No flying in 5.0: Would it be better?

[XiXiQ]

If you don't want to fly, don't fly. That's pretty simple. Why remove the option for others just to force your own preference onto everyone else?

[Mhaeric]

I'll say it again, since almost everyone here seems to be thinking in all or nothing terms. You can have both flying and have it be immersive. It's not a one or the other.

My idea: Keep flying in game, including having it still be gated behind story quests like it is now. The only difference in 5.0 zones would be that vertical flight would be limited to a smaller distance higher than the landscape at that point. I.e. you can still fly, but not so high that you lose sight of the details below you. And zones wouldn't necessarily be cubes, allowing for differences in the height of the landscape but not leaving the lower elevations with massive empty sky patches above them.

There are a couple of areas in Stormblood where this can be seen how it would look because of the way the landscape is situated. E.g. the forest just outside of Castrum Oriens is a perfect example of a place where flight is allowed, but not so high that you're not still flying through trees and still feel like a part of the interesting parts near to ground level. Another example is the north-western to north-central section of The Lochs where the cliffs can't be flown so high over top of that you are getting a complete aerial view of their layout. In both cases, the terrain is largely still around you in some form instead of predominantly being far below you which provides a more immersive and interesting flight experience, and at the same time that terrain doesn't greatly inhibit flight through it.

Also, none of this would be back compatible. In the same way they didn't add flight to 2.0 areas, they wouldn't adjust flight in 3.0 and 4.0 areas. It just would be a different design approach in 5.0 and beyond.

[Solarra]

@Mhaeric - or maybe we could just admit it isn't broken and stop trying to suggest fixes.

[Iscah]

What beauty, every map in this game rather baron with few locales.. Azim had Dawn throne & really nothing else worth a gawking, Yaxnia got Castle & Upcoming dungeon not much else, Fringes is pretty much dirt & rocks very few zones have enough to be worthwhile on foot & then fact all maps with a decent sized area are even more baron like Western Highlands it's large with a Bridge & Dungeon to gawk at & f all else in between worthwhile to walk the zone.

I think you may be confusing "landmarks" and "scenery" here. The Dawn Throne is the one really visible landmark on the Steppe - though I would probably count the other settlements too - but the scenery is the wide plains, the desert, the mountains, the rock pillars... it's beautiful, and you don't go to look at each part individually but altogether it creates that setting. Even the 'barren' areas like the Fringes and the Western Highlands set the mood for that part of the story.

One of my long-term favourite games is Shadow of the Colossus - if you're not familiar with it, basically the two things you do are fight giant monsters, and ride your horse through a deserted landscape to get there. Lots of varied scenery and ancient ruins, but no other characters or enemies to encounter. It's lonely, but beautiful, and I like that feeling of travelling without interruption. And in the later areas of this game, so long as the ground is full of aggressive enemies that won't let you pass peacefully, the only way to get that experience is in flight.

My idea: vertical flight would be limited to a smaller distance higher than the landscape at that point. I.e. you can still fly, but not so high that you lose sight of the details below you.

I don't think this is an issue with the flying height, it's an issue with the flying controls. Currently, with the way your steering is tied to the camera, it doesn't matter how low you fly - you cannot look at the ground below you because it sends your mount into a nosedive. In fact I tend to fly higher than I otherwise would, just so I can look down more easily without coming close to the ground.

I'm really not sure why they've done this. When riding your mount on the ground, you can pan the camera around them and look around you, but as soon as you're in flight it's locked to your movement.

Also, I think it makes more sense to keep a larger limit to how high people are able to fly, and let us *choose* to fly there if we want, or stay close to the ground if we want. There's no need to go near the height limit when you're travelling anyway - it's only going to take you longer to fly up and back down again! I think I've only hit the 'invisible ceiling' when I tried to fly over the wall in Yanxia, and trying to reach islands in the Sea of Clouds that were actually out of bounds.

Forcing a lower height limit doesn't add anything, it just cuts down on the enjoyment of flight. Ideally it should be higher than people will feel like going, to avoid immersion-breaking collisions with the ceiling!

[Shurrikhan]

If you don't want to fly, don't fly. That's pretty simple. Why remove the option for others just to force your own preference onto everyone else?

The question has never been whether to allow flight in a map design philosophy dependent thereupon; it's solely been whether to allow that dependence.

It's far more alike to "should topography provide gameplay, or solely aesthetics?" or "Should mob density be so consistently thick that travel feels impacted, almost to an unimmersive degree, unless one can avoid those mobs by level or altitude?" than "Should we randomly stop our previously used assets from working as their forms would indicate?"

When flight is involved, numerous design considerations that would otherwise lead to a better product for everyone -- albeit to varying degree -- can and almost certainly will be ignored, because developers and players alike are quick to ignore issues that are merely temporary.

