Add Dragonriding-like system to FFXIV

After playing WoW: Dragonflight, I have gotten kind of spoiled by the Dragonriding system, and it feels kind of jarring to go back to the plain old hovering-in-midair system, which now feels slow and boring by comparison. I would like to see Dragonflight-style dynamic flying added to FFXIV. I seem to recall reading that Guild Wars 2 has a similar system as well.

For those wondering what I'm talking about, Dragonriding is a new type of flying system that was added in the World of Warcraft expansion "Dragonflight". Instead of simple, basic hover in place and move up, down, left, right, forward, or backward, Dragonriding adds advanced physics to flight and basically makes a minigame of flying. When fully upgraded, you get 6 vigor charges, which you spend on maneuvers such as speed boosts and flapping upwards. It is much faster than regular flying, and there is also a racing minigame where you have to fly through specified courses and try to get the fastest time possible. In the upcoming expansion "The War Within", the system is being expanded to most flying mounts (Not just dragons) and renamed Skyriding.

And yes, you would still get the option to use the old system of simple flying, in case of accessibility issues.

I too enjoy dragonriding in Dragonflight. But how would it work in FF where the zones are instanced and not as large? By the time you get some momentum, you’re at the end of the zone already.

I'd like it alot, especially if we got a gold saucer minigame where you race other players

I don't feel like it would really work well in XIV when the zones are fundamentally not designed with flight in mind as the overall verticality and clutter of them is much lower, which means there isn't many high places to dive from nor obstacles to weave around.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by KageTokage

I don't feel like it would really work well in XIV when the zones are fundamentally not designed with flight in mind as the overall verticality and clutter of them is much lower, which means there isn't many high places to dive from nor obstacles to weave around.

---

much like wow it'd just be made for the new expansion to start with, then added to old zones later on mostly for convenience sake not so much because it fits.
Dragonriding is incredibly OP in old zones in wow but who cares, zoomies is fun

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Feronar

After playing WoW: Dragonflight, I have gotten kind of spoiled by the Dragonriding system, and it feels kind of jarring to go back to the plain old hovering-in-midair system, which now feels slow and boring by comparison. I would like to see Dragonflight-style dynamic flying added to FFXIV. I seem to recall reading that Guild Wars 2 has a similar system as well.

For those wondering what I'm talking about, Dragonriding is a new type of flying system that was added in the World of Warcraft expansion "Dragonflight". Instead of simple, basic hover in place and move up, down, left, right, forward, or backward, Dragonriding adds advanced physics to flight and basically makes a minigame of flying. When fully upgraded, you get 6 vigor charges, which you spend on maneuvers such as speed boosts and flapping upwards. It is much faster than regular flying, and there is also a racing minigame where you have to fly through specified courses and try to get the fastest time possible. In the upcoming expansion "The War Within", the system is being expanded to most flying mounts (Not just dragons) and renamed Skyriding.

And yes, you would still get the option to use the old system of simple flying, in case of accessibility issues.

---

In your dreams, soldier

:'(

1. WoW stole that idea straight up from Guild Wars 2.

2. That kind of mount system is generally best for traversing dynamic/varied map design. Something which FFXIV Hasn't really done since Heavensward, maybe Stormblood. All the extra mobility tricks don't matter much when you mostly traverse flat/bowl zones.

I haven't played Dragonflight, but the 'Dragon flying' system does look like a lot of fun from what I've seen. I would like to see it in XIV. The updated flying animations that we're getting give me a little bit of hope that the dev team is also interested.

I gave Dragonflight a go after it went on sale and found dragonriding to be an incredibly obnoxious way to get around. If it were optional I wouldn't care either way but I don't think there's much of any chance of that system ever coming to FFXIV.

If they are going to copy a mount system they shouldn't copy the crappy copy that is dragonriding in WoW.

They should copy who did it best, GW2. Ykno, the ones who WoW did a poor job imitating. Their griffon flying is best in class example of flight in an mmo. And their mounts in general are the best in the mmo genre.

Turning flying into a minigame sounds really tedious and annoying. And I remember from WoW that zones are huge and would take forever to fly across. So I imagine it works fine there. But XIV does not have as massive of zones so I'm not really sure there's a necessity for something like this.

I mean, before they can even do this, they need to fix the damn physics engine and have proper platforming/jumping.

As a person who feels incredibly proficient in platforming games and has a great love for solid platforming stages/gimmicks, FF is absolutely infuriating in this regard.

We can’t even have proper races with it. Unless you like that pseudo temple run rails thing with chocobos.

I must ask first, what point would it serve? Because if it's just to make something more realistic and closer to a sim, then perhaps it takes all of its meaning from actual content benefiting from it? Because if you do all of this just to move around, yes, it's gonna be fun the first few times until the magic disappears and then just starts feeling like an obnoxious chore when the only thing you want to do is to move between point A and point B. Else you could also do the same on sprinting, you know? Adding more athletic based stacks of stamina, managing energy introducing breathless debuffs rooting you in place... Makes sense in a race or a marathon, but for moving around?

