Should Flying be implemented on AQ3D?

The game wasn't designed with boundaries on the y-axis, so the sky really isn't the limit. There's no restriction, so flying would really mess certain things up: Beating parkour with little effort, skipping dungeons (if you can go over gates and dungeon obstacles), accessing points that you shouldn't be entering in maps, etc.

And even if flying was a thing, it would require a bit more work which might not be something AE wants to invest time in. The implementation in AQ3D's current state would require repeatedly pressing the space bar, which wouldn't really be intuitive at all, especially for mobile players who will have to double tap their screen every half a second to keep jumping. The other problem is that when you're in the air, for other players, they won't see you in the air (they'll see you on the ground instead, because the game processes the fall state on the client-side). And the other potential issue is if you go so far up and want to just drop down to the lowest elevation, the long duration of the fall state will just kill your own character; that's how it's set up when a player falls into the void.

It's often why you don't really see the developers flying in the game, but instead, they usually develop other things as a "workaround" (like their own form that has 200% speed). It's really just the whitehats that have fun with the air jumps.

 

Even if AE made flying a thing, they would have to disable them in parkour areas and change invisible walls in areas where they could be used.

 

Disabling flying in parkour maps shouldn't be too much of a problem, if they have the right set up for that. But the real issue is that they aren't going to start adding more invisible walls. There are dozens of maps, and they'd have to retouch just about every map they've made. Only exception would be maps that you can already leave the boundaries of (e.g. escaping out of Yulgar's Inn is patched, and it took them years to even bother patching it). And even if they did put invisible ceilings on every map, they might miss a spot.

 

AE isn't going to? They HAVE TO do that if they actually decided to implemented flying in that form. If there are going to be maps which have good invisible walls, we can just report them about it and they could fix them in the next release.

 

If flying truly wanted to be implemented, it should have benefit that morphing doesnt have (not just for cool pose screenshot), but its benefit also shouldn't kill morphing benefit too.
In most open world mmorpg flying is slower than mounting because flying is able to skip terrain where mounting can't, so both flying and mounting still have their own plus and minus.
But AQ3D isn't truly open world, so flying is kind of inefficient in term of time and speed for small scale maps, not to mention we have free travel portal and free summon code that even faster than anything else.
Those flying thing will just adding a number of stupid bugs. So until there is truly a need for flying, I guess our wing will just become decoration for a while like a chicken and penguin.

 

Problem is that there are still a lot of unpatched areas, especially ones with bad soft locks, or just poorly implemented invisible walls. Umbral Caves, for instance, still has pits that you can get trapped in, and the only way to get out is to teleport to another player. Isle of the Dead, and some other maps, still have poorly designed walls that really constrain exploration. These are issues that have been around for a long time, and known, and AE's simply too complacent to do anything with them as long as their releases are satisfactory.

To rephrase all of that, why should AE consider focusing on vertical boundaries of their maps, when they can't even get their horizontal boundaries done properly? They can't just start putting all of their eggs in one basket and present something that might not work out in the end, especially if their only shtick is presenting 'satisfactory' releases that simply 'gets the job done' and don't go above and beyond.

Flying forms would ultimately replace the current forms that exist, unless AE, for some bizarre reason, add limitations to flying forms (like giving it only vertical speed, but not horizontal speed), which wouldn't make the forms worth much. Only reasonable thing to do is reprice every single current form, and then make flying forms the new "4,900 DC items".

 

There sure are many unpatched areas which would need some adjusting. I am sure AE can at least change their maps to be less vertical so flying won't become a problem. I can see that there are going to problems with some dungeons too, so making them disable flying should be an easy thing to do.

 

Making maps less vertical removes a lot of scenery (like cliffs, mountains, places you could climb), and people enjoy games that feel more "open world" and add a lot of exploration. And current existing forms are still going to be useful for getting around areas with mountainous terrains or areas to climb, so trying to limit the maps wouldn't be such a great idea, especially seeing what happened with Isle of the Dead when the boundaries were limited.

 

Maybe not maps less vertical, but instead make invisible walls prevent flying making you able to just exit the boundaries.

 

People could still probably find crevices that they can escape from, or they might feel claustrophobic because the invisible wall is too close to the ground, but it most depends on how the boundaries are set up. I would prefer a wall that's just the top half of a sphere, rather than a flat plane, but that's not so easy to do, because maps aren't conformed in a circle (maps can be in any shape). But if they do a half-sphere rather than a flat plane, and permit flying forms, then it would actually make flying purposeful. You would have more vertical space towards the center of the map and less vertical space towards the edge of the map.

 

Yeah, just putting a flat invisible wall would hinder flying and making into a half-sphere just like a dome is give flying the feeling of more freedom. People will find such spots because it's not easy to make the boundaries perfectly airtight and reporting such leaks should be encouraged.

 

Reporting bugs rarely get addressed at all, unless it's actually major, like game-breaking. Even if it is encouraged to report the bugs, they're not going to bother patching it in any reasonable timeframe, especially since there are already a lot of existing boundaries bugs that still haven't been patched yet. It's really in the best interest that AE doesn't step foot into creating flying forms (no matter what direction they go with), if they're not willing to put the time in fixing other boundary issues, and that's probably why they've said countless times that it's unlikely to happen.

 

AE probably would have if they planned to add flying, but at this point it's not very likely to happen.

 

It's not the matter of "would have". Boundary issues should be fixed regardless of whether flying is implemented or not.

 

It's shouldn't be an excuse to improve map boundaries because AQ3D should already have proper map boundaries. Flying requires good map design for it to work naturally and those boundaries are part of that.

 

But even if flying was never planned, boundaries should be patched. For instance, being able to leave Shadowskull Tower Bridge by climbing the arch isn't intended and shouldn't be like that (though it can be fun at times), and there ought to be better walls at some point in the map. Last time I recall bad boundary issues, if was in one of the maps connected to Arcangrove.

And leaving the boundary can cause some bad exploits... for instance, dragging a monster out-of-bounds, which has happened before, and it can make the monster unkillable for players, especially if the monster gets stuck or requires a large team which isn't plausible.

 

Yeah, they should be patched and there shouldn't be an excuse to not to patch them because those boundaries can be abused.

 

Flying would add a new level of interaction to the game! Since we already have capes that are wings, flying would be amazing.

 

Flying, probably not, but a newer form of levitating, sure. I'd like to see the /levitate emote animate the cape/wings of the player. The /levitate emote is, as it current is, a bit dull since it doesn't do anything to the back item. An extra bit of animation would definitely make the emote more lively.

 

AQ3D is lacking in animation and it's not a surprise because AQ3D has had just one animator (Korin) for most of its development before it got another one (Xentry). When it comes to flying, it would require more animation to be created for compared to just a normal travel form.