No flying in 5.0: Would it be better?

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Originally Posted by AppleJinx

You aren't forced to fly in 3.0 and 4.0 zones. It doesn't matter how great a map is it will eventually get boring and flying just makes traversing a lot better especially when I am trying to get to a hunt mark.

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I still enjoy traversing the ARR maps; certainly more than I do the HW or SB ones. I don't want flying stripped away per se, I want map design to be better. I think the reason the maps are so boring and empty is because flying is the excuse. Why put effort into designing your maps when your players are only going to traverse it once and fly across it every time afterwards? No, I'd rather go back to ARR map design where it was actually fun, dense, and varied.

No thank you, flying is better. If you don't want to fly, then stop flying.

Map design is not related to flying because we explore every map on the ground anyway. Bigger maps may be connected to faster mount speed though, but you don't have to throw the baby out with the bathwater by removing flying altogether when simply making it slower in a new area would be enough.

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Originally Posted by Fhaerron

The automated flight paths is from point A to B. Which you just need to pay a fee to an NPC.
When you unlock flying you can fly wherever and how you want, at a much greater speed then in XIV (in WoW you have up to +330% fly speed)

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I simply used WoW flight paths as an example of the relative height level of flight that they followed for reference to how a vertical height limitation can still keep a player immersed in the environment as opposed to flying so high above it everything is ants. I have no frame of reference for how full flight behaved in that game. Don't read more into my previous statement than is there.

I honestly prefer the smaller maps from ARR. The HW and SB areas are just so unnecessarily large and barren, making the initial questing prior to unlocking flight in each zone really tedious. Then, once flight is unlocked it honestly feels about the same as walking through the smaller ARR maps as far as speed of traversing the area goes. So for me all flying does is act as a way to artificially increase questing time since you have to travel on foot at a snails pace for a while before unlocking it.

I don’t dislike flying though, but having to traipse across enormous maps slowly on foot before unlocking it just felt like a time waster to me.

One of the reasons I started playing the game was because you could fly at HW and SB. I truly enjoy flying about in maps and exploring. I also enjoy the non flying maps in its own way. I don’t think it should be completely eradicated, that’s not fair on those who enjoy it (same goes with swimming). Instead, adding incentives to not fly would be good, to appeal to an audience who’s not in favour of flying the next expansion.

You could just...not fly you know? You have that choice.

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Originally Posted by Remus

You could just...not fly you know? You have that choice.

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Have you even been reading this thread? Nobody *just* wants flying taken away and that's it. It's that we're dissatisfied with how the maps are designed, and how boring it is to traverse through them.

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Originally Posted by Mhaeric

I simply used WoW flight paths as an example of the relative height level of flight that they followed for reference to how a vertical height limitation can still keep a player immersed in the environment as opposed to flying so high above it everything is ants. I have no frame of reference for how full flight behaved in that game. Don't read more into my previous statement than is there.

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Thing is that nobody uses it as soon as you unlock flying. Flying used to be super expensive for the license and they still had to get a mount with it too which wasn't easy back in the old days.
Flight paths are more a thing of the past now only used by low lvl's for the first 10 days they are playing.

WoW's flying is probably less 'immersive' then here just by the sheer speed at which you race across the land.

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Originally Posted by Alestorm

look at World of Warcraft: people scream they'll unsub if there's no flying at an expansion's launch. I would rather have gorgeous zones that feel alive than appease a few entitled players.

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I was one of the players who strongly objected to the removal of flying in WoW. I chewed through one Pathfinder and then quit, along with several million other paying customers. I haven't been back since.

I agree Eureka is a beautiful area and I really hope they never add flying to it. However, I don't want to see this approach extended to all areas in an entire expansion.

Handled properly, flying adds to the map by making some areas only accessible after you acquire it, and it gives you a fresh perspective on areas you've already explored. I still remember my delight when I looked down on the pools in Valley of the Fallen Rainbow for the first time and realised how apt the name was.
I like the way flying is handled in this game. I like doing the content on foot first, I like hunting for the Aether currents and then being able to use my flying mounts to get to timed nodes and dailies fast.

I don't think removing features ever works out well for a company. Even if people continue to pay for a product, the fact that they are getting less features for the same (or possibly even more) money will not escape them, and that erodes good-will.

