Do other MMOs have the Ability to Fly

[Goretzu]

I haven't seen Andryah in months, what did you do with her!

 

He quit SWTOR, I think he was just playing the forums for most of 2012 anyway.

 

I don't think it killed it in WoW. In fact my favorite Outdoor PVP memories were in the days of Halaa in Nagrand. Good times.

 

Yeah I'm not sure it really killed OPvP in WoW, it didn't really exist outside very specific areas anyway. It made it a lot harder for gankers to kill AFK people though.......... which is maybe what people mean.

[chuixupu]

Yeah I'm not sure it really killed OPvP in WoW, it didn't really exist outside very specific areas anyway. It made it a lot harder for gankers to kill AFK people though.......... which is maybe what people mean.

 

If you mean not being able to kill people while they're flying, there have been several fun ways to get around that, though I think they've fixed most of them now. These included:

 

1) Moonkins could fly up and use Typhoon on a mounted person in the air and knock them to the ground

 

2) Rogues could dismount, Garrote and then use Killing Spree on someone in the air

 

3) priests could dot-up people in the air and then slow fall down

Edited February 4, 2013 by chuixupu

[ryathal]

Flying mounts didn't kill world pvp in WoW, people not wanting to do world PvP in WoW killed it. All the proof you need is when the sunwell patch went live and every high level player on both factions were forced into a tiny island, all that happened on my pvp server were a handful of gank squads killing people trying to do dailys and running away from anyone actually wanting to pvp, everyone else just ignored each other. or you could look at any summoning stone location for raids, the only pvp that happened was when a full raid or more was present against 2-3 others, anything close to equal numbers just meant everyone ignored each other.

[Urael]

2) Rogues could dismount, Garrote and then use Killing Spree on someone in the air.

 

Rogues can still cause the death of people airborn. You can dismount, shadow step, <any attack> (I like gouge for the momentary stun so mages can't use their "feather fall" ability), target go splat. You will also die of course. Used for city defense. Or wickerman defense during the October event. Good times.

[nogoer]

Wow is a fantasy world and i would say most people expect dragons in fantasy worlds. Especially considering the first multiplayer games like D&D were very prevalent in their use of dragons and those games are what evolved into games like WOW. Now dragons are flying beasts so naturally flying beasts and WOW should be in the same sentence. Now mounting them for personal flight is a leap of faith, but i consider flying mounts a plus to a game.

 

GW2 is dead and you have to say a part of it's death was due to no mounts at all. I mean come on, what self respecting sword slayer doesn't pine for a gallant steed to charge in on!?!?

 

On to SWTOR. This is a space game and flying is a core element to space. The movies are FILLED with all sorts of flying vehicles and if you try to tell me you play this game because it isnt tied to the movies your a liar. Heres my rebuttal to specific arguments i saw...

 

Kills pvp - Open pvp areas in wow lock out flying during the pvp sessions so if pvp is dead its because of how flying was implemented in those zones or how flying was not implemented in those zones...not the fact flying is implemented.

 

Datacrons - i somewhat see this but i call bs. I have not done all the datacrons but one of the most difficult ones i've done so far(nar shadaa flying billboard) is indoors and most indoor areas are already locked out of any mounts at all. Further, you would think flying mounts in WOW would make farming a non factor. Well while flying makes travel easy seeing things from the air isnt always as easy as its made out. Some of these datacrons are under trees or obscured by cliffs/machinery. Some are even buried in tunnels and instanced zones where mounts cant go (2 man quesh tunnel one). From my perspective flying mounts affect datacrons very little and the ones it does make too easy can just be relocated or hidden from the air by a tree. I mean seriously, theres already dozens of guides that point out specific coords to EVERY cron. Like flying there makes that any easier, it just speeds up the process by making the long part in finding the cron not getting to the zone.

 

Engine cant handle flight - This is just stupid. So googling the engine and flight and getting 0 results automatically indicates it's not capable of it?!? Like another said if it couldn't handle it then we wouldn't have things like falling. Flying is just like falling but you "fall" up. Its a 3D engine people and as such inherently has this capability. You can climb hills and fall off cliffs. You can ride elevators up and down and you can even jump up and down while doing it and even move forward and back. Frig people thats flying even if its only for milliseconds.

