Griffon Flight Change After 2/6 Update [merged]

Crossposting from Reddit:

From OPSince the update, the griffon trick to cancel downwards momentum does not work anymore

For those out of the loop: It used to be possible to cancel much of the downards momentum and movement of a downwards wing flap by holding the button to pull up in the middle of the animation. You could control exactly how much of the momentum you wanted to cancel by holding the button for more or less time during said animation. The result is you would get all the speed of a downwards wing flap, while losing much less altitude. The flipside is doing so would severely diminish your altitude buffer, so trying to later pull back up would result in barely gaing any altitude back. As such, it was not a good technique to employ in every situation, but it had many uses nonetheless.

After today's patch, it seems doing this is no longer possible.

Now, any key press of the "pull up" button during the dive animation is ignored by the game. Even if you hold the button until after the dive ends, it is still ignored. You now have to wait until the dive animation is fully over before pressing the pull up button for it to work.

_From ANet_JoelHThere was a bug fix that went out related to pitch up behavior, but there was also a bug with that change that should be addressed in our next hotfix (also the note for the fix was delayed and will be in the late notes). For context, there has always been an 800 ms delay after doing a diving wing flap that enforces a minimum starting altitude if you want to go super fast. The core issue is that this delay could be interrupted by using the pitch up key, which was 100% not intended and would eliminate most of the risk, gaining the initial speed boost of the diving wing flap without paying a corresponding altitude cost. Additionally, though less important, animation was not set up to blend very well between the diving wing flap and pitch up animations. To correct these issues, it is no longer possible to pitch up during the delay period.

The bug, or more like poor behavior, with this bug fix is that pressing pitch up too early currently does nothing at all. This will be changed so that as long as you keep holding pitch up, once the delay period ends you will immediately pitch up._

Well, that explains why I've been hitting the ground a lot since yesterday. I assumed it was lag.

I posted this in the bug section as well, since even though part of it is „intended“ it feels buggy to me (and apparently also many others on reddit).

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/27577/griffon-mount-pull-up-broken#latest

I really hope it is reverted. I can't see it as breaking the flight mechanic the way that it was, although I am still a novice a griffon flight. This change only makes it more difficult for me.

The is when transparency would be nice. "Oh hey, players. The current flight is bugged and X behavior is not intended. This will be getting fixed so don't get used to it."

Well they could bring it back but make the speed increase based on altitude. If you want the full speed increase then you have to do the dive for the full altitude.

I've already posted my thought in the other forum about this, but I'll do it here as well. I am not at all happy with this change. It makes the Griffon flight less enjoyable, even more with the races. The problem they fixed was not a problem at all. It wasn't hurting anything nor giving others a better advantage over fighting enemies. It was a nice little feature just to make flying easier and not crash into the ground. Now, in order to get the full experience people need to be at a much higher altitude to jump from in order to pull back up from a dive.

Removing this feature makes the dive painfully clunky. What a change to implement after four months of experiencing the joy of flight. Less fun for everyone.

The delay set is way too long, and needs to be at least 75% less than what it is now. Having this in now makes doing some griffon adventures impossible to get gold rank on.I don't see what was wrong with leaving it the way it was. You couldn't gain much height from where you started at even with the ability to cancel the dive. This change was uncalled for.

Also performing the wing flap, had a friend with a stop watch hit it as soon as I hit the wing flap, and it was around 1600 ms before I could pull up, so the timer is doubled than what it currently states of being 800 ms.

It would be nice, if the griffon just learned to fly normally. This ridiculous pulling "down - up" personally from me caused disappointment with his acquisition. No pleasure. And if you take into account that for his purchase had to perform a lot of tasks, which I did with teeth :), and invest 250 gold ... Raptor and rabbit normally cope with their functions. The rabbit does not need to be thrown from a great height, for example, so that it jumps:)

@"AlexVv.3965" said:It would be nice, if the griffon just learned to fly normally. This ridiculous pulling "down - up" personally from me caused disappointment with his acquisition. No pleasure. And if you take into account that for his purchase had to perform a lot of tasks, which I did with teeth :), and invest 250 gold ... Raptor and rabbit normally cope with their functions. The rabbit does not need to be thrown from a great height, for example, so that it jumps:)

The Griffon was never supposed to "fly nomally" by design, and that's ok.