As to zones feeling alive, you have to remember Eureka is tiny. If they remove flying from all areas, the map will not miraculously fill with hundreds of players because face it, once you've done the story there is no reason to go out in the world besides dailies and gathering.

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Originally Posted by Fhaerron

Thing is that nobody uses it as soon as you unlock flying. Flying used to be super expensive for the license and they still had to get a mount with it too which wasn't easy back in the old days.
Flight paths are more a thing of the past now only used by low lvl's for the first 10 days they are playing.

WoW's flying is probably less 'immersive' then here just by the sheer speed at which you race across the land.

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Why do people think I'm saying that flying here should be like it is in WoW? I used a single example of one aspect of flight for reference from a game I played a total of 3 days in. WoW's flight paths are relatively low flying, at least in the starter areas, which makes them still feel you're still in the world and not outside of it. I.e. you can still see people running around below you, and there's still some obstacles in your way like tall hills or trees. This concept of limiting flight to low height would be a good way to combine flight and immersion at the same time. And that is all I'm saying about WoW.

I swear the reading comprehension on these forums drops like a rock after midnight. Someone must feed you all or drop you in water something. General you, before any non-general "you"s get your britches in a bunch.

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Originally Posted by Wilford111

Have you even been reading this thread? Nobody *just* wants flying taken away and that's it. It's that we're dissatisfied with how the maps are designed, and how boring it is to traverse through them.

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Could have picked a better thread title then. I think the maps look fine personally and quite interesting to traverse. When I am levelling I can take in all the sites and figure out the lore of certain areas from side quests. I saw some people give the comparison to Eureka, but Eureka is a small map. It only seems big because you have to walk everywhere at the start. When you get your mount you notice how tiny it is and why they could have that much detail.

Expansion maps need to hold side quests, main quests, potential locations for gathering, beast tribes, dungeon entrances and landmarks for NPCs with aetherytes. Eureka just holds monsters so they didn't need to think about much when it came to the design of the map. Overall, I don't think anything needs to be changed. I think they got better filling them up compared to HW and I can see them maybe doing more in the next expansion potentially.

Personally I'd want world maps to at least be worthwhile to explore/be in outside of hunts and gathering before choices about flying or not are to be made. Would be pretty crappy to lose the convenience of flying just for the sake of a bit of eye candy.

I have stopped playing WoW a few years ago because they have removed flying back then. And so have many other Player. And I never went back.
Once a Playerbase is used to a certain feature you should not take it away from them. They can get very angry.
We had this Discussion for a very long time on the WoW Forum. One Statement has been said over and over again. If you don't want to fly, don't do it. You are free to walk through all maps. You don't even have to use a Mount at all.
There you have it.

I feel flying takes away the immersion, never liked it. Get rid of it please.

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Originally Posted by Marcellus_Cassius

I feel flying takes away the immersion.

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And do we get rid of flying mounts too, or just enjoy the not so immersive spectacle of them flapping around just above ground level?

Why get rid of flying?

Just get rid of the zones instead and replace them with faraway vistas you can see from the teleport hubs. It's pretty much what the zones become after flying anyway. Saves a whooole bunch of effort, though.

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Originally Posted by Zojha

Why get rid of flying?

Just get rid of the zones instead and replace them with faraway vistas you can see from the teleport hubs. It's pretty much what the zones become after flying anyway. Saves a whooole bunch of effort, though.

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Or just do like those bots do and auto-port from gathering node to gathering node...

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Originally Posted by Mhaeric

One way they could do it would be to allow flying, but limit the vertical scope of it so you're still moving through the terrain in a manner that's similar to being on foot just with the faster rate of flying and being able to avoid obstacles like hills. This would still let you traverse the area faster and easier, but not completely divorce you from the experience of it like flying at 100 metres up does. I believe WoW works like this. At least it did in the starting areas with the automated flight paths they had back when I played for about 3 days of the trial.

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Quite the opposite. WoW's flying mounts can be upgraded into greater speeds than XIV's, WoW's soft skybox (at which point you and your mount start slowly being killed from oxygen deprivation if you remain thereabove) is already higher on average than any XIV zone's, and WoW's mount movement mechanics are absolutely identical, even including their maximum slopes of ascent/descent without suffering the speed penalty of using only the vertical ascend/descend keys -- which are then identical multipliers. Ours is a direct translation of one of WoW's largest, irrevocable regrets.

