Is it healthy to gate flying behind "pathfinders"?

[Sluvs]

I wish they'd remove pathfinder but disable flying in war mode. With extra rewards. It can't be catch up gear cause this people will just camp alts but it needs something.

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Pathfinder did make sense at the time and it clearly wasn't stopping wod from doing well initially.

WoD was built without flying in mind. So yeah, it made sense not to have flyiing there I suppose.

[idkwhatgoeshere]

WoD was built without flying in mind. So yeah, it made sense not to have flyiing there I suppose.

Its still an issue the player base cares little about. Wod kind of showed that and bring flying back to wod didn't cause sub to go up. I'd be fine with its removal in non war mode.

[Elim Garak]

No one was unsubscribing because of flying. I unsubscribed because of pathfinder. So definitely it's not healthy.

[Sluvs]

Its still an issue the player base cares little about. Wod kind of showed that and bring flying back to wod didn't cause sub to go up. I'd be fine with its removal in non war mode.

never claimed it mattered. I just think the current situation is not optimal for both pro-flyers and anti-flyers.

[TBCCLOL]

Blizzard do exactly this. But there is smart trick. To say, that story ends in patch x.2 and we don't truly "experience" content before that.

Ye pretty much this, they keep prolonging stuff like a DBZ episode

[Mic_128]

it was always gated behind something so I'm fine with pathfinder, what I'm not okay with is gating it behind a future patch.

This. I don't mind Pathfinder being a thing, but it should be completable from launch.

[TBCCLOL]

Tbf, you are earning the ability to fly in the new zones. So you are not as much as re-earning them, but expanding you ability.

That being said, i simpathyze with your point.

Pathfinder would make sense if they designed the land around flying and made ground exploration a thing. They didn't.

There was a little bit of that in Suramar. But we havent seen it done properly ever since Wrath. Your example would be cool to be honest.

Sadly I dont see any interesting choices being made by the developers, they will stick with pathfinder or give up on it. Both solutions are easy ones. And boring Ones.

Ye but beside the fact that makes still no sense unless there is something specific like the LAZORZ preventing flying or they can do like FF where if you explore the zone you unlock it and or the more you go further into the MSQ you can fly faster.

it is detrimental to the game to keep doing this "wax on, wax off" with abilities/talents/skills especially with core stuff.


Ye they will make the easiest for MAU profit

[WowIsDead64]

I just want to show you one thing now. I should be sleeping now, because I'll need to wake up early tomorrow, but I have little celebration now. It's strange thing, but it's very important. SL is so bad, that I decided to pay some old debts instead of playing it. I decided to do crazy things, I had never done before. Because I thought, that this things weren't for me, because I wasn't hardcore enough for them. And funny thing - I succeeded.

What Blizzard don't understand - is that obtaining these flying mounts requires tremendous amount of effort. And that at the end effort, that is put by M+/Mythic raid guys, isn't any better, than my effort. And that taking flying away from me = devaluing my effort. Saying, that it means nothing. Throwing it to trash. They should go to hell.

[WowIsDead64]

I've just realized one thing. Quests are psychological trick. They're like ball in football. You do exactly the same, as without it - just run. But there is purpose. There is goal. You chase it. And this goal make you forget about fatigue and pain. Same for quests. You do exactly the same. Just kill mobs. But there is purpose - story. And this makes you forget about fatigue and pain. Problem is - Blizzard try to implement implicit quests. Because it's just like removing ball from football players and just saying "You have to run 5 laps around stadium first. Don't ask why. Just run.". And in this case flying is like "I'd better ride bicycle, than just run - at least it's more fun and not that tedious".

I just can't force myself to start enjoying killing mobs for no purpose, other than waste of time. That's it. One would say, that whole MMO genre is essentially time killer. That trash in dungeons and raids is also pointless, but it exists for reason. But that's my choice. Who wants to waste time - still can do it.

[Battlebeard]

No, I effing hate it. I want flying from day 1!

[TheRevenantHero]

I don’t want neither of both options. Flying should be unlockable just reaching max level… for 2 million gold. Done. It requires some effort for some casual players, but most players have it the moment they ding, and it removes gold from the bloated economy.

uhhhh what? It requires more than "some effort". For casual players, 2 million gold is an almost insurmountable goal. Nobody has 2 million gold when they hit max level unless they spent A LOT of time at the AH. Making it 2 million gold to fly is objectively worse than locking flying behind pathfinder.

[Witchblade77]

uhhhh what? It requires more than "some effort". For casual players, 2 million gold is an almost insurmountable goal. Nobody has 2 million gold when they hit max level unless they spent A LOT of time at the AH. Making it 2 million gold to fly is objectively worse than locking flying behind pathfinder.

THIS.

and even with spending a LOT of time at the AH, you need to be 1. on a not a dead server where stuff actualy sells. 2. know what to sell in a first place.

it would take me at least 10 times as long to get 2 mil to unlock flying... for one character.. then it would take me to finish pathfinder to get it for everyone.

time gating pathfinder is a problem. just asking for one? I genuinely don't mind especially when it doesn't involve rep grinds. however, if you work on it at launch, they are time gating it twice over. by just not releasing it until a year later. and in case of shadowlands - gating it behind the story that is itself timegated (originally) via artificial limit to renown.

its pretty much the reason why I habitually skip first half of the expansion and don't come back until flying patch is announced (and more often then not released) so that I can catch up on achievements and start flying the moment I'm done.

