Basically:

- New map is great. Looks cool (especially from a distance, nothing different
when actually walking around.)
- Arelium has same stuff as Batcity had.
- Game is still same as it was. Grind, grind and grind the same areas as
before.

Practically:

- Playing is a pain in the ass. Moving around is too difficult and annoying.
Also the continents seem too large without any reason for the size.
- Arelium is too big. Again looks nice when looking whole map, but sucks when
actually walking around.
- More and more is moved away from the "playing", meaning doing the actual
areas (the real content of the game). And more is added to the auxiliary part
of the game (like moving around). I really hope that there is something deeper
behind this tune, and it isn't just remake of the landscape.

In my opinion, something has changed in the Bat policy and we have seen more
and more attempt to make this game more "realistic" (which is bound to fail,
since this is a text based fantasy game after all). It seems that it's going
too far at some points, and added realism is making things harder and worse
without any real positive effects.

We are also seeing more and more RL arguments on e.g. news posts. It seems
that every suggestion can be either shot down or backed up with some RL
references, and most of the time it just looks plain stupid and in general
there is no real logic. This game is full of unreal elements, and if RL would
really be a reference, this game would need serious tuning and it would
probably fail completely.

I agree that this change must have been a major effort and I respect that, but
it doesn't mean it's automatically great. I hope to see further improvements
to make this game more playable and above all FUN for everyone.

I don\'t think Martow has a problem with the 5 continent idea, I\'d say just
about everyone thinks that great.

The issues are:
- Why did the continents need to be so big? Surely the story would be just the
same if the maps were half the size.
- What\'s wrong with portals between continents?
- Why create a wanderers guild and not extend the navigators guild?

Maybe there is some grand master plan that I\'m not aware of but I don\'t see
the point of adding all this extra overhead to get to the interesting bits of
the game. However I am willing to be enlightened.

Askan

A bit proofreading through Gores answer.
Thats actually really good news. New content and quest is what we need and its
great that you coders have time to do such things.
Becouse ferry-system is really, really broken at the moment and too many
players dont have ships becouse they drain so much of money, which is already
drained at many different places. That seems to be the biggest reason behind
many players disgust of this new world.
Then why do wanderers require navigators to be able to join them? And those
alternative methods, mounts, need some kind of skill to use, which many
players dont get. And what about the older alternative transportation methods,
like balloon. Why not extent the balloon rides so that could be yet another
alternative method of traveling or impliment some kind of a zeppelin system
between main cities and continents, which could be made by goblins or dwarfs
just like one popular game that many different parties like to copy.
I hope when you go through your logs about the level of adaption to these new
challenges, I hope you can distinguish the masochists from those who really
want to play, but dont have the time resources just to figure out the deeper
workings of the ferry system to actually be able to use them nor do they have
the ridiculous amounts of explore to get wanderers to nearly a working level
so they could travel between continents on their own nor do they have the cash
to buy ships that cost more than a player city or have the extra wealth to
salvage their ships due to outrageous pirate problem. My suggestion would be
that you coders would in addition to watching the situation from afar, you
would step right into a players boots and get hard hands-on experience in this
new world.

Just my mad ramblings,
spammer,
Jutom

What\'s wrong with taking a ferry? Eh? Why on earth would I want to wait at the
docks for the right ferry to come to get me to a certain continent? Why would I
want to sit in a ferry and wait for the trip to be over? What\'s the point in
this? Does it make the game more enjoyable, to sit around and wait for a
ferry. What do I \"gain\" with this time wasting? I wanna waste my time by
slaying bunnies and humping a goat!

Formse

It takes an unreasonable amount of time for the ferry to arrive, it stays
in the harbour for only a few seconds so you have to sit there and stare
at the screen ready to press enter. After that you have to type 'view' for
a gazillion times so that you know when to exit the ship. And you can't
leave anywhere whilst the ship is moving or you'll miss your destination.

This setup, while being neat, totally and utterly horrible what comes to
usability. Please do something. Thank you.

