In this thread, please post your feedback about Dragonriding, after you’ve tested it in the Dragonflight Alpha.
WoW Developer Greyton has a full introduction to this feature for you here.
In this thread, please post your feedback about Dragonriding, after you’ve tested it in the Dragonflight Alpha.
WoW Developer Greyton has a full introduction to this feature for you here.
This is a very good call-out. We’re working on improving the dragonriding gap detection to fix issues like this. We’ve noticed that dragonriding won’t kick in with some slope types, so we’ll be addressing those in a future build.
This is a great call-out of a few distinctions between “flying” and “dragonriding.” We’d like to slot dragonriding into its own unique space without crowding out flying, so it feeling like an investment is in the desired ballpark. How much of an investment is definitely something we’d love to hear continued feedback on, especially as progression comes online and as players get more used to the feature.
We’ve found that this is a big part of the appeal of WoW’s flying, so pulling that into dragonriding would encroach on that space too much.
Oh I think you might like the progression then! (And good note about that balance.)
Also, we’ve also seen a request or two from testers to drop the cooldown on Soar for testing purposes, and we don’t think that will be necessary to get the whole system well-tested. We’re getting great bug reports, and we thank you very much for them.
Hey all,
In this next build, you’ll notice some new functionality!
Thank you again for continuing to give feedback and suggestions as we continue to make our way through alpha.
We’ve just rolled out a hotfix to remedy this, which should be active in current builds. While existing characters might have trouble with this, new characters selecting these traits should no longer experience this issue.
Dragon Glyphs are account-wide. Right now, selecting traits doesn’t make selections for every character, but the amount of points available should be consistent across characters as any character claims a new Dragon Glyph.
Thank you very much for trying this out in courses and comparing your experience before/after. We’d like to make the “when” of turning matter a little bit more, but not overmuch. More feedback will help a ton as we move forward. We’re keeping an eye on feedback as we continue to iterate.
Thanks again!
Greetings Dragonriders and Dracthyr!
With the next alpha build, we’re making a change to Soar for Dracthyr that reduces their maximum speed from (roughly) 930% to 640%. The maximum speed for Dragon Isles Drakes is unchanged. This only applies to the Dracthyr Soar racial ability.
In the Dragon Isles, all characters of all races are on similar footing in regards to their ability to traverse the terrain because everyone can summon a Dragon Isles Drake. However, this isn’t the case in other areas of the game where flying mounts are the mainstay of travel. In Eastern Kingdoms, Soar is currently over twice as fast as Epic Flying which travels at 410% speed. The result is that Dracthyr have a drastic efficiency advantage over characters of other races when doing non-Dragon Isles content, whether that’s Chromie Time quests, clearing old raids for transmog, pet battling, etc.
Soar is important to the identity of Dracthyr. From the outset of the design process we knew that Dracthyr had to be able to fly in some form, even if we didn’t know the specifics until later. But, Soar is also a Racial ability, and was never intended to be a massive efficiency or performance improvement over other races. These two goals are somewhat in conflict: Make Soar fun and fulfill the fantasy of being a flying creature, but don’t give one race an outsized advantage across large swathes of the game.
What we’ve found while playtesting these changes internally is that the speed change didn’t diminish the fun of the locomotion mechanics. The engaging control system, gameplay of conserving momentum, and challenge of navigating obstacles, are all still present, while also rewarding skillful use of Soar with being able to travel faster than Epic flying mounts. This hits both of the goals nicely – Dracthyr can engage in the dynamic, immersive locomotion of dragonriding, but aren’t able to blitz across a continent in half the time as other characters.
The Alpha period is time for experimentation, testing, and learning, and that often leads to change. Due to Soar being an evergreen feature of the Dracthyr race, we feel that reducing the top speed is necessary for the long-term health of the game. Thank you for your passion, feedback, and understanding. See you in Azeroth!
Here again with a few updates that went live with this build:
When we introduced turn rate tech, we wanted to make sure the when of a turn mattered. However, we might have been too heavy-handed with those values. Now that we’ve found the outer limits, we’ve re-tuned turn rate to lessen its impact. We continue to iterate on the balance here and welcome your feedback. Please give it a try, in questing, time trials, or both, and share your experience with us.
