Solution for Shadowlands Flying

[Snowfunk]

I think not being able to fly, really makes the game play experience better.

Both in Legion & BFA, being grounded was a great experience.
Learning the lay of the land, best paths & shortcuts. Using flightpaths & other means of travel. Goblins glider's, toy's & tricks to get around is fun.

But it does get old, eventually, you should get flying. But not too early.
If it was up to me, I would just enable flying in a patch when the time is right.

I don't mind Pathfinder so much really, it's not a bad idea.
But the timing is wrong, the problem is it hits you with another time-gated grind, when you are already ready to start flying.
Frankly, the requirements for Pathfinder should be possible to meet, before the achievement becomes available.

[Kynario]

If you guys were in charge of things at Blizzard, players would Unsubscribe in the first month.

The whole point of Subscription-based MMO's is to design content in a way that it lasts for a couple of months, at least. That's the whole point. To keep people Subscribed for as long as possible.

[Raelbo]

It's very simple:

Unlock it in the form of an achievement if you have completed every quest in every zone for the first character you level through.

It's very simply awful.

That encourages players to rush through quest content instead of taking their time to enjoy it. It defeats the entire point of withholding flying in the first place - namely to get us to immerse ourselves in exploring and discovering the new areas instead of skipping over most of it from the air. It still boggles my mind that they did this in BfA by essentially making flying unlock immediately after getting to revered in Naz'jatar and Mechagon.

A far more logical approach is to have players required to complete a pathfinder type achievement, but give us plenty of time to get through it, then open flying with a simple final step that is unlocked at a fixed time later in the patch. Preferably a lot sooner than they did it in BfA of course - like 3-6 months in at most.

Alternatively they can just drop the idea of no flying altogether, since it isn't anywhere close to the prime problem that they've managed to delude themselves into thinking it is.

[VinceVega]

I think not being able to fly, really makes the game play experience better.

Both in Legion & BFA, being grounded was a great experience.
Learning the lay of the land, best paths & shortcuts. Using flightpaths & other means of travel. Goblins glider's, toy's & tricks to get around is fun.

But it does get old, eventually, you should get flying. But not too early.
If it was up to me, I would just enable flying in a patch when the time is right.

I don't mind Pathfinder so much really, it's not a bad idea.
But the timing is wrong, the problem is it hits you with another time-gated grind, when you are already ready to start flying.
Frankly, the requirements for Pathfinder should be possible to meet, before the achievement becomes available.

Fully agree. With flying you could just put all the WQ and stuff in one room. Done. You completely skip the world. At some point you visited everything and have done everything. Then Pathfinder comes along.

Granted i think X.2 is too late. X.1 would be better. I have done everything 10000 times over when 8.1 hits. At that point it gets a bit annoying. But yes for the first few month you should be grounded.

[Swnem]

It just needs to be there at launch.
I don't care which grind they want to pick. I want to be able to fly once i do that. I don't want to be grounded for a year wasting my time seeing the same places a millions times even though i already did the grind, while they pick yet another grind to let me fly. No one's portfolio is worth that.

[HateTrain]

I would counter that by saying, it is not.

I mean, but it is.

Removing half of the requirements from the achievement to get flying is equally as silly to me as asking for a set of gear to be mailed to you for hitting max level so you can start raiding immediately. It sounds kinda pissbaby and childish, no? I think so at least.

[Bellows]

If Blizzard were to get rid of Pathfinder, I would be worried about the consequences of that. I think we'd see a bunch of WQs where the mobs were in the basement of some building or deep in some cave, or you'd have more flying threats like the debuff worms in Uldum/Vale. Maybe that's an alright compromise, but I wouldn't love that.

If you kept Pathfinder but didn't timegate it, it would end up being such a grind that there would be twice the rage about Pathfinder that there is now.

[Thagrynor]

This isn't a solution because because their isn't a problem. Pathfinder is fine as is. The issue is laziness and that is a 'you" problem, not a game problem.

Well shit. I didn't know it was YOU that spoke for every one in game.

Can you tell me, what is our opinion of PVP? What about professions? I was wondering earlier and clearly i apparently need some scrub online to form my opinions for me.

The fact is, Pathfinder isn't "fine". It was the easiest compromise between Blizzard not wanting flying and players not willing to keep playing if they removed it.