~/A

Can NPC ships be introduced near major ports to patrol and shoot at pirates,
its retarded that i summon a ship in harbour and some ass within 5sec starts
shooting at it. Without me rasing the anchor or so much leaving the port.
Hello? any sees some thing wrong with that, even in the days of great sailing
ship piracy was common, but pirates would not start shooting in major ports.
Or would not even sail into them. Seriouly if ur gone make this a major form
of travel. Post some navy ships, or u gone have a large player base pissed off
at some ass who decideds to sink every one as soon they clear the port.

In theory, theory and practice are the same, but in practice, theyre not.

Trade between continents would be cool. It could be like that game you play on
your Ti-83 calculator in math class, Drug Trader, where you fly around trading
drugs, basically the same as any location trading game with random prices
changes and chance. That could be fun, for sure.

Possibly you could make another way to buy sailor things, like quests. Also,
"credits" for ship use only, perhaps you could earn credits by doing stupid
missions that people like me are too highbie to care about. i.e. Board of
Ship-Tasks: Aragon wants a class 2 ship to transport 50kg of rat from Bat City
to Crimson guild harbor within 1 hour, he will pay 50,000 ship credits" then
some nubus who like ships can screw around with them and get ship credits,
this way people who can't solo cash can keep up with shipping.

(*==-- /\/ --==*) BatMUD Council Representative (*==-- /\/ --==*)

first off, wow way to tear into someone.

secondly, you obviously don\'t play the game. the huge difference between
regen breaks and the ferry is that i have some control over regen, there are
you know spells and skills that make it faster, and i generally try to not
fight mobs that will leave me with 1 hp/sp/ep after one round causing a nice
long regen break. however the ferry is just simply wait time. shitty shitty
wait time. especially since i occasionally play on my lunch hour. and i dont
want to spend ten to twenty minutes of that sitting on a fucking ship. hell,
even when i\'m not at work i usually dont get much time to play, and sure i
COULD stay on one continent, but fuck you i dont want to. so much excess shit
has been added with these maps, and although i assume (but really doubt it will
work) that some effort will be made to tweak it. its ridiculous! why do i
need to pay extra money every time i want to go to my guild (besides the
insane wait)? why cant i swim? i mean i know its far and would take a while,
but this is a fantasy game after all. and if you want a fantasy reference for
letting me swim, i\'m fairly certain beowulf could do it, so why cant i!!!

I recall somebody else getting up close and personal
recently in 'bs' group *cough*
Well anyways, while you're doing an excellent job for
making this _free_ game better everyday, you might want
to get more perspective on something. All you who say
'stop whining about travelling, continents ...etc'
Please do this test:
Get yourself a character, absolutely no wizard assets
whatsoever, some 50k money (lets say you've just bought
an expensive weapon) to the bank, some 20-50M exp and
a castle room in some random place. Then start playing
lets say a nomad. I'd like to see after a week of trying
to reach areas, paying ferries, running your ep's off
in the wilderness saying again 'stop whining about
travelling.'.
Honestly. Try that. Try hard labor for one week with a
soloing, and tell me that's easy, fun and playable.

~/A

wow, yes you did just immort and already you are spouting wizard crap. having
partied with you a fair number of times, and listening to lots and lots of
whining, the idea that you would enjoy this new map and traveling as a nomad
is ridiculous. but whatever. As for Favorit, is your player character i dont
know, around level 50, have 2 navs and 1 wanderer and non-limitless money? how
much exp is it worth, do you really sit and play it for 8 hours at a time,
cause saying you logged in, decided to try and travel to one area on the same
continent and wasn\'t too upset with it, isn\'t nearly equivalent to being a
player. and i dont mean any offense by this, just you saying hey i have a
player char, shouldn\'t really convince anyone you have a realistic
perspective of being a player, do you often try to travel between continents
(with or without eq?) do you join parties? do you try to do exp on one
continent and train on another without huge amounts of down time? if so,
great, maybe you do have a good idea of how players are feeling, if not, then
maybe give it a shot?

Done, but if geting my equ from chest to the continent X takes me 15mins it
(more or less) enforces me to stay in Laenor.