I'd love for flight to be a thing actually designed around rather than merely tool by which to ignore other issues, but if it came down to it, I'd sooner sacrifice convenience for a time than meaningful discussion and development, since the prior -- as a simple removal of virtually all complexity -- can be fallen back on at any time, but the latter is elusive and has benefits that would last hereon.

[Solarra]

When flight is involved, numerous design considerations that would otherwise lead to a better product for everyone -- albeit to varying degree -- can and almost certainly will be ignored.

Can you give an example?
How would HW and SB be better without the flight-only accessible areas and nodes? You seem to be suggesting we've lost something here, that these areas would have been 'better' without flying. Better how?

[Wilford111]

If you don't want to fly, don't fly. That's pretty simple. Why remove the option for others just to force your own preference onto everyone else?

Every time I read a post like this I die a little inside. Nobody wants to just run around in HW areas (at least I hope not) because they're not designed for it. You pretty much need to fly because of how incredibly huge and spread out everything is.
What we want are maps that AREN'T huge and spread out. Or at least, not spread out. If you absolutely must have large maps, increase the amount of Aethernet Crystals that we can teleport to, add more locales, make the map as dense and full as ARR maps. And you know what, go ahead and keep flying. But make it so that you don't need to fly to get somewhere quickly. Make flying optional.

[Nicodemus_Mercy]

I prefer huge and spread out zones. It makes the world feel bigger and more immersive. I dislike the model WoW has taken where zones are cramped and wind back on itself making travel incredibly tedious.

There's a psychology to it. Going from point A to point B, even when its a fair distance, doesn't feel bad to me. Traveling from point A to point B but having to go through point F first, even though point A and B are very close and point F is very far, feels awful.

I also LIKE flying. The sense of freedom it gives and the views you can only see while flying are incredible to me. Having areas only accessible via flight gives flight purpose as well.

[whiteblade89]

I think flight is one of the best things they've added to this game. Thats just my opinion and doesn't have to be shared by anyone else, but I love being able to just take off on one of my birds and go where I want to go. This isn't to say that I necessarily enjoy maps like the Ruby Sea or Sea of Clouds (even though I do love the scenery, its a lot of wasted open space), I would just hate to have been able to fly for this long and then have that stripped away from me. I agree with Wilford111; I think traveling by foot should be just as feasible and efficient as flight, but I don't see that being implemented well. For that to happen, maps would wind up being potentially flat and lacking any sort of geographical intrigue. Why climb a set of stairs to get on a bridge to cross one river when you can just call a bird and fly over it in half the time? (just a rough example). The fact is that flight offers a sense of freedom that many of us enjoy and would hate to do without. I don't see how they can make land traversal as feasible and efficient as flight without sacrificing either the quality of the maps, or impeding on the freedom of those who want to fly around.

[Mhaeric]

@Mhaeric - or maybe we could just admit it isn't broken and stop trying to suggest fixes.

A. I never said it was broken.

B. This is simply a suggestion to make flying more interesting, not a fix. See A.

I simply enjoy flying through areas like Castrum Oriens far more than areas like the north half of The Peaks because there's stuff to actually see as you fly by and this suggestion is a way to have the best of both worlds. All the empty air in those spots just feels like wasted space and I can see with a different style of level design it could be avoided. If they don't do this, then I'm still happy with flight as we know it in 5.0+ and prefer that to no flight.

I don't think this is an issue with the flying height, it's an issue with the flying controls. Currently, with the way your steering is tied to the camera, it doesn't matter how low you fly - you cannot look at the ground below you because it sends your mount into a nosedive. In fact I tend to fly higher than I otherwise would, just so I can look down more easily without coming close to the ground.

Use your left mouse button, not your right to pan the camera while autorun is active. You can pan the camera using the left mouse button to view in any direction while both flying or grounded, and it doesn't affect your movement at all.

Forcing a lower height limit doesn't add anything, it just cuts down on the enjoyment of flight.

No it doesn't. Can you honestly tell me that your enjoyment is less when flying through the higher elevation areas that have features of interest in the current zones we have? Those areas have exactly the level of flight that I'm suggesting. Go fly through the forest just outside of Castrum Oriens to see exactly what I'm talking about. Then compare that to flying above the forest in the northwest corner of The Peaks. Heck, even the Chocobo Forest around Tailfeather is better designed for interesting flight than that zone. I'm simply making a suggestion to not have those giant empty air spaces in the lower elevation parts of the maps anymore. I'm certainly not suggesting limiting flight to 15 or 20 feet off the ground or anything. That would be ridiculous. Just have the upper limit move up down at a similar rate that the ground elevation moves up and down, but not so high that detailed textures cease to display and mobs look like ants. Compare the difference between the north and south halves of the map in The Peaks. If the upper limit just scaled down a bit from the south half to the low half it'd be a much more interesting zone to travel through.