Pathfinder is often implemented way later than it should be. It is usually with the x.2 patch that we finally get to fly which is usually 9-12 months into an expansion. That is a long time of being stuck moving about the world slowly for no reason . This will be made worse given all the reviews of Revendreth and how vertical it is. Lots of folks hated High mountain because of how much of a pain it was to traverse the zone for quests. Revendreth seems to be even worse in terms of the verticality.

So your crappy opinion seems like a 'you' problem, not a 'rest of the player base' problem.

[Segus1992]

I'm continually amazed that people on this forum can spin "I don't want to spend my gaming time doing pointless world quests" as "laziness". Seriously, it's a game, and the quests are stupid easy. How can anyone possibly, possibly think that they're not "lazy" because they are willing to sit at a computer for hours a day for weeks on end grinding? How can you be so lost?

Wake up man.

It's not like the shit you do to get Pathfinder only gives Pathfinder. Maybe an MMO isn't for you.

[Nachturnal]

If you guys were in charge of things at Blizzard, players would Unsubscribe in the first month.

The whole point of Subscription-based MMO's is to design content in a way that it lasts for a couple of months, at least. That's the whole point. To keep people Subscribed for as long as possible.

I don't understand why this is a point brought up from a player. You aren't a shareholder, so what does subscription and time metrics matter to you? I know it's a logical point to make, but when discussing what you would like out of the game, or any topic where a solution is sought, why bring in the mentality of a suit?

[Newname1234567890]

Considering all the zones are separated out i dont think this is a terrble idea, or a basis of an idea at the very least.

[ranzino]

just a reminder: TBC was fine with flying because the interesting areas were not accessible by ground mounts at all, thus also max lvl restricted. nothing forbids blizzard does the same again and at max lvl like outland.

[Nnyco]

Sooo... pathfinder?

[Nachturnal]

Considering activities were drawn out and repetitive already before Blizzard went public...weren't devs always "suits" too? They always wanted you to play their game as long as possible, because as long as you play, you pay. And I swear there was less to do (unless you raided) before Blizzard even merged with Activision.

This is IMHO especially true with sub games. With offline games, they just want you to spend 50 dollars on the box and don't care how long you play. They have your money and will never get more.

Then there is this weird time where you bought the box in D2 and D3 and OW etc..but still get to play "for free" on their servers. Never figured out why they do that when they are all suits. But I guess it is an investment...that if you like it you buy more of their next product

So by that logic...any game company was always "suits". Everyone likes to make money. I like it. I wish I had more..could make more. But I am just too dumb.

But I guess ppl like to see the past with rose tinted glasses and just think a Richard Garriot deserved his millions or a John Romero his Ferraries, because they came from ..dunno? Luck? Passion? Being at the right place in the right time?

So..hey..stop hating on Bill Gates then - or Zuckerberg....just some schmucks who struck it lucky back in the day. Only the new guys like Kotik or Bezos are manipulating evil basterds..right? It is bad shit in 2020 and was all innocent in 1990.

I'm stating that from the position of a player, it shouldn't matter how much time another player spends in-game or how they use their time relative to their subscription. How another player spends their time in game shouldn't be of consequence or concern to you and your in-game time's fun value. And when discussing how some mechanics/systems should work in-game and subsequent changes to make a system more appropriate and engaging for a larger portion of the playerbase, the argument of "well how can this solution extend subscription time" shouldn't be coming from a player.

[lordjust]

It's not like the shit you do to get Pathfinder only gives Pathfinder. Maybe an MMO isn't for you.

It depends on what part of pathfinder you're looking at. If you leveled through PVP or dungeons, doing the questlines give you nothing valuable because you'll probably have better gear from PVP and dungeons. Same thing with world quests. Week 1 I was max level and had full HC dungeon gear and started doing mythic dungeons. Through dungeons and islands I was at the weekly AP softcap so doing world quests gave me nothing useful and I did them just for the rep.

In my opinion doing the main quest and explore all zones is fine. Doing 100 WQ is just tedious and unnecessary especially if there's a fixed amount of quests you can do. Same thing with the rep requirement. They can keep the rep requirement if we're able to somehow farm it. BC was fine with flying unlock at max level, WotLK was fine with flying unlock at LVL77 and Cata was also fine with flying unlocked from the start.