 

About the only argument i buy for anti flying mounts is the game objects not being filled out to be solid. This is why i don't expect flying mounts anytime soon. However flying mounts are an evolutionary thing. Eventually new players joining slows down and the player base starts to "age out" everyone has rerolled, done alts, seen all the story lines, obtained all the datacrons, etc and a lot of the anti arguments become moot. You really want to spend 2 months obtaining datacrons on your 3rd servers, 12th alt? It becomes a much bigger plus when you've been there and done that but now can do it in a lot less time. SWTOR has already gone that way with the legacy system. Maybe they introduce flying mounts through legacy alts and some "family love" force explosion causes a large alt family to be so force sensitive they can all of a sudden control beats to fly.

 

It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when and how. For all we know the devs are reading this thread and chuckling behind closed doors because they in fact already have set the foundation for flying mounts. Like wow it could easily be done for new places like makeb and then retro pulled in to older zones.

[Goretzu]

If you mean not being able to kill people while they're flying, there have been several fun ways to get around that, though I think they've fixed most of them now. These included:

 

1) Moonkins could fly up and use Typhoon on a mounted person in the air and knock them to the ground

 

2) Rogues could dismount, Garrote and then use Killing Spree on someone in the air

 

3) priests could dot-up people in the air and then slow fall down

 

Yeah it was certainly possible in quit a few ways, but it was much harder to stumble across them in the first place and the effort of doing it certainly seemed to put a lot of people off (compared to ground based ganking).

 

Flying mounts didn't kill world pvp in WoW, people not wanting to do world PvP in WoW killed it. All the proof you need is when the sunwell patch went live and every high level player on both factions were forced into a tiny island, all that happened on my pvp server were a handful of gank squads killing people trying to do dailys and running away from anyone actually wanting to pvp, everyone else just ignored each other. or you could look at any summoning stone location for raids, the only pvp that happened was when a full raid or more was present against 2-3 others, anything close to equal numbers just meant everyone ignored each other.

 

Yeah, OPvP was largely dead long before flying mounts came to WoW.

 

Really speaking without some form of structured RvR to maintain it, OPvP almost always just settles to the lowest common denominator (sporadic ganking).

[Urael]

Wow is a fantasy world and i would say most people expect dragons in fantasy worlds. Especially considering the first multiplayer games like D&D were very prevalent in their use of dragons and those games are what evolved into games like WOW. Now dragons are flying beasts so naturally flying beasts and WOW should be in the same sentence. Now mounting them for personal flight is a leap of faith, but i consider flying mounts a plus to a game.

 

GW2 is dead and you have to say a part of it's death was due to no mounts at all. I mean come on, what self respecting sword slayer doesn't pine for a gallant steed to charge in on!?!?

 

On to SWTOR. This is a space game and flying is a core element to space. The movies are FILLED with all sorts of flying vehicles and if you try to tell me you play this game because it isnt tied to the movies your a liar. Heres my rebuttal to specific arguments i saw...

 

Kills pvp - Open pvp areas in wow lock out flying during the pvp sessions so if pvp is dead its because of how flying was implemented in those zones or how flying was not implemented in those zones...not the fact flying is implemented.

 

Datacrons - i somewhat see this but i call bs. I have not done all the datacrons but one of the most difficult ones i've done so far(nar shadaa flying billboard) is indoors and most indoor areas are already locked out of any mounts at all. Further, you would think flying mounts in WOW would make farming a non factor. Well while flying makes travel easy seeing things from the air isnt always as easy as its made out. Some of these datacrons are under trees or obscured by cliffs/machinery. Some are even buried in tunnels and instanced zones where mounts cant go (2 man quesh tunnel one). From my perspective flying mounts affect datacrons very little and the ones it does make too easy can just be relocated or hidden from the air by a tree. I mean seriously, theres already dozens of guides that point out specific coords to EVERY cron. Like flying there makes that any easier, it just speeds up the process by making the long part in finding the cron not getting to the zone.

 

Engine cant handle flight - This is just stupid. So googling the engine and flight and getting 0 results automatically indicates it's not capable of it?!? Like another said if it couldn't handle it then we wouldn't have things like falling. Flying is just like falling but you "fall" up. Its a 3D engine people and as such inherently has this capability. You can climb hills and fall off cliffs. You can ride elevators up and down and you can even jump up and down while doing it and even move forward and back. Frig people thats flying even if its only for milliseconds.

