Walk To Command (Petition for Reversal)

Garros

Vinzent said:

WALK TO is also pretty important for VI players.

Hey, vi player here... what are you talking about? Walk to is useful because I am a lazy and do not want to explore every single area in the game, but it is not hard to learn the ones I use or need to manually walk through. The only two things I used walk to on were boars in blackforest, and stopped because three was not worth it, and treekin in the same area, which actually got me killed cause it took me into some kind of jacked up cave. Aside from that it was just an easy way to run to places I did not want to bother exploring over a quest or something which always felt like cheeting anyway. Oh, and saying people are being emotional etc is a good way to make them listen to you, good job.

Veldrin

Argwin said:

Veldrin said:

Just had a novice who had trouble locating a city denizen he needed for a novice task because of this change

Which denizen? I tested several city denizens and they all worked.

Pilgrim Guide one

Kaios

ITT: "I am alright with this change, okay back to prospecting and harvesting with my scripts now."

Rino

Dear coder team, 

I am Rino, a total blind screen reader player here. 

I have the following confession to make in regards to the latest change on walk to command. 

1. I uses walkto dockworker to overcome my landmark limitation. 

2. i use walkto command to walk to sharks at New Hope, buffalo, scorpions, wyrms and various fishes at Phereklos. 

3. I have a 5 letter alias to "walkto cheska158767" to reach Common room of the Wander Inn. (indoors). this avoided 10x of "alt k", 1x "alt I" and "alt +,"  {10x north, 1 southeast and 1 north}  from Nont. 

4. I use walkto command to do flour quest, which provide 180 renown. 

5. I use walkto Kurgo, Mhunna, Mahk, and Khulhedra to get some of the hunting renown. Ulgase and Malvoc is just too risky to use walkto, since it usually results in death due to the swarms of undead. 

6. when walkto command is lifted during Egg hunt, i am as good as stuck in the particular area. past experience include stuck in actar Valley. 

Based on this update, the following is what i experience:

1. I am forced to give up reagent hunting since walking to these denizen is no longer possible. Probably will only do deep sea fishes since some area  is smaller. 

2. It resolve my decision of not to hunt Mahk, and Khulhedra since i am unable to locate them manually. 

3.  I have to give up some harbour renown since i am no longer able to walk to some denizens which i used as landmark to complete ferry renown. 

4. I can only complete the flour quest partially since WALKTO AAlen never work. 

5. I am now learning to stuck myself on a ship, hoping for a captain to appear to bringing me to sea monster hunting. 

The following did not change based on this update:

1. I don't go outside of continent alone since i do not have a mapper to return. Even the World Tree is dangerous to explore since i cannot gare from it. 

2. Digsites in wilderness is only made accessible when some kind players counted number of rooms to glide  to reach the exit. At time, i will still get lost, and have to restart from gare. 

3. Hunting in Dun Fortress and Qurnok is still possible, since hunting ground is carved deeply in brain. so are some one the 3x3 or the "Inverse T" small deep sea diving room. 

4. Extraction on my usual area is still possible since i can walk to Manara, Moghedu, and some digsites which was located with others help. 

Conclusion: 

Quoting   Anytus's message "2020/6/25/16:26 Greetings! Regarding issue #88162: Many players with visual and other impairments do just as well as sighted players in PK. We are quite proud that Achaea can be accessed just as well via screenreader as it can with a sighted person's client. Our many VI raiders, PKers, and city defenders are testament to this! Please don't hesitate to use ISSUE ME <your issue> if you have any further questions or concerns!"

I find this bar on walkto command is my last straw. I rely heavily on walkto command to enjoy the little few tasks in Achaea as I do not know how to script on PVP, and I am not capable to defend myself from pickpocketeer such as Mizik. Despite Achaea and Aetolia are both IRE product, I am surprised that Aetolia has in game walk to room number, but not in Achaea. Should the helpful WALKTO DENIZEN command is a form of insanity, then I ought to keep my sanity in check by playing less. Yup. January 2021, a good time to reduce achaea in my life.

Santar

Back before I was good at forays, I did a five man foray one time with a group of random folk. I asked the party for help finding the foray, but every other person in my party was visually impaired. I had no idea it was that prevalent until then. Took me like 45 minutes to find it(was a foray newb).

