Blizzard needs to EMBRACE flying...

[Pakheth]

I've been saying this for years.

Blizz need to build the zones around flying, like they did in TBC. Some areas were only available through flying, like Skettis and Throne of Kil'jaeden. It gives the zones life after reaching max level.

[Beelzebull]

No thank you.....

[Baerong]

Whish Blizz had the option for fly/no fly realms. I would pick the latter.

[WowIsDead64]

Remember vashj'ir? That's literally how flying with combat would work and people hated this location

That's really what it is, if you look at terrain design right now, then assume that blizzard somehow made ground movement and flying movement equal - flying will be as "tedious" as ground movement, because that's the threshold blizzard is aiming for.

Blizzard gave players this Z movement option integrated into gameplay (in vashj'ir) to see if players will like it - and they didn't, which means that the easiest solution to flying problem (add combat dangers) will not work and this whole thing has to be redesigned, but players will flip all the tables they can find if you'll take away this convenient non-interactive way of moving from any point to any point.

Don't you like flying straight up, toning down your graphic settings, look for the mud mound, then dive into it with 10 others players hoping to get it first? Good times

There was no problem with combat itself. There was problem with navigation in 3D space. Same reason, why Legion locations were bad. Same reason, why some people hate Oculus.

As always. My opinion - flying allows me to skip unnecessary elements. Only question - is after what amount of time they become obsoleted and players should be allowed to skip them? Blizzard think, that flying shouldn't be allowed, while content is current. But it's BS. As for me, there is short period of time when content is fresh, new and there is something to explore. It usually takes several weeks, may be month max for content to become rutine. Usually when I complete content on my main and want to switch to alt and therefore do some content for the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc. time - it's perfect time to start flying. Removal of flying in current content - is just one of that casual/alt-unfriendly-biases, Blizzard suffer from too much recently.

[bloodmoth13]

And then what? People would just hearth/whistle to a flight master, fly to their objective, then bomb in. It wouldn't solve any of the problems created by the weak design of the open world. It would just make activating your mount more annoying and be a net negative.

I'm with Kumorii on this: Two major things need to happen.

1) The base mechanics of flight need to be changed. What form that takes is a topic for discussion. Flappy bird like the JOUST! quest in Mt Hyjal, or Emerald Winds, or just adding momentum or other physics to it.

2) The general philosophy of the open world design needs to change to account, from the beginning, for players who have the potential to fly in some or all areas. If this means scattering dangerous flying mobs to attack players, creating terrain hazards, line of sight issues with giant trees, cliffs, fog, or darkness, then I think Blizzard should do it. This can be mixed and matched with areas that can only be reached via flying, just to add atmosphere.


Either one of these would be a good start, but using both together would be the best outcome.

hearthing every 15 minutes to fly? sure go ahead, once you are in though you are stuck there unless you have flight whistle. Most of the time though it would just be easier to use your ground mount and go from there. Its a simple system that i think would solve the worst issues (flying from mob to mob) but leave the best parts.

I thought of your ideas before, and i dont think they would work. Flying is supposed to be ease of access, making the mechanics more difficult would suck, especially considering how bad all flight mechanics in this game handle.
Flying hazards should be implemented only in areas that need them, say high tier quest mob. give him some AA snipers, attack birds or whatever else to dismount or scatter fliers. that i think would be enough.

I dont think blizz should invest any more time into making flying more challenging, it defeats the purpose of it and is a waste of resources. just restrict mounting to flight masters and that would solve 95% of flying issues, adding anti air mobs in areas that need it would solve the rest of the issues. no need for anything else tbh

[Segus1992]

Tbh Cataclysm was the start of a steepe decline for 3 reasons (imo):
- HC crowd asked for harder dungeons and their prenerf versions were destroying pugs with tanks being one shot on trash pulls. We went from super casual friendly / easy Wotlk to back to BC difficulty but even higher tuned. Total 180° from Blizz.
- Azeroth revamp was not that popular
- The aquatic zone was a negative experience for most

My entire point that you somehow missed is that you'd have to be incredibly naive and stupid to think people left all for one single reason, that people would come back if that was removed AND that that one reason is fucking flying of all things.

Also those reasons are terrible but what can you expect.

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It isn’t ideal for those that want flying. Those that don’t can simply not fly.

I suppose you’re going to tell me that gating it behind a grind is a good thing for anti fliers who will never make it to mobs before they die eh?

Yeah just like how you can simply use gear with no stats if you don't like azerite gear or titanforging.

If you never make it to mobs before they die it's 100% a you problem.

[anon5123]

The main reason for restricting flying is so that it takes longer to do things which helps Blizzard's shareholder meetings with the "Player Engagement" metric.

....or, Blizzard doesn't want to design an intricate and interesting world only to have players fly over it and ignore it.

[Beazy]

The Blizzard WoW team doesn't have the motivation or the talent to embrace flying.

[SirCowdog]

hearthing every 15 minutes to fly?

Or just mount up and run out until mobs leash.

Adding annoying restrictions on flight without addressing the underlying issues won't solve anything.

I thought of your ideas before, and i dont think they would work. Flying is supposed to be ease of access, making the mechanics more difficult would suck, especially considering how bad all flight mechanics in this game handle.

"Flying is supposed to be ease of access": According to who? The fundamental problem with how flying is being handled right now is BECAUSE that's all people are treating it as. There is nothing but a dead end full of design problems if flight isn't changed.

I dont think blizz should invest any more time into making flying more challenging, it defeats the purpose of it and is a waste of resources. just restrict mounting to flight masters and that would solve 95% of flying issues, adding anti air mobs in areas that need it would solve the rest of the issues. no need for anything else tbh

You know what else is a massive waste of resources? Creating an overly simplistic open world that loses all value the moment a person reaches level cap. Or the moment a new patch island is released. Or the moment a player gains flying. Or just gets slightly higher iLVL gear.