[WowIsDead64]

THIS.

and even with spending a LOT of time at the AH, you need to be 1. on a not a dead server where stuff actualy sells. 2. know what to sell in a first place.

it would take me at least 10 times as long to get 2 mil to unlock flying... for one character.. then it would take me to finish pathfinder to get it for everyone.

time gating pathfinder is a problem. just asking for one? I genuinely don't mind especially when it doesn't involve rep grinds. however, if you work on it at launch, they are time gating it twice over. by just not releasing it until a year later. and in case of shadowlands - gating it behind the story that is itself timegated (originally) via artificial limit to renown.

its pretty much the reason why I habitually skip first half of the expansion and don't come back until flying patch is announced (and more often then not released) so that I can catch up on achievements and start flying the moment I'm done.

I don't like idea of buying flying for lots of gold, because it makes flying exclusive to certain players, while casuals, for whom it's initially intended, would most likely need to buy tokens for $$$ instead. It turns flying into something like Brutosaur. Some sort of reward for players, who play on AH. Or, again, boosters, who sell paid services. I just don't think, that they need flying.

That's why we have pathfinder in a first place. Because gold can no longer be used as way to gate flying. Blizzard's logic - is to assume, that TBC was the best xpack ever made and that only TBC has things, implemented 100% right way. Including flying, being hard to get, i.e. being very appealing reward. But it's just folding screen. There are many other reasons, hidden behind. And at the end TBC Classic clearly shows, that is was nothing more, than just a myth.

[T-34]

Flying should be removed from the game.
Adding flying was a huge mistake.

[Coffeh]

Blizzard's handling of flying is why I don't play WoW anymore. To me it's the perfect litmus test as to the intentions of the game's design. Flying was never an issue until Blizzard made it an issue, and that's because the overall broad design philosophy of the game shifted from making a FUN game to making a tedious game. Nowadays, everything in WoW is designed simply to waste players' time. Fun is treated as a carrot on a stick, and the game is an endless series of time-gated grinds to reach that goal that used to be the actual focus of the game.

Therefore flying is used as a mechanic to just string players along and keep you subbed and playing and paying to unlock something that used to be a core feature of the game. Something that the devs know players enjoy. But they use it to manipulate players now. That's the basic overall problem with WoW, and their handling of flying is a clear example of the designers' intentions and you can extrapolate that to pretty much every aspect of the game. So going forward, I won't play any expansion until they go back to the old implementation of flying: level to max and buy it. Having to do all the quests and explore the new zones is fine, and I think it's perfectly acceptable to do that on every character to unlock flying (in current content). If the devs want the questing to be experienced in a certain way, by all means players should experience that. But once you're max there's literally NO reason to not immediately unlock flying. Well, obviously other than Blizz using it as a means by which to string players along.

So, there it is. Until the designers' focus shifts back to making a fun game that they want players to play for that reason...I don't expect their implementation of flying to change. Because that's not how WoW works anymore.

[Tojara]

Eh at most it should be unlocked after you finish the campaign when an expansion launches. Grounding people in the first few weeks is absolutely fine IMO. It however doesn't make sense to me to unlock it once those zones are old patch content. So waiting for a .1 patch, or something months down the line is just silly to me. I think something is lost from a questing perspective if you can zip around while leveling up for the first time though.

[CaptainV]

Back in TBC, we bought flying with gold and that was it, it was expensive and an extremely luxory feature with access to new content.

In WOTLK you had to buy cold weather flying at 78, in order to even access the level 80 content, which frankly was genious as an incentive to get you to go and get it, plus while it was expensive, it wasnt extortionately expensive, you could earn it fairly easily.

Frankly, the fact they added pathfinder at all was a lazy way to avoid having to make flying in zones, and despite what people may think, thats the harsh truth. Blizzard didnt want to programme flying in zones in WoD onwards and the reason was because it was alot of effort, not because it was immersive.

Want proof? The fact that certain areas of WoD were not even properly finished and by the time the expansion finished you still had areas with mysterious bronze dragons spawning in places that made no sense, because the expansion never left alpha.

In Legion they realized Pathfinder was a gateway to a goldmine of opportunism, they knew it would be a way to timegate peoples access to content, so they made it a literal timegate to content you could access later.

Frankly, its the worst thing to ever be added to wow and id rather they just went back to the ye old days of "You hit a level range, you buy the thing, you can fly" more so, why not just give us end game zones specifically requiring flying to access parts of the map and content?

As for the price of flying itself per character a reasonable amount such as 2000 to 4000 gold should be fairly easy for most players to access so I see no real issue.

[WowIsDead64]

They still don't get, that if they time-gate flying anyway, then any pathfinder-like achievement if pointless, no matter how easy it is.