open e, open w, open s, and open n..... I don't know how many newbies have escaped simply because they knew which direction the door was. I'll never have to worry about that again, by the time they try and type open foliage, I'll have easily killed them. Ohh and those vets who haven't bothered to reexplore every area for the 100th time to notice whatever annoying, tedious, time consuming change you've put in this week, well I get to kill them too. Now if you could just nuke the flee command and make it something complicated like omfgrunformylifeorI'mgoingtodieagain, we'd really be in business. Just be sure not to allow aliasing, and change it every other day or so. Ohh, and if you could go ahead and get that defecate command in, I'd really like to begin ####ting a couple times a day, you know, for atmosphere.

Laearrist


Seriously, who does this change help? I'm assuming you didn't make it for the people complaining that the game has become more tedious, and time consuming. It can't be for newbies who already struggle mightily learning the vastness and complexity of CF. How does this make the game more fun, and less like work?

I lean slightly towards it being a good change. So long as they make the entrance to it obvious (atleast for the emerald forest one). I want new people to know that you have to open description word. Since there isn't anything like that in newbie school. Which there should be now IMHO. By having new people look for open (word) it allows them to think about looking for other things in descriptions, stuff that people complain about that they can't find, such as (weapons,potions/wands, ingredients).

In the long run, I think this is a good thing and will generate that lightbulb above some newbie heads.

Flags to make doors only findable via keyword have been around for a while. What hasn't been around for a while is them working right. If you want to blame someone for that, blame me. I recently made this implementation work right. (I also recently worked on a lot of bug fixes and some other fun things you haven't seen yet.)

You aren't going to see every door, or even a majority of doors, become keyword-only, I'll promise you that.

You also aren't going to see this idea go away entirely. This isn't negotiable. As an area writer, I'm excited about the idea of being able to put more fun hidden stuff in areas going forward with this feature. Those of you who've been in the Silent Tower might have seen my own personal jab at the 'open north;open east;open south;open west;open up;open down' mindless exploring alias. Now, every area with secret rooms doesn't have to work that way.

What might be up for discussion is which doors use this feature and what their keywords are. Right now, it's less than ten doors in the whole game using it. If they keywords are too obscure or some obvious choices are missing (in some cases I think they are, right now), log them with the typo command and we'll change them if we agree. If you think a particular door should be more obvious for some reason, we can discuss that.

The one in the vale should be obvious, as in open w. First, it's a newbie area. Second, the one to the south still works with open north. At what point to new fun things outweigh changing of old things to make them tedious?

First, it's a newbie area.

"Think of the children!"

It's not keeping newbies out of any place they'd want to go. It's probably keeping a few from getting killed, actually.

Second, the one to the south still works with open north. At what point to new fun things outweigh changing of old things to make them tedious

Sometimes, you need to make some things more difficult to make other things possible. I'd go into detail, but I'm trying to cut down on encouraging rants by feeding their authors.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

This is another one of those, trying to fix what's not broken things that annoys most of the playerbase but Imms don't really care and defend it with ridiculous things like static games get boring(I like run-ons). I really doubt your going to bring back the hordes of people who quit because they were sick of open e,open w, open n,open s. I think you'd save alot of whining if you only implemented this kind of ninja change to the game to new or revamped areas. Anyway that's my 2 copper.

That which does not kill us,
makes us stronger.

I will agree with this post.

This is a change who will not impress too many people.
Such change was really quite unnecessary and will not impress
either older players, nor any new player.
I personally feel there was no reason
to make exploring any harder or more trivial.
The game suffers other flaws that need some
fixing (which has been outed in this as well as
the unofficial forum by newer as well as veteran players).

Great job to you imm's generally thought
Yet another 2copper.

(n/t)

If this is used purely to cover hidden exits. I have no problem with that. Power to the area writers for making their hidden doors more hidden. Heck, it could be worse and we are lucky we don't have to search and be lagged 5 seconds to find hidden doors.

However, common exits, I really believe should be able to open direction. I don't think you should be running through a small town gate and....

open gate fails
open door fails
open drawbridge fails

what the hell? I had to type..."open palisade" ???

In a high impact pvp situation, this would be really lame. If that change ever went into affect, I hope at the very least when you moved in a direction it would say something like,"You must open a "palisade" first. (provided it wasn't hidden and meant to be searched out.)

