Any talk about them doing away with Aether Currents for flight

[SturmChurro]

It has little bearing on the main story itself, but rather serves as flavor. Considering you only have to do one series, you can't really claim its importance when three other role quests can still there gathering dust. In fact, I still haven't finished two of them. That isn't to say anything about their quality or whatnot. I actually liked the ones I did. It's that when I'm approaching the conclusion of Shadowbringers, my full attention is towards that and I'd rather not take a sharp detour to start/finish a completely separate storyline.

Same! I have a couple zones in Stormblood that I STILL haven't finished.

[Absurdity]

Slightly off-topic but I'd honestly prefer if they just got rid of flying for newer zones and reduce them in "useless" size. ARR zones are tiny compared to later expansion zones but they have a lot more little details, generally feel more "lively". They also made riding maps actually useful by significantly reducing travel time, since riding maps only increase your ground speed...well, before they added flying to ARR zones.

[linayar]

It has little bearing on the main story itself, but rather serves as flavor. Considering you only have to do one series, you can't really claim its importance when three other role quests can still there gathering dust. In fact, I still haven't finished two of them. That isn't to say anything about their quality or whatnot. I actually liked the ones I did. It's that when I'm approaching the conclusion of Shadowbringers, my full attention is towards that and I'd rather not take a sharp detour to start/finish a completely separate storyline.

This is one reason why job/role quest could be done away with. I like them for what they are and would also be fine with continuing them, but the main story of FFXIV has never been about the player character's jobs. The player character's identity is more about being the Warrior of Light rather than being any one particular job (or even all of them). So having a parallel story (as in part of the leveling journey, supposedly) cannot really fit well with the main story because it has to change based on the job being played.

Slightly off-topic but I'd honestly prefer if they just got rid of flying for newer zones and reduce them in "useless" size. ARR zones are tiny compared to later expansion zones but they have a lot more little details, generally feel more "lively". They also made riding maps actually useful by significantly reducing travel time, since riding maps only increase your ground speed...well, before they added flying to ARR zones.

No, thanks. ARR pre-flying, Eureka, and Bozja are enough experiences for me to know I prefer flying. I don't care about the zone being more "lively" when I'm trying to get to certain places in a rush and have to deal with obstacles.

[ryouma17]

aethercurrents is a good system i like it, takes about 5 minutes to get all the currents, i'd rather do that a million times then spend months grinding rep for pathfinder

[VictorTheed]

I enjoy looking for the aether currents, there pretty fun to search for.

I wouldn't mind if they took them away from quests though and just through those out in the open world as well.

[Lanadra]

It has little bearing on the main story itself, but rather serves as flavor. Considering you only have to do one series, you can't really claim its importance when three other role quests can still there gathering dust. In fact, I still haven't finished two of them. That isn't to say anything about their quality or whatnot. I actually liked the ones I did. It's that when I'm approaching the conclusion of Shadowbringers, my full attention is towards that and I'd rather not take a sharp detour to start/finish a completely separate storyline.

Going to have to disagree on the importance and relevance of the Role Quests. True I don't care too much about the contacts and their tales. But I do care about Ardberts companions.. we fought them in post-HW, before they returned home with Minfilia to stop the Flood of Light, and now we get to see both what happened before in their lives and what became of them after their clash with us in HW.

[Reinha]

aethercurrents is a good system i like it, takes about 5 minutes to get all the currents, i'd rather do that a million times then spend months grinding rep for pathfinder

This. It's a reasonable requirement for unlocking flying. It takes only a few hours per zone and the devs get to design how we see the landscape for the first time, what mobs we encounter and how long it takes to travel to objectives.

[hobostew]

Maybe they should lock flying behind a lengthy reputation grind and not implement it until a couple of patches into an expansion. 8)

[LaylaTsarra]

Aether currents are fine. They've made them pretty easy to find. Heavensward was a tough one but it got nerfed later with repositioning many of the currents. Having to go through msq on the ground is a good thing. It at the least gives you an opportunity to see the landscape from the ground where the dev's have put in a lot of time of effort. Flying simply isn't the same thing and shouldn't be available right away.

[Rufalus]

It's one of the few elements of exploration in the game world, so I'd rather see the feature remain.

Agreed with this. Exploration is my favorite part of RPGs. It's a nice experience to work out the land routes through the ffxiv maps before flying is unlocked and you start skipping over everything. Maybe I'm in the minority because there's always been a lot of vocal people who hate currents.

I would like some kind of shapeshifting realm where the map is randomized each time you enter so you have permanent exploration content. Some elements similar to deep dungeon but it's mostly outdoors and you can discover dens/caves hiding useful items. That sort of thing is what I like.