Suggestions

I’m sorry, I’m going to have to say no support. I am 100% for accessibility, especially since my own joint issues in the past year have made coli very difficult for me (I can only manage maybe 30 mins on my laptop, on a good day), but I can’t support autobattling at all.

The economy ramifications really is a huge issue. It’s easy to think it won’t ever be a problem if you yourself wouldn’t abuse it, but tons of people 100% would. I’ve seen Neopets mentioned, and I will have to say that it stopped being fun for me very, very quickly because I could never find/afford anything.

I do think the coli needs a rehaul (looking at you, captcha), but I don’t like autobattling and never will. I guess I just don’t like the loss of control? And if it was limited enough to not cause much of an economic impact, it would basically be useless.

I would definitely support keyboard rebinds, or a voice controlled thing. Actually, the latter would be super useful for my own joint issues.

Not sure if this would help, but have you tried mobile? I’m sure my joint problems aren’t as bad, but I’ve found that mobile is far easier on my hands, and I can go way longer in the coli than trying to click the same keys over and over again.

Full support, though I understand people's concerns.

I have chronic pain myself, making it difficult for me to even type some days.

In such an event, perhaps auto battles could turn off EXP gain (as people sell lvl25 dragons, this shouldn't be too major an issue). Then there's no risk in destroying the exaltation economy, but people like myself can still grind for items. Additionally, there could be a requirement to keep the window selected, and require the player to still go through things like captchas (but with more visually-impaired friendly puzzles), to make sure the player is still active. AKA make it so we can't just automate it in the BG and go away for hours.

Alternatively, there could be a limit to how much auto battle one could do in a day; such as a solid hour or two.

This site could really do with some accessibility. The coli is certainly one of them.

I support greater accessibility. FR in general and the coliseum in particular are pretty inaccessible and need to be better.

I wonder if there's a way to have a coli auto-battler with a fully leveled team only. The biggest risk I see with an auto-battler is with the ability to level dragons and then exalt them: Everything else would probably balance to a certain extent because suddenly everything from the coli would be accessible and AH would be flooded. The same way any new coli gene is ridiculously expensive for the first month and then slowly drops in price as more and more people get it.

But I'd also support just other methods of getting stuff. Like a "gather all" button, or "bond all" button to automate activities.

[quote name="Corviknight" date="2022-10-03 08:20:18" ] Maybe if staff actually introduced an alternative to coli grinding, we wouldn't be having this discussion. Unfortunately, coli grinding is extremely profitable for them, brings a lot of traffic for advertisers and the likes. No support. Instead of patching coli to be slightly more palatable, introduce other activities that are less demanding. Buff Baldwin. Buff Arlo. Buff gathering because I had one day where I had 4 festival currencies. Then again, every single new event has been boring and underwhelming because it's just coli grinding under a new coat of paint. Warrior's Way get a pass because it's actually fighting-themed, but the rest. Microholidays? Coli grinding. And there is absolutely 0 reason for it to be just coli grinding. Talk like a Pirate Day? Big same. That needed to be a coli event? Uh, why? FR DEvelopers should probably stop relying on coli grinding as a crutch. Events are not engaging because of it. [/quote] While many people talk about "coli alternative" seems this new mechanic should REALLY be alternative, when using it really prevent use coli at same time? Being same time consuming with same put of effort (well what activity without clicking exist? Hold and move something toward screen? Like often mentioned cooking - when you should mix your dish to make it ready and do not spoils?

Not to invalidate your issues but, I don't touch coliseum myself because I just find it really boring, and yet I don't really miss out on event stuff and I usually get enough food to feed all my dragons just from gathering (and I have more dragons than you even comparing just non-hibden). Especially now with the update where you can get event currency and stuff from any site activity.

Coliseum battles are not completely essential to the FR experience imo, and one could easily live without it. The only exception is specifically the materials for hibden, which buying them could get really expensive (though I bought some because I hate coliseum).

And for that matter, I don't do fairgrounds every day either because that too gets way too boring to me (though I do play glimmer and gloom sometimes, it's not really way that often). I think one thing you can do for money with little effort is breeding dragons and selling, it's one thing I've been doing.

(Though admittedly, if they were to add auto-battle to coliseum I would love it, because I just really hate coliseum.)

[quote name="Shenzai" date="2022-10-03 09:02:51" ] Not to invalidate your issues but, I don't touch coliseum myself because I just find it really boring, and yet I don't really miss out on event stuff and I usually get enough food to feed all my dragons just from gathering (and I have more dragons than you even comparing just non-hibden). Especially now with the update where you can get event currency and stuff from any site activity. Coliseum battles are not completely essential to the FR experience imo, and one could easily live without it. The only exception is specifically the materials for hibden, which buying them could get really expensive (though I bought some because I hate coliseum). And for that matter, I don't do fairgrounds every day either because that too gets way too boring to me (though I do play glimmer and gloom sometimes, it's not really way that often). I think one thing you can do for money with little effort is breeding dragons and selling, it's one thing I've been doing. (Though admittedly, if they were to add auto-battle to coliseum I would love it, because I just really hate coliseum.) [/quote] as someone who also hates coli and therefore doesn't do it very often, "this doesn't need to be accessible because it's not essential" is still very dismissive towards the struggles of disabled people striving for recreational accessibility. likewise, sunflowerlizard already stated that even gathering every day puts a strain on his body, so that isn't really a good alternative either. just because something isn't completely necessary, doesn't mean it shouldn't be more accessible to those who'd like to participate anyway. that said, i support the idea of a limited autobattle function. an hour a day sounds like a perfect limit, and if people are worried about the economy, turning off exp gain would be a good way to balance things out.