Flying is not actually the problem here, despite the discussion about ways to make it better.

[Charge me Doctor]

The reason people didnt like z axis was because aimed AoE spells wouldn't work and you cant tell distance of enemies. Vashir was an amazing zone, but the downsides from gameplay made it really annoying.

I personally enjoy vashj'ir both quest and gameplay-vice.
But yes, and that's why even flying combat won't fix it (flying problem). What else do we have? Jouster-like combat again? Obstacles in air? We are too limited by current engine to make flying any good

[SirCowdog]

....or, Blizzard doesn't want to design an intricate and interesting world only to have players fly over it and ignore it.

So Blizzard needs to make "an intricate and interesting world" that operates on more than just two dimensions. If they're so skilled and amazing at level design that they want players to stop and enjoy it, this shouldn't be too hard for them to accomplish, should it?

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We are too limited by current engine to make flying any good

If that's actually the case, then don't try to make flying good. Make the content and the places you're flying...to, around, and through...good. At least include it in the world instead of locking it away until the content doesn't matter. Blizzard is perfectly willing to completely restrict flight in order to have a pretty skybox(Argus). They should be equally willing to create an atmosphere of wonder and enjoyment using flight instead of ignoring it.

[Laqweeta]

Or a crazy idea since they spend a shitload of time on creating zones, they want people to actually see it and not just fly from quest giver to objective and then back.

til that it takes over a YEAR to see a zone.

Give it up people, pathfinder exists for time played metrics and shareholders.

[schwank05]

I'm almost certain that this has been talked about before... but.

To take away flying would ruin the game at this point. So the only option left is for Blizzard to embrace flying and make zones, islands, questing areas etc; only available through it. This was done in Wrath I believe and I remember it being a really enjoyable experience having to fly to the top of Storm Peaks or wherever it was; as it was the only way to get there.

Embrace this mechanic and make it a true character of the game's design. Don't just have it as an ease of access tool to get around the zones. Having that as Flying's only benefit is ~ B O R I N G ~.

It's a subjective topic I suppose but, am I wrong?

I love flying and think BC was very well designed and every xpac since has had good Flying vibes. Cata was amazing having flying at 82 I loved that.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

I have ALWAYS been pretty anti-flying. But if they went all in and actually made it something more than a click, gain altitude, and then hit auto run while I go AFK type of even than I probably wouldn't have a problem trying that out. Make it interesting then I am willing to give it a try. But as it is now.. pretty hot trash for the most part. Just a skip of content that works well for what it is at the moment.. that content down there has no point now.. fine.. just fly over it type of deal.

[Zalamander]

Pretty ironical that some(and blizzard) think people see more of the zones because flying is gated. But for me it's the opposite, I haven't even bought BFA because flying is gated I haven't seen any zone at all...

Just hope they hurry up with classic and release TBC so I finally get to enjoy flying in WoW as it's supposed to be again.

[Oneru]

Is there an example of another MMORPG which embraced flying and made it work properly? Haven't played any other MMO to max level, so curious what people would consider a successful example of flying integration in an MMORPG.

[CreatureLives]

I don't mind working for flying. I just hate the time gating thing.

I fully experienced those zones long before I got flying. My appreciation of their design actually got less and less the longer I had to wait for flying. Especially Zuldazar.

I'd even be okay with having to earn flying for each zone separately as long as I could get it much sooner. Explore the area, do all quests, get exalted, do the dungeon/raid on any difficulty, do 100+ world quests in that zone, etc. I'd do all that shit for each zone if I had to if I could get it sooner and maybe if they wanted to still save something for later they could keep zones for the opposite faction gated and if you fly in to the zone without flying you get a warning that says you'll be dismounted after so many seconds and then a parachute saves you from falling to your death.

[Tarx]

The flying is very good as it is right now with pathfinding wall . We explore the whole world the first 1 year and then after everything become a chore we can fly to do things faster - easier .

[Sluvs]

I don't think it would necessarily require an overhaul to flight in order to make it fit better into the current open world design. Blizzard clearly wants to restrict flying in order to both make it seem like a reward, and to keep players from clearing content too quickly. There are other minor considerations, such as how flight invalidates ground-based terrain, but mostly it's a matter of speed.

Blizzard has already shown us that they can modify the mount system with things like mount equipment. I think they could expand upon that to further improve the viability of ground mounts, while at the same time slowing down the raw speed of flying in order to get more parity. If that was done on top of adding deterrents that make flight less attractive in some areas(such as kaliri birds, canons, whatever), people might be more inclined to use something other than flight from time to time.

The trick is to realize that it doesn't require an entire black and white change of the entire system in every aspect in order to move towards a better situation than what we have now. And quite honestly, I don't see how any move towards making flight better....in ANY regard, is going to result in a riot from players worse than the frustration and irritation that 8 month pathfinder lockout is causing.

Making flight better has a lot of grey area. And I do not think the design space with current flight rules are that good. There would need to be a significant changes, maybe even add downsides to flight, and the community almost never reacts well to significant changes. And restricting flight is what got us here in the first place. Something like the patrollers in mechagon might be interesting. But would there be backlash?

The mount equipment is a pathetic system that can be ignored with little to no consequence, in its current state obviously. I have to actively remember that it is in game.

The pathfinder is a compromise that has its problems but the rioting over it has died down a lot.

IMO, people overplay the design space that flying has, and also overplay the frustration that the pathfinder causes.

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I currently believe that the only change that will solve their community perception problem over this is literally making flying easier and faster to obtain. And that is about it. Anything else will cause a riot.

[reauxmont]

It's a subjective topic I suppose but, am I wrong?

Since it's a subjective topic: Yes, you are wrong.