Balancing the Elytra

The minecraft elytra removes the need for powered rails, water tunnels, horses, nether transportation, soul-speed tracks, speed potions, ice boats, ender pearls, and dolphin swimming. With the game meta being deconstructed and beating the ender dragon + reaching an end city being widely documented and facilitated over time, it's becoming easier and easier to reach the elytra. It makes all your pre-elytra transportation structures useless and really decreases the fun of exploring.

Here are some balancing ideas to help with this:

Buffs:

- Enhancing the rail crafting recipe: constructing railways is really, really expensive for a objectively slow transportation method.

- Increasing powered rail speeds and/or efficiency (especially in vertical tracks)

- Increasing chances for getting a saddle on loot chests.

- Making the leatherworker's saddle trade a lower level (apprentice?).

- Making bred horses more unlikely to receive worse stats than their parents.

- Improving combat while riding a horse.

Nerfs:

(warning: controversial! not all of them should be added simultaneously because the elytra still needs to feel like an achievement)

- Disabling flight when a player is hit with a projectile (maybe stun them so that they fly slowly for a while).

- Making flight more difficult (heavier) if a player has more armor points and/or the weather is not clear.

- Decreasing elytra rocket boost speed (servers can't keep up!).

- Increasing kinectic energy punishment.