No flying in 5.0: Would it be better?

[CosmicKirby]

Absolutely NO.

You DO NOT want this.

It WILL NOT make the areas more dense and detailed.

[bass9020]

I have not played BDO, but from what I briefly checked online, it apparently takes 45 min to get across the game's existing maps. However what's not said is if the maps are empty or not. There are also horses in that game. Apparently people play other games while walking to other areas. So there's something broken in that design if it resorts to Skyrim/Fallout3 levels of walking everywhere.

Black Desert has a pretty amazing open world. One main road can take you from one side of the continent to the other but there are many side roads and branching pathways. The continent is broken up into 8 areas all with a different theme and everything within that area reflects it similar to the main regions of XIV. As for empty they are far from it, there are many little settlements, mob camps, and usually 1 main city with a couple towns. NPCs are even on the paths walking to places and even bandits can attack you depending if you have trade goods. Horses come into play because you can level, train and breed them to make more powerful and rare horses that can learn skills to make traveling much much quicker. Its not an easy thing but when you get a horse with the skills that allow you to speed up your traveling it feels great and you feel like you accomplished something. They even added a new tier horse that can glide so traveling is even faster.

A bit off topic sorry!

[Iscah]

It just feels like a waste seeing all these buildings you can't enter (Namai, Kugane, and the Azim Steppe yurts break my heart) or landmarks that aren't given any lore or explanation (The Northeastern area of the Dravanian Forelands map that's only accessible by flying, The Arms of Meed in The Peaks, Dimwold in the Fringes, Swallow's Compass in Yanxia, just to name a few). There are just so many missed opportunities to make the zones richer.

I've said elsewhere, I don't see any issue with not being able to enter NPCs' personal houses. We only ever go into public buildings, unless invited.

Also the northeastern area of the Dravanian Forelands *is* accessible by land - through one of the smaller caves in the same area as Mourn, if I remember correctly. And/or there was an overland route that involved jumping down some mountain ledges. We got sent there for some sidequests.

I think some of the other locations might be there for job quest plots (eg. there are people living in Dimwold in the WHM quest, though we still don't get much lore about the place itself) or they might even be setting up for future events. Was there something in the sightseeing log about those places?

[Solarra]

Are there any technical people here who can explain if the lack of richness in 3.0/4.0 areas is because more because of flight or is more because of the size of the area? Eureka's a pretty big place and it still has a lot of richness. Would it lose a lot of it if we could fly? Another thing I notice is denseness, I don't think we would have a lot of trees or tunnels in eureka if we could fly there.

No tech qualifications here but possibly the difference is due to Eureka being instanced rather than persistent (the strict limit on outdoor furnishings in the housing wards suggests there are constraints).

I have to say though, I don't share your view of SB areas, to me they seem 'rich' and more varied than HW (and I didn't dislike HW). I loved Yanxia, the Peaks and the wide open spaces of the Azim Steppe.
It sounds like you want smaller, denser areas that are all on one level; I don't see smaller maps or the removal of flight-accessible areas as improvements, personally.

I'm not a fan of games where every trip across the map to a quest or other objective involves traversing difficult terrain, going round obstacles, doubling back as your 'path' turns out to be a dead-end or travelling miles out of your way to reach something you could actually see when you started because it was very close to you but you couldn't just walk over to it.
I experienced this in WoW's WoD expansion; exploration was not a lot of fun on foot and normally I love exploring. Fighting every trivial mob because they aggro'd and dismounted you was a pain and the short horizons due to mountains, cliffs and trees being so dense that they permanently blocked the view, was depressing.
There are games where travel equals content and the difficulty of getting from A to B is all part of the fun, but I don't think that approach works well in an MMO.

[Marcellus_Cassius]

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?

What would you like to see?

[Marcellus_Cassius]

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

I'm just voicing my opinion, I find if flying was removed it would force the design to tailor the experience.

Edit: Gotta love how people get when you disagree with their views. And this isn't in reference to the quote or quotee, but if you disagree with another person's opinion, state your own and learn to tolerate when someone views it differently instead of attacking them.

[Mikki]

I really don't even like flying. Getting the currents just to unlock flying is really irritating and it makes people appreciate the zones less. When was the last time you walked through a zone you could fly in? When was the last time you appreciated the beauty of those maps? Plus, with them being so large.... as others have said, they've become extremely empty compared to ARR maps. I'd rather just have regular mounts with no flying and instead have the mount speed increases. I want beautiful, small maps.

I think SE is under the impression that maps should be HUGE in order to be impressive but I love the smaller maps of ARR.... I hate flying forever in one direction just to get anywhere. I usually just set it to automove forward pointed at the direction I want to go and tab out to do something else.

[Ayer2015]

I like how WoW does it. Ground mounts for several month after an expansion, then open it up to flying afterward. You lose so much of the effort that went into creating a world when flight is included in a game.

[MrSmiley]

Any zone with planned flying has to be made huge to compensate, just look at the difference in size and random open areas in HW compared to ARR. If they did this, they would have to go in intending for flying to never be in place or we would simply have far too big zones again. Now that flying is in the game, I don't see that happening.

[Reinha]

I'm just voicing my opinion, I find if flying was removed it would force the design to tailor the experience.

Edit: Gotta love how people get when you disagree with their views. And this isn't in reference to the quote or quotee, but if you disagree with another person's opinion, state your own and learn to tolerate when someone views it differently instead of attacking them.

I was just asking. It seems to be very common these days to request the removal of features one does not like or use, and ignore all the harm it can cause to the game experience of those who do like or use the feature. Examples being the requests to remove neighborhood housing, hunts and now flying. These suggestions, when listened to, affect everyone and it's therefore important to not simply tolerate those views but to discover solutions which remove as little as possible from the game while improving the game as much as possible.

Could you further explain what it is about the current design that dissatisfies you when you as an individual travel on the ground, and why it is necessary for your desired experience that no one can fly? The current situation is that maps must be explored on the ground to the extent of finding aether currents and completing main scenario quests, which means maps are designed with ground travel and quest progress in mind.