But adding a very high delay that was previously not there after months of people getting used to the handling of the mount (in many cases to the point of the pull up timing going into "muscle memory")... I don't know what exactly was so broken about the pre patch pull up behavior that it justifies such an extreme change to the negative, but I can't recall anyone reporting bugs/exploits in that context. Maybe someone involved in this "bug fix" could elaborate/help us understand. If it was only because it "was initially not intended" even though it didn't break anything, I don't get why it was changed in the first place.

What I do know is that the change makes the mount feel broken and the movement/handling of it clunky for anyone who previously pulled off high risk/high reward maneuvers for the fun of it (yes, there is still people left who enjoy mastering difficult things and press more than one button). Ofc there's also many players that are not affected by the change (e.g. some don't even know how to pull off a full speed boost or that the mechanic is even there - which is also OK). But just because it doesn't affect part of the players it doesn't automatically mean the change was a good idea.

To many, the "joy of movement" initially created by the devs is gone or at least hampered through this change... I really hope a revert of the fix or at least a decrease in the delay of the pull up skill is being (re)considered by the devs involved.

This is a great example of anet fixing things that aren't broken.

I am super sad by this change. The delay before you can pull up is so long now. :( I really enjoyed the movement of the mounts, especially the Griffon... The fact that it was changed right after a costly Griffon mount skin was introduced has left a few of my friends feeling very bitter about this.

Anet please for the love of god, listen to your players on this one:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/7w33se/the_griffon_change_is_just_plain_awful/

Like that'll happen.... seamless mount operation unlock, coming to a gemstore near you :D

I also support the need to revert the changes, latest update made the handling a bit better, but it's still worse than it used to be, mounts don't have any part in the competitive scene, so the "fun" factor should be prioritized.

@"Kheldorn.5123" said:This is a great example of anet fixing things that aren't broken.

Classic way of fix stuff till its broken.

@Offair.2563 said:

@"Kheldorn.5123" said:This is a great example of anet fixing things that aren't broken.

That would be the Confusion change.

I always use that pullup to control my altitude alot better. I dont really care for the speed gained with it. I rather would have no speed but more control

Already a thread on this over here and in the Bug forum right here.

The one true fix I can see from this is that the infinite preservation of altitude through diving / pulling up on repeat is no longer there, so I guess that's nice. Still, it's hard to believe that they'd allow people to get use to something that was a core mechanic for months before deeming it a bug. Call it a bug all you want, but it was in the finished product and was indistinguishable from "normal" griffon behavior to the average player. It was effectively an additional griffon mechanic.

Really going to miss all the dive-spots that just got canned across the board. Anet, I'm on my knees beseeching you, please give us a compromise. So many people have fallen in love with the way you could be creative when flying the griffon. That creative method of flying isn't as feasible any more, and the amount of available fly space (especially on core maps) has been drastically decreased because there are so few perches that are high enough to initiate a dive (the ones that are, are typically blocked by invisible walls).

@Bearbrunt.4196 said:

Really going to miss all the dive-spots that just got canned across the board. Anet, I'm on my knees beseeching you, please give us a compromise. So many people have fallen in love with the way you could be creative when flying the griffon. That creative method of flying isn't as feasible any more, and the amount of available fly space (especially on core maps) has been drastically decreased because there are so few perches that are high enough to initiate a dive (the ones that are, are typically blocked by invisible walls).

So much this!

That sounds pretty awful. I use this trick a lot, but you still need to jump from a significant height for it to work. Now I guess you need a "specific" height instead of one that is just tall enough for a down wing flap.

And as other have pointed out, doing this would only give you the big speed boost, not altitude cancellation. Feels like nerfing fun to me, I mean the other mounts were all still useful on anything that didn't have a hill to jump from and it is still possible to break out of maps with mounts so what's the big deal?

Here's a ton of feedback in 1 area about the Griffon update.. https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/7w33se/the_griffon_change_is_just_plain_awful/

Anet the community is just looking for at least a reasonable explanation on how necessary was this change after 5 months of having the griffon already. This reddit post, https://reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/7w33se/the_griffon_change_is_just_plain_awful/,that has already been posted multiple times shows how unsatisfied the community is with the unexplained change. We got the expansion for the "Joy of Movement", but why remove the joy?