REQUEST: Remove Aether Currents

[Shougun]

Read and the thoughts dispersed in some posts already but wanted to say myself that I think the system is preferable to just allowing flying from the gate, at least in a general statement. The reason being it makes you have to deal with the obstructions and scale of the zone before you get to cut everything down into tiny packages.

I say in a general sense because I could see them using different system if they so wished, like instead of currents you might get to a zone and fly right away but there is a Garlean shield blocking most of the zone. Or like the energy cloud at Nidhog's area. Or some other sort of progression of the area. Maybe in a new Eureka 3.0 your chocobo gains upgrades a bit like some classic FF games (like how color used to mean something for chocobos), so rather than aether currents it's like going from shallow, deep, mountain, etc upgrades. You might also find some value in if the game had content that utilized the 3d space more, like if there was a flying enemy that would chase you, missiles, etc. As currently flying exists in a sort of 'shift out of the plane of existence', like if we pretended to be npcs you'd vanish and repear like some magician once you reached a certain height lol. If the game experience didn't necessarily end by flight then flight earlier could make more sense.

I also would find it curious if they perhaps made flying more into gliding, for a zone, with a number of other transportation options and growths in conjunction. Say for example there are some wind tunnels you might go into for greater speed and stamina (which would consume on each flap of your flying mount), there might be cannons like Secret of Mana (fires you off to another location lol), teleporters, set gliders, peaks you could glide down from. In this way the zone might get smaller as you progress and learn about it's features but it'll never become as much of a "straight line". Like if you took Khoulsia for example you might have to leap and flap from outcropping to outcropping which would add like 15 seconds to your travel time but just by having to do that the cliff wall would feel significantly larger.

Anyway, in general I think aether currents offer a progression step that is important to the most average experience of the zone and removing it weakens each zone's personal potential impact to the player. "just make it optional" is also not always an option, because not only should I be able to say it and people get it but from personal experience the 'fastest / highest value option' is often the most picked over whatever would provide you the best experience (like if certain jobs do things faster, they're picked more, doesn't mean they're more enjoyable, if your favorite item is X but Y is way better guess what 90% of the people will be doing? ... using X lol). That said I can see it is entirely possible that someone would never value nor want to experience the world and only care about getting to X step and anything that slows X down is just annoying... I can see that.. but I still feel like in the average experience of the content that it would be important not to trivialize a zone's "conversation" (if you will) to the players and by auto allowing flight I think you cut that conversation short unnecessarily.