[quote name="sunflowerlizard" date="2022-10-01 11:20:24" ] I cannot play this game anymore because of my arthritis. Starving my dragons isn't fun. Asking other players for food isn't fun. Missing out on chests & events isn't fun. I play games like Fire Emblem Heroes that let me participate in most events using autoplay with no shaming & almost no physical pain, and I am just not willing to come back to FR and physically hurt. Even refreshing the page repeatedly to gather is uncomfortable--I physically cannot hit buttons over and over for 5 minutes straight. I need to have a break. Just about every single activity in this game is designed in an inaccesible way for me, and it's not necessary--brewing potions happens automatically in the background. Why can't arena battles happen automatically in front of players? Maybe with a cooldown on how often you can autoplay? This doesn't mean the game is bad, but it is a choice. This game would be better for me & I think for most of the player base if botting in the arena wasn't just encouraged, but built into the game. Autoplay, maybe with AI tactical choices (dragon A will do X if Y) like Dragon Age Origins & Dragon Age 2 had, would be more fun. The challenging part of the arena was never the timing of your attacks, it has always been designing an effective build & other tactical decisions. Players who don't like watching their dragons fight could keep playing the old way, players who do enjoy that could avoid physical injury, and this site could retain its userbase even as we get older or become disabled. The game is currently designed so that your physical ability IRL determines how well you will succeed & how many items you can accumulate. That is not, in fact, fair. Obviously most of the games in Fairgrounds aren't ever going to be accessible for me, and that's OK. But the arena is a big focus in this game, and making it accessible would immediately and directly increase your player base. When I was able to play, multiple players would leave every year because of joint issues like arthritis & carpal tunnel. I am not the only person having this problem. Even able bodied players talk about taking breaks for their wrists during dom battles. I often think of this game & miss it, but the site has been designed so that I cannot have fun playing. It's a great game, but it could be better. Just my two cents. I haven't been able to be active in this game for years, so I don't even know how relevant my specific proposals are. I just miss being able to play. [/quote] Big support for this. I've never even thought about these issues. I've found my hands getting tired after coli grinding, but I hadn't even considered how this affects people with issues like this. Considering that Flight Rising is generally more accessible for non-traditional gamers, I think more accessibility options like this would be a massive benefit to the game. I understand where people are coming from, but keeping the current captcha system in place is entirely possible with this system. Allowing for an autobattle option that you have to click with every new encounter would go a long way towards helping people with these issues while still preserving the game's anti-bot policy. It would be simple to implement and I don't think it would affect Flight Rising negatively. Something important to note is that battling manually wouldn't somehow become unviable because of this - autobattles in mobile games have notoriously 'ok' AI because they can't plan or strategize, and I don't think Flight Rising would be very different in this regard. Farming Mire with two leveling dragons still wouldn't be automated because of the strategy that goes into it; AI can't just spam scratch and have a good win rate. But farming in lower-level venues absolutely would be. As someone who has no desire to use this feature, it would be good for the game. edit: forgot to mention, an automated gathering feature would be fantastic as well. If nothing else, automated single-click gathering would help a lot with this.

I don't know why so many people aren't supporting you on this. I think they are taking the autobattling suggestions way too seriously and literally, applying comparisons to games that really have no way to compare to FR. The fact that this isn't a simple "yes" and "that would be great and I want to see them work on it" is really concerning. I don't know why folks always feel the need to go out of their way on posts like this to tell you that you aren't allowed to access something and your ideas will never work. That's just terrible.

I wish I was a dev so I could work on this for you. I believe there is a way to make this work. Why can't we just click "start game" and it does the battle sequence for us? I don't know how that would make things so drastically different from the way they are now. And the economy of the game doesn't really matter...it's all made up...currency is fake....yes the economy would "change" but so what? More people would have more wealth? OH NO HOW TERRIBLE!

[quote name="LayeredCake" date="2022-10-03 10:19:11" ] And the economy of the game doesn't really matter...it's all made up...currency is fake....yes the economy would "change" but so what? More people would have more wealth? [/quote] Sadly it doesn't work like this - it's exactly the opposite. Automatic coli battles will make all valuable coli drops (eggs, rare apparel, new fams/genes, den items) costs drop to fodder floor, so players who were earning gems through coli now will have no source of ingame income. If applicable to fodder training, it would also lead to huge treasure amounts from exalting without proper sinks, so exchange rates will change and buying gems for treasure would be harder as well, so, essentially, the only ways to receive gems will be trough real money purchases or selling dragons for gems (which isn't good source of income as for now). To be honest, I don't know the solution for such problem. FR is all about clicking here and there, it is just made this way.

An autobattler seems like it could really destabilize things, but the Coli does need to be more accessible.

Keybinds should absolutely be a thing, though I understand they wouldn't help your particular issue, but they may be helpful to others with less sever pain. Voice commands as well.

