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I think the popularity of Classic servers might prove otherwise, but I see the point you're making. I have no doubts that providing an interesting and engaging world is possible, even if it does present some challenges to development. But Blizzard has a hisotry of doing things with WoW that even they claimed weren't possible: Cross server tech, matchmaking, LFR, phasing, etc. It's just a matter of whether or not Blizzard is willing to work at it, and I think as long as long as they have inflexible, formulaic, design-by-spreadsheet leadership like Ion, it's not going to happen.
Then stop trying to force players into doing everything! That, more than anything else, is holding WoW back from being better than it is. The reason games like Witcher 3 and Skyrim have fast travel is because they recognize that not everyone wants to do everything. Not everyone enjoys taking a magnifying glass to every pixel of road between points.
Blizzard is so god damned afraid that players won't appreciate their glorious fields full of pointless trash mobs that they literally don't allow you to bypass any piece of it, even if most of it wasn't interesting in the first place.
I want you to consider also that Vashj'ir was built using technology and design from 2010. And that since then Blizzard hasn't really tried it again. The technology has come a long way since then. Design theory, UI, server tech, latency, animations. Hell, even their development team probably has mostly different people. Virtually every part of WoW has improved since then. And yet rather than challenging themselves to make another attempt or to improve their open world design, they've regressed back to mostly flat zones with almost no verticality.
Is that REALLY what we want from Blizzard and WoW?
Then don't timegate it. Base it on actual progression. Let the PLAYER determine when they unlock it by how fast they clear the content. Keeping in mind, this would need to go hand in hand with content with actual depth and challenge, and not just faceroll AFK Kill-X quests.
Last edited by SirCowdog; 2019-05-19 at 03:51 AM.
No, things are much more simple. They try to stretch content, make it take more time, than it should. Do you know, how hypocritical they are? Read this on a main page:
Yet we need to wait for flying for a year+ after release of 8.0.The team feels that as long as you become familiar with the zone on foot first, it is not to early to allow flying in these new zones.
I don't care about Wow 11.0, if it's not solo-MMO. No half-measures - just perfect xpack.
It wasn't. It was an asspull. Here's a link to the original interview with Ion Hazzikostas on Polygon that started the whole drama.
https://www.polygon.com/2015/5/22/86...mo-pc-blizzard
And here is the parody. Because it's Sunday RIP Zarhym, I miss the old skull
https://blue.mmo-champion.com/topic/...o-fuzzikoalas/
New interview with Ono Fuzzikoalas discovered in Gollypawn magazine.
THERE'S STILL NO LIGHTING IN DISMAL SWAMP... AND THERE PROBABLY WON'T BE IN ANY NEW ZONES OR EXPANSIONS
When Boredlords of Paymore first hit, some fans were surprised to discover that even upon reaching the level cap of 500, they still couldn't see any of the new zones. Initially Gizzard expected to patch in dim lighting at some point, but now it has changed its mind.
"Having looked at how lighting has played out in the whole world in all expansions, we realized that while we were doing it out of this ingrained habit after we'd introduced lighting in the initial release, it actually detracted from gameplay in a whole lot of ways," Fuzzikoalas explains. "While there was certainly convenience in being able to completely see the world everywhere you looked, that also came at the expense of gameplay like prolonged exploration, like trying to figure out if you're walking into a wall repeatedly, or if you're going to fall off a cliff and will you ever get back up if you do."
"IT MADE THE WORLD FEEL IN MANY WAYS MUCH TOO WELL LIT"
Fuzzikoalas gives an example: Before darkness was introduced to Foiled by Whichcraft, if you got a quest to kill ten rats for ten rat toes, it would play out a certain way. Players would need to fight their way through the rats. After seeing the rats, players could just kill on sight, wonder why there were so many toeless rats, but persist in slaughtering all the rats and then finally return to the questgiver who they could clearly see. With the new system, you won't even know if you're actually going towards the rats or possibly mounting a one-orc invasion on Windstorm. As an added plus, they'll never see you coming, either.
Until you walk into something and discover it's indeed aggro, you are filled with a sense of wonder! No minimap, world map, heck, you can't even see your quest journal. Being required to memorize your quest objectives is like an entire little mini-game all on its own and encourages grouping. Before you knew how big a zone was because you could see it. With all lighting removed, even tiny zones can feel huge, especially if we put in some obstacles designed to keep you going in circles. Hours can be spent in the dark whereas the old, unimaginative style of full lighting encouraged people to dash hastily through, killing rats, and turning their quests in promptly.