Veldrin

There are so many QoL improvements in the other IRE games it baffles me we don't have them here. Like walkto room number

Jovolo

I noticed that too when I started playing Aetolia recently. Achaea is still the better game, in my opinion, but there are  some features that would benefit Achaea and yet haven't been implemented.

There is likely a good reason for this, and I have heard that it is by Sarapis' design that Achaea is relatively obscure and difficult when compared to the other IRE games, which is something the Achaea production team may not be allowed to overturn.

Shirszae

Why add quality of life when you can instead remove it because of something not even the players fault? 

Stefana

QoL improvements are for games where the devs actually like their player base.

Jovolo

The circlejerk about terrible admin may be becoming unfair, especially given that they haven't defended themselves nor further explained their motives behind the change.

Sydari

Of most of the things removed from the walk to list, why was Certimene removed? I understand he's easy to find once you know where he is, not sure what's game breaking for him to not be included. 

I agree with the side that believes this was a bit heavy handed reaction to what happened, and I feel with a bit of time a better solution could have been made. I do hope adjustments can be made. 

Jovolo

Oh, I only just saw the comment on the first page about Nicola's message in the leaders clan. That is so disheartening to see.

I understand that being an admin for this game, or for any online community, can be a difficult and thankless task. While that provides an explanation for mistakes and the occasional butting of heads, it doesn't negate the responsibilities of the admin - to maintain composure and objectivity. Perhaps I am overreacting, you tell me.

"(Leaders): Nicola says, "I'm going to start docking credibility on people who spam OOC commands (see walk to) to try and skip/cheat events. It is very immersion breaking and frustrating for those who have put a great deal of time into creating content and events. Please go ahead and let your various discord channels/OOC clans aware."

1. Since when was WALK TO an OOC command? I just checked the website and there's a help file that provides an in-character explanation for the WALK TO command. Whether or not you want to repurpose that is up to you as the admin, but this leads to a bad-faith argument whereby Nicola is accusing the players of abusing OOC mechanics. Which is demonstrably false.

2. Presumed intention on behalf of players to "skip/cheat events" by using well-known and in-character mechanics to find denizens who are part of these events? Nothing more clearly explains how Nicola views the player base than that sentence. Rather than consider this an admin oversight to flag event denizens as not working with the walk to command, she assumes the player base is maliciously circumventing the intended design of the event.

3. "Go ahead and let your various discord channels/OOC clans aware" why is Nicola not relaying this information to the rest of the game and instead relying on other players to spread this message around? This comes across as petty and dismissive, to me, as if it's not worth her time to communicate with the players.

I think Nicola has done a lot of good for this game, and that's why I have defended her and the admin up and down the forums and the official Achaean Discord when I feel they are being treated unfairly. I would urge people not to see this as a divide between the admin and the players, but only a misunderstanding of each others' intentions. Everybody wants to have a good time, everybody wants to be respected. That isn't too much to ask for, I don't think, from both sides.

Colden

Great. Since it is only a misunderstanding, we should be seeing a reversal incoming, and apologetic news post.

Aerek

Discontent with the change doesn't surprise me, but the level of outage kinda does. I had no idea WALKTO had expanded to such extent as waking to individual denizens, by number, game-wide. I'm shocked such a functionality was ever added, and not surprised to see that curbed a bit.

Certimene not being on the list is weird, clearly the admin can exclude denizens for special events, those are true. But I don't feel this is the end of the world folks are painting it to be. Y'all remember we used to hunt buffalo before WALKTO, right? They're always in the same 10-12 rooms and you can still WALKTO Sangre.

Jovolo said:

3. "Go ahead and let your various discord channels/OOC clans aware" why is Nicola not relaying this information to the rest of the game and instead relying on other players to spread this message around? This comes across as petty and dismissive, to me, as if it's not worth her time to communicate with the players.

That's just how Leaders channel works. Admin pass guidance to mortal leaders, who manage their own people. Players often respond better to fellow players, where they might be tempted to rebel against Admin wishes.

Keorin

I think it would be one thing for WALK TO changing because the admin felt that its prevalence detracted from immersion and engagement with the game world.

