No flying in 5.0: Would it be better?

[LastFireAce]

They take away flying, first thing we do is probably complained about it lol

[kikix12]

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

Because he's the center of the world that's too lazy to not do something convenient, even if he dislikes it. Duh!


People in this thread really seem to miss a lot of things. The new maps are barren...Obviously! You expect a rocky canyon and a sub-desert area to be filled to the brim with flora and fauna? A giant body of water with few islands here or there the same?! Or maybe plains?! A realm reborn was set in a place mostly thriving with life, exception being Thanalan. And there is A LOT of useless, unfilled space in there. The desert south of Amalj'aa area is the most dead place in the game. The rest of that map is comparable to Fringes. La Noscea have a lot of reasonably flat, empty spaces with random trees. The only maps REALLY filled are Shroud...but that's obvious. Those are an actual, humongous forest, so it WOULD be weird for them to not be full. And even there you can easily notice that the larger vegetation is really thin for a "dense forest"...

A Realm Reborn maps are also annoying, forcing you to go over artificial walls simply because its few centimeters above your jump ability. Flying is a replacement for the most obvious thing in the world...using ones hands to get over slightly higher obstacles in a second or two instead of spending two minutes going around them.

The problem is that for some reason the developers think they need to make large maps that are equally annoying (or more) without flying to make flying afterwards more attractive. That's the problem here. What's wrong with a small map having flying? What's wrong with an easy to travel map having flying? Nothing. It's all in the developers (and some players) heads. Majority of players won't even care whether it takes just a few seconds to move through the map if they fly. They get from point A to point B as they wanted, and doing that faster is just a bonus. Why would they care that there's nothing before point A or after point B if they have no business there?! And people still use flying even if they want to go in a straight line, so making maps like dravanian forelands is simply pointless. Especially since the quest line follows the maps topography roughly, so it does not even have much of an effect outside of the few off cases or dailies.

[Narangerel]

I don't know why good zone design and flying have to seem like two things that cannot co-exist. If the map designers feel like their hard work is wasted, why is that the fault of flying? Eureka looks nice, when you aren't busy dodging mobs when you can't mount yet but that's about it.

And the the maps themselves sometimes have us fighting the terrain to get from A to B... like why?

[Reinha]

The problem is that for some reason the developers think they need to make large maps that are equally annoying (or more) without flying to make flying afterwards more attractive. That's the problem here. What's wrong with a small map having flying? What's wrong with an easy to travel map having flying? Nothing. It's all in the developers (and some players) heads. Majority of players won't even care whether it takes just a few seconds to move through the map if they fly. They get from point A to point B as they wanted, and doing that faster is just a bonus.

Exactly. Maps can be just as immersive and detailed as the devs want to make it, flying has no effect on that. If the devs think we shouldn't cross the map very quickly then there is no need for flying to be as fast as it is now in a small map. They can make it go the same speed as ground mounts and some players will still fly because it's fun to soar in the sky and look at the world from a different perspective. If Eureka had flying like that, I would fly instead of riding on the ground. It has nothing to do with avoiding mobs because I can already avoid most of them just by being level 20.

[Vulcwen]

Exactly. Maps can be just as immersive and detailed as the devs want to make it, flying has no effect on that.

Flight removes navigational challenge, which is an important aspect of making maps immersive. But you can make a good compromise by severely limiting the height at which someone can fly. Something I think works better than straight up flight are gliders, they include a challenge-reward structure as you navigate a map, but since we have flight, implementing that is pointless, and it also has an impact on map design (you need a lot of climbable elements in the game for it to work).

[kikix12]

Navigational challenge is something to be made on street/dirt illegal racing games, flight simulators or naval simulators. Alternatively on puzzles in action or outright puzzle games. This is neither of these, not even close.

As for immersion...how does that suffer?! I mean, do people stop being immersed in their real life if they get onto their personal little planes or helicopters and fly to the neighboring town instead of going there by foot? Of course not. If anything, it's the exact opposite. Why would it be any different in the game so long as the mounts that fly are properly designed. A griffin, giant bird (Yol) or dragon does not interfere with world immersion. An oversized elephant that runs on air no different than it does on ground does.