"It made the world feel in many ways much too well lit," he says.
Originally, Gizzard thought taking lighting out in Boredlords of Paymore was an experiment, and Fuzzikoalas says he would have bet "something that he was willing to part with" that they were going to bring it back eventually. But as they played the expansion and heard others play it, they discovered that they liked the game better without lighting.
"The world feels darker, feels more lugubrious," he says. "Players have been asking for darker nights for years. Then it dawned on us. Why stop there? Now there's more exploration, secrets, discovery and overall immersion in the world. At this point, we feel that outdoor gameplay in Foiled by Whichcraft is ultimately better without lighting. We're not going to be introducing the ability to see in Paymore, and that's where we're at going forward. At least we think it's forward, it could be going sideways. We won't know until we bump into it. We're applying the same philosophy to development that we want the players to use so we can all understand each other better."
Fuzzikoalas confirms that this lack of direction includes future expansions, though he doesn't discount the possibility of adding visible options in to specific expansion ideas or zones that would benefit from it. In general, though, he believes that exploration in Gizzard's indeterminable world "works better and feels better in our limited view when you're doing it without any light."
He also promises that Gizzard will continue working to improve its selection of rentable seeing eye dogs in the game to prevent any major frustration from this change: "The goal is to increase excitement in getting from point A to point B but retaining as much of the gameplay and depth as possible while you stumble around getting to that point, if you make it at all."
NEXT ARTICLE:
FLASHLIGHTS WITH FIVE MINUTE DURATIONS, MINER HELMETS FOR TEN MINUTES, BIOLUMINESCENT BATTLE PETS AND SPARKLE PONIES WITH SPORADICALLY FLASHING HOOVES -- COULD NEW CASH SHOP ITEMS GET ANY MORE THRILLING?!
No flying would be.... acceptable if zones were designed like Vol'dun, well at least in part, where you're running freely without any sort of intentional mazes or blockages. Linda reminds of tanaris, that one
I mind it because I have only one character. By the time I can complete the Pathfinder achivement it's already beyond useless for me. I don't bother doing WQ's anymore because they're too time consuming and I've got nothing to gain from them. Pretty much all I do out in the open world is travel to my M+ or Raid. That's it. It's a big empty space connecting point A to point B, nothing more.
Flying would have been useful while I was doing world content. But by the time it unlocks it will be completely redundant - Even more so when you consider that the new 8.2 zones aren't going to allow flying at all.
Essentially, I've had this cool and fun ability stripped and have been given nothing at all in return for it. Pathfinder is not a "compromise" for me as much as it's an outright "Fuck you!".
Yes, starting 100th "flying vs. no-flying" thread with exactly same arguments will certainly "get this one thing straight". ;D
I know both "flying" and "no-flying" people have some problems with pathfinder and their arguments. That's why it's called COMPROMISE.
Just as a point of order: You will be able to fly in both Nazjatar and Mechagon once you complete Pathfinder part 2.
I agree that by the time you get flight, it won't be particularly useful in those zone, but there it is.
- - - Updated - - -
It's not a compromise when one side gets everything, and the other gets a wet turd that's been hacked up by a dog.
Getting flying in launch areas midway through expac and patch zones when you reach revered is "wed turd that's been hacked up by a dog"? And people that get no-flying environment only for 8-10 months gets "everything"? How can people treat anything you write serious when you post shit like this?
Don't be disingenuous. It doesn't help anything. And if you seriously believe what you just wrote, then you haven't looked very closely at the situation.
Please take the time to read the discussion between myself and @Jastall, some of which you can see on this same page. But the TL : DR version that starts the discussion can be seen here.
For players who want to enjoy flying, they are required to do all the work, and even then are not allowed to fly until an arbitrary time which has nothing to do with their efforts. And by the time they do get flying, every piece of content they could potentially fly to has had virtually all of its value exhausted by the requirements of Pathfinder.