The only real difference is that WoW now limits flight to the latter half or even the final patch of any given expansion, locked behind a hefty set of achievements. Ours requires only a haphazard once-over of the terrain and quests of the zone in question, becoming useful, generally, the moment our main no longer has use for the zone.

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Originally Posted by Marcellus_Cassius

I feel flying takes away the immersion, never liked it. Get rid of it please.

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Why does a feature you dislike need to be removed for you to stop using it?

To answer the op:

We can have flying and beautiful maps. Taking away practical functions will not make future maps feel or look better.

They take away flying, first thing we do is probably complained about it lol

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Originally Posted by Reinha

Why does a feature you dislike need to be removed for you to stop using it?

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Because he's the center of the world that's too lazy to not do something convenient, even if he dislikes it. Duh!


People in this thread really seem to miss a lot of things. The new maps are barren...Obviously! You expect a rocky canyon and a sub-desert area to be filled to the brim with flora and fauna? A giant body of water with few islands here or there the same?! Or maybe plains?! A realm reborn was set in a place mostly thriving with life, exception being Thanalan. And there is A LOT of useless, unfilled space in there. The desert south of Amalj'aa area is the most dead place in the game. The rest of that map is comparable to Fringes. La Noscea have a lot of reasonably flat, empty spaces with random trees. The only maps REALLY filled are Shroud...but that's obvious. Those are an actual, humongous forest, so it WOULD be weird for them to not be full. And even there you can easily notice that the larger vegetation is really thin for a "dense forest"...

A Realm Reborn maps are also annoying, forcing you to go over artificial walls simply because its few centimeters above your jump ability. Flying is a replacement for the most obvious thing in the world...using ones hands to get over slightly higher obstacles in a second or two instead of spending two minutes going around them.

The problem is that for some reason the developers think they need to make large maps that are equally annoying (or more) without flying to make flying afterwards more attractive. That's the problem here. What's wrong with a small map having flying? What's wrong with an easy to travel map having flying? Nothing. It's all in the developers (and some players) heads. Majority of players won't even care whether it takes just a few seconds to move through the map if they fly. They get from point A to point B as they wanted, and doing that faster is just a bonus. Why would they care that there's nothing before point A or after point B if they have no business there?! And people still use flying even if they want to go in a straight line, so making maps like dravanian forelands is simply pointless. Especially since the quest line follows the maps topography roughly, so it does not even have much of an effect outside of the few off cases or dailies.

I don't know why good zone design and flying have to seem like two things that cannot co-exist. If the map designers feel like their hard work is wasted, why is that the fault of flying? Eureka looks nice, when you aren't busy dodging mobs when you can't mount yet but that's about it.

And the the maps themselves sometimes have us fighting the terrain to get from A to B... like why?

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Originally Posted by kikix12

The problem is that for some reason the developers think they need to make large maps that are equally annoying (or more) without flying to make flying afterwards more attractive. That's the problem here. What's wrong with a small map having flying? What's wrong with an easy to travel map having flying? Nothing. It's all in the developers (and some players) heads. Majority of players won't even care whether it takes just a few seconds to move through the map if they fly. They get from point A to point B as they wanted, and doing that faster is just a bonus.

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Exactly. Maps can be just as immersive and detailed as the devs want to make it, flying has no effect on that. If the devs think we shouldn't cross the map very quickly then there is no need for flying to be as fast as it is now in a small map. They can make it go the same speed as ground mounts and some players will still fly because it's fun to soar in the sky and look at the world from a different perspective. If Eureka had flying like that, I would fly instead of riding on the ground. It has nothing to do with avoiding mobs because I can already avoid most of them just by being level 20.

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Originally Posted by Reinha

Exactly. Maps can be just as immersive and detailed as the devs want to make it, flying has no effect on that.

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Flight removes navigational challenge, which is an important aspect of making maps immersive. But you can make a good compromise by severely limiting the height at which someone can fly. Something I think works better than straight up flight are gliders, they include a challenge-reward structure as you navigate a map, but since we have flight, implementing that is pointless, and it also has an impact on map design (you need a lot of climbable elements in the game for it to work).

Navigational challenge is something to be made on street/dirt illegal racing games, flight simulators or naval simulators. Alternatively on puzzles in action or outright puzzle games. This is neither of these, not even close.

