Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Realms are now unlocked for Phase II testing!
For our initial launch, testing will begin on Friday, December 20, 2024, at 10 AM Pacific and continue uninterrupted until Monday, January 6, 2025, at 10 AM Pacific. After January 6th, we’ll transition to a schedule of five-day-per-week access for the remainder of Phase II.
You can download the game launcher here and we encourage you to join us on our for the most up to date testing news.
Flight.
WizardTim
Member, Alpha One, Adventurer, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
I've seen that some effort has been put into flight mechanics for the game, specifically the flying mounts that are super rare.
I'm curious if flight will be a thing in other ways, and how might the mounts retain their superior quality in spite of other methods of flight being used?
Ideas I had were magical items and abilities of some spell casters (mages and clerics granting the power of flight with a buff, summoners summoning a flying mount, bards poly-morphing into small flying creatures like ravens, and magical items that grant the power to non-magical classes). Travel speeds for flight would be roughly the same as running speed, maybe a bit faster, but far slower than flying mounts.
These powers/items would be higher end, obviously, and should have unique benefits and drawbacks (poly-morphing into a bird means you can be 1 shot killed, but also means you are less noticeable and possibly benefit from stealth).
It also raises the question of aerial combat and air born threats, such as large birds of prey, bats, dragons, and other things. Maybe a key benefit to the flying mount is that they can bypass these threats, maybe a fear aura or something in addition to being faster than traditional flight.
I'm curious if flight will be a thing in other ways, and how might the mounts retain their superior quality in spite of other methods of flight being used?
Ideas I had were magical items and abilities of some spell casters (mages and clerics granting the power of flight with a buff, summoners summoning a flying mount, bards poly-morphing into small flying creatures like ravens, and magical items that grant the power to non-magical classes). Travel speeds for flight would be roughly the same as running speed, maybe a bit faster, but far slower than flying mounts.
These powers/items would be higher end, obviously, and should have unique benefits and drawbacks (poly-morphing into a bird means you can be 1 shot killed, but also means you are less noticeable and possibly benefit from stealth).
It also raises the question of aerial combat and air born threats, such as large birds of prey, bats, dragons, and other things. Maybe a key benefit to the flying mount is that they can bypass these threats, maybe a fear aura or something in addition to being faster than traditional flight.
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Yes, they will be the ones granted access to the flying mounts, as well as rare loot drops from high end raids, as far as I understand it.
Noted * thumbs up *
That mounts could affect groups sounds really intriguing. I like the bards transformation part. I can see many benefits to it, and interesting additions to fights.
I am against all flying ideas except for the 20 lord types per server.
Since I havent played w0w, I only experienced flying in ff14 and a tiny bit back in l2. I was bored with both of them.
Why would I fly when I choose to play an adventure game and go through thick forests, caves, or climb mountains.
Climbing in caves and mountains is also fun.
Says you.
Hot-air ballons could be nice, only for 4 players and expensive to buy, just for one use.
The point of discussion isn't "how fun is this", it's "how can this be *made* fun".
I'm well aware that flight tends to shrink the world size. Which is why I specified that flight speeds be limited to maybe a touch faster than normal run speeds. These speeds might vary depending on the methods used to attain flight (the polymorph might go a bit faster than running speed, buffs a bit faster than that, summoner mounts being a bit faster still, and items being roughly equal to running speed, or highly variable depending on the quality and nature of said items). The reason for that is to try and maintain the world size and keep travel as a logistical concern.
I'd also be very opposed to flight abilities for caravans and trade animals. I like that travel time is a real thing to factor into this world's game play, and flight SHOULD be a fairly rare or costly thing to invest in. Mages and Clerics who invest in flight buffs should be sought for that investment, and it should require a significant sacrifice of skill points to be able to obtain those buffs. Conversely, mages and clerics who do not take those buffs should be sought for other things of equal value. Likewise for bards and their proposed polymorph spell, it should require a significant investment of skill points to get up to that point. One that really only works for bards who want to go down a play style path that favors deceptive utility over combat.
