Guild Wars 2

So, in order to move through the dense jungle, we will be using gliders…
Seems rather low-tech, doesn’kitten
Asura have mastered magnetism and levitation, even teleportation.
Charr have helicopters and knowledge of gunpowder.
Even the Sylvari have floating seed pods.

We could use any of these to gain altitude or make a handy jet pack, instead of just floating a bit and diving towards our death, right? Right?

I don’t know. The asuran systems don’t seem to have developed any repulsion (except on the smallest of golems), and apparently it needs a finely tuned grid of repulsor stones, so maybe it couldn’t. Helicopters and gunpowder don’t scale down to a backpack sized option very well- just look at the real world there. The seed pods are a bit unclear, but I bet wind would throw them off course very easily, and there doesn’t seem to be any way to steer them.

Asura devices do not fly, they merely float. The only exception are the small golems like o-Tron but their movement is minimal.

Charr don’t have helicopters – the Pact does. And the Pact’s been decimated. Also, good luck getting those helicopters through thick vegetation without the blades becoming tangled, damaged, or destroyed.

Sylvari ‘floating seed pods’ show no means of proper movement control, so I wouldn’t trust them for ‘flying’.

Not sure if you can have a “handy” jetpack. Ive seen jetfliers go 125mph…i wouldnt want to do that in a jungle…!!

“Hey..im a Rocketma…………..” ..crunch

Low tech is sometimes the optimal solution for exploration.

The only group that seems to have manage to create a working jetpack is the Molten Alliance and Scarlet. We might have been able to reserve engineer them, but I’m not sure just how easy it would have been to gather the materials and work the magic needed to make them actually work.

In real life, we can make a lot of things fly in various ways. How come jetpacks aren’t in military use? Because they aren’t practical. There’s your answer.

Noted, jetpacks with rockets aren’t likely.

Yet the question still remains. If we could gain some altitude, our gliders could become ‘flyers’.
What about the various asuran movement-related technologies? Launchpads, that vista in LA that shoots you towards an island… None of them seem quite there yet, but with three colleges funding various research, flight could become a thing real fast.

What about zephyrite crystals, who are now littered all across drytop?

What about freaking masters of air, who can bend the winds to their will? An elementalist would be a master of movement with a pair of cloth wings!

Well, in the personal story, Sieran can fly, and in Sea of Sorrows Verahd floats Cobiah and Isaye around. Mark it up as something NPCs can pull off that players can’t for (very valid) gameplay reasons. Granted, that magic probably has limits- I can’t picture them flying for days to get from city to city.

I think a glider is a sensible option, given the terrain. It’s not too big, can more-or-less be controlled, thus can likely get in and about a jungle canopy to some extent, and is clearly made of something so lightweight it’s easy to hoof around with - although we don’t have to worry too much about the realism of carrying the thing about, or how our various armour and weapon ratios will actually affect the glide.

For (presumably) short distances, it’s also likely the much more economical way to travel independently.

I’m not sure how much this contributes to the topic, but flying in MMOs generally seems to serve the purpose of long distance travel, a niche occupied by portals, gates, and waypoints in GW2. Gliders seem more like an extension of the semi-platforming elements present in this game than a legitimate mode of transport.

because gliding is falling with style!

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Charr don’t have helicopters – the Pact does. And the Pact’s been decimated. Also, good luck getting those helicopters through thick vegetation without the blades becoming tangled, damaged, or destroyed.

I wouldn’t really say so. I mean, the guild hall decoration is labeled Charr Helicopter after all :P.

Also they imply the Seraph have Airships of their own. Probably the Charr air force is dedicated toward anti-flame legion actions ATM.

Honestly, gameplay wise, they wouldn’t do flying for a very obvious reason. Then people would go “Why can’t I fly in Kryta???” And, IIRC, in WoW flying mounts removed much of the risk of exploration, or exploration in general. Why hike and explore that ruins on the way to your quest zone when you can just fly over without any threat?

Well we got one Sylvari Elementalist, who was able to use air magic to fly a certain distance.
Though I don`t know how much of that counts as flying, or just a really long controlled jump