However, common exits, I really believe should be able to open direction. I don't think you should be running through a small town gate and....

We agree. This has nothing to do with common exits, it's just one more tool for area writers if they think it fits. If there is a big obvious door, it will work just fine with "open west".

The depth of negative response from a few of our veteran players to this amazingly minor change to a few hidden doors in the game just floors me. When we set out to implement the new project I'm currently neck-deep in, being able to bring a lot of these exits 'up to standards' was, I thought, a great side benefit. Secret doors that had existed for years would now be, well...secret. Vets who knew where they were wouldn't be affected; they'd just have to use a keyword to open the door instead of the generic direction. I never even thought of this as a hardship.

To address specific concerns:

Tapster: No, this won't affect regular doors. Just the hidden ones.

ORB: Nothing was really 'broken', but there were plenty of areas that could have benefited from this feature when they were first written. Since we didn't have it back in the day, people found most of the hidden doors in the game the old-fashioned way, with the open-each-direction trick. I don't think that was ever the intent of these older areas, else the authors wouldn't have bothered with keywords or directional descriptions to clue folks in to these types of exits. It's got nothing to do with making the game less static, and everything to do with increasing the flexibility we have to make areas more interesting, including older areas to newer players.

Java: We always have to compromise between the two groups of players you describe (those who enjoy reading room descriptions/exploring and those who don't). This change doesn't force you to do anything; it certainly doesn't force you to not have any fun. There will always be plenty of equipment to find, mobs to slay and quests to solve that don't require going through a hidden door or even having brief turned off. This sort of attention-to-detail feature helps reward those folks who look closely at the areas as they move through them, but it certainly doesn't hinder your style of play.

Aiekooso: We're never going to be able to take the time to poll the playerbase before we make any changes. It's hard enough getting a consensus among the Immortals much less among everyone who plays the game. We have a wide spectrum of experience among the Immortals, and it is that experience we draw on when we decide to implement new things on CF. What this means is that you have to take the good with the bad; sometimes we'll implement changes that you like, sometimes we'll implement changes that you hate. We certainly don't sit up late at night thinking of new ways we can piss off our players! All we ask is that you take the changes in stride, post if you don't like 'em (like you're doing!) or if you do like them, and let us know if you find any bugs.

Nebel, Incognito I appreciate your comments as well.

The vitrol in your post, Laearrist, really stings. If you're worried about this being a 'time consuming' change, I can truthfully tell you that you'll run into this feature very, very rarely, and it really shouldn't take more than a few seconds to look in the direction you want to go to discover the keyword that opens the door. You certainly don't have to reexplore every area in the game to find these; you already know where most of the hidden doors are, and their locations haven't changed at all. And since (if I read your follow-on post correctly) you don't spam to find hidden exits, I would think that your attention to detail when you explore will now pay off (slightly) more than those that don't pay attention. They'll miss things, but you won't.

Bottom line for me is, I feel that this change very slightly benefits folks who pay attention when they explore an area, while not really affecting folks who don't want to explore in any significant way. As always, I appreciate your feedback, and as I and the other Immortals continue working on this new project, we will keep in mind that not all hidden doors need to be keyword only.

Kastellyn the Devourer of Magic, Lord of Legends

Is purposeful. I don't really care to be civil when (seemingly) every change that goes in makes the game I used to loving playing into something that feels very akin to work.

"I can truthfully tell you that you'll run into this feature very, very rarely, and it really shouldn't take more than a few seconds to look in the direction you want to go to discover the keyword that opens the door."

I encountered it either the day it went in, or very very soon after. It might have only taken a few seconds if it had been announced, but since I had no reason to reasonably expect any change, it did not. I considered that the area was buggy and was about to pray about it before I tried a working keyword.

I don't want to start rehashing old stuff, but this isn't the first change like this. Every time you say it's really a minor thing that benifits some and harms no one or only harms those people who spam/abuse/etc... Well I call shannanigans on that. Obviously I'm not the only one annoyed by this.

Laearrist

p.s. I don't spam because I don't really explore. I don't like reading descriptions, they aren't the interesting part of the story. I challenge you to find someone who thinks differently.

p.p.s. "I and the other Immortals continue working on this new project, we will keep in mind that not all hidden doors need to be keyword only." I'll beleive this when I see it, which I won't, since every new hidden door will have a keyword I never bother to figure out.