I think it feels like another when it comes within an hour of the admin getting pissed that someone used it to get to a denizen a minute earlier in an event, and feeling like it's a reaction to that. The context here is definitely part of the frustrations.

It's also one more decision in what's perceived by a lot of people as a long series of poor, often knee-jerk reactions joined with a dismissive attitude, and I think that's colouring people's perception of the change a lot.

Jovolo

Aerek said:

But I don't feel this is the end of the world folks are painting it to be. Y'all remember we used to hunt buffalo before WALKTO, right? They're always in the same 10-12 rooms and you can still WALKTO Sangre.

Why remove the QoL feature if it's still relatively simple to do without the QoL feature existing? Then you're hurting the people who did rely on it such as some of the visually-impaired folk who have weighed in, new players who haven't quite learned their surroundings yet, etc. The game is plenty challenging enough regardless of whether or not you can WALK TO BUFFALO.

I also don't believe that the anger is only because of the change to the WALK TO feature, but that the situation has been exacerbated with the communication surrounding the change. The language used was accusatory, unfair, and also bad faith.

Aerek

Keorin said:

I think it would be one thing for WALK TO changing because the admin felt that its prevalence detracted from immersion and engagement with the game world.

From my vantage, this is what it looks like. A hide-and-seek event was made trivial by a QoL addition that wasn't intended to do that. I admit my immersion is slightly damaged by the idea of having perfect knowledge of every denizen's location across the entire continent, even in areas I'd never visited.

There was clearly some frustration on part of the Admin, but hey, sometimes that's how issues get highlighted. How many legitimate classlead approvals result from moments of frustration and realization that "really, this is ridiculous"?

Reyson

Aerek said:

Discontent with the change doesn't surprise me, but the level of outage kinda does. I had no idea WALKTO had expanded to such extent as waking to individual denizens, by number, game-wide. I'm shocked such a functionality was ever added, and not surprised to see that curbed a bit.

Certimene not being on the list is weird, clearly the admin can exclude denizens for special events, those are true. But I don't feel this is the end of the world folks are painting it to be. Y'all remember we used to hunt buffalo before WALKTO, right? They're always in the same 10-12 rooms and you can still WALKTO Sangre.

Jovolo said:

3. "Go ahead and let your various discord channels/OOC clans aware" why is Nicola not relaying this information to the rest of the game and instead relying on other players to spread this message around? This comes across as petty and dismissive, to me, as if it's not worth her time to communicate with the players.

That's just how Leaders channel works. Admin pass guidance to mortal leaders, who manage their own people. Players often respond better to fellow players, where they might be tempted to rebel against Admin wishes.

That's not a great argument for its removal, though. People played Achaea without the curingsystem for over a decade, and the game is unambiguously better for having it. I understand that it might not impact you, or maybe even most players, very much. But as someone who tries pretty hard to engage with everyone who's new to the game (whether from another IRE or new to this MUD, or new to MUDs!), I can definitely say that the QoL stuff is the kind of selling point that makes it easy for a person to feel comfortable enough to invest in the game. 

Even with the best start, Achaea is a multi-hour investment just to familiarise yourself with the style of game, let alone its content, which is also massive, and obscure, and if I can tell someone to just find a mob in a random village by having them use WALK TO instead of having to look around for them, that generally makes it an easier and more positive experience (especially since a lot of the time, NPCs don't identify as their shortname or other names that work on them in IH, with hidden names. Less of that these days, with new areas introduced, but it's still prevalent enough I feel WALK TO is a boon). 

Like I said before, what does the game lose by having it as a feature? You automatically know the name of someone's sword without ever having met them before, in Achaea, as well as their title, so what argument could anyone rationally make, IC, for you not knowing where Jill and Bob are hanging out? 

As for the other, I don't agree with you. If it's violation of an OOC command, as Nicola claimed it was, then it should've been a world-wide announce, just like they've announced rule breaking and changes in previous events. It's definitely a way of saying 'one of you is misbehaving but I won't tell you who,' without naming names, since it assumes that they're an established enough player to be on Discords and OOC clans, and it's certainly not a professional look, telling someone else to handle it, when the event runners have an actual IG mechanism of announcing that something is not permitted via the big red text box we see when someone's breaking the game or breaking a rule or something. 