Furthermore, the unlock of flying does not stop or prevent grounded players from continuing to stay on the ground. Those players literally give up NOTHING except the experience of denying pro-flight players even the opportunity to enjoy the game in their preferred method. The fact that you refer to this as "only" having 8-10 months is not accurate, nor is it honest.
So no, it's not a compromise. What do players who want to enjoy flying actually get out of this situation? And how does whatever they get measure up to what both Blizzard and pro-ground players get? I think if you can manage to be even moderately objective or fair, you'll be forced to admit that it's a raw deal. There's so much disparity in this "compromise" that it would almost be more honest to completely remove flying and force Blizzard to suffer the consequences of that decision.
That's why I refer to what pro-flight players get as a "Wet turd".
Last edited by SirCowdog; 2019-05-19 at 09:21 AM.
Places like Silvermoon and Stormwind were built as "stage-illusions" to save on user's system resources back when WoW was being run on potatoes, I'm not certain that designing a 3D city, cutting parts out to save resources then testing all the possible views really saves much time over just building the city. The technique isn't really necessary with the modern system specifications for WoW and you can tell WoD didn't use it when you use the glider.
The delay between Pathfinder being released and flight actually being unlocked came from them needing to do testing for things like dismount zones (indoor areas) extending upwards and getting players flying over places.
You seem to have trouble distinguishing between thinking X is better and hating Y. The crappy world content was a factor in me quitting MoP so early in the expansion but it doesn't mean I hated flying, I just preferred all the leveling content (except Cata,) Isle of Quel-Danas, Firelands, dungeons and raids to the endgame dailies of WotLK, Cata and MoP. If flying was in WoW like it used to be I would probably still play but not enjoy it as much.There was never a large number of these people and the obvious response to them was... "wait, you hate the game with flying, it ruins the game for you but here you are after SEVEN YEARS?"
Pathfinder allows the devs to design and pace the game around ground-based travel which is their preference whilst allowing flight later in the expansion for people who want to use it for sight-seeing, as a catch-up mechanic for alts or to finish professions and achievements they found too difficult or time-consuming when tied to the ground.
The idea that removing flying was to slow down content consumption in WoD is nonsense. Blizz put a lot of dedicated end-game content in the game (over a dozen dedicated top-level zones with unique mechanics) but limited us to completing one of them and made the rewards lacklustre. If they were worried about content being consumed too quickly they could have allowed for 2 or 3 or even all of them each day for better rewards and it would have given people a lot to chew through even if they had allowed flight.
Halfway through WoD they were going to cater for your opinion and said there would be no flying going forwards but that caused enough backlash for them to do a 180 and introduce the Pathfinder system.At any rate, I don't really care if they turn flying ON or OFF, but I wish they would just stick to their guns. I would rather have no flying at all, than having to wait halfway through an expansion and do a tedious chore list to enable flying. You used to just train flying at max level after you played through the game once - I thought that was good enough.
So you could say I am "IDGAF about Flying, but ANTI-Pathfinder".
Call me whatever you like, but I won't look through hundreds of pages of pointless discussion. Maybe you think it's going somewhere, but I don't. I see same old shit that is posted since late WoD.
For me it's very simple. People that want no-flying environment can't have other people flying around. People that want flying environment wan't flying ASAP. You can't have both at the same time, so making 50% (less, but last few months don't matter anyway) of expac crafted for one crowd and rest (+ forever in future expacs, many people revisit these zones to level alts and for collections) for second crowd is only compromise I can think of.
Of course it could be done with or without Pathfinder, but devs want players get a taste of ground experience before they let you fly. Because it's all this is, calling Pathfinder - exploring zones, finishing questlines and reaching revered reps - "work" and thing that "exhaust value of content" is false. Also, without Pathfinder, many completionist would say "screw it", I'll finish these zones in few months, when it'll be 2x faster and easier.
That's my 2 cents. Enjoy you thread, I may visit you in next expac.
And what does Pathfinder ultimately do? It allows Blizzard to have a no-flying world for all practical purposes, while maintaining the illusion of keeping flight. And the result of sticking to a strictly formulaic, no-flying design has resulted in progressively weaker outdoor content.
It will be interesting to see if Mechagon and Nazjatar change that trend, but even if it does it's still coming a year into the expansion. And I would challenge everyone on either side of the argument to ask themselves why having a delay of that length before getting decent outdoor content is acceptable.