Any talk about them doing away with Aether Currents for flight

[Limecat]

Best of both worlds would be getting rid of the currents since they are ultimately pointless, but still locking flight behind some final events of a zone. The part where you have to beat feet and get to know the layout of things directly is important, even if you'll spend the vast majority of your time flying over it all later.

[Theodric]

It's one of the few elements of exploration in the game world, so I'd rather see the feature remain. You only need to find each aether current once, anyway - then it's done. Unless you have alts, of course.

[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.

[Lanadra]

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.

That's not going to work the way you imagine it will. Star Trek Online tried that years ago before deciding that procedural generated.. ergo, random planets/maps were not the way to go. The general player feedback was 'it sucks, it feels cheap and inconsistent and really doesn't do much to invoke a sense of exploration'. Ever since then they've stuck with curated, handcrafted maps really no different from what FFXIV or GW2 or.. any MMO really offers.

[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

[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.

[Cithaerias_pyropina]

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.

"Grinds Fisher to max level with Ocean Fishing. Proceeds to swap to max level Fisher, turn stealth on, ignore all mobs, toggle auto-run on, and then tab out of the game until arriving at Aether Current"

[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.