Of Flight and Lore

[Alien_Gamer]

During the quests to unlock flying its stated that flying is only available in HW maps because of the large concentrations of wind aether to use in conversion for flight, concentrations that don't exist elsewhere in the alliance. Its also mentioned during the anima quests that Eorzea has extraordinary amounts of aether infusing the area thats not found in other lands.

Given these, how do you think they'll explain flying craft in Doma? Birds and chocobos are self explanatory but what about the manacutter/reaper/other things?

I'm kinda expecting them to ignore this and just keep going, but I'll be disappointed if thats the case.

[Pence]

Bahamut managed to upset the balance of aether, I'm sure the same could easily be said for the end events of HW.

[TinyRedLeaf]

How do you think they'll explain flying craft in Doma? Birds and chocobos are self explanatory but what about the manacutter/reaper/other things?

Like you, I expect these minor inconveniences will be hand waved away. It'll be rather irritating for thousands of players to suddenly find some of their flying mounts unable to work, for lore reasons they had not thought about before.

That's before we even consider how Domans and other Far East populations would react to the sudden mass influx of smelly horse-birds.

And then there's the issue of how magic-use and other aether-based abilities would be affected outside of Eorzea. I've been pointing out that it's a lore point, albeit one that's not stressed often in the game, that Eorzea is special, because its atmosphere has higher concentrations of aether.

We'll know for sure, in just over two weeks.

[Shadotterdan]

Maybe we'll have a quest that gives us a specially aspected wind crystal that we can use to generate our own flying field and then allow flying in ARR areas

[LineageRazor]

SE has pretty much shut down the idea of flying in ARR areas because doing so would require them to add a LOT of additional geometry to the maps. There are places where models are crude or outright absent for the simple fact that it's impossible to see them from the ground, so there was no point in spending any time doing them right. Apparently, though, we ARE getting increased speed on our ground mounts, so you can still expect faster travel in ARR areas.

The real question is how they'll explain flight in the Stormblood areas, not ARR. Heavensward could be waved off because of the unusual amounts of Wind-aspected Aether in the area (so much, in fact, that whole maps are floating islands held aloft by Wind-infused crystals). It'd be quite a stretch to claim that the same conditions exist in Ala Mihgo or the Far East, so I wonder if they'll even bother trying to explain it or just quietly ignore the problem...

Actually, ARE we flying in Stormblood areas? I've been taking it as a given, but I don't recall SE saying for certain.

[Okamimaru]

I have a feeling air aspected aether will play a role here as well... allowing for flight as well as explaining how we can survive so long underwater without needing to surface for air....