Any talk about them doing away with Aether Currents for flight

[Arkevorkhat]

I think the real answer here is that the dev team doesn't care about User Experience as long as they can turn their failures into plot points.

The vast majority of the story of Shadowbringers was driven by the lack of flying mounts prior to story completion. The Mt. Gulg / Talos Repair and construction arc, the second half of Amh Araeng, early Il Mheg, almost the entirety of the Amaurot arc, and most of Rak'Tika. Lakeland was the only zone that didn't have some plot point driven by you being unable to fly without Eulmoran airships / Amaros.

[Jeeqbit]

I think the real answer here is that the dev team doesn't care about User Experience as long as they can turn their failures into plot points.

The vast majority of the story of Shadowbringers was driven by the lack of flying mounts prior to story completion. The Mt. Gulg / Talos Repair and construction arc, the second half of Amh Araeng, early Il Mheg, almost the entirety of the Amaurot arc, and most of Rak'Tika. Lakeland was the only zone that didn't have some plot point driven by you being unable to fly without Eulmoran airships / Amaros.

That's really true of the entire story since ARR. From ARR it doesn't even acknowledge that you can ride a mount or teleport much.

For example, your companions will "walk" up ahead and as far as they are concerned, you walked with them and killed mobs occasionally along the way. Of course you didn't. You hopped on your ground mount and got there really quickly. They act like you will go to the airship dock to travel to another city and say they will see you later when you finally arrive, but then you just cast teleport and it's done and you are already meeting them again.

I'm fine with this and it assists my roleplaying because I don't want to acknowledge teleporting and always having mounts in the story. We shouldn't pretend it's a new thing in ShB though.

We only get the ground experience once. Once we fly we will never see the area the same way as we experienced it on foot and I think that's why it's important to give us the ground experience in the story.

[StriderShinryu]

I think the real answer here is that the dev team doesn't care about User Experience as long as they can turn their failures into plot points.

The vast majority of the story of Shadowbringers was driven by the lack of flying mounts prior to story completion. The Mt. Gulg / Talos Repair and construction arc, the second half of Amh Araeng, early Il Mheg, almost the entirety of the Amaurot arc, and most of Rak'Tika. Lakeland was the only zone that didn't have some plot point driven by you being unable to fly without Eulmoran airships / Amaros.

While I'm one who actually does like Aether Currents, I do agree that this is one thing I really hope the dev team doesn't do again in the future. It was very annoying to have almost every single zone divided up by what ended up feeling like silly, arbitrary contrivances. Once or twice where it makes sense, sure, but when you build entire dumb "story sequences" around it, it just ends up feeling like padding.