My opinions on Flight and world design in FFXIV and my reasons for quiting the game.

[Garet]

I can't really agree on flight, but I have complained that zones are basically mob farms since SE moved away from ARR design. (I really miss the way they made the zones in ARR. I still walk through them because they feel like a world.)

But, yeah, half the quests in this game are go here to see this to go there to see that, when they could just have easily put those npcs in the same place. Or had some kind of courier send that message. We're the Warrior of Light, ffs! We have better things to do than be someones messenger. It really is just to pad time.

Sad to see you go, but hope you find what you're looking for elsewhere!

Agree. But it is the way with MMOs. They just do not have the same amount of time and planning to implement on xpac what they had for the initial product. So usually the first initial launches of mmos tend to have bigger immersive worlds than subsequent xpacs.

Gridania Forest is still sooooo nice to travel though. I sometimes travel on the ground when I am passing thru it just to enjoy the forest complete with sounds of birds etc.

[Jojoya]

Didn't they say they're lowering the amount of aethercurrents needed for flight in Heavensward and possibly Stormblood once Endwalker rolls around? Or am I just insane.

They did say they were going to make adjustments on some of the older aether currents though I don't think they were specific on what type of adjustment. Removing them would be the simple solution, of course.

Personally, the only zone I found annoying was Lochs. I have no idea what they were thinking when they were placing most of those.

Flying was a mistake. Walk on the ground like gravity intended, you godless heathens.

I'm perfectly fine being restricted to the ground while working on the MSQ for that zone. Being on the ground feels like part of that story.

I'm not fine being restricted to the ground when the story has moved on and the only reason left to return to the zones is the repetitive side content. That's just wasting the player's time. They're not getting any benefit from it. They're not seeing anything they haven't already seen before.

It does not make things more fun.

Restricting flying in WoD was one of the ways WoW started going totally wrong. It made already boring end game grinds even more boring and time consuming. It makes things less fun.

It's not a coincidence that I picked up FFXIV for the first time as SE was getting ready to add flying for the first time in its new zones while at the same time Blizzard was getting ready to stop adding flying new zones in WoW. SE showed that they appreciate players value their time. Blizzard didn't not and still does not.

[TheMightyMollusk]

Restricting flying in WoD was one of the ways WoW started going totally wrong. It made already boring end game grinds even more boring and time consuming. It makes things less fun.

It's not a coincidence that I picked up FFXIV for the first time as SE was getting ready to add flying for the first time in its new zones while at the same time Blizzard was getting ready to stop adding flying new zones in WoW. SE showed that they appreciate players value their time. Blizzard didn't not and still does not.

Part of why WoD restricted flying was because Draenor was half-finished and they were hoping nobody would notice if they couldn't fly over and take a look. I remember using a water-walking mount and taking a look around the coasts, and running into invisible walls all over the place to keep players out of places they hadn't gotten to yet. It was just one of many ways that WoD was such a gigantic mess.

Then Blizzard talked about no flying at all going forward, and got such huge backlash over it that they just made it stupidly convoluted to unlock it instead. Then they doubled down on it in Legion, and then I quit the game so I dunno how it went from there, but I've heard nothing positive.

[Starshower]

Didn't they say they're lowering the amount of aethercurrents needed for flight in Heavensward and possibly Stormblood once Endwalker rolls around? Or am I just insane.

Yeah, I remember that as well. From what I understood at the time is that they are removing aether currents entirely, which would be good. IMO flight should be automatically unlocked when you complete the last quest of a zone.


It would be exciting to have one less chore to complete when making new characters, and for new players. I know so many people that are in the endgame and still can't fly in multiple areas. I usually ferry them arround to get aether currents when I discover they haven't done it, but it would be nice to have flight enabled for everyone. ARR made it really easy since you unlock flying just by completing the end of 2.0's MSQ.

[ACE135]

I always liked collecting the Aether Currents. I liked exploring the map a bit off the ways and get familiar with the environment. I think that was the way SE wanted you to get to see (almost) every corner of the map at least once. When flying would be unlocked immediatly, there might be places you would otherwise never see because you have no business to do there.

