Ground mount

[Colorful]

Because the animations are designed with the current speed, and increasing the speed will make some, if not all mounts look incredibly ridiculous. Picture a Behemoth running 2-3 times as fast as it does now, or hell even a Goobbue.

They could make varying mounts have different speeds but that comes with its own cons, people might not be able to use their favourite mounts anymore because it's slower, and then they'll complain about their mounts not being able to run ridiculously fast. To give you an example from WoW, this turtle.

[Janhyua]

Because the animations are designed with the current speed, and increasing the speed will make some, if not all mounts look incredibly ridiculous. Picture a Behemoth running 2-3 times as fast as it does now, or hell even a Goobbue.

They could make varying mounts have different speeds but that comes with its own cons, people might not be able to use their favourite mounts anymore because it's slower, and then they'll complain about their mounts not being able to run ridiculously fast. To give you an example from WoW, this turtle.

That looks great I giggled

[Nandalowell]

Because the animations are designed with the current speed, and increasing the speed will make some, if not all mounts look incredibly ridiculous. Picture a Behemoth running 2-3 times as fast as it does now, or hell even a Goobbue.

They could make varying mounts have different speeds but that comes with its own cons, people might not be able to use their favourite mounts anymore because it's slower, and then they'll complain about their mounts not being able to run ridiculously fast. To give you an example from WoW, this turtle.

Okay, now I want to see Goobbue mounts running at mach speed. Would be glorious. XD

[RiceisNice]

They could make varying mounts have different speeds but that comes with its own cons, people might not be able to use their favourite mounts anymore because it's slower, and then they'll complain about their mounts not being able to run ridiculously fast. To give you an example from WoW, this turtle.

To jump on your example, even WoW had examples where a turtle mount didn't increase your ground speed; it's only purpose was for water traveling. As far as asethetics is concerned, the overall environment and presentation of WoW I'd say is "cartoony" compared to a "realistic fantasy" like FFXIV, especially in relation to character models and animations (specifically crafting animations and their dances). There was also a bit of a thing where if your character model was smaller (or larger) due to buffs, your movement animations would speed up (slow down) in relation. We sorta see that right now with how "slow" the behemoth and magitek animations are, and even feels slower despite moving at the same speed.

There's also the aspect where the environments are not designed with flying speed in mind. The heavensward areas are signicantly much larger than 2.x. Even with flying, it'd take forever to get anywhere if it remained at ground speed in the air.

And lastly, with the plans they have in store for mounts, I'm not sure why they just do away with ground-exclusive mounts and make them all fly in some sort of manner, honestly. They already went for the tortoise, fenfir, and now planning for tank mounts (lion, bear and a black coeurl) to fly as well.