The Problem with Flying

Riding on a dragon will always be bad-ass!

Flying, the ability to move through the air freely. Be it for work, for transport, or for pleasure, it’s a wonderful and invigorating experience. In MMOs the ability to fly is often asked for by the player base, typically by mount of course. It’s a pretty cool idea don’t you think? Who wouldn’t want to ride on a dragon, that’s badass!

One of the earliest examples of using flight in video games in an interesting that I know of is the first Final Fantasy (I am sure there are others). By the time you acquire the Air Ship in that game you have traveled to or explored most of the game’s world. Using air travel allows you to avoid the hassle of retracing old grounds, let’s you get straight to specific places in faster time, and the most important part, it can grant access to new places that were previously inaccessible. Sounds fair, doesn’t it? It’s a pretty sweet reward late into one’s adventure, and even opens up new content! But the MMO genre is different from a single player game. As I always tend to emphasize, you are not alone in the world of an MMO, you play *with* others, cooperatively, competitively, or passively. What may work in one genre does not necessarily mean it will work in another.

There is a demand for the original release of World of Warcraft, and one of the appeals for this classic game in 2019 is the lack of flying. One of the common reasons for this is that flying dramatically reduces the chances of player interaction in the open world. It is also stated that flying makes the world feel smaller being able to transverse it freely. For these reasons I whole wholeheartedly agree. An MMO is not just about you, it’s also about all those around you and the experiences you have with them. Adding the Z-Axis to the way players move about kills the chances of coming across someone in the open world. When there is no risk to travel how can there be conflict? (One can even argue that teleporting is also harmful, but that’s a topic for another time). If everyone must travel by ground the opportunity arises to fight someone of the opposing faction, to save the life of someone who is about to be defeated, or to simply party up with another to accomplish a common goal.

However, I do not think flying is inheritably bad, even in an MMO. Hell I don’t think there’s any “inheritably” bad ideas for MMOs (ok there might be some I’ve yet to think of). Rather I believe that there are a lot of good ideas that are simply poorly implemented, and as a result people tend to use them as an example against an idea rather than as an example of poor construction. If a chair breaks the moment you sit in it, the chair itself is not the problem but rather how it was made.

So many paths and places to go, yet the journey doesn't matter.

So what’s the problem with flying that causes the downsides? Well simply put flying is fucking broken in games like WoW. Flying mounts can turn just as fast as a land mount, it can ascend and descend just as fast as it can move forward and turning around can be done as fast as you can move your mouse. Land mounts move in the same way that the player does but faster, they can go from 0mph to 100mph in 0 seconds flat, and can decelerate as just as fast, that’s not how physics work! In both WoW and Final Fantasy 14 the only difference between a land mount and a flying mount is that the flying mount has a Z-Axis. It’s essentially a flying saucer UFO. It’s clear that flying mounts were added fairly quickly as its evident not much thought was put into their mechanics. Slapping a pair of wings on a horse and calling it a day is poor craftsmanship.

There are very little limitations to mounts in general and even less so for the flying variations. They tend to not require food or fuel and they can used virtually anywhere in the open world. The biggest downside of a mount is if you are attacked you will be dismounted and stunned for a short period of time, which almost never happens with flight. How silly would it be if you could pull a car out of your pocket anywhere at any time? (Pulling a car out of your ass is actually possible now in FF14). If you come across a warzone in an MMO, just whip out your magic broom or dragon and completely ignore that mess, no one will attack you, chances are there’s no flight combat! The stratosphere doesn’t exist and neither does oxygen nor frostbite, the only limit to how high or far you can go is the sky ceiling.

Pimp Chicken

One thing I don’t like is complaining without explaining, and complaints without suggestions. So that is exactly what I’ll be doing, offering up some ideas on how flight in MMOs can be better. Note though I am not a game developer and not all my ideas will work in every scenario (and they just might not be good). Nor have I played every MMO out there due to the huge time investment. This is to serve as a form of thinking exercise on what could be. MMOs (and games in general) are very complicated and the slightest change can have unforeseen consequences. Some ideas may require other ideas or other changes to work properly. Sometimes a system would need to be rebuilt from the ground up. If you the reader have an idea or know of a certain system or mechanic in another game that is relevant to this topic, I would love to learn about it from you. No idea is flawless, but brainstorming is cheap and fun.

•  Stamina/Fuel: I briefly mentioned this earlier but a form of cost and/or limited time to a mount could reduce the dependency on them, making cheaper alternatives (walking, land mounts, and other in-game transportation) more appealing.
• Height Limitations: As it stands typically a flying mount’s limit is the game’s sky ceiling. So what if this limit could be changed or have consequences for going past a certain limit? Some mounts may start become fatigued or slowed. What if the limit changed based on something like weather, being forced to fly at a lower level?
• Keeping the Height Low: When there’s absolutely no limit to how high one may fly, dangers become non-existent. So what if the height limit for a flying mount was…. 20 feet above the ground? They would keep the benefits of avoid most obstacles and enemies, and would still be susceptible to ranged based attacks from PvP.
• Anti-Air: Having a means to force an enemy out of the air. Issue here is the concern over draw distance. Given how fast flying is, being able to even spot the target in time can prove challenging.   
• Transportation as a Profession: Instead of thinking of mounts as they stand, another approach could be to completely redesign how transportation works in MMOs. Being able to raise, breed, grow, create and take care of various mounts of different abilities and traits could have a lot of potential. FF14 does this to some extent with its chocobo raising, but it’s largely irrelevant in the open world. Having to rely on others for certain tasks is generally a good approach to have in an MMO, as it encourages playing with others. Delegating the role of transportation to the players could change the way it is perceived entirely. Imaging being the flight master or the porter.
• Different Mounts = Different Abilities: Giving roles to mounts beyond just increased speed, and thus making each of them more unique. I have not played through Guild Wars 2 yet, however I have heard (and looked at the wiki) that mounts in that game are in fact unique in their abilities. As an example some can jump high or far distances and others run over enemies. This can be done for all sorts of things such as puzzle solving and challenges. Having individual mounts be unique can make it so not one is inheritably better than the other.
• More Realistic Controls: Taking a note from Skyrim or Breath of the Wild can give some insight on the way horses move, and potentially how utilizing actual player skill in controlling mounts could be fun! But the main reason for this idea is as mentioned before, mounts in WoW and FF14 are simply a buff for the player, with the only real difference in the way they move is their speed. Having mounts behave and control in a more “realistic” matter wouldn’t directly solve the issues of flying mounts, but it would nerf them a bit.
• Air Ports: My personal favorite out of all these ideas due to its simplicity and direct nature in keeping flight and land based travel relevant. The airport idea is to make it so mounting a flying mount is only possible in select locations, “airports” so to speak. Then once the player hits the ground they will be unable to remount said flying mount and must travel by land.

Sometimes an idea sounds cool but doesn’t work out in practice. An idea isn’t necessarily bad because it didn’t work out, sometimes they just don’t fit in with the world. Sometimes the idea wasn’t made correctly. It’s important for us to be able to distinguish between a bad idea and a bad execution. Sometimes a simple change can be all that’s needed to make something work. To give up on an idea because the first attempt failed is defeatist and rather shallow. There is so much potential for the MMO genre that it makes me sad when a failure is seen as something that must be purged rather than fixed. Riding on a fire breathing dragon will always “sound” cool, and goddamn it I want to see it become a reality. No idea is perfect, but we can try and we should, not for the sake of reaching perfection but rather improvement. The dragon may not be perfect, but believing we can have this and make it work without the downsides that are commonly associated with it is the first step to making it a reality that works with the world rather than against it.