>p.s. I don't spam because I don't really explore. I don't
>like reading descriptions, they aren't the interesting part of
>the story. I challenge you to find someone who thinks
>differently.

I'm one of these people. Loch Grynmear and Kteng's Lab are probably my two favorite areas and it is absolutely essential to read room descs and attempt looking at almost every noun therein.

Cheers.

Is your favorite part of CF reading room descriptions? I was treating CF as a kind of never ending story. Just like in any book, the people, the places, etc, have to be described, but the action of any book is always what keeps people reading. While a book with good action but not very good description might still make the best seller's list, a book with great descriptions but no plot never will. I might read Loch Grynmear's descriptions when trying to figure out a quest, but the QUEST is the action, it's why I'm reading descriptions.

Ignore this:
*grumblenodamnquestinthevaleworthneedingtoreaddescriptionsgrumble*

>*grumblenodamnquestinthevaleworthneedingtoreaddescriptionsgrumble*

I'm of two minds about the vale and this myself. Okay, three.

On one hand, it's a relatively old low level area. Maybe this shouldn't be used there.

On the other hand, maybe it's good to throw it at you in a relatively harmless low level area, so you get used to the idea of thinking about it and have a fair chance to find that hidden exit in the Demi-Lich Trothon's magic enchanted of capris 30 levels later.

On the other other hand (don't ask), maybe it's good that it's harder for newbies to walk into dark elf scouts that will maul them.

Some of the best parts of this game are in the descriptions. From my pre-imm days, I would go to the first level of hell just to read the descs and see what other things may have been missed. I thoroughly enjoy seeking and finding things. There are so many things that haven't even been found yet and they have been around for years. My first area has been around for nearly two years and there are still things there that haven't been done.

Some players are going to enjoy running from Hamsah to Galadon, cabal to cabal and just do the pk/rp thing within that. While that part is fun, it can get boring because it is the same thing, over and over. Exploring a new area and learning something new that can give you an additional edge is rewarding. Remember the first time someone had that certain amulet, mask, gauntlets, rings etc.? These things were all found through exploration. There are others out there and there are plenty of players who can't wait to find them.

but apparently that wasn't good enough, and forcing me to read room descriptions to find doors I know exist was neccessary. I mean hey, I don't try and ruin the way you play, but feel free to continue ruining the way I play.

This is a text-based game. You have to be able to read to play. Upgrading is the nature of anything worth doing. The players who spend the time reading and finding the new things are going to upgrade themselves with the game. I am sorry that you don't feel like reading and just want to go through the motions, but for the game to remain interesting and for the staff to continue to see a challenge in maintaining the fact that this is the best mud out there, players are going to have to read.

You've gotten yourself all bent out of shape over something that many have already said will only effect you in the very short term. I really don't understand what the big deal is, but I am willing to accept that you do not like this change. Apparently there are very few of these doors currently in existence. It is certainly your perogative, I imagine, to forego exploring any future areas that may/may not include doors of this type. Once you've located the <10 doors that are currently in existence your interaction with this change becomes nil.

I can understand your frustration, though, because once patterns are established they are hard to break. There are many other, often better, areas to rank in as a 1-15 lowbie evil you know. Might I suggest Loch Grynmear. As an evil you can rank there without having to worry about these keyword doors (as a good not so much). There are many others, of course, but Grynmear is awesome so I'll try to plug it as much as possible from here on out.

I want to reiterate that a mountain seems to have been made out of a mole hill, here, by what appears to be a relatively vocal crowd. However, I want to urge the imms to really put some thought into giving us a string of changes in the near future that undeniably add to the fun factor and cannot be (mis)construed as "even more steps towards tedium." We'll all benefit.

With all the crap in CF I'm surprised something like this would piss you off.

.

First, you gotta know that this sort of post isn't going to get a positive response.

Second, I've seen it too. I used to be able to "open west" and now I have to "open window". It annoyed me the first 3 times I did it. Then I just knew to open window instead.

If I am exploring an area for the first time I look around and will catch things like that. They only time it gets annoying is when you have established a pattern for a certain zone and you have to change your pattern.

But really, is it that big of a deal? Sure its annoying that you forget and open (direction) instead of (carefully hinted at exit in room description). But how long will it take you to relearn your route?