At this point I honestly don't see any reason why FF XIV should add something like dragonriding in their game. Unlike in GW2 in FF XIV the mounts only are a means of faster transportation and for glam purposes purely.
In GW2 on the other hand each mount adds something vital to exploring the environment. For example the Springer can knock down enemies by using its skill cannonball. The longer you press the space bar the higher it jumps, so perfect for reaching spots higher up, like mastery points or hero points or such.
The Raptor does have a dash skill which is pretty useful too. Also it can pull in nearby enemies with Tail Spin and if you unmount it it does this little tail spin and damages the enemies. Hell, if you trained the specific masteries the mounts even have some shared power with increased engage damage.
The Skimmer can float above the water and once you fully mastered it you can even ride it UNDER water. So fucking awesome!
But the best ones imo are the Skyscale (my favourite) and the Griffon. If you master them fully you can even use updrafts or ride one the ley-lines. The Skyscale actually is best imo to fully explore maps and reaching very high up locations. The Griffon on the other hand has almost unlimited ability to stay in the air when you time the soar right after a dive. There's even a guild in GW2 who actually teaches how to ride the Griffon effectively XD
Even the Warclaw which only is a thing in WvW in GW2 will get to play a role in the upcoming expansion so it can finally also be used in PvE along with new skills.
Before the mounts were introduced we even had the glider abilities which helped in Heart of Thorns and which could be trained. I do catch myself often in FF XIV, standing on a cliff and being close to hitting the space bar in an attempt to open the glider, lol.

So yea, the mounts in GW2 are useful and needed story-wise from some point out. The Skyscale was a pain to get but you don't wanna miss it once you unlocked it. The story in GW2 made the mounts kind of a useful tool in order to progress, but in FF XIV... ? The devs would need to actually bring content which requires some sort of mount usage and not just flying but actually come up with a skill system around the mounts and kind of a way how to teach the mounts or at least one of them said skills. I don't see that happen, especially since "mounts" in this regard - maybe except for chocobos - never were a thing in the old FF games either. The only FF I can recall which gave the chocobos some real purpose was FF 9 with their chocobo treasure hunt, kind of a mini-game. Looking for treasures or treasure maps in Chocobo Forest and then going out on the world map, trying to find the right location from the little treasure map thumbnail. I enjoyed that and would do so in FF XIV as well.

No thanks, I hate GW2s mount system. If you're going to give me a flying bird, then it better FLY and not just fall gracefully or have to use stupid wind spots to get a boost. I don't need minigames just to get where I want to go. Also, the mount system in GW2 is just another way to sell cosmetics. Have you seen their gambling boxes? It's absurd.

I don't think that a Dragonriding esque feature... or any sort of dynamic mount system, or player action will work in XIV because of the innate server lag the game has.

The game neither forces you nor requires you to have a skin on any mount. All the mounts do function in discribed manner without skins just fine but do require a somewhat skilled player and patience at times.
Besides tons of FF XIV players also do glam runs in order to just obtain a certain glam or suffer or enjoy through savage content only to get a specific mount (axolotl for example). No actual use in both imo when my armor is already decked out and max ilevel.
There always will be those who spend money on games (except for subs or the base game) and those who rather invest good amounts of their free time which could be used to go out with friends or other stuff.

I'd rather they put their efforts into other content than just designing new expansions zones to be more difficult to traverse on the ground and then making 'dragon riding' to compensate. I didn't play dragonflight long but the whole system felt kind of arbitrary and annoying.

It could have a GW2 mount system, where there is some dashes or portals you can enter with them, just to be more fun to explore and fits the maps even if they're "small"

Unless they fix the netcoding I cannot see this working tbh

I hated that flying in wow and that made a whole expansion with it. It wasn’t optional so it sucked. I basically finished that expansion and then quit as I hated that flying in the game lol

Zones are too small in FF14 to warrant the active nature of Dragonriding. I like flying for short distances; if I need to go from corner to corner then I'll pay for a teleport.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Feronar

After playing WoW: Dragonflight, I have gotten kind of spoiled by the Dragonriding system, and it feels kind of jarring to go back to the plain old hovering-in-midair system, which now feels slow and boring by comparison. I would like to see Dragonflight-style dynamic flying added to FFXIV. I seem to recall reading that Guild Wars 2 has a similar system as well.

For those wondering what I'm talking about, Dragonriding is a new type of flying system that was added in the World of Warcraft expansion "Dragonflight". Instead of simple, basic hover in place and move up, down, left, right, forward, or backward, Dragonriding adds advanced physics to flight and basically makes a minigame of flying. When fully upgraded, you get 6 vigor charges, which you spend on maneuvers such as speed boosts and flapping upwards. It is much faster than regular flying, and there is also a racing minigame where you have to fly through specified courses and try to get the fastest time possible. In the upcoming expansion "The War Within", the system is being expanded to most flying mounts (Not just dragons) and renamed Skyriding.

And yes, you would still get the option to use the old system of simple flying, in case of accessibility issues.

---

Suggestions are good however I don't feel like FFXIV needs to be another GW2/Warcraft clone.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Hycinthus

I too enjoy dragonriding in Dragonflight. But how would it work in FF where the zones are instanced and not as large? By the time you get some momentum, you’re at the end of the zone already.

---

It takes literally 2 seconds in wow to take off and get dragonriding to max speed, the zones are large enough