As for immersion...how does that suffer?! I mean, do people stop being immersed in their real life if they get onto their personal little planes or helicopters and fly to the neighboring town instead of going there by foot? Of course not. If anything, it's the exact opposite. Why would it be any different in the game so long as the mounts that fly are properly designed. A griffin, giant bird (Yol) or dragon does not interfere with world immersion. An oversized elephant that runs on air no different than it does on ground does.

Immersion depends on the believability of the world and its general esthetics. It is broken by developers by introducing ridiculous glamour options, crappy flight animations for mounts that have no place being in the air and foolish quest designs choices that completely ignore in-world conveniences just to make the player go out of their way to do something. All those cases where players are supposed to escort an NPC and then they go all "I'll go ahead and meet you there." are ruining immersion as well, because how is that escorting? These things ruin immersion and they are in the game since day 1, constantly repeated time and again.

Remove flying for 5.0 and make all new zones like eureka!

I think no flying COULD work if there was an actual lore reason for it in the newer zones AND there was actual open world content to pay attention to. I’d like better map design as well but PS4 limitations and such. I’d also love for the overworld to be more active in general. Eureka while instanced, is a step in the right direction in terms of map design. Still needs work.

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Originally Posted by MageBlack

Remove flying for 5.0 and make all new zones like eureka!

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Assuming you are serious, how? Are you talking about implementing all the features or just the 'no fly' bit?
Intricate zones with interesting features like the caves in Eureka? (not sure how practical that is on a large scale but I certainly wouldn't object)
One npc for MSQ?
No side-quests?
Level-locked mounts?
Level-locked Aetheytes?
Mobs with extremely large health pools?
Levelling by Fate-train or grinding mobs for hours on end?
All of that works great in a tiny area and for a short period of time, but it's not enough to pin a whole expansion on.

I'm rather confused that the OP sees having an interesting zones or flying as an exclusive choice. Why can't we have both?

And to the people advocating removing a heavily advertised feature from HW and taking the game back to it's ARR roots, what would removing flying really achieve?
I don't see ARR as the best expansion ever, far from it. It is filled with fetch quests that have you running all over the map for... reasons and then returning to the Waking Sands because... more reasons and all that slow, time-wasting running back and forth is something we often tell new players to stick with in other threads, because the game does get better.

I don't believe the people asking for 'no flying' in this thread have really thought about how enjoyable it would be to walk to every single gathering node, fate, hunt mark and quest objective for months and months on end.

I don't particularly care if flying is removed, but SE needs to attach a real cost to all of the ultra-convenient modes of transportation present in FFXIV.

Between flight, Aetherytes, and the queue-anywhere Duty Finder, the entire game is built around seeing as little of the game world as possible. There's absolutely no cost to any of these features; flight is free, the DF is free, Aetherytes cost trivial amounts of Gil.

I think this is becoming a problem. The game world is part of the appeal of MMOs. I bet there isn't a single person who played FFXI who can't recall countless XP camps in the game, as well as the journey there. Why do I remember La Theine Plateau and W. Ronfaure? Because I had to run through them constantly whilst leveling in Valkurm the first time around, since I didn't have the Dunes Outpost yet. Why do I remember Ro'maeve? {sky}. FFXI's construction forced people into the game world; FFXIV's encourages them to ignore it.

Removing flying can help. I don't think it'll solve the whole problem, given the Aetherytes, but it can help. What I'd also be comfortable with is keeping flying, but imposing real costs on the transportation system. Calling Mounts needs to cost something; running or flying should have some sort of burn rate, maybe Gysahl Greens or some other item, that imposes a non-trivial cost on their use. Flying should cost significant amounts. Teleportation should also be significantly more expensive.

For me, an ideal set of changes would discourage me from ever using my Mount to move between Gathering points, particularly flying. I should occasionally be inclined to choose to run from Gridania to South Shroud, rather than teleporting, and I should always be inclined to travel from Gridania to the Ixal Tribe via some means other than teleportation. Convenience with a meaningful cost is a luxury that gives a sense of options; convenience without any cost simply makes the game world feel shallow.

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Originally Posted by kikix12

As for immersion...how does that suffer?! I mean, do people stop being immersed in their real life if they get onto their personal little planes or helicopters and fly to the neighboring town instead of going there by foot? Of course not. If anything, it's the exact opposite.