The other thing meant to keep flight as an interesting aspect of the game world is both tactical advantages/disadvantages in warfare, and aerial combat as well as air born threats. Adding elements of risk and danger to flight, particularly within the domain of major flying beasts, potentially adds more to the world experience.
This entire comment is why I'd actually prefer Intrepid didn't have any form of flying at all. Same w/ Family Summon, Arena Ladders, etc.
Seems like all it will do is lead to people to ask for more of these systems which just degrades the spirit of the game.
Which means that as soon you lift up above all the agro mobs, that are there to block your way and make zones challenging you have, guess what, a less interesting and less daunting world. It doesnt matter if your speed is slow.
So no flying, except for the castle owners and a few mayors. Rare and prestigious. Leave it to them to use their mounts for tactical advantage.
You want some extra flying?
Science node zeppelin. A bunch of players boarding the thing, no cutsceens, boring travel from node to node. Slow as.
Benefit? You dont risk dying.
Cons? You carry only what you have on you and it will boring just being up there. Maybe do some rp to kill the time.
Flying mount skins make me nervous as well.
Dragons for lords isnt anything new. They are so few that it doesnt impact the world and gameplay of the game.
The methods of flying are:
The powers available to non-flying mounts are specific to the mount and are not used as attack. The flying mounts are PVP mounts and can attack in ways such as breathing fire.
Aside from flying mounts, there will be many gliding mounts to give players access to the speed of flight without trivializing content too much or making travel time too short. Remember that that economy is heavily dependent upon areas of the map being separate from others making items more valuable in specific regions than in others. If travel becomes too easy, then the prices in different regions becomes more uniform.
One of the early videos on mages showed the mage surrounded by a blue sphere and floating across a small chasm. So, it appears that at least some classes will have access to some kind of gliding or levitation without a mount required.
I dont see any reason why the pitfalls many of us have seen need to remain true as a general rule. These pitfalls only really exist in games that aren't designed for flight, yet have it.
If you design your game with flight in mind, these pitfalls can be peeled away one at a time.
Dont want flight used as a means to bypass content? Give that content aerial or anti-aerial mobs. Problem 100% solved.
Ashes isnt being made with this in mind, and so adding general flight to everyone in the game would be a mistake here. However, that doesnt mean it has to be the case in every game, it just needs to be a part of the games design.
It completely and totally removes all danger in the world and any possible unique scenarios that could happen through organic rudimentary and restricted travel. Unrestricted flight is nothing more than a "content skip" with extra steps.
In AoC this is even more critical than most other games because travel and the dangers therein IS the major draw of the game.
I was overjoyed to hear that the unrestricted flight mounts would be exceptionally rare, and also temporary.
If you're wondering why I keep using the word "unrestricted" when referencing flight, it's because I do believe flight can have it's uses, as long as it's made to have drawbacks. A game that does restricted flight mostly well enough is Guild Wars 2, a game with a mount system that is commonly praised. Though I have many complaints about the power of the Skyscale mount, which has too powerful of flight capabilities and is far too good at what it does, I feel the Griffon mount is pretty much the best version of a flying mount I've seen.
The Skyscale mount has full-direction flight control like WoW or FF14, but you can only ascend a certain altitude above where you took off, attempting to go higher causes your mount to enter a "tired" state where it descends slowly and inevitably. However you can float in midair indefinitely as long as you don't try to go above that threshold, meaning if you start on the highest point of a map, you can fly straight towards any destination without worry. To ascend higher, you can scale mountains (as it's name implies) by hopping up footholds on terrain to "reset" the liftoff altitude.
The GW2 griffon requires you to manage your altitude actively by "flapping" and can never reach higher than the altitude you lifted off from. It could also just be considered a "gliding" mount, which I honestly think is just an inherently better concept for general gaming than a "flying" mount.
Tl;Dr: Free-flying bad
WoW flying is restricted - you typically have to have played enough of the content to earn flight in any new expansion, so, you aren't really skipping new content, rather you are skipping previously played-through content.
But...the design for flight in Ashes seems like it should be fine.
We have to keep in mind that in Ashes we should not have static content, like we do in WoW, so...
