I love the wind current idea to unlock flying!

I was wondering what others feelings about this were?

I think it's great and exciting because you have to explore the zones on the ground first, and considering the new zones are 2 to 5 times larger and more dangerous, I was extremely happy at that news. You can't just fly over everything right from the get go.

And once you do unlock flying, the added perk is all of the new locations only accessible by flying. All of this really extends and deepens the exploration aspect that ARR lacked.

Seems Yoshi and the team really do strive as hard as they can to please the majority since many complained of how small zones were in ARR, and how every area had no sense of danger.

Thank you Yoshi and team for all of the work and effort you guys put into this game and actually listening to the majority of player feedback. ^_^

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by h0tNstilettos

considering the new zones are 2 to 5 times larger

---

Mind if I ask where you got this from? They said 50-100% larger, not 100-500% larger.


I like the idea, as long as they don't implement it in an annoying fashion.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Colorful

Mind if I ask where you got this from? They said 50-100% larger, not 100-500% larger.


I like the idea, as long as they don't implement it in an annoying fashion.

---

That's what I heard too was 50-100% larger, but in the Live Letter from yesterday Yoshi said 2 to 5 times larger. I was like "Whoa, that's even better. :O"

I assume that counts both ground and sky land area. So in a zone that is 5 times larger, it might be 3 times larger on the ground and 2 times larger for sky land area as an example.

EDIT: View post #5 in this thread about area size. It was even relayed by Bayohn in the Live Letter XXI Digest Thread. http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-Digest-Thread

What I believe they meant by the 2-5 times larger is this:

Current zones fluctuate drastically in size. North Shroud is much smaller than East Shroud, Western and Northern Thanalan are trumped by Southern and Eastern Thanalan. Coerthas Centeral Highlands is massive compared to most of the others as well. In my own interpritation, most of the maps in Heavensward will be 2x larger than the larger 2.0 maps and 4-5x larger than the smaller zones, making them all more uniform in size (and more explore worthy).

They're also inherently larger just because we have the skies to explore.

I think it's great that you have to unlock flying, but I'd still rather not have flying, or at least have flying enemies as well. Biggest issue with flying is that it just cheapens the overworld, sure they made mobs tougher but once you've finished questing and can fly? Who cares. You'll fly over all the challenge. The world still wont feel dangerous because we'll just be flying over everything. Flying enemies, or even just enemies that can aim up, would at least provide some incentive to not just fly everywhere. Kind of weird that, in an expansion about Dragons, the skies will be clear for us to safely fly in...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Nalien

I think it's great that you have to unlock flying, but I'd still rather not have flying, or at least have flying enemies as well. Biggest issue with flying is that it just cheapens the overworld, sure they made mobs tougher but once you've finished questing and can fly? Who cares. You'll fly over all the challenge. The world still wont feel dangerous because we'll just be flying over everything. Flying enemies, or even just enemies that can aim up, would at least provide some incentive to not just fly everywhere. Kind of weird that, in an expansion about Dragons, the skies will be clear for us to safely fly in...

---

Not really, because you have to explore the world on foot to unlock all the wind currents in that zone, which means you have to face the danger before you can fly. Unlocking flying is not quest based, not in the sense that doing a series of quests unlocks it. Quests will only unlock your flying mount, but it can't fly until you find all wind currents in that zone.

I think it's a good thing as well. I mean, I'm disappointed I won't be able to fly RIGHT AWAY, but at the same time, it gives me a good excuse to explore the new content on foot!

But the big question is....
Will enemies slow us in the air while flying. Like c
C'mon lol slow is so wtf

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by h0tNstilettos

Not really, because you have to explore the world on foot to unlock all the wind currents in that zone, which means you have to face the danger before you can fly. Unlocking flying is not quest based, not in the sense that doing a series of quests unlocks it. Quests will only unlock your flying mount, but it can't fly until you find all wind currents in that zone.

---

And? That's beside the point. Once you unlock flying you're still just flying over all the danger the finally decided to add.

Doesn't matter, you need to land at some point to do your quest, as such, you'll be facing danger.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Nalien

And? That's beside the point. Once you unlock flying you're still just flying over all the danger the finally decided to add.

---

The point is you have to face the danger before you can fly over it. To give that as a reason is silly because you will have to face danger at points, before and after you get flying because there are places you can't fly through or over that will force you to land and continue on foot.

It's a nice compromise between having flying and avoiding letting it render the world itself obsolete.

In WoW it was possible to get a flying license for an entire region just by purchasing it from a vendor, from there you could explore an area for the first time entirely through flight (and to be fair some regions could ONLY be explored through flight) but this actually led to many people completely missing a lot of content in some areas since it is much harder to have players organically experience the world when they can fly over it.

This method of unlocking flight zone-by-zone via fully exploring each zone on foot first sounds great to me as you'll get to experience each zone properly before being able to skip it through flight.