Yes i have ship, no its level 4 navigator has no hands (why the hell did he
get even the status navigator if he cant even navigate from one capital to
another on a open sea where the is no rocks, i am a mere free time captain and
even i can do it FFS) nor is there much to do when 60M ship starts to ramm you
to get more sailor rep (no wrong in that, but i would like to play/sail too
instead of being a rep generator to others)
Yes i have money for ferrys, no my triggers are not fast enough for the ferry
nor do they tell me where the ferry is heading nor will they reduce the time
for simply WAITING for the ferry. Excelent timeframe to crack one sudoku btw.
Yes i could join wanderers and become a wandigator, no waiting ~1,5mins to
see if the wierd relocation or summon or dim is going to fail is not fun.
This, this wonderfull guild screems for triggers that gets the job done while
i go out for a smoke and bells me when all the party members are in one place
while i play couple rounds counter-strike.
In addition, the guilds needs five dozen rooms to be visited that i have no
idea how many i have visited (or i do but my score does not). Specially i
can\'t undestand why you need these nifty new spells to get party member in
(some, i give you that) areas to the otherside e.g. behind river/window/take
honey anvil.

Yes i do agree that geting into \"action\" was quite fast (clicking \"join\"
is how fast i usually get it served) but now simply geting the party together
is a feat. Specailly if someone would like to take something more with them
than their naked bodys. From waiting that go & summon caster(s) / eps to be
regained and having the actual party already together we have added waiting
that the members (might) show up to a major places and after that we get to
the old part i.o. regen and head out to the area.

From one extreme we have gone to the another, could there be a nice middle
part? Sink wanders and make summon & relocate to use same cost method than Go
(being inside a area would use the areas exit points for sp calcualtion plus
50 sps, another 50 if the target is outside also) but having a minimum cost
equal what relocate / summon have now? Using pcity teleport to get to a
different continent would cleave ½ the ammount of using Go betwean spots but
both in sps and in eps? Ships to be ships and not some barkboats and sailors
to be steel, so that they can cross a pläkä (windless) sea without need of
holding hand every step. Yes, 4M ships can do this but not everyone has 4M
ships and consider it \'fun\' to steer a ship with, well, not that good
interface (sorry melemkor but sailing is not smooth at all now, its more like
hide and seek).
I personally feel that the \'fun\' starts when you get the party together,
when all the members that are going to party up are able to chat in same
channel, thus inviting members to party outside the room would make it bit
less pain to skoop the group together and into one place. Until you have the
members in party all is just big IF, regaldes where they are and what they do.
If i got !intel in my party and he goes to get FW\'s, well at least the party
and the leader knows he is planing to come. Might be trivial feeling to you
but would make my game experience more confident thus fun.

I like the change, a lot. I dont like the way it shoots casual playing/party
gathering in a leg, both of em.

A hits you.

Then stop doing it. Honestly, every time one of these weird little flame wars
start, they end with some (arch) wizard pointing out how they give up their
time and energy to make a game that we play for free. This is true, no one is
denying it that I know of, but let\'s be honest here: no one is holding a gun
to your head either.

If coding for this game is so trying and unappreciative, then stop doing it.
You don\'t get to have a little pity party just cause you do something of your
own free will. A tree might get sick of being a tree but it doesn\'t have
options, you do. As I see it, if making this game is so terrible when people
complain then a) stop doing it or b) remove and ban the people who complain.
It\'s your game, if you dont feel I deserve access to it because I complain
too much then get rid of me, it\'s wholly within your right and I would have
no hard feelings if you did. (No wikipedia rants for me )

Now obviously, the same can be said about players, you don\'t have to care
about our take on the game. It\'s been joked on bat before that if all the
players quit the wizards would probably still code things for themselves.
Fair enough. I\'d like to think in my last post on this thread I tried to
avoid asking for a pity party for players. I probably failed (badly and
apparently sound angry all the time anymore), but I wanted to see how Favorit
played, because possibly there was some other experiences that would give him
a better all around understanding. (Sorry to Balthas for bad formatting!)

Okay, the changes aren\'t done, there are some obvious additions coming soon
(Sunday even!) and they will change a lot of the current complaints. Fair
enough! But as for changes farther on, well if we\'re being honest here,
there isn\'t a fantastic track record on batmud for proposed changes coming
\'soon\'. (Hasn\'t this map been in the works for years?) So please forgive
players for not having patience, we\'ve had a hit and miss relationship with
\'soon\' in the past and some of us aren\'t so good at the delayed
gratification (read: me, maybe others but I won\'t claim any right to speak
for \'em).

