of anyone at all that avoids a game they genuinely enjoy because a developer said something about it that never came to be quite true.

Your signature signals better than anything what you think of Blizzard. And that's fine. But it also means that it's unlikely that you'll view anything in a more-or-less objective way. That's fine too. But this belief that developers need to only speak truth about future events is sophist*.

*http://www.dictionary.com/browse/sophism

I don't expect developers to be speaking the truth. I hate deception, double talk, PR language, intentional hiding of facts etc. As a product consumer, i want the product designers to come up with what i should expect from it so i can continue to either support the product or not with a INFORMED decision.

I never thought that the developers "lied" to us when they announced that Night Elf island or Farahlon areas and then went to scrap those areas from the game. They have every right to change plans when something is not working as intended or ends up far below thier standards or is incompatible with the game lore etc. I didn't like their decision of scrapping flight out in WoD, but i would have accepted it back then, when i felt more loyal towards WoW and the developers decisions. I would have waited to find out.
The problem was that they wormed this decision towards the players. It started with an announcement of no flying at start, but possibly 6.1, then it was "maybe later, but not 6.1", then it was "no flight onward". In order to keep the WoD expansion selling, one key decision about the game direction was kept covered. Then the decision was shown as to be long and dragging and then no flight announced. The 2 week reversal of this decision showed that this tactic they followed was not at all well accepted by the community and subscribers.

So, developer credibility IS relevant. It allows me to decide whether the game i buy is worth my time and money or not. As a 12 year constinuous subscriber with 3 accounts, i did expect the devs to come with a clear and concise description of the direction the game was taking, so i could actually buy 3 xpacs (one usually a collector's edition, either physical or digital) and continue to pay for 3 subs.

You (meaning everyone who happens to read this post) should understand that my signature was not put there in a moment of rage against Blizzard. It was a decision made when i found the game i played for many years and have enjoyed up till then, turned into an RNG casino, a diablofied version of it, a game with so many nice ideas so badly implemented with the intention of dragging out content, mask the lack of content quantity with ad nauseum repetition and keeping the rewards elusive, having Broken Shore quest line shenanigans (compared to the suramar questline, Broken Shore quests were actually a spit against the wind from the devs, came back up on their faces)
As a last comment, the fact that many people decide to use my signature as an argument to refute my points, instead of actually discussing them, shows how much they grasp at straws to "win" in a discussion and are incapable of either reading comprehension, just troll or are bored with meaningful conversation. In that scope, my signature actually fulfills its role. It works as a nice sieve to part dirt from gold.

- - - Updated - - -

It seems that they did actually deliver on the common expectation of flight. Your expectation simply isn't common to the point where i've yet to meet anybody outside this thread expressing even minor surprise about it not being available on Argus.

I didn't expect Argus to have flight either (before i unsubbed). Mostly because i have been used to having non-flight islands in the middle or end of an xpac and not giving any much thought about it. So in that regard, it seems i disagree with @SirCowdog.

But his points of Blizzard intentionally keeping the matter vague, hinting of a different direction and then returning to the usual way of things, the Dev's excuses about "artistic decision" to make Argus non-flight etc, do have value and merit. When someone reads all the dev comments about the subject at hand gathered all together, that someone can actually witness how scrupulously the Developers left their design decision about Argus having no flight out of the discussion or announcement loop.

I cannot stress enough that actually using older expansions as an example or a point to prove Argus was deemed to be no-flight from the start is wrong. Because between older expacs and Legion there's a key difference. PATHFINDER (WOD doesn't count, anyway, since it was the very first and forced inception of it). Older expansions with flight had no pathfinder. Just flight at lvl cap or from the begining (Cata). Legion has Pathfinder and an enforced timegate to flying for no apparent reason than to drag the content enough in order to continue their half-assed developing of the next zone(s). Those differences can only be discussed AFTER Blizzard unveiled their plans. Only in retrospective can you see how Blizzard has orchestrated their presentation of the matter at hand.

Everyone expected that Pathfinder would allow flight sooner. If that came to happen, Argus having no flight would have been accepted more easily.

[SirCowdog]

Developer credibility is irrelevant. The game is what you judge against. What developers say when they discuss how they think about the game in the future or why they have done something isn't black and white. Nothing really is. It's all gradations of grey with different points of view presented as a summary.

Thinking about design evolves. Saying that developers have no credibility is a great argument for developers to point at and then say nothing at all. This entire argument about what developers promise and whether they have any credibility is immediately solved by what's in the game. You like it or you don't. You buy it or you don't.

This entire argument is about developer credibility. The fact that someone can even say that it's irrelevant with a straight face is astounding to me. Especially when we have so many examples in the gaming industry of hype not matching the final product. WoD is a prime example of this, and giving devs a "Get out of jail free" card just because they say conditions changed during development shouldn't be something we as a community should be so ready to do.

I think a lot of the argument comes down to the simple fact that some people aren't able to separate their enjoyment and like of a game from critical observations about that same game. For example: I LIKE WoW as a game in a general sense. But that doesn't stop me from pointing out the obvious flaws in the way that it's presented to the players, or the ways in which content development is being heavily influenced by the business aspects.

You say you don't know anyone that avoids a game they genuinely enjoy because a developer said something about it that never came true? There are LOTS of people who avoided Mass Effect Andromeda because of the poor quality of the game vs what was advertised. The same for No Man's Sky, which many people were very badly looking forward to. I'm obviously not currently subbed to WoW, despite liking the game, specifically because of the actions of the devs.

If players keep blindly accepting whatever garbage developers and publishers drop on them, then games will continue to slowly get worse and worse. Players who are so entrenched in the fandom that they can't even be in the presence of disagreeing opinions without telling people to STFU and quit are only making things worse.

To paraphrase one of my favorite game critics: "Players should WELCOME criticism of their favorite games, because that's the only way they'll get better. Games will NEVER get better if you just quietly accept them."

[huth]

But his points of Blizzard intentionally keeping the matter vague, hinting of a different direction and then returning to the usual way of things, the Dev's excuses about "artistic decision" to make Argus non-flight etc, do have value and merit. When someone reads all the dev comments about the subject at hand gathered all together, that someone can actually witness how scrupulously the Developers left their design decision about Argus having no flight out of the discussion or announcement loop.

You're presupposing that they're intentionally misleading you and interpret every action based on that presumption.

Yes, they didn't say anything about whether Argus would have flight. They also never told us about Argus being part of Legion at all until it hit the PTR. It never had anything to do with flight, but with them wanting to keep this part at least a little surprising.

People constantly trying to turn the words in their mouth around and try to make it out to be a personal attack on the players is why most devs are so tightlipped. You only have yourself to blame for it.

To paraphrase one of my favorite game critics: "Players should WELCOME criticism of their favorite games, because that's the only way they'll get better. Games will NEVER get better if you just quietly accept them."

You missed the important part. Criticism != endless complaining about things you were never told you'd get in the first place. What you're doing isn't a well reasoned critique of the devs decisions, it's bawling and trying to twist their words because they didn't do what you wanted them to.

Mind you, "Wow, this is the best game ever!" is also a critique. Criticism doesn't mean exclusively talking about what's bad, but to be critical when doing your analysis.

[SirCowdog]

You missed the important part. Criticism != endless complaining about things you were never told you'd get in the first place.

Whatever...I'm done. Have fun paying Blizzard for the privilege of defending their good name while they stretch content and mislead you.