[Beefhammer]

I'm absolutely fine with Pathfinder. I wouldn't mind if it was available during the x.0 patch though (so you're still grounded for about a month, to earn the reps).

Alternatively, they could still do the two-parter, but part 1 gets you the ability to fly in your covenant zone as soon as 9.0.x, and then like older pathfinders you can fly everywhere in 9.2.

This is the only change that should be made. Complete the campaign and reps to unlock flying for current zones. Ground in new zones until you complete the campaign and reps there. I would make this change and apply it to alts as well. Final patch it can be unlocked account wide.

[neik]

The walkthrough process to unlock flying is okay in my personal experience, the main issue is that the players need to wait another 9 months to be able to fully unlock it and start flying, it sounds little bit unfair.

For me it worked out just fine, since I always took a break after the launch both in Legion and BfA, and came back on flying patch.

[Shiza]

This isn't a solution because because their isn't a problem. Pathfinder is fine as is. The issue is laziness and that is a 'you" problem, not a game problem.

Pathfinder is shit because flying is locked up until we are already halfway through the expansion. It would be obnoxious and lazy design that only satisfies a fringe minority who can't handle wanting to play ineffectively and not being rewarded for it, but at least we could immediately work towards flying instead of working into it, then having to wait a year.

- - - Updated - - -

I think not being able to fly, really makes the game play experience better.

Both in Legion & BFA, being grounded was a great experience.
Learning the lay of the land, best paths & shortcuts. Using flightpaths & other means of travel. Goblins glider's, toy's & tricks to get around is fun.

But it does get old, eventually, you should get flying. But not too early.
If it was up to me, I would just enable flying in a patch when the time is right.

I don't mind Pathfinder so much really, it's not a bad idea.
But the timing is wrong, the problem is it hits you with another time-gated grind, when you are already ready to start flying.
Frankly, the requirements for Pathfinder should be possible to meet, before the achievement becomes available.

I think the world design in most zones since Draenor is rather shit. It is obnoxiously designed for you to take as much time as possible to get from point a to point b. The only zones that feel somewhat right to ride in are the 1-60 ones.

- - - Updated - - -

For the most part, I'm fine with Pathfinder Part I, as it is, being required to unlock flying. Maybe drop the rep requirement to honored (or remove it). But doing all the zone quests and unlocking the achievement for exploring the zone seems to meet Blizzard's requirements for "playing it their way first". Now that I've done all the quests once, and viewed the entire zone from the ground "as intended"...please let me fly hereafter so I can get to the content I want to do faster.

I think the revered requirement is mostly okay for the main factions, as normally once you finish a zone, you are already at honored. I think the more obnoxious part are the side faction which don't have their own zone, barely any quests and just a small number of world quests each day available to them. Wardens, Tortollians, Champions. These are the obnoxious ones which take just too long to complete. If they would release flying with Pathfinder Part I and limit the rep faction to the ones connected to your main zones which you can quest through and have world quest for over an entire zone, it wouldn't be that bad.

[Segus1992]

It depends on what part of pathfinder you're looking at. If you leveled through PVP or dungeons, doing the questlines give you nothing valuable because you'll probably have better gear from PVP and dungeons. Same thing with world quests. Week 1 I was max level and had full HC dungeon gear and started doing mythic dungeons. Through dungeons and islands I was at the weekly AP softcap so doing world quests gave me nothing useful and I did them just for the rep.

So you leveled by doing things not intended to be the main path to max level, refuse to level any alts in an alternate way, barely play at max level, and complain when the game isn't fully open for you?
Maybe an MMO isn't for you.

[fear]

If you guys were in charge of things at Blizzard, players would Unsubscribe in the first month.

The whole point of Subscription-based MMO's is to design content in a way that it lasts for a couple of months, at least. That's the whole point. To keep people Subscribed for as long as possible.

Considering that bc-mop flying was just spend some gold I don't think flying had much to do with subs. What really seems like happened with flying in the first place was they just tried to save money but designing the zones not for flying and tried to completely remove it all together.

When that massively failed they tried to make it as annoying and drawn out as they could after that. Flying wasn't a problem for like 7+ years until they made it one.

If they are wanting to change things for shadowlands clearly there has been backlash to their current choices on the system.