Immersion depends on the believability of the world and its general esthetics. It is broken by developers by introducing ridiculous glamour options, crappy flight animations for mounts that have no place being in the air and foolish quest designs choices that completely ignore in-world conveniences just to make the player go out of their way to do something. All those cases where players are supposed to escort an NPC and then they go all "I'll go ahead and meet you there." are ruining immersion as well, because how is that escorting? These things ruin immersion and they are in the game since day 1, constantly repeated time and again.

[MageBlack]

Remove flying for 5.0 and make all new zones like eureka!

[Soupa]

I think no flying COULD work if there was an actual lore reason for it in the newer zones AND there was actual open world content to pay attention to. I’d like better map design as well but PS4 limitations and such. I’d also love for the overworld to be more active in general. Eureka while instanced, is a step in the right direction in terms of map design. Still needs work.

[Solarra]

Remove flying for 5.0 and make all new zones like eureka!

Assuming you are serious, how? Are you talking about implementing all the features or just the 'no fly' bit?
Intricate zones with interesting features like the caves in Eureka? (not sure how practical that is on a large scale but I certainly wouldn't object)
One npc for MSQ?
No side-quests?
Level-locked mounts?
Level-locked Aetheytes?
Mobs with extremely large health pools?
Levelling by Fate-train or grinding mobs for hours on end?
All of that works great in a tiny area and for a short period of time, but it's not enough to pin a whole expansion on.

I'm rather confused that the OP sees having an interesting zones or flying as an exclusive choice. Why can't we have both?

And to the people advocating removing a heavily advertised feature from HW and taking the game back to it's ARR roots, what would removing flying really achieve?
I don't see ARR as the best expansion ever, far from it. It is filled with fetch quests that have you running all over the map for... reasons and then returning to the Waking Sands because... more reasons and all that slow, time-wasting running back and forth is something we often tell new players to stick with in other threads, because the game does get better.

I don't believe the people asking for 'no flying' in this thread have really thought about how enjoyable it would be to walk to every single gathering node, fate, hunt mark and quest objective for months and months on end.

[Vhailor]

I don't particularly care if flying is removed, but SE needs to attach a real cost to all of the ultra-convenient modes of transportation present in FFXIV.

Between flight, Aetherytes, and the queue-anywhere Duty Finder, the entire game is built around seeing as little of the game world as possible. There's absolutely no cost to any of these features; flight is free, the DF is free, Aetherytes cost trivial amounts of Gil.

I think this is becoming a problem. The game world is part of the appeal of MMOs. I bet there isn't a single person who played FFXI who can't recall countless XP camps in the game, as well as the journey there. Why do I remember La Theine Plateau and W. Ronfaure? Because I had to run through them constantly whilst leveling in Valkurm the first time around, since I didn't have the Dunes Outpost yet. Why do I remember Ro'maeve? {sky}. FFXI's construction forced people into the game world; FFXIV's encourages them to ignore it.

Removing flying can help. I don't think it'll solve the whole problem, given the Aetherytes, but it can help. What I'd also be comfortable with is keeping flying, but imposing real costs on the transportation system. Calling Mounts needs to cost something; running or flying should have some sort of burn rate, maybe Gysahl Greens or some other item, that imposes a non-trivial cost on their use. Flying should cost significant amounts. Teleportation should also be significantly more expensive.

For me, an ideal set of changes would discourage me from ever using my Mount to move between Gathering points, particularly flying. I should occasionally be inclined to choose to run from Gridania to South Shroud, rather than teleporting, and I should always be inclined to travel from Gridania to the Ixal Tribe via some means other than teleportation. Convenience with a meaningful cost is a luxury that gives a sense of options; convenience without any cost simply makes the game world feel shallow.

Edit / Addition:

As for immersion...how does that suffer?! I mean, do people stop being immersed in their real life if they get onto their personal little planes or helicopters and fly to the neighboring town instead of going there by foot? Of course not. If anything, it's the exact opposite.

I don't think this is a proper analogy. We're immersed in our real life because... it's our life. We have no choice but to be immersed in it. But immersion in the community (the real-life version of Eorzea) absolutely suffers. It's the difference between the feeling you get living in a city and relying on foot and public transit to get around, and the feeling you get in the suburbs where you drive from point to point and interact with nothing along the way. I've lived both existences - it's a night and day change. Street vendors, impromptu music, small little niche stores - or, on the other side of the coin, homeless, crime - none of these are particularly visible even from a car, let alone from a personal jetpack. The impact is stark.