 

About the only argument i buy for anti flying mounts is the game objects not being filled out to be solid. This is why i don't expect flying mounts anytime soon. However flying mounts are an evolutionary thing. Eventually new players joining slows down and the player base starts to "age out" everyone has rerolled, done alts, seen all the story lines, obtained all the datacrons, etc and a lot of the anti arguments become moot. You really want to spend 2 months obtaining datacrons on your 3rd servers, 12th alt? It becomes a much bigger plus when you've been there and done that but now can do it in a lot less time. SWTOR has already gone that way with the legacy system. Maybe they introduce flying mounts through legacy alts and some "family love" force explosion causes a large alt family to be so force sensitive they can all of a sudden control beats to fly.

 

It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when and how. For all we know the devs are reading this thread and chuckling behind closed doors because they in fact already have set the foundation for flying mounts. Like wow it could easily be done for new places like makeb and then retro pulled in to older zones.

 

You cherry picked the thread to set up your strawman.

 

As to the issue of whether or not the Hero Engine can in fact handle flight and where that information is contained, Aries_cz provided the information. Moot. And closed.

 

As to whether SWTOR's Hero Engine can handle flight. Still to be determined. SWTOR used a pre-release (and rumoured to be unfinished ) version of the Hero Engine for development. It is not known whether it's an "easy fix" to switch out to the new Hero Engine.

 

As to whether "the dev's are reading this thread and chuckling", you didn't address the FACT that in many many many places in SWTOR there is no "there" there. That is the main issue with regards to flight. If flight were enabled without changing what is "real" and what is "just a picture" we would in fact see how tiny SWTORs planets are. The geometry/geography of the planets needs to be changed to fully support this.

 

Lastly, If it's "so easy" to do, why didn't they do it? The tell tale signs are contained in "no swimming". That is technically "flight" in another medium.

 

All is not as "simple" as you make it out to be.

 

Edited February 5, 2013 by Urael

[SnoggyMack]

Nope, it's not that simple. Open world PvP would be still dead, regardless if I use it or not. Sure, there is not much open world PvP at the moment anyway, but it would be even less then.

 

I disagree. Flying mounts would have little impact on Open World PVP. And the GTN will be thriving so PvP will be fine.

 

Anyways, another game that has flying is Champions Online. And it just recently introduced flying vehicles so now you can fly yourself, use a jet pack and fly, or use a new flying vehicle to fly around.

[TalkingDinosaur]

SWG did in the end.

 

Considering the game was shutting down within the month, SOE just said, "eh fuuf it."

 

*New Update* Half-arsed atmospheric flight.

[discbox]

In Champions Online and DC Universe Online you can fly.

 

I don't need to fly in SW:TOR. I need Pazaak, armor that looks like Star Wars (not Gandalf on acid) and faster speeder mounts

Edited February 5, 2013 by discbox

[chuixupu]

Rogues can still cause the death of people airborn. You can dismount, shadow step, <any attack> (I like gouge for the momentary stun so mages can't use their "feather fall" ability), target go splat. You will also die of course. Used for city defense. Or wickerman defense during the October event. Good times.

 

Hm, that's interesting, because they fixed it so you couldn't do the Killing Spree thing a while back I assume shadowstep wouldn't work either. Unless it's a low level person you'd probably not kill them with just one attack though.. I'll have to go try it this week.

[Urael]

Hm, that's interesting, because they fixed it so you couldn't do the Killing Spree thing a while back I assume shadowstep wouldn't work either. Unless it's a low level person you'd probably not kill them with just one attack though.. I'll have to go try it this week.

 

It's not the attack that kills them, it's the fall from the mount. If they are low enough to the ground that the duration of the gouge keeps them from activating some sort of falling counter measure it's the fall that kills them. It may kill you also. I have a parachute from engineering as my out after I execute the attack.

[chuixupu]

Attacks don't always knock people off mounts though, I've got people down to almost a sliver of health and they're still on it.

 

Oh well this is really off-topic, lol

[Prysha]

Just curious as to whether other MMOs similar to TOR have flight for exploration purposes? I would love to see this someday, but Datacrons would no longer be challenging and who knows how much of the scenery with in the player zone is really solid and not just for looks, I'm willing to bet much of it isn't solid since that would be a waste of developer time at the moment.

 

SWTOR with freefly?

not going to happen...

i dont even have seen people flying in star wars movies though.. unless they were piloting spaceships...

[nogoer]

You cherry picked the thread to set up your strawman.