If WALK TO -is- an IC command, and that was just an overreaction, then there are even clearer ways to handle it. Telling a player to be responsible of another player's behaviour in an OOC capacity is never acceptable. I have zero control over any of my teammates, and it puts me in a damn awkward spot if you make me so, since I can't enforce that any way. 

ETA: A lack of pre-planning during an event isn't a reason to cut something that benefits some people out.

Milabar

I think the only time I used walkto is to walk to village folks and novices.

As long as I can still do that 🤷

Keorin

Aerek said:

Keorin said:

I think it would be one thing for WALK TO changing because the admin felt that its prevalence detracted from immersion and engagement with the game world.

From my vantage, this is what it looks like. A hide-and-seek event was made trivial by a QoL addition that wasn't intended to do that. I admit my immersion is slightly damaged by the idea of having perfect knowledge of every denizen's location across the entire continent, even in areas I'd never visited.

There was clearly some frustration on part of the Admin, but hey, sometimes that's how issues get highlighted. How many legitimate classlead approvals result from moments of frustration and realization that "really, this is ridiculous"?

This isn't actually true, though. As best I can tell, no meaningful progress was made in the event via the use of walkto. And even in that case, removing walkto writ large because they forgot to set the toggle they already had for that denizen would seem excessive, because that wouldn't be a case of walkto writ large having issues for the game.

Laedha

That's not a great argument for its removal, though. People played Achaea without the curingsystem for over a decade, and the game is unambiguously better for having it. I understand that it might not impact you, or maybe even most players, very much. But as someone who tries pretty hard to engage with everyone who's new to the game (whether from another IRE or new to this MUD, or new to MUDs!), I can definitely say that the QoL stuff is the kind of selling point that makes it easy for a person to feel comfortable enough to invest in the game. 

100%. I first played achaea in college when I had a ton of spare time. I remember the days of painstakingly following along with Shazara's giant world map and memorizing various routes so I could walk quickly. Then I stopped playing when I got a job and had kids. When I finally did give it a try again almost a decade later, I doubt I would have stuck around with the curing system and walk to. This is a complicated game with a huge retention barrier for new players. No need to make that worse. 

Senoske

Laedha said:

That's not a great argument for its removal, though. People played Achaea without the curingsystem for over a decade, and the game is unambiguously better for having it. I understand that it might not impact you, or maybe even most players, very much. But as someone who tries pretty hard to engage with everyone who's new to the game (whether from another IRE or new to this MUD, or new to MUDs!), I can definitely say that the QoL stuff is the kind of selling point that makes it easy for a person to feel comfortable enough to invest in the game. 

100%. I first played achaea in college when I had a ton of spare time. I remember the days of painstakingly following along with Shazara's giant world map and memorizing various routes so I could walk quickly. Then I stopped playing when I got a job and had kids. When I finally did give it a try again almost a decade later, I doubt I would have stuck around with the curing system and walk to. This is a complicated game with a huge retention barrier for new players. No need to make that worse. 

I still have my directions journal. Used to keep it next to me at all times.

Adrik

If there was no discernable advantage to the players for being able to WALKTO this NPC during the event, then why was this such a kneejerk reaction of "OKAY FUCK ALL Y'ALL!"?

The ability to remove denizens from WALKTO has been present for awhile, and I've seen it used a few different times already that stopped people from WALKTOing certain denizens.

Now people are just going to wander the world and randomly get merked by Zsarachnor when someone accidentally (or purposefully) leads him out. Where is he? Iunno. I can't see the AREA or WALKTO a dangerous denizen anymore. Better wait for the rightfully upset person to tell us where they died.

There's a plethora of use cases where WALKTO is actually a friggin AMAZING thing, and actually decreases the amount of difference between Nexus and Mudlet.. and then you've got this one maybe bad thing that TOTALLY RUINED THIS EVENT (/s).

Utianima

Stefana said:

QoL improvements are for games where the devs actually like their player base.

Now that's below the belt and uncalled for. If no admin is stepping in here, I will. No need for personal unwarranted attacks.

Kaios

Utianima said:

Stefana said:

QoL improvements are for games where the devs actually like their player base.

