The new flying system is awful and here’s why

Community General Discussion
1

Since the new flying system was implemented, I’ve been feeling nearly constantly annoyed about it. For the first few days I figured I’d get used to it, but I haven’t. The first thing a guildie said to me when I complained was “well, how often do you use steady flying anyway?”. And the answer, in my case, is ALL THE TIME.

Today I decided to do a little experiment to figure out why exactly it bothers me so much - I wanted to know if I’m overreacting or just imagining things.

What I decided to do was this:
Every single time I would have (before the change) switched mount, I’d switch flight style and make a notch on a post-it note in front of me. I’d do this for one hour. This was while doing open-world content.

The result was 26 times. That’s 26 x 5 seconds = 130 seconds. That’s 2.2 minutes spent casting “Switch Flight Style” in 1 hour.

Of course I don’t actually use the ability “Switch Flight Style” THAT often usually, because it’s not worth the cast time in many cases.

However, it does mean that I feel annoyance, roughly, on average, every 2 minutes.

As it is right now, what happens every 2 minutes on average is one of the following:

  1. I mount up, and I’m in the wrong flight style. I swear to myself, dismount, cast switch flight style, and mount up again.
  2. I mount up, and I’m in the wrong flight style. I swear to myself, don’t change it, and fly like that towards my objective.
  3. I’m about to mount up, but remember to change flight style before mounting. I click the button, swear to myself and wait impatiently.
  4. I mount up, and I’m in the wrong flight style. I swear to myself and WALK towards my objective.

It is annoying.

It is annoying all the time.

In fact I am so bothered by this that personally I’m actually willing to sacrifice all my awesome new skyriding mounts and only have dragons for skyriding if that’s what it takes. I won’t ask for this, because I actually really love that we can use other mounts, and everyone else does too. No one REALLY wants to go back. But if an OPTIONAL toggle for this existed, I myself would use it in a split-second.

I assume the global switch is there because it’s necessary for programming reasons that I don’t understand.

So….

…if a global switch is absolutely needed and flight style cannot be assigned individually mount-by-mount or by placing mounts into two different “folders” or something like that….
…. if it’s not possible for an OPTIONAL toggle to switch back to the old system of 10.2.0…

then…

Make “Switch Flight Style” an instant cast off the GCD so I can macro my way out of this constantly annoying drivel.

Alternatively, since Blizzard loves locking stuff behind achievements, steady flight as it is right now could be the standard that everyone has from the beginning, and the instant cast could be the reward from Pathfinder. That way steady flight is available from the beginning, which it really should be for availability reasons, and Pathfinder is still there and something desirable to achieve.

Rant over.

24 Likes
2

I´ve gotten used to it now as a druid. if I want to race somewhere I go turbo mode, if I want to hover I go on normal.

tell you whats creepy though, them furry dragons floating in the air, that is just too much for me.

3

HOW? How is that creepy for you?

Afraid they might judge you for your dwarven height?

2 Likes
4

I dont understand really why this is a problem to some people.

The solution is right there and it is but a mouse click.

But i guess it is a fine sign of the times that a mouse click is too annoying.

Or wasting 2mins in a hour is world ending.

8 Likes
5

that too, but can you imagine the carebears floating above your head?

6

Well; I’m not.
That was the biggest issue I had with dragonriding: Having to ride ugly mounts for most of DF.

Now let me make this clear: I’d rather see that people aren’t annoyed by this system, so I agree in general with making it instant cast; as long as it dismounts you.

However! I do think that this is a self-inflicted issue. You really don’t NEED to change so much. You really, really don’t.

This is in essence the same discussion as with ‘WQs are mandatory and I don’t like that’, back in the day. No they weren’t mandatory. You FELT forced and that is a YOU issue.

I am getting a wee bit tired of people complaining about something that they themselves cause. Sorry.

4 Likes
7

How would that be any different than any other race floating above my head with a mount? At least they look natural that way, using their wings.

8

For gathering purposes, it would be nice if we could choose flightstyle on a per mount basis, so we can use normal flight on the Druid flight-form and use dragonflying on the other mounts, without having to switch between them.

4 Likes
9

It is not just a mouse click, it is a mouse click and a 5 second wait.

No, when I say “annoying” I do mean “annoying” and not world-ending. I’ll even agree to “mildly annoying”. The problem isn’t that it’s only mildly annoying, it is that it is so all the time.

3 Likes
10

Yes, I don’t like it either.

First I need to spend 5 seconds when I want to hover or need a more controlled mount then I have to spend another 5 seconds to switch back when I want to get away from there.

6 Likes
11

I understand, which is why I also said in my post that I’m not asking for that, and that I don’t truly want that either. It would be a shame, I agree.

I know. And as I said in my post, I do not actually change that much usually, but did for the sake of the experiment. However, only a week and a bit ago this was about how much I changed mounts. So, I don’t NEED to, but it IS a change that doing so now is much more bothersome than it was a week ago.

I understand what you’re saying, but disagree that I cause this myself. We had a different system since patch 10.2.0 until now. The cause is the change of the system, and I’m complaining about a change I don’t like that’s causing me annoyance. I’ll agree that the annoyance is all mine. I’ll also agree that my own failure to adjust to the new system is part of the issue. :stuck_out_tongue: That’s why I waited a week before I complained. But I did not cause this; I did not decide to make this change; I did not have a choice about this change.

2 Likes
12

Allow us to assign flying style to mounts, or - I guess this is a lot easier from a dev perspective - make the change an instant cast as mentioned above… The current flying feels so bad after having 7 months where you could easily switch between the two styles…

4 Likes
13

i had a brainwave bwahahah.

Jump once you fly like normal, jump twice and you enter turbo

1 Like
14

Just me or does dynamic flying in this prepatch try to automatically adjust your angle to level you off parallel to the ground?

1 Like
15

you will get used to it .it took me sometime to adjust also

16

I made a weak aura just for this. I added it to wago.io for you. It has no code embedded and has only a text dump that display to tell you what mount style you are changing to.

1 Like
17

It is very inconvenient for me too. I actually ended up using only the Steady Flight mode, because I usually prefer controlled flight. Everyone races over to the next Radiant Echo place while me in Slow mode fly after them, but at least when I arrive I can choose exactly where to land and examine the area before. (to figure out if it’s worth landing at all and exactly where) Before this change I used both flights quite often, because I had two separate key binds for both mounts. So it’s quite a big downgrade for me.

4 Likes
18

What’s the problem there? If you know you’re now going to gather, just switch to steady and stay in steady.

19

What’s wrong with making it an instant cast, there would be a lot less complaints and it requires 0 work on blizz’s end. :confused:

7 Likes
20

The worst part of the new system for me personally is that it deletes the personality of the mount. Every mount sounds the exact same. Your netherdrake sounds like your corpsefly which sounds like your gearglider. Two examples are below:

Example 1. My shadowlands dragon has an ashy sound to it’s wings. Vanished with new flying:

Example 2. My rocket sounds like a rocket. Vanished with new flying:

Most people seem to play with sound off, but personally I loved the heavy sound of netherdrake wings, or the lightweight flap sound of dragonhawks and if you use new flying it just thanos snaps that part of the game out of existence. I think a dev sat down and intentionally said ‘this mount will use this sound effect’ and they did that to have it convey a part of the mount’s design and personality - specifically the weight and power in its wings, and so having your wyvern that probably weighs a little more than an orc sound just the same in the air as a massive armoured protodrake is a bit jarring.

Sound homogenisation bad.

5 Likes