 

As to the issue of whether or not the Hero Engine can in fact handle flight and where that information is contained, Aries_cz provided the information. Moot. And closed.

 

As to whether SWTOR's Hero Engine can handle flight. Still to be determined. SWTOR used a pre-release (and rumoured to be unfinished ) version of the Hero Engine for development. It is not known whether it's an "easy fix" to switch out to the new Hero Engine.

 

As to whether "the dev's are reading this thread and chuckling", you didn't address the FACT that in many many many places in SWTOR there is no "there" there. That is the main issue with regards to flight. If flight were enabled without changing what is "real" and what is "just a picture" we would in fact see how tiny SWTORs planets are. The geometry/geography of the planets needs to be changed to fully support this.

 

Lastly, If it's "so easy" to do, why didn't they do it? The tell tale signs are contained in "no swimming". That is technically "flight" in another medium.

 

All is not as "simple" as you make it out to be.

 

You cherry picked as well.

 

I never stated it was easy, just an evolutionary thing that would at some point be added. I also fully did address the no "there" there and said it was the most valid argument against flying, but then segued into the possibility it's already been worked on even partially. Most threads in these forums are complete speculation so unless a dev chimes in and says "no" there is no flying work done and no capability then it's a valid opinionated argument for my stance.

 

As for the chuckling comments. I'm sure devs have seen some of the players threads and had more than a few chuckles. BW most likely keeps a tight leash on info and all company employees have signed confidentiality agreements so they can't chime in on anything.

[Urael]

You cherry picked as well.

 

I never stated it was easy, just an evolutionary thing that would at some point be added. I also fully did address the no "there" there and said it was the most valid argument against flying, but then segued into the possibility it's already been worked on even partially. Most threads in these forums are complete speculation so unless a dev chimes in and says "no" there is no flying work done and no capability then it's a valid opinionated argument for my stance.

 

As for the chuckling comments. I'm sure devs have seen some of the players threads and had more than a few chuckles. BW most likely keeps a tight leash on info and all company employees have signed confidentiality agreements so they can't chime in on anything.

 

Fair enough.

 

Given how the environments "appear" now. I don't believe they intended to add z-axis free movement other than "jumping puzzles" from the go. Again, the lack of swimming is related to the flight issue. It would take a major reworking to implement "flight". I really don't see EA putting the resources into SWTOR for that not when they can just sit back and offer shinies in the CS. (Yeah, I know I am conflating issues. Just very bitter after switching to Freemium-nickle-dime-greed model).

[AelixVII]

I know it would be a beast of a task to redesign all the worlds to allow flying 'mounts' and I also know there's a huge amount of players that hate the idea of flying speeders in the game, but maybe we could have a planet or 2 that allow speeder flight so both parties are happy?

 

Or at the very very least... the ability to use our own speeders in a speeder racing mini game.

[Master-Nala]

Just curious as to whether other MMOs similar to TOR have flight for exploration purposes? I would love to see this someday, but Datacrons would no longer be challenging and who knows how much of the scenery with in the player zone is really solid and not just for looks, I'm willing to bet much of it isn't solid since that would be a waste of developer time at the moment.

 

WoW, EQ2, DCUO, Champions Online, (now deceased) City of Heroes, there are others, but those are the ones I've played.

[Admiral_Petty]

Fair enough.

 

Given how the environments "appear" now. I don't believe they intended to add z-axis free movement other than "jumping puzzles" from the go. Again, the lack of swimming is related to the flight issue. It would take a major reworking to implement "flight". I really don't see EA putting the resources into SWTOR for that not when they can just sit back and offer shinies in the CS. (Yeah, I know I am conflating issues. Just very bitter after switching to Freemium-nickle-dime-greed model).

 

I personally think that the lack of swimming was them not wanting to put the effort into it when there are much more important things to focus, just as flight would be on the backburner for a long time as well if it ever is implemented.

[nartiuslightlord]

You will see chat bubbles before you see flying mounts. i can almost bet it.

[darkwingduk]

I'd rather they spent time on a flight sim similar to JTL from SWG, with PvE, PvP and Exploration.

 

JTL was trash. All in all that is all.

[chuixupu]

You will see chat bubbles before you see flying mounts. i can almost bet it.

 

Well, I'd hope so. They even had them in some form at one point and it doesn't require an entire environmental and animation redesign, lol.