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I don't think this is a proper analogy. We're immersed in our real life because... it's our life. We have no choice but to be immersed in it. But immersion in the community (the real-life version of Eorzea) absolutely suffers. It's the difference between the feeling you get living in a city and relying on foot and public transit to get around, and the feeling you get in the suburbs where you drive from point to point and interact with nothing along the way. I've lived both existences - it's a night and day change. Street vendors, impromptu music, small little niche stores - or, on the other side of the coin, homeless, crime - none of these are particularly visible even from a car, let alone from a personal jetpack. The impact is stark.

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Originally Posted by Soupa

I’d also love for the overworld to be more active in general

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This is the issue, this right here ^

The open world is not largely empty because of flying, it's empty because there is very little reason for the majority of players to be there.
I said it before but it bears repeating, Eureka works because of it's size. 144 people in a small area looks busy (especially since most of them are in the train and therefore in the same place). Grounding everyone alone is not going to populate the world. People won't go to areas if there is nothing to do.

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Originally Posted by Vhailor

Between flight, Aetherytes, and the queue-anywhere Duty Finder, the entire game is built around seeing as little of the game world as possible. There's absolutely no cost to any of these features; flight is free, the DF is free, Aetherytes cost trivial amounts of Gil.

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I think the genie is well and truly out of the bottle. As you say, this game is designed to be convenient. We're used to moving quickly and freely and a lot of people like it.
Instead of taking things away or adding costs and artificial difficulties, I think it would be better to look at ways of giving us more incentive to travel on foot and more reason to be in the open world.

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Originally Posted by Biridan

Making it harder to get places is not fun. I like how it is now. You have to explore the map then you unlock the ability to just get places on return visits.

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I actually enjoy looking for the aethercurrents. I also like the sort of maps that can be created because of flying, like The Sea of Clouds and The Churning Mists.

I'd like flying to be a bit more meaningful. There should be more places that have some sort of content (like quests, gathering nodes, maybe even access to a special type of content) accessible only by flying.

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Originally Posted by Vhailor

Removing flying can help. I don't think it'll solve the whole problem, given the Aetherytes, but it can help. What I'd also be comfortable with is keeping flying, but imposing real costs on the transportation system. Calling Mounts needs to cost something; running or flying should have some sort of burn rate, maybe Gysahl Greens or some other item, that imposes a non-trivial cost on their use. Flying should cost significant amounts. Teleportation should also be significantly more expensive.

For me, an ideal set of changes would discourage me from ever using my Mount to move between Gathering points, particularly flying. I should occasionally be inclined to choose to run from Gridania to South Shroud, rather than teleporting, and I should always be inclined to travel from Gridania to the Ixal Tribe via some means other than teleportation. Convenience with a meaningful cost is a luxury that gives a sense of options; convenience without any cost simply makes the game world feel shallow.

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Mabinogi had a cost attached to mounts/pets (they could only be summoned for about an hour per day, and each had different inventory sizes, so you better not put anything you need all day on them.) However most felt this was an annoyance since a common thing to do in mabinogi was use the pets as a kind of chain-gun (summon all the pets in order one at a time, and unsummon them before they take damage, as they had a CD between use, but if you had at least 10 of them you had enough to keep smacking a boss while playing dead.)

Like the most reasonable thing off hand would attach a fuel/feed cost to mounts to move faster than walking speed. But this adds a road cone that wasn't previously present, thus people would not like any change to how they work. Like the present Gysahl greens for the chocobo is the closest there is in the game to this, and unless mounts get upgraded to combat pets, it would not be justified.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Quite the opposite.WoW's flying mounts can be upgraded into greater speeds than XIV's, WoW's soft skybox (at which point you and your mount start slowly being killed from oxygen deprivation if you remain thereabove) is already higher on average than any XIV zone's, and WoW's mount movement mechanics are absolutely identical, even including their maximum slopes of ascent/descent without suffering the speed penalty of using only the vertical ascend/descend keys -- which are then identical multipliers. Ours is a direct translation of one of WoW's largest, irrevocable regrets.

The only real difference is that WoW now limits flight to the latter half or even the final patch of any given expansion, locked behind a hefty set of achievements. Ours requires only a haphazard once-over of the terrain and quests of the zone in question, becoming useful, generally, the moment our main no longer has use for the zone.