That\'s all.

-Fil

ps. Thanks for giving me something to do at work for a few years now.

Ok, great, this isn't finished yet. But I don't get it, why do you put this
new stuff in game if you know it isn't nearly finished? You knew this would
f*ck up much of the game and still you wanted to make it happen? Why not
finish it first, make the plotlines, trade quests, whatever, and only then
make it public?

To me, it seems another standard Bat tune. Go from one extreme to another,
like someone said, and wait for response and then quickly tune it to playable.
You sound like you had all planned before, but to me it seems quite hasty
excuse at the moment, looking how the game stands right now. If you knew this
is going to be bad you surely must have expected heavy whining and commenting,
so take the heat.

Don't worry, just remember the immortal words of Schnucki:

"Those who know the least, know it the loudest."

Solution: Archwizards could offer bans until the tuning is over to people like
Martow who don't want to play until things are finished. That way he wouldn't
be able to play an unfinished game (since he evidently does not have the self
discipline to stop playing himself), and all us that don't mind playing an
unfinished game would have one less whiner to listen to for a while. Win-Win
situation I think.

Yes everyone should be quiet and happy. And if you open your mouth you should
be banned or removed. I think you need to change to Soviet MUD, or accept the
fact that commenting is ok.

I think you missed the point. The fact is you don't have to, nothing is
stopping you from NOT playing until all this tuning is finished. But either
you havn't figured out that you have a choice, or your addiction is so strong
you can't stop yourself, and for severe addicts who are playing a unfinished
game they can't stand to play, a ban until tuning was finished would be like a
wizlock, but solely for you. It was a bit tongue 'n cheek, maybe my sense of
humour is just non-existant. But what you were asking for, IE, unfinished mud
to not be given to players, amounted to 'keep game wizlocked for weeks on
end', and I don't see why we should all suffer simply because you don't have
the self discipline to not play something which is obviously irritating you.
Besides which, not having it played until the tune was 100% complete would
lead to a crappier mud. Beta testing is an integral part of development, and
it is effectively what we are doing now.

Maybe I'm blind or stupid, but I really can't see what good would come from
not allowing batmud to be played until everything was fixed. Those who don't
want to play don't have to, those who do want to can. I can't see anything
wrong with that.

You don't know anything about Martow. Get to know the person before you start
flaming him and spamming this channel with your idiotic ideas. Martow was not
rude. He was opinionated, he was not ungrateful. Martow's post is completely
acceptable and something you'd find on any decent development feedback forum.
Fil's posts are hateful, rude, and from an idler who doesn't even play. If you
can't tell the difference between the two posts then enjoy your job working at
McDonald's, as you have about no ability to comprehend social contact.

(*==-- /\/ --==*) BatMUD Council Representative (*==-- /\/ --==*)

Fantastic that you chide Lavitz for not knowing Martow and yet you know nothing
about me and make the same complaint. You\'ll make an excellent lawyer.

I said to those who distribute, watch for fun and laugh at animal
cruelty. I didn't say to anybody 'who sees it'.
Now you're mixing things up. Everybody here appreciates what you do,
the hard labour, but as I said - if you're not playing it fully, you
need to hear from those who do. I've heard/seen many complaints about
ferries and travelling, but most of them have been torpedoed by wizzes
who just say 'stop whining and learn how to travel'. Well travelling
for nomads in Bat has always been difficult, and now it is tenfolds
that.
I would be much less annoying if for instance ships would be more
affordable, or atleast us poor upstart newbies could build a ship
and travel without some top pkillers in bat shooting us down every
chance they get. I've always been a poor moneycollector, and
I don't want to grind for the next 6 months straight to get a
friggin jollyboat with oars.

I say again: get perspective. Grind your way through 30 megs of money
without any easier means of travelling to get a ship and tell me
that's not unreasonable in the current situation. Perhaps the
situation we started in after this conversion - ferries costing
GARGANTUAN amounts of money etc frightened me, since extremely rarely
in Bat have the wizzes changed anything to less expensive.

~/A