We would be skipping new content if flying mounts were common, rather than rare.
If that's in response to my post that's not what I mean by restricted/unrestricted flying
That's just delayed unrestricted flying.
The way I was defining it is
In WoW, flight is restricted until after content is completed.
Just because you define something, doesn't mean it's accurate.
"Boring" is subjective.
("Unrestrained" might be closer to what you're trying to convey.)
Well I'm not going to argue pointless semantics, but other than that..
How is flying past everything, ignoring the world and heading straight to a destination, skipping the content in-between, not skipping content? Even if it's trivial and "you've already done it before" it's still content that you're skipping.
How is "unrestrained" flight NOT boring? You literally just point in a direction and alt-tab until you get there. That's literally as brainless as you can actually get.
If you think it's not boring because "ooooh flight! freedom! I can go anywhere!", wouldn't you enjoy it even more if you actually had to fly actively instead of passively?
That definition is poor at best, and assumes way more than it accounts for. I'm assuming your actual experiences are limited here. Your response regarding differentiation between "active" and "passive" flight is also confusing and poorly defined.
By your definition, City of Heroes flight is unrestricted. It's easy, allows you to fly all but indefinitely, allows you to "skip content", and is probably the least popular travel power in the game. It's fun comes purely from a RP perspective, and it's uses are limited to travel only. But it's fun, and allows you to get from point A to point B without mundane hassles (what you seem to refer to as content, which is also apparently very poorly defined by you).
Making some content optional is very beneficial to the core game designs, especially in MMOs. It may seem like a waste of content to create sections of the game that some people can blow past and never experience, but that's pretty much exactly why I'm raising this point for discussion to begin with. The key phrasing here is "optional". I'd consider the methods of attaining the currently described methods of flight for Ashes as purely circumstantial. You must be the right person at the right time and with the right luck to obtain it. It's certainly a deserved point of prestige to obtain, but there in lies the problem I have with it. It becomes wasted content by virtue of it's rarity. Not optional, but out right barred for most players.
I'd have no problems with that if it was just the creme de la creme of flight in the game, but no. Most people seem to think it should be the ONLY flight in the game, and that's the best example of bad imagination I can think of right now.
What I proposed here was to add air born content to the game, to MAKE flight not only fun an interesting, but also open it up to a larger player base. I'm well aware of your concerns and fears regarding it, but have already addressed them.
World size is relative, in every game. Flight does indeed tend to shrink the world, but only if done poorly. City of Heroes has flight (as well as super leap, teleportation, and super speed) as early as level 4, as I've explained before, but doesn't harm the game the way you insist it would. The primary factors that govern world size and how large the world feels is travel speed, terrain changes, and cultural changes.
Travel speed directly affects the size of the world. If you can get to any point of the map in half an hour or less, the world feels somewhat smaller. The worst example of this is long range teleportation, which just cuts out entire sections of the map. Using City of Heroes as the case study here, flight (and teleportation, which the travel power version is incredibly short ranged compared to it's portals) are both designed to travel X number of meters per second. Without going into detail, neither actually makes travel time irrelevant, and both contribute to the size of the game world without making the world feel much smaller.
All travel powers give you far more significant speed and range, but the sheer size of the world still makes you feel very small by comparison. This was well done IMO, because it increases the players freedom of movement, allows them to bypass content that may be just a boring slug fest in favor of what they actually want to do, and still gives them the feel of having to travel a fair distance from point A to B.
Even with the few valid points you gave, it's still inherently un-engaging and adds nothing to the game other than the ability to skip content.
If you consider unrestricted/unrestrained flight to be content, please tell me in no uncertain terms how any "content" that you can alt-tab entirely through is "content". If there's no risk, are you even playing?
I explained in simplest terms the difference between the two. It's very straightforward. WoW flight is passive. Any flight that lets you hover indefinitely, or fly in any direction unhindered is passive flight.
Active flight is any form of "flight" that requires you to be at attention or be at risk of falling or crashing into something. It's not difficult to understand.
