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

[TheGrimace]

I don't want this. The only good thing to come out of this will be that it will be easier to reach certain vistas. ARR didn't need flying, it needed more reasons to revisit ARR zones. Now these places are gonna feel even deader.

[Liam_Harper]

To summarise various points: It kills can kill the exploration-taxonomy in maps, reduces the number of travelers on the map's land routes (socializer-taxonomy), and the flight system prioritizes A to B travel and ease of movement in an objective based system (no adventure, over trivializes aspects of travel example: bofuri ep 7 angel mode quest)

While I see the point, I disagree.

If people enjoy and want to explore and immerse themselves in the scenery, they'll do so. One of the reasons I left WoW was because of how they constantly tried to force their players to "enjoy" things, or took things away because they felt we didn't know what we liked and it was more fun their way. It was insulting.

We fly because we like flying. The scenery looks nice from the air too. New players will be on the ground from 1-50, then they get a faster form of travel to chew through those extra pre-HW quests and later revisits.

[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.

[VictorTheed]

I can't wait to fly around the arr zones and re explore every last one of em again, that'll be interesting.

Though I wish we had to find the aether currents in each zone, I always enjoy using my compass to look for those when new expansions come out, but I'm excited to fly in the arr zones.

[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.

[Niyuka]

I think we can just have click-on-map teleports, people would use them, so logically its good for the game. Same idea as with flying. Also, why not speed up mounts to twice the speed? I bet you, more people would use it! So its good, right?
Now that we mention it, we should remove the need to kill the same boss every week again. Just make it that once you beat them once, you can opt to just get the loot by clicking an optional chest. I am sure most people would use it over a reclear, and those that want the reclear can still do it, right?

SE has screwed up majorly in the 5.x patches this expansion by drastically reducing gameplay time. This is another step. Its slowly moving towards being an action movie thats just 3 setpieces one after another, with no pacing, no breather between, no "filler" that serves the purpose of stretching out the experience, building suspense or offerng variety.
I mean, they basically removed Ruby Weapon within the SAME patch cycle by giving out free 385 weapons!
I suggest as the next idea, you only need to level one class of each archetype, and for 1000 poetics you can boost any other class to that level!

[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.

[Avidria]

Man I still don't think this change was necessary but the arguments I'm seeing against it really are the exact same arguments I saw over and over in WoW against having flight at all, and it's just bringing back that heavy feeling of *tired* I got in every thread on the topic. To this day restricting flight the way they did is imo one of the most frustrating and disappointing decisions that Blizzard ever made.

I'm just curious to see how SE is changing the zones to enable this, if any further, and why they wanted to do it. It'll be nicest in places like East Shroud, which is a map I've pretty much always strongly disliked navigating, and Coerthas which is just. Big and empty anyway, with only one Aetheryte and a lot of things that send you back to it over time