Flying

I just wanted to say the running around to gather aether nodes for flight, I find to be a complete waste of time(except to gain flight). No experience, no reward, no battle just straight up frustrating boring WOWish run around like an idiot thing. The reasoning is just as unsound. I am looking for aether nodes on the ground so that I can make my mounts fly. The mounts dont need to visit these nodes just me. The logic escapes me.

it makes perfect sense, they designed all this wonderful terrain they want the players to traverse most of it at least one time.

My only complaint about attuning to aether currents is that they shouldn't be tied to quest, it should be just pure exploration! :D

It does actually kind of make sense - you yourself need to know how the currents work in the map to know how to steer your mount correctly and (hopefully) not into a cliff because you didn't realize how the currents would work. Most of the currents are in high or wide open places, but the ones that are hidden under areas are important too, presumably giving your character a taste of what currents are like in smaller, more dangerous-to-fly area.

I guess the reasoning for giving you the first chocobo to fly with is that it's already trained to read the currents, and therefore a newbie such as yourself or myself would be better off learning the currents with this chocobo...then once you've mastered that first map, you'll be skilled enough to fly with other mounts and teach your own how to fly.

That's my take on it! And while it's frustrating sometimes, I still like it and feel accomplished when I finally collect them all and fly.

The first thing I do when I enter a new land is explore it from end to end top to bottom. I like to know where stuff is. :) This just feels like a run around. Then again maybe I was just tired when I was on last night.:P