Now that's below the belt and uncalled for. If no admin is stepping in here, I will. No need for personal unwarranted attacks.

How is that a personal attack? The administration on this game does act very cliquey. I do my due diligence in the game, report bugs, help newbies, and in general try to be a good and contributory player but for some reason I can't get a straight answer on any question I've asked or have just had messages/questions straight up ignored. None of that gives me the impression that I am liked or even cared for by the administration.

Makarios

I'm not going to go too in depth here (I will tomorrow, but I need to actually sleep and don't want to walk off after posting a lengthy explanation since there will no doubt be questions after the fact), but a couple of quick points:

- The change was not made because of the quoted leader post. This is an easy thing to assume given the context, but as with many things the situation sparked a conversation after the event. This change came out of that conversation. Often it just takes something like this to highlight a particular topic for discussion. Another example of this that springs to mind was the lethal highlighting that came out of the black wave event. This just doesn't come up usually in an admin context, so when something facilitates that adjustments sometimes happen. It is easy to assign motive or perceived reason in these circumstances, but these changes universally come post fact and not in the moment.

- We strive to please as many people as we can, but we also cannot please everyone. Sometimes players will fall on the side of the very much not pleased side of that line. We understand this (anyone who has ever played an online game let alone Achaea has been in that situation at least once), but I can assure you even if you are displeased it is because we are looking to improve Achaea. You might not agree, that's fine: but there is no motive beyond looking to make the game the best version of itself that it can be.

We'll have a breakdown of reasoning and such tomorrow (unless something catastrophic occurs), but I felt it best to make that clarification in the meantime given some of these posts.

Thaisen

I mean...the Black Wave lethal thing is a perfect example that fits the exact same situation as this one. An event was being "ruined" in the perspective of the Admin and it was quickly rectified.

I'm very excited to hear the reasons on how this change improves the game...because I can't think of any.

Makarios

I am not sure what you mean here. There was only one character in that event we planned around not dying, and I can absolutely assure you lethal highlighting did nothing for them: because I was playing said character.

What I am pointing to here is the lack of said highlighting was not immediately apparent as a significant factor until it came up in the course of the event. When it did, discussions happened, things changed. It is as simple as that, and is usually how changes born out of events occur: because events have a habit of creating scenarios (or emphasising things) outside of the normal flow of gameplay.

Colden

People will just write scripts to get around it. While those who don't code will be left with the tedious task of manually walking through areas searching. It's 100% worse for the denizens that constantly move. I thought muds were shooting for a more modern approach that attracts players, not annoy them with tedious tasks. Bashing alone has always been a  grind. Who wants to make it worse?

Gregent

Makarios said:

I'm not going to go too in depth here (I will tomorrow, but I need to actually sleep and don't want to walk off after posting a lengthy explanation since there will no doubt be questions after the fact), but a couple of quick points:

- The change was not made because of the quoted leader post. This is an easy thing to assume given the context, but as with many things the situation sparked a conversation after the event. This change came out of that conversation. Often it just takes something like this to highlight a particular topic for discussion. Another example of this that springs to mind was the lethal highlighting that came out of the black wave event. This just doesn't come up usually in an admin context, so when something facilitates that adjustments sometimes happen. It is easy to assign motive or perceived reason in these circumstances, but these changes universally come post fact and not in the moment.

- We strive to please as many people as we can, but we also cannot please everyone. Sometimes players will fall on the side of the very much not pleased side of that line. We understand this (anyone who has ever played an online game let alone Achaea has been in that situation at least once), but I can assure you even if you are displeased it is because we are looking to improve Achaea. You might not agree, that's fine: but there is no motive beyond looking to make the game the best version of itself that it can be.

We'll have a breakdown of reasoning and such tomorrow (unless something catastrophic occurs), but I felt it best to make that clarification in the meantime given some of these posts.

I also look forward to hearing the breakdown of reasoning and such. And if there will be any considerations given to what Rino has said in their comment for VI players. I know 'not all VI players', but Rino's post made many strong arguments, with clear evidence, on the impact this has had upon them.

I don't want to be cynical about this, but I do hope that what Rino said does not simply get tossed into the 'players will fall on the side of the very much not pleased side of that line' pile. Because it doesn't seem very inclusive if that is the case.