The Daily Grind: Are flying mounts bad for gameplay?

@Elikal Right there with ya. The people that gripe about quality of life changes are the ones that lead to MMOs being unable to gain a decent foothold in the market, these days. There are not enough nutters out there that want games to be tedious and monotonous to keep the amount of MMOs out there, right now, afloat. You gotta do something to bring in the people with lives that want these kinds of perks.

@Elikal

Yeah.
The first time I play, exploring the world on a ground mount is nice, but after a while, I simply want to go from A to B in the minor time possible.

But the "hardcore" will tell you that is something for lazy "casuals" that don't want to work and that they will ruin their game (on par to addons, LFG tools and so on)

@Sephirah

While I agree with you on the convenience, and anyone who says flying mounts are only for "casuals" is an idiot (those are probably the people who call you a carebear casual if you don't dedicate at least 8 hours a day regardless of your skill/knowlege). The problem I have with flying mounts is that nothing takes players out of the world faster and makes things feel empty than flying mounts...well other than a queue system for everything.

@Chambers

I'm sorry, but world pvp died a nasty death long before flying mounts came about. Stop bringing up that old chestnut. I can go with you on instanced battlegrounds, but flying mounts? No way.

Truthfully, world pvp did die when the BGs came out, but for one major reason: World pvp has no reward. When it was the only game in town, people did it, and it was fun for a while, but the moment they introduced something that let them smash face AND get rewarded for it, people flocked to it en masse.

The people who actually enjoyed the endless deathmatch of open world pvp continued doing it, and still continue doing it. It's just that the vast majority of people, despite what the vocal minority on the forums say, did not enjoy it for one reason or another. The only reason they did it was because that was the only game in town. WoW just wasn't setup properly to be a open world pvp game.

@Chambers Agreed with everything you say, but as you can see by the posts above, there are those that seem to think that anyone who's opposed to flying mounts only wants them out because they want the game to be more "tedious".

I wholeheartedly agree that flying mounts dilute the game...both the world and the gameplay.

@Chambers

Sincerely:

- If you want World PvP back, you need to find a way to put together in a smaller number of servers the players that actually want to play World PvP. Unwilling players on PvP realms (like me) will do anything in their power to avoid PvP (or, if they are like me, even try to cheapen the whole experience; I never fight back or call for help, I either kite the attacker to guards or /sit and wait to be killed).

- As a PvE player stuck in a PvP realm (RL friends that absolutely refuse to play on PvE realms), I really loved the fact flying mounts let me ignore 90% of World PvP.

- If you want to explore the game world on foot, do so. Why should the fact other players are cheapening their exploration experience matter to you?

@Chambers But at the same time, that's not "flyings" fault. The fault lies with no aerial combat in a game based around a bit of pvp.

@Rowlf

Or, it could be that you've just seen it over and over again a dozen times, and like having a new perspective? I know that's how it was with me and WoW. I've leveled a dozen characters to the various caps over the years, and doing 1-60 the exact same way for the majority of that was kind of wearing.

I love WoW's art style. I love the feel of the world. But even something you love can get old if you have too much of it. And I've never really gotten how flying "breaks immersion" when if it's done right, the world looks just as beautiful from the air as it does from the ground. I probably spent the better part of 2 months after Cata came out exploring the world on my flying mount more than leveling and dungeons. But I guess that's just me.

@ed511df3

Here's a quick example of immersion killing:

Random Quest Giver: Hey dude, got a really hard task for you. You need to sneak through all the guards to that really tall tower, fight off the special bodyguards inside and finally get to the top and kill that big badie that's been troubling us.

Player: Hokay no problem "whips out his flying mount, makes a straight line to the top of the tower, nukes the target, comes back the same way". All done, NAO GIEF LEEWT!

@ed511df3

It kills immersion for a lot of reasons (I stated some before), most of them are personal so if it's no problem for you... then no worries :)
The biggest "problem" for me is that the entire social experience diminishes.

Also, doesn't (too much) flying then, get old as well after a while?

@Rowlf I get your point. Flying changes our perspective of a world, just like real life. When you are up at a high altitude, you begin to see that the world isn't as huge as your mind likes to make it seem. Back on ground level, the world looks enormous again.

However, flying is immersive in it's own sense and I think it's unfair of you to reject flying so quickly. It's when flying is given early when experiencing new content is when it can break the immersion. )Unless your game revolves around flying). The same argument you give against flying is the same one that can be used for mounts.

I thought flying was beautiful and immersive in Vanguard. But I didn't get a flying mount until way at high levels. Now those places I saw in the newbie zones I couldn't reach? I could go explore those now! That was pretty sweet.

@Mynsc

Or conversely, player whips out flying mount, makes a straight line to the top of the tower...

Whut? There's arrows and a ballista shooting at me! Yipe! *hurried landing on the top of the tower* Dang, there's guards at the top of the tower. *fights* Where's my quest mob? I see the arrow, but he's not up here... Ok, I see a stair leading down...

Goes past more mobs, makes a few more turns into the room/study that the quest mob is in, kills quest mob. Then has to decide if going back out the roof past the respawned mobs, or back down the stairs and out the gate is easier.

Immersion maintained better, no? If your quest is to assassinate some named guy, then named guy should be a lot better guarded in a less accessible room, than chilling at the top of a tower exposed to a fly-by hit and run.

Putting quest mobs at tower tops is meant to masochistically make grounded people wade through every mob and back again, but stops making sense once you anticipate players will try coming in from any direction they can, roof, balcony or otherwise.

Aion fortresses are a nice example of how players can go in walking through a gate (both front and back), or whack a stone that brings down the war walls essentially, allowing players to drop into the courtyard from the air, and a couple of those fortresses have "secret" tunnels you can fly in from the bottom and sides too.

@meancheez

This can also be done with "elevators", teleporting, special transportation NPCs (that can be gated until someone does the activation requirements) and a lot more ways. You dont need to give every player a flying mount.

I understand your point about vertical zones, but think about it: what's more fun, getting to the top of a reaaally tall mountain by just flying straight there with your mount, or by going through tunnels, through narrow and steep roads, maybe even fighting a few wild animals along the way, etc ?