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/facepalm.

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Originally Posted by Tempest222

I honestly prefer the smaller maps from ARR. The HW and SB areas are just so unnecessarily large and barren, making the initial questing prior to unlocking flight in each zone really tedious. Then, once flight is unlocked it honestly feels about the same as walking through the smaller ARR maps as far as speed of traversing the area goes. So for me all flying does is act as a way to artificially increase questing time since you have to travel on foot at a snails pace for a while before unlocking it.

I don’t dislike flying though, but having to traipse across enormous maps slowly on foot before unlocking it just felt like a time waster to me.

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I don't find the SB maps large at all. I can easily see from one side to the other which to me ruins game immersion no matter the means of travel. In ARR and HW most of the maps feel and appear larger as they don't appear to be like me looking across some small valley. Even with the shrinkage that came with Warlords WoW still feels larger to me than the more recent content in FF XIV.

Back to the subject, I do not want to see flying go away. I think SE has a reasonable system for gaining access to flying and the convenience it brings after a player has finished the available quest lines. If it were to go away when added with the release of things like Eureka I would have no questions about cancelling my subscription.

I would say no.

Once you've let the flying cat out of the bag, there's no going back. Freedom of movement is wonderful.

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Originally Posted by Vhailor

Pile of masochistic rubbish

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WoW and FFXI are that way.

Lack of flying would take me out of a lot of activities. For instance, no way am I running all around a map like Coerthas Western or the Hinterlands to find a hunt mark that only gives me a few centurio. It's a drag even with flying. Also the distances to and between gathering points are way to large for no flight, in ARR they were at least closer together. There are also dailies. No I do not want to do something like beast tribes in a large map if I am forced to walk.

I don't mind the lack of flying in Eureka but that is a duty, you have very specific objectives when you enter, much like a dungeon. But plain overworld, yeah its pretty the first few times but after that I just want to go from point A to B as swiftly as I can. I ran everywhere in XI for 10 years and that was enough for me. Honestly if I had to run for 30 minutes to do one of the bland fetch quests this game is filled with, I would likely move on.

You are given the option of not flying if you do not want to. No one is forcing you to use a mount so don't force me not to.

Sure. If they make the game function better mechanically so zones are less linear and have things to do in them. But I highly doubt they're going to rework the base mechanics so I say just keep flying.

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Originally Posted by Solarra

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I think the genie is well and truly out of the bottle. As you say, this game is designed to be convenient. We're used to moving quickly and freely and a lot of people like it.
Instead of taking things away or adding costs and artificial difficulties, I think it would be better to look at ways of giving us more incentive to travel on foot and more reason to be in the open world.

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Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

Mabinogi had a cost attached to mounts/pets (they could only be summoned for about an hour per day, and each had different inventory sizes, so you better not put anything you need all day on them.) However most felt this was an annoyance since a common thing to do in mabinogi was use the pets as a kind of chain-gun (summon all the pets in order one at a time, and unsummon them before they take damage, as they had a CD between use, but if you had at least 10 of them you had enough to keep smacking a boss while playing dead.)

Like the most reasonable thing off hand would attach a fuel/feed cost to mounts to move faster than walking speed. But this adds a road cone that wasn't previously present, thus people would not like any change to how they work. Like the present Gysahl greens for the chocobo is the closest there is in the game to this, and unless mounts get upgraded to combat pets, it would not be justified.

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I generally agree here, there'd likely be backlash. Still, the point of the thread, as I understand it, is to speculate whether or not a removal of flying would make the game better, not more popular and/or avoid community backlash.

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Originally Posted by Kazgrel

WoW and FFXI are that way.

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So? Those games are also, by most any measure, better than FFXIV is, albeit they haven't aged well in a variety of ways, especially in terms of graphics and UI, in XI's case. This is a thread about whether or not a certain course of action would make FFXIV better. Emulating its predecessors in certain ways seems like a reasonable statement to make.

Also, please don't willfully mistake my post. I'm not advocating for limited travel options. I'm advocating for attaching a cost to travel options. If you don't have a cost, players will always flock to the method of travel that is fastest / most convenient, which invariably cuts out as much exposure to the game world as is humanly possible. Attaching costs puts other methods of travel on more of an even playing field. There's nothing masochistic about this, and it's a rather asinine summary of what I wrote.