Stariya
5 years ago
Druid Travel Form and Consent
I’ve been thinking a lot lately as to why I still hate the changes to travel form after all these years. There has been a lot of changes to druids forms in the past that I have been against, like the removal of the resto tree, but given time I’ve gotten used to it and I’m cool with not having it. (although I do appreciate the glyph =D ) same with shapeshifting being on the GCD, I prefer it the old way but I’m cool with it.

So why do I still hate the travel form consolidation? Is it the technical problems? Right now I barely have visual clues as to what I’m going to turn into, so if I’m stuck in combat I end up spaming travel form until I get bird. That’s an annoyance not worthy of hate and if it was just that I would be cool it by now. I can live with annoyances with relation to my forms. it's part of being a druid, our forms are quirky.

When they first combined them they introduced a glyph that separated out flight form, me disliking the changes snatched that up so I could have them separated on my bars. The side effect of that glyph was my stag form was now ridable. Of course all of my guild thought this was a cool new toy and proceeded to jump on my back for a free ride. This did not sit well with me. This was not an annoyance, this unsettled me deeply; I didn’t want people jumping on me with no invitation or consent on my part beyond my desire to chill in my stag form. However I loved having my flight form separated out, so I decided to train my guild to stay off. Lucky there was a lot of death pools around archimonde. It took a few weeks but I could chill in my stag form with no one getting on me, most days. Still every so often someone would jump on and I would play it off as a game, but I killed them to prove a point. Their attempts to ride me was not welcome.

Jump to Legion. The introduction of class mounts, druids got a cool two person flight form. It was said it would be separate from our flight form so I was all excited. I got onto the PTR, got my class form and I liked it. It was a separate button, I could CHOOSE to shift into it and let people ride me while still having a flight form that no one could mount. I loved that concept, I could allow people to ride me at my whim. I could easily consent to them riding me just like the two person mounts. Then they combined it into our regular flight form and my attitude shifted hard. I flat out refuse to use it. Thankfully I didn’t fall in love with the appearance, I don’t feel like I’m missing out by not using it but some druids do.

In game our avatars are a reflection of ourselves. What happens to them affects us as players emotionally on some level. So the fact that people can get on me without my consent is very unsettling, it's invasive. Maybe I’m overly sensitive given my own history but I wanted to put this out there and request some change so druids can have the forms they want and still be able to grant some form of consent. I understand the way its set up now it might not be feasible or practical, but at least think about it.
Edited by Stariya 04/30/2018 07:44 PM
Sigma
Game Designer
5 years ago
Druid Travel Form and Consent
Thanks for bringing this up. It would definitely be ideal for you to be able to have control over something like this, so even though there's not an immediate solution, I wanted to say we appreciate you making what might have been a difficult post.

On live, you at least have the option of Glyph of the Cheetah for the ground case, and as you mention, ordinary Swift Flight Form for the air case. I know that's not perfect since you may prefer to use other appearances--as we try to add more avenues for character customization, I hope we can find a place for this kind of option on Travel Form.
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