I tend to understand that the need to impose this was, like so many things on site, a measure to curb abuse in PVP situations, which I understand? Having someone shoot a few hundred meters into the air in the middle of a fight can make things very awkward and messy for everyone, but maybe there's another way to fix this?
With that in mind, I would like to propose an alternative method of curbing flight spells that to me at least, feels more realistic, which is by dictating the speed at which one can move move while in flight, whilst using these spells.
No upper limit on how high one can climb, but rather, one will be restricted by the pace at which they can soar through the heavens? I mean, to me it feels like if you're pushing more fuel in the form of mana into a spell engine, you'll go faster?
At the moment flying spells let you move at whatever your running speed is, limited by height. I think the elevation restriction is dumb, so wouldn't it make more sense to limit you to say… Moving at a specific fraction of your running speed? So that way, at S Class you'd have full access to your potentially much zoom speed, but at lower levels, the inefficiency and output of the spell diminishes your return?
For instance, you could say that a B-rank Flight spell gives you 1/3 your ground running speed, then an A-Rank one gives you 2/3?
Either that or you could stick a hard cap on how fast people can move as an upper limit by flying, like say "You can fly at #-Rank speed".
Both of these seem like more useful and more realistic than what we have at the moment, so hopefully, it might help to make for a better way of doing things than instigating some kind of arbitrary 'glass ceiling' when it comes to travelling upwards?
Anyway, thanks for your time, and consideration.