In a game like Aion, passive flight is fine because the game is made with passive flight as a core mechanic, and as such everything is created with such in mind. You could actually even remove wings and make the game an "underwater" game with just a filter and it would be just fine, because passive flight is essentially just swimming in the air.
In FF14 and WoW (even the later/current content) is NOT made with flight as a core mechanic, and as such it exists separately from everything else and is only a mode of easy transportation. This is self-evident in that you have to play through content without flying before you can unlock it. If passive flying is so great and bring so much to the table, then why is it only available after you complete the actual content?
I haven't played City of Heros, but based on your description I would consider all those modes of transportation infinitely more fun than the flight ability. Sure it's great for RP reasons, but RP is always secondary to game mechanics.
You're never going to convince me that traveling in a Superman open world game is going to more fun and engaging than the Spiderman open world games have been. In fact, there's been so many Spiderman games because his method of travel is so fun, engaging and has risk/complexity to it.
You seem to be looking at MMO flight as being WoW flight.
If there was a large open area of land with no mobs, and you needed to cross from one side to the other, you could set auto-run and alt tab out.
The issue you are talking about is not an issue of flight/no flight, it is an issue of content/no content.
These two things are not the same.
I play CoH and it is true, that flight is relatively boring. Here is a Reddit thread where people talk about their favorite transportation powers:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Cityofheroes/comments/bfhsf6/whats_your_preferred_transportation_power/
Generally speaking, flight was "easy mode" or the most convenient, but generally it's not considered "fun". Jumping from building to building was more fun, or teleporting. Basically the travel modes that required you to think about how to get around and were more interactive.
If by MMO flight you mean the "passive" or unrestricted/unrestrained flight that's been defined in all 3 of those ways so far in this thread then yes. Add your semantics to the ever-growing list.
And yes, I agree with you to an extent. Travel without danger is one aspect of the problem.
Terrain traversal is another major component.
When you're walking in a zone, you have to navigate said terrain, even if it is simple avoidance. Terrain traversal, while minimal and seemingly insignificant is a subtly huge component of immersion and gameplay. If you can just fly past a cliff instead of navigating up it, that's "cliff navigation" content that is skipped.
If you can just fly past mountains, suddenly those mountains are insignificant and the world is instantly trivial and tiny.
Now, if you had a mount that could scale mountains or cliffs, but it required skill to do so, then that's a different story. This is what GW2 mounts do, and it's why people laud it's mount system so much. Luckily it seems AoC is gathering inspiration from GW2 with it's mounts since mounts are confirmed to have different abilities, one even being gliding. It's also an MMO, and because of this, I don't think your "MMO flight" wording fits
The world and travel is insignificant to Superman.
People play Spiderman open world games because of the significance of the travel and how he interacts with the world.
You could argue that superman's flight is just to get to the combat and other content faster, but why can't we have both? Why can't we have engaging travel and engaging combat/other content.
Edit:
If you wanted engaging unrestricted/unrestrained flight, you'd have to have stuff to dodge in midair while you're flying to your destination, or even flying mounted combat. Neither of which is really ideal without being a core game pillar.
Adding any system in to a game that isnt designed for it is bad.
A game that only allows swimming on the surface shouldnt add in the ability to swim under water without putting something there. A game that only allows movement on the surface shouldnt allow you to go above that without putting something there.
Flight is like any system - it needs to fit in to the game.
Adding a system where players can build a cart and attach it to their horse is great, but doesnt make much sense in a game without horses.
Adding in furniture for players to put in their house is great, but only if the game has player houses.
Adding in enchantments for gear is great, but only if gear can take enchantments.
Adding flight to a game without adding content for flight would be like adding enchants for gear to a game, but not allowing gear to be enchanted.
Your argument ONLY makes sense if we assume that this is how flight is added to any given game.
As soon as you factor in non-shit developers and management, and realize that if they add flight for the masses they will add content for it as well, your entire point falls flatter than flat.
GW2 opted to make mounts content, rather than a means to get to content.
Some people like this, many do not.
I do not.
oh ok I guess I misinterpreted your argument, it looks like we completely agree