Writing Code

Sixtus

You should hire someone to work exclusively on bridging the gap between the input received from the game and the system that interprets it.

 

The most tedious aspect of the game is writing code. I would bet that you’ve lost a significant portion of your player base because of issues like this. If someone was hired to work on bridging this gap then I’m sure you would have a much smaller learning curve.

 

Also, why don’t you send emails to players who haven’t logged in recently and ask them why they left?

Ahmet

The team has made countless quality of life changes, adaptations, and additions to Achaea that make it easier and easier to play the game without having to know how to code. Not sure what you mean by 'bridging the gap between the game and the system', but the nexus client was a MAJOR step in the right direction. There's not much that you -need- to code, if anything, and for most things there's scripts readily available. I'm very skeptical that the coding aspect of Achaea is what drives away most novices.

Then again, there's always room for improvement. Maybe IDEA some changes you think might be worthwhile?

ETA: Speaking of QoL changes, why are the PATH commands only available on Nexus?

Kiet

You mean like the serverside curing system that requires 0 coding knowledge to use? It's not like I disagree, but they also have been working at easing that, too.

Atalkez

To be fair, SS is hard to manage without some scripting. It's really fast so scripts will be superior to change prios aliases from my experience. So advanced use, at least, you may need to augment. Turning it on is easy and super user friendly though.

Not that it's difficult, and I doubt there have been many people that quit purely over coding hurdles.

Kiet

You don't really need to manage SS for regular everyday things, though. A lot like the 'need' for arties, people are just convinced they should be prepared to fight the top tier, even if it'll realistically never happen.

That said, lots of people did quit or not try achaea because of coding hurdles, I'd say, and assuming otherwise would be naive. Obviously no one quit on an established character, but lots of newbies from my experience see the 'need' for coding and decide it's not worth the hassle. It's why I'm glad we have things like serverside curing and WALK TO and the nexus client now.

Cooper

Kiet said:

You mean like the serverside curing system that requires 0 coding knowledge to use? It's not like I disagree, but they also have been working at easing that, too.

Using straight SS curing will get you killed extremely easily even in low/mid tier. It requires complex coding to use properly.

Rhodri

I think there's also a good portion of the player base that gets a lot of enjoyment out of coding for the game.  I know I wasn't alone when I'd ditched WoW after Blizzard started assimilating all its player mods into the default ui.
I know it's a fine line, though.  And I think the devs have done a great job at making the game enjoyable to coders and non-coders alike.
Also, the bulk of your code's already been written for you.  Tried Svof or Wundersys?  With that out of the way you can pretty much dive right in to combat and figure things out as you go - granted you were willing to use Mudlet as your game client.

 

Atalkez

Kiet said:

You don't really need to manage SS for regular everyday things, though. A lot like the 'need' for arties, people are just convinced they should be prepared to fight the top tier, even if it'll realistically never happen.

That said, lots of people did quit or not try achaea because of coding hurdles, I'd say, and assuming otherwise would be naive. Obviously no one quit on an established character, but lots of newbies from my experience see the 'need' for coding and decide it's not worth the hassle. It's why I'm glad we have things like serverside curing and WALK TO and the nexus client now.

I would be surprised to know someone quit 100% because of scripting. We've got people that are blind playing this game. Look at what Tanris accomplished.

If you like the game, you'll learn the small things here and there to make your experience better. If you don't, you'll blame 'needing scripts', when that's probably only 10% of the issue, and quit anyway.

If you like it, you'll learn. If you don't, you won't.

Aethele

Ahmet said:

The team has made countless quality of life changes, adaptations, and additions to Achaea that make it easier and easier to play the game without having to know how to code. Not sure what you mean by 'bridging the gap between the game and the system', but the nexus client was a MAJOR step in the right direction. There's not much that you -need- to code, if anything, and for most things there's scripts readily available. I'm very skeptical that the coding aspect of Achaea is what drives away most novices.

Then again, there's always room for improvement. Maybe IDEA some changes you think might be worthwhile?

ETA: Speaking of QoL changes, why are the PATH commands only available on Nexus?

Completely agree. Somebody starting with no coding experience has a mini map in the corner, can turn on curing for basic hunting, and use landmarks to get around. Far more user friendly than it has ever been.  I first played 12 years ago and would have quit almost immediately if I hadn't happened to be immediately grabbed by a patient mentor who helped me with literally everything for a week or two. 

Ahmet

Aethele said:

Ahmet said:

The team has made countless quality of life changes, adaptations, and additions to Achaea that make it easier and easier to play the game without having to know how to code. Not sure what you mean by 'bridging the gap between the game and the system', but the nexus client was a MAJOR step in the right direction. There's not much that you -need- to code, if anything, and for most things there's scripts readily available. I'm very skeptical that the coding aspect of Achaea is what drives away most novices.

Then again, there's always room for improvement. Maybe IDEA some changes you think might be worthwhile?

ETA: Speaking of QoL changes, why are the PATH commands only available on Nexus?

Completely agree. Somebody starting with no coding experience has a mini map in the corner, can turn on curing for basic hunting, and use landmarks to get around. Far more user friendly than it has ever been.  I first played 12 years ago and would have quit almost immediately if I hadn't happened to be immediately grabbed by a patient mentor who helped me with literally everything for a week or two. 

Not to mention that nexus has built-in pathing functions for finding rooms, tabbed chats, configurable windows (afflictions, defences, limb damage, inventory, tasks), hotkeys, hmew bars, an easy-to-use scripting interface (that uses javascript and gives them access to jQuery, perhaps one of the most robust and well-documented language libraries for this sort of thing that you could use), on top of providing a nexus clan for help, as well as a documentation that's consistently being updated.

95% of publicly-available scripts (if not more) for mudlet cover one of the things mentioned, that nexus/serverside already handles.