I was actually surprised when I came here that you could just open west. It made exploring a lot easier, because you could blow off room descrips and just try every exit and be rewarded. But if I were writing a zone, I'd rather people actually read what I wrote instead of just using an alias that had "open n;open s;open e;open w;open u;open d"

Anyway, I just don't think its that bad.

Firstly, let me say bitching players are players who are paying attention to the changing subtleties and nuances of the game. So good for you for being alert and noticing that you need to actually address what is in the room and interact with it appropriately. If a player no longer needs to look at the area about them, why would I bother even writing an area and seek to make it an enjoyable and somewhat unique experience?

Oddly enough it is fun writing areas, but if the area becomes to commonplace, a small tweak to it is not deathful. Consider this, if you were wandering in a deep, dark, nasty dungeon, full of deathful traps and horrible flesh-eating monsters... would you not look about the area very carefully? My perception is that you just want to blow through the area and get the shiney prize at the end. You could say that I have been in this dungeon hundreds of times, and that damn monster, or that damn secret thingy has always been that way...so why should I have to ever do anything different? What an imposition!"

Oddly enough, I think the world and the players will survive. I honestly do appreciate your input, keep it up - thanks.

Eshval's email
BlackMarquessa@gmail.com

Eshval's slightly off-center (unofficial) blog.
http://blackmarquessa.blogspot.com/
Carnivàle
http://cirquecarnivale.wordpress.com/

I did realize my post was not "constructive". However, *I* personnaly don't feel like I should be expected to reexplore newbie areas. One of the few things that I consider a huge boon after playing for so long is that I don't need to reexplore areas, I already know them. So long as I hit the new areas as they go in, I retain a pretty solid handle on what every area is like. It took me about a minute to discover the right keyword for foliage (apparently branches works too). If, perhaps, there was some reason to expect the change, I might not have tried open w, open west, l w, open w, open w, open w... etc before I realized that west was no longer a keyword, and I needed to re-read a description (in an area that I've probably spent a thousand hours in) to figure out just which word I need to open it. I tried several (trees, passage) before I got it right, perhaps I'm just dumb.

Thanks for the response, and I'm sure I'll survive this one, but when reexploring all newbie areas hits my to do list....

Laearrist

p.s. "If a player no longer needs to look at the area about them, why would I bother even writing an area and seek to make it an enjoyable and somewhat unique experience?"
If it was new, I wouldn't expect to coast through it, however after the 300th time, I might.

If you know an exit is there, and can't see it, then just check to see what that exit is.

The only time it should cause you a problem is if you don't know the exit is there and are spamming open in every direction on the off chance you hit a hidden one.

One thing you're missing is that people play this game to have fun.

Some people enjoy reading room descriptions and picking up on minute details. But some people don't. You can't force them to enjoy it. All you can do is annoy them and make the game slightly less fun for them. And obviously, it doesn't add any significant element of enjoyment to the rest of the playerbase who would already read through the room descriptions, does it?

This is all assuming that this is a game-wide change like Laerrist is suggesting, rather than an area-writer's discretion type of thing.

You say that you're trying to prevent people who are just "blowing through" an area to get the prize at the end. But why? If they don't enjoy going through every line of every room description, why make them? It's supposed to be fun, isn't it? Why force them to not have fun? It's not like you're making it any MORE fun for someone else to counter that affect.

This just reeks of another example of how the game is moving in the opposite direction (more realism, but also more tedium and less fun) than most of us would like.

And don't take any offense to this. I like you guys (most of you) and appreciate what you do.

You've taken my perfectly good rant and ruined it with your well thought out opinion. Not only that, but because you support my position (at least to some extent) I now I to completely rethink it and come up with a way that this is, indeed, a good change. Of course, if I could've found a reasonable justification, I probably wouldn't have ranted in the first place, but damnit, I'll just try harder.

Pretty valid points, and no offense taken. The question becomes one of how do we write areas with no window dressing? Just a bunch of blank rooms seems pointless. On the opposite extreme, once areas become well-known and its secrets no longer secret, we could drop in a new area and let folks learn its secrets (FWIW, this won't happen). Many folks may enjoy playing a static game where nothing every changes, and no progs and quests are written and added, but it would seem that such stagnation leads to boredom.

I do enjoy the inpit of players, so keep it up. You folks make this endeavor fun.

