No flying in 5.0: Would it be better?

[Solarra]

I generally agree here, there'd likely be backlash. Still, the point of the thread, as I understand it, is to speculate whether or not a removal of flying would make the game better, not more popular and/or avoid community backlash...
...Also, please don't willfully mistake my post. I'm not advocating for limited travel options. I'm advocating for attaching a cost to travel options.

So far I haven't seen anyone in this thread give a concrete example of how removing flying would make the game 'better'.
Subjective things like 'immersion' would be affected, but that's different for everyone and not everybody cares about the open world or enjoys that aspect of the game.

Removing flying would necessitate maps being on one level only. That would be worse than what we have now. At present, some areas require flying to get to, taking that away would not be an improvement.
The few overworld activities we do have at endgame would all be made much more difficult, which would probably lead to less people doing them. The idea that the world would be more active without flying is a fallacy.

Adding 'cost' to travel is something the game has already done. We have to find Aetheryte Currents which both encourages and rewards exploration. We have to complete the MSQ on foot and some side quests too. I enjoy those aspects a lot, but once I've finished the story I'm only in the world looking for hunts, fates, dailies or gathering nodes and I don't see any benefit in making those activities harder to get to.

As to making a personal mount more inconvenient or costly so people are pushed towards using a Choco porter or a ferry, I don't see the point. The reason they aren't popular is because they are extremely limited and offer exactly the same experience every time you use them.

[Zojha]

[...] and I don't see any benefit in making those activities harder to get to.

Indeed. That's why I say: Remove the open world zones entirely and just port people to those activities directly. It's even faster and more convenient, there is no benefit in making those activities harder to get to by having to move there manually after all and it saves dev effort on the maps. More than that, you no longer compete against others for things like hunts or lag over things like Ixion. To top it off, you don't need to keep those instances running 24/7, if nobody is there, you can save server resources as well. And as you say yourself, not everyone cares about the open world anyway and the only thing affected by going full instances and menus would be subjective things like "immersion".

It would make the game so much better, no? I mean, it's super convenient and comes with all sorts of side benefits for servers, devs and players to boot. And all it does is to take that last bit of inconvenient travel time and inaccessibility flying still retains and throws it out of the window, because there's clearly no value in it. It's the next consequent step - Raids already do it, you just get dumped right in front of a boss. Raging success, might as well dump people right in front of a FATE, quest hub, gathering node or hunt. It's the future of MMOs!

This post contains biting sarcasm

[Solarra]

Indeed. That's why I say: Remove the open world zones entirely and just port people to those activities directly etc.

Very funny (oh look, I can be sarcastic, too, but let's not derail the debate with snark)

All I'm arguing for is leaving things pretty much as they are.
Can you give me one benefit of removing flight (along with all flight-accessible areas on the maps and flight-accessible nodes) and adding extra difficulty to the terrain and ground travel?
What is so terrible about what we have now?

Edit: I do hope the people up-voting your post clicked on your 'spoiler tag'

[Aylis]

The few overworld activities we do have at endgame would all be made much more difficult, which would probably lead to less people doing them. The idea that the world would be more active without flying is a fallacy.

My personal sentiments agree and is mainly why I want to keep flying. I personally enjoy doing my daily hunts and my weekly B mark. It's a fun little time killer for extra money and seals to convert to ventures. With flying I can usually wrap up one expansions set in about an hour. Telling me I'd now have to spend four hours running around each bloody map to finish a set...I deffo would not enjoy it as much and would most certainly not want to do them anymore.

I'm all for pretty scenery but I can only oooooo and ahhhhh and take so many screenshots for so long before its old and I just want the convenience of getting to where I need to go to do what I need to do fast.