Patch 5.3 will allow Flying Mounts in ARR areas!!!!

[DBriggs304]

Why is it a bad move?

One of the main strengths of FF is the ability they have mastered to make even the oldest content and areas have meaning. Even going back for a small quest keeps the community engaged.

Nothing kills a game for a newer player than empty early zones. The fact that we are seeing so many sprouts lately in these areas gives vitality to these areas and keeps the game alive.

That will be lost with thos and it may take a while, but it will affect the game in the long run.

[Delis]

One of the main strengths of FF is the ability they have mastered to make even the oldest content and areas have meaning. Even going back for a small quest keeps the community engaged.

Nothing kills a game for a newer player than empty early zones. The fact that we are seeing so many sprouts lately in these areas gives vitality to these areas and keeps the game alive.

That will be lost with thos and it may take a while, but it will affect the game in the long run.

Sure the over world areas may seem dead. Right now leveling up a new character I don't really see that many people out in the over world other than people afking at the aetheryte crystals. Sure there are some people out and about questing but it's not like there are huge gathering and socializing going on in the over world.

The three starting city states are always pretty busy and packed during peak hours and I am sure that will stay pretty much the norm so new players will see that the city states are still pretty active. That is where I talk to new players the most and hand out crafted gear etc. Not so much the over world. I just don't really see how this is such a bad thing that it will turn people away from the game.

[DBriggs304]

Sure the over world areas may seem dead. Right now leveling up a new character I don't really see that many people out in the over world other than people afking at the aetheryte crystals. Sure there are some people out and about questing but it's not like there are huge gathering and socializing going on in the over world.

The three starting city states are always pretty busy and packed during peak hours and I am sure that will stay pretty much the norm so new players will see that the city states are still pretty active. That is where I talk to new players the most and hand out crafted gear etc. Not so much the over world. I just don't really see how this is such a bad thing that it will turn people away from the game.

I see plenty of people in all areas of the game now. Maybe that is due to the free week they had. But we'll have to see what happens. To me, they didn't need to change much in ARR as that is just the "teaching" part of the game. Flying will make the original areas completely dead now. I love my flight but it is fine how they had it. Will just have to wait and see, but since having great success with this expansion, they seem like they are starting to make some bad decisions. I'm for streamlining the quests in ARR but how much before it's gutted, making crafting far too easy now, adding flight, and if you go by some, the lack of content right now.

I am starting to get WoW vibes here decision wise and that is not good.

[LaylaTsarra]

II am starting to get WoW vibes here decision wise and that is not good.

I don't know about WOW but ARR is the only area you can't fly in. It makes sense for them to make it flyable and it will make a lot of people happy. The standard some agree don't agree here on the forum is ever present. The moral of the story is you can't please everyone. We're getting it so it's not going away.

Furthermore you can't fly day 1 so this whole won't see the area from the ground doesn't hold water. New spouts will still have to walk until they get their mounts.

[MsQi]

I am starting to get WoW vibes here decision wise and that is not good.

I does feel like another let's do this just because of wow thing. But it made more sense for wow. WoW had out of the way places to explore since vanilla that were mostly there for scenery during FP travel. When the did the revamp they added more such things. Based on this games design and what they said you will have even less to explore. You may be able to land on buildings but they said they made some places unreachable. Likely we'll just be able to hover over high distant places.

WoW has huge continuous continent maps. Flying across these tiny zones is will be silly, flying for a few seconds and then zoning. Now if they made like each region a continuous map it might be somewhat epic.

WoW doesn't have instantaneous teleportation to every zone. The redesign added several new zones that benefitted from flight. The redesign also changed the terrain of existing zones, kind of corralling lower level players into appropriate zones, like how they split the Barrens.

It's happening, but with the way they present it I don't expect much from it. Just flying in the same zones not designed with flight in mind.

[Vivi_Bushido]

I does feel like another let's do this just because of wow thing. But it made more sense for wow. WoW had out of the way places to explore since vanilla that were mostly there for scenery during FP travel. When the did the revamp they added more such things. Based on this games design and what they said you will have even less to explore. You may be able to land on buildings but they said they made some places unreachable. Likely we'll just be able to hover over high distant places.

WoW has huge continuous continent maps. Flying across these tiny zones is will be silly, flying for a few seconds and then zoning. Now if they made like each region a continuous map it might be somewhat epic.

WoW doesn't have instantaneous teleportation to every zone. The redesign added several new zones that benefitted from flight. The redesign also changed the terrain of existing zones, kind of corralling lower level players into appropriate zones, like how they split the Barrens.

It's happening, but with the way they present it I don't expect much from it. Just flying in the same zones not designed with flight in mind.

I think part of the decision for flight in ARR was to make the travel to the Waking Sands less mundane. Since they can't put an Aethetye there for lore abiding reasons. Flight also breaks lore in a way, but not as much as the shard would.

[MsQi]

I think part of the decision for flight in ARR was to make the travel to the Waking Sands less mundane. Since they can't put an Aethetye there for lore abiding reasons. Flight also breaks lore in a way, but not as much as the shard would.

Flight won't be available till 50 after completing "The Ultimate Weapon". After that the scions soon move to the Rising Stones. This is happening in the same patch where they streamline the MSQ, possibly eliminating a few trips to the Waking Sands.

There is the boat from Limsa and you can also hire a chocobo and use that time to go to the bathroom.

They might have considered it but I can't see it being a main reason.

[Cithaerias_pyropina]

One of the main strengths of FF is the ability they have mastered to make even the oldest content and areas have meaning. Even going back for a small quest keeps the community engaged.

Nothing kills a game for a newer player than empty early zones. The fact that we are seeing so many sprouts lately in these areas gives vitality to these areas and keeps the game alive.

That will be lost with thos and it may take a while, but it will affect the game in the long run.

Ehehehe Ahahaha. I've been leveling a newbie alt for the past couple months, albeit very slowly due to ARR's horrible fetch-quest ridden questline, I rarely see anyone out running around. Adding flight won't change what's already rare to see to begin with.

Nothing kills a game faster than a boring and slow burning early game, and that is exactly what ARR is, slow and boring. It takes an incredibly long time to get to the meaningful parts of ARR's story. And walking, running, sprinting and spamming your mount doesn't help reduce the trashiness of the nausea-inducing fetchquests. Flight, however, will expedite the boring fetchquests to allow a new player to get to the quests that hold actual meaning.

And adding flight doesn't change much of anything. People can just use auto-run to ignore the sights and sounds of the environment. (Which is what I do. I don't care for the environment, get me out of there asap so I can get back to doing other more entertaining things rather than slowly walking through shrubs or rocks that I have seen a thousand times.)

However, I agree with the revisiting old zones thing. A zone will only keep a hold of it's "newness" for so long before it's reduced to normalcy or even feel like a chore to navigate. An example is traveling from an aetheryte to a beast-tribe every day, every other day, or every few days, you'll quickly start seeing the zone as nothing but a bunch of grass and rocks. It takes a while for a zone that's been burnt out to recover its "wow factor", and adding new things to really old zones does allow people to re-experience that "wow factor". But flight may actually increase that feeling because you'll be able to see more of the zone at once rather than very small sections.