Originally posted by rauz
Originally posted by DaveG
+ 4 (but with a fee)
... Bingo!...
Yes, public transport would be nice, but you\'re talking far future from here.
And there is no reason why you could not sleep in the cart. They would just have to take you out at the destination, but you paid for that after all

Imagine a cart driver stopping at an inn, carrying out a sleeping mage, and laying him inside

This way there would be a possibility to travel automatically if you wish (and cannot teleport yourself) without annoying people travelling at full consciousness.
I agree that the possibility to snap-to roads or use some pre-planned waypoints (located farther than current visible area) could lead to hordes of walking zombies, which is much worse than a zombie following you.
As for zombies following you - realistically, you should be able to hide in bushes or something so that they no longer see where you went. But to make things easy, I would prefer a special command for getting rid of followers. That way you retain the possibility to follow anybody at anytime but get the ability to get rid of zombies.
In other words, accepting followers should be the default (and without offering leadership) but the option to reject them should exist.
I am not sure that grouping (and especially following only inside groups) is a good idea. What would that group be? If it is a guild, you do not start or join guilds just to walk around. If it is some technical aid for walking together it is just weird - making a group to walk together for a while. How many of such groups would you have to create to walk comfortably with people you meet?
Or if it is something else, what is it?
Now how to make it possible for people that are not explicitlly in some group to walk together and talk: when you /follow somebody, it affects your movement only at the times you would normally stand still (or walk straight because of autowalk?). You can move on your own as usual. That way, you can choose where you go, wether you prefer to walk next to your leader, follow behind, or run around in circles. When you want to talk or look around, you just continue in the direction and at the pace selected by the leader.
Now if you both follow each other, and one talks, you keep moving. If you both talk or look around, you stop (or walk straight possibly?). That\'s natural and should be expected.
Larger groups can form if several poeple follow one leader, for example.
Of course, you need to stop following. But this is related to other use of keyboard as well. Currently there is a \"toggle chat\" - I am not sure what it should do as the keybindings do not work very well on OS X. But I would expect once you press it, the chat window gets focus (without showing it in any way - aargh), and when you press it again it loses focus, and you can use the keyboard for navigation.
So what I would like is a \"start chat\" command - I would bind it to spacebar but other keys are possible - the keybindings in the game are fortunately already configurable. If you hit enter in the chat, you send the message an return to \"normal\" mode. If you hit Esc, you should not send anything (keep the unfinished messagefor later), and return to \"normal\" mode.
In \"normal\" mode, I would bind some Stop command to Esc as well. This would stop following or anything else you are possibly doing (ie stop autorunning, take fishing rod out of the water if you see a log that would likely break it).