Almost didnt reply to this, but several points I think may have value.
First, if you don't want to be attacked while AFK or while deep in chat, or crafting even, turn auto-accept off. I know it seems less realistic, but after all, is that NOT what it is for?
Not that I want to be attacked at every turn, but I can not think of a time I did not accept a challenge... when I am present to do so. If I step away for a min and my characters are... meditating, well, that would hardly be Incharacter for a very low level person to kill him with 40 hits... while I sit there.
In any event. About HOW to get something implemented. Probably could be its own thread. I know you all know this, but let me be clear. There are a lot of people playing, and a few dedicated people developing. They are, I am sure bombarded with ideas that may be good in a game, but may not match their vision for THIS one. Want it implemented? I would first discuss it with a few people, make sure you are not alone in your desire. Then perhaps talk to any devs you know, if applicable, just to see if already in the works, or how much resistance there is to it. If you get something like "yeah, great idea.... for another game.. it won't happen here" then you might want to save some time and effort. Remember it is Talad's garden, and he is nice enough to let us play in it, and even lets us offer suggestions of what to plant, but ultimately, his decision is final, followed closely by the devs themselves.
So, what next? Well, they have literally an infinite number of tasks to do, so I would add as a feature request (and with even minor dev knowledge, I find those do not get deleted as much, as long as you do not hear the "not gonna happen". and then post a thread in this forum, and try to get support for it. Even if the devs agree in theory, you need to get community support AND a champion for the project to increase the likelyhood of it happening soon. With one bug that affected a small number of players, I had to talk to people for months, many forum posts, ingame, and then IRC to a newer dev, who used his expertise to look into the issues and the code, and post in bugtracker, then it was a few short days before it was figured out, and the next update, it was fixed. Time to get problem looked at? About 3 months of about an hour a week effort. (don't be too much of a pain, has a negative effect, remember, their garden, not yours) Time to get it figured out and fixed, about an hour. Having bug fixed. Worth it to me, though I only met a few others ingame that it affected, I am sure it affected others...
This topic, of how to get things done came up a lot when I was involved in volunteer leadership... Outline as follows.
Get idea
Flesh out idea with friends
feasability study (see if already planned, if there is little, no or negative interest in it from those who would have to be involved)
Build support (yes, talk to people, A line I used a lot was "Mind over matter, if no one minds, it don't matter" Limited resources esp time, you know.)
recruit a Champion (someone who can help from the inside, this may include you becoming an insider... Join the Dev team?)
Assist in the implementation.
Also, if they do not want it implemented, you may have to implement it yourself. I was unhappy with not being able to have links to threads and ps wiki saved ingame so you could drop links to OOC questions quickly, and their URLs are ugly, so I made the Yliakum Visitor's Bureau (
www.yliakum.com) Note, that is not to replace this or the wiki, but to help people with simple things and forward them to those links easier. Or you may want to find some other devs or dev resource to put your suggestion. Though I don't think I ever had an idea that no one else had, at least regarding game design, you may even want to get into game development yourself. Seems like too much work for me.
heh, back to work.
