No flying in 5.0: Would it be better?

[Remus]

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.

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.

[Bellsong]

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.

[Glenfiddich]

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.

[Marcellus_Cassius]

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

[Solarra]

I feel flying takes away the immersion.

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?

[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.

[Shurrikhan]

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.

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

[Shurrikhan]

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.

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.

[Reinha]

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

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

[SenorPatty]

To answer the op:

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