[Keramory]

Mob density in this game is absolutely insane. Before I started using stealth with a gathering class to help, I usually had to fight 10-15 enemies unrelated to my quest just to get to the location. On more than one occasion I failed a fight in a quest, not because of the mobs SE intended me to fight, but because of random mobs that got aggrod while I dodged an AOE attack or more frequently, respawned on top of me because the last guy to do this quest killed them before hand since it was the only way to do it without assistance. All of this combined just creates a grind to get you to put in more hours and pay them more money in subscriptions.

You know, there used to be a time when MMOs had open worlds where your character could potentially get KO/killed by mobs. Ya'll spoiled anymore.

As for flying in general, I'm mixed. Huge time saver so I'll never be completely against it, but the flight mechanic really ruined the feel and depth of some zones. Fairly recently I was leveling BLU for example (the only time you actually level in open world), and completely forgot what an amazing and actually fairly sized place I was in.

Think the bigger crime here is there's nothing in game to make the time traveling from A to B worth it.

[Bright-Flower]

Maybe it's partly because of remember WoW time gating flying unnecessarily in its later expansions, but I really don't see the aether currents as a big deal unless you're doing multiple alts and repeating the process over and over. And the exporation/side quests ones are easily done as you do the msq in a zone. So I just struggle to see anything overly difficult or annoying about unlocking the ather currents with a couple of specific exceptions like in the Lochs where you have to traverse half the zone to loop around to where the current actually is. But those are few and far between.

[Jojoya]

Part of why WoD restricted flying was because Draenor was half-finished and they were hoping nobody would notice if they couldn't fly over and take a look. I remember using a water-walking mount and taking a look around the coasts, and running into invisible walls all over the place to keep players out of places they hadn't gotten to yet. It was just one of many ways that WoD was such a gigantic mess.

Then Blizzard talked about no flying at all going forward, and got such huge backlash over it that they just made it stupidly convoluted to unlock it instead. Then they doubled down on it in Legion, and then I quit the game so I dunno how it went from there, but I've heard nothing positive.

Tanaan had nothing to do with why we didn't have flying at the start of WoD. The no fly decision was made before the expansion was even announced at Blizzcon 2013 (we were told then we weren't going to have it).

We didn't get flying because a faction among the senior lead developers didn't want us to have flying.

Tanaan was delayed because a couple of months after Blizzcon they chose to make garrisons a central component to the expansion instead of optional content as originallyl announced. Tom Chilton said as much in a couple of interviews at Gamescon 2014. Farahlon was cut because they had to make a choice between and Tanaan once they could move developers back to things other than garrisons. Tanaan was already attached to the main continent while Farahlon was just an island. Rumor was the Shattrath raid got axed alongside Farahlon because the story was heavily tied to it but I don't think that was ever denied or confirmed.

[Kes13a]

If you think getting flight in FFXIV is hard, you obviously have never played WoW.

unlocking flight there is worse than painful, its full time employment. running around and finding the currents and having to complete a couple quests is remarkably simple.

only if they had us complete every side quest in a zone, max all the beast tribe reputations, complete EX's and Savages, and sacrifice small animals in your back yard would it be even remotely like the other game. count yourself lucky.
that said, enjoy where ever you end up and I hope it fits your playstyle better

[LisSquid]

Agree. But it is the way with MMOs. They just do not have the same amount of time and planning to implement on xpac what they had for the initial product. So usually the first initial launches of mmos tend to have bigger immersive worlds than subsequent xpacs.

Gridania Forest is still sooooo nice to travel though. I sometimes travel on the ground when I am passing thru it just to enjoy the forest complete with sounds of birds etc.

I'd have to disagree. ESO and WoW continue to make worlds with just as much detail, and sometimes more. I have described the world design of FFXIV from SB onward as what the world staging looked like in Perfect World. They can, they just don't.