Eshval's email
BlackMarquessa@gmail.com

Eshval's slightly off-center (unofficial) blog.
http://blackmarquessa.blogspot.com/
Carnivàle
http://cirquecarnivale.wordpress.com/

You know the saying, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."? I'd say this applies. This change annoys me in the same way that the locking of a desk annoyed White Goodman. Just because everyone who's played the game for at least 2 years knows where an exit is, doesn't mean it needs to be changed. Again, just because something isn't annoying and tedious, doesn't mean it's a sign of stagnation.

For the sake of simplicity, let's say there's two groups of players.

Group A likes to read all the room descriptions, and look for all the fancy keywords and really "explore" each area thoroughly.

Group B prefers other parts of the game, such as PK, RP, cabal politics, etc etc much more than he prefers "exploring", and actually finds "exploring" in itself boring.

The two groups don't have to be mutually exclusive. In the past, both groups were perfectly satisfied. Fancy descriptions were still there. Obscure keywords were still there. You could still do all the exploring you want. But for Group B, you could stick to directions so you could concentrate on the parts of the game that you don't despise.

So this change doesn't actually "fix" anything, it just forces Group B to act like Group A. I personally don't see any need for that. Rooms were still being explored in the past, the only difference now is that they'll be explored by people who really don't want to be exploring them.

That make sense?

I agree that stagnation is a bad thing. But changes just for the sake of changes are even worse. And changes which cause annoyance to a large part of the playerbase, without adding any fun to another part of the playerbase are worse than that.

Ultimately, this isn't really a significant change. It's just another minor nuisance to some players, without any real (that I can see at least) need for it.

A similar argument was used when the changes to damage adjectives first went through. Now I think just about everyone does fine with them. (not counting people that made their clients change it back to the old way). I think a certain period of awkwardness will come and go, and it will just be old news after a while. Not that I support or don't support the changes. I do think there are lots of other more important changes that could be made.

You are quite wrong.

Comparing this changes to the damage adjectives is just a poor
comparisation.

Damage adjectives had a real neat
feature for old and new players, named the 'damage' command.
New and old players had a choice.

Awkwardness or not, this change, while purely based on exploration
not only bring a somewhat bigger burden on newer players on this
MUD, but plainly discontents older players.
A poor choice, with today's lesser numbers.

Seriously, Why make life more difficult on the playfield, when
the realm suffers in terms of inhabitants.

"just enough to buy a pie and survive, yet have fun".0cents

Why people play in chess and why Master of Orion 3 has failed.
First game is "stagnant" with a few rules and pieces.
The second has a lot of complicated stuff and things.
Of course, there can be a lot of pointness changes, but that is not what makes the game better.

I'm not talking about these doors only. ( In fact I don't play now thus they don't bug me )
I would say new damages messages and new parry/dodge messages annoyed me more
because I had to rewrite my highlite triggers.
Though I admit that I don't read those messages while I'm fighting,
I usually have other things to do in fights.

The point you and a lot of the imms seem to be missing of late is that we (we being the playerbase) do not enjoy these changes. I'd say put up a pole on the side and see how many people agree with it being a great new aspect to the game and how many feel that it is ass. Realism is good and is appreciated to a point. Cf is already a game that requires a lot of time. Minor irritating changes that require me to make an extra trigger or alias are not fun. The problem is a lot of the "realism" added to cf is seen as an additional obstacle we now have to deal with. Ask yourselves since we have made cf "real" and more appealing have our numbers gone up or gone down. I know the general argument here is that well only the people who hate the changes speak up. If that is the case then do a pole and give everyone a fair opportunity to voice their opinion.

I am pretty sure, the forums are an avenue for expressing opinions, which is why they are here. Oddly enough I listen and read and respond, though I may not agree with players and/or immortals.

Eshval's email
BlackMarquessa@gmail.com

Eshval's slightly off-center (unofficial) blog.
http://blackmarquessa.blogspot.com/
Carnivàle
http://cirquecarnivale.wordpress.com/

Common courtesy would be to announce it to the mud. I mean, it's not as if we've played a certain way for 10 years or nothing.

Seriously though... what are you talking about?

We have the option of making a door accessible by keyword only. It's on hardly any doors, anywhere in the game. It's just one more tool for area writers, and it was written for specific situations. I hardly think it warrants a rant.

I have two pounds of salt in my desk just in case of popcorn, so that's saying something.