In addition, we’ve improved the hotbars for dragonriding, allowing players to customize their hotbars through drag-and-drop as normal, much like a druid’s bar when in bear form (or other cool forms). This also resolves some issues like not being able to use abilities to dismount and not being able to interact with quest items while mounted. (If you lose your dragonriding abilities, check your spellbook. Characters from previous alpha builds may not have these skills, but new characters in this build should see them there.)
While a better clean up will be present in future builds, existing characters might be missing these skills, unfortunately. New characters should not run into this issue. Please try creating a new character. Thank you for your patience during alpha!
We’ve hotfixed in a better solution that should catch this case. Creating a new max level template character should return any mounts or spells lost. Afterwards, characters below level 70 can log out and back in to see mounts and spells returned. At this stage, Dragonriding spells can be dragged out of the spellbook, under the General tab.
Thank you for the report! We’ve discovered an issue with these wherein not all of them are counting for points, and there will be a fix available in the next build.
Hello Dragonriders! With today’s update to the alpha, we’ve made a few changes that deserve their own callouts.
We discovered early in Alpha that we’d need a solution for players who rely on /follow or similar features to engage with World of Warcraft, as following wasn’t immediately compatible with Dragonriding. To address this, we’ve added “Ride Along”. Dragonriders can speak with Lithragosa (the Dragonriding Trainer) to opt into this new functionality. With Ride Along on, a player in your party may interact with your Dragon Isle Drake to transform into a whelp that will follow alongside your drake. If you are someone who has relied on /follow or have other players help guide you around Azeroth (or find Ride Along to be an interesting accessibility option for other reasons), please try this feature out and share your feedback with us!
Thank you all for your continued feedback and discussion.
Thank you for asking! We currently plan for Ride Along to function in The Nokhud Offensive.
Thank you for the reports! Regarding talent training - are you able to train a trait after logging out and back in? Or is it a consistent issue you’re seeing, wherein you cannot learn new traits even while having enough glyphs?
We’ve got a hotfix on the way for this. Thank you again for reporting!
Thank you for the updated reports. Skyward Ascent’s effectiveness was unintentionally affected by other dragonriding fixes, and we’re deploying a hotfix soon to address this issue.
Hello dragonriders!
A couple updates coming in an upcoming build that warranted pointing out:
Thank you for the report! Drake hats are indeed not intended. This will be addressed in an upcoming build.
We’d like to mention a new known issue:
Hello Dragonriders!
With the most recent build, we’d like to mention a few additions:
Good day Dragonriders!
We’ve noticed a lot of feedback around tutorials, dragon glyphs, and dragonriding skills and abilities, and are excited to provide these updates in today’s build.
Skills and abilities have seen some updates, including:
Many of the changes in this build are to improve onramping to the system, including:
Bug fix highlights include:
New Known Issue:
Hello Dragonriders!
With the latest build, we wanted to call out a few things:
Hello again Dragonriders!
Another dragon glyph improvement worth mentioning:
Hello Dragonriders!
With the next build, we wanted to note a few things:
Hello Dragonriders,
With today’s update, we’d like to share a couple notes:
New Known Issue:
Hello Dragonriders AND Dracthyr!
We’ve been hearing lots of feedback from players that Soar feels never worth using, especially as they progress through the Dragonriding Skill Track. While we don’t want them to feel identical, we do want to bring them closer together. We want players to feel like Soaring in the Dragon Isles is a powerful option that embodies the fantasy of flying as a Dracthyr. All the while, we also want Dragonriding to have unique benefits. We’re making some changes with the next build that are aimed toward these goals.
The Dragonriding Skill Track will now confer some benefits to Dracthyr Soar while the Dracthyr player is inside the Dragon Isles
Thank you all for soaring with us on this journey!
Also, in Dragonriding racing updates, we have the following callouts:
The “Reduce Camera Motion” and “Keep Camera Centered and Reduce Camera Motion” Motion Sickness options should remove the boost FOV. If you find those do not work, please report that as a bug.
Adding a new Known Issue here - The FOV effects on high boosts have been affected by an unrelated camera fix, causing them to be far more intense than intended. A future build will have a fix to restore these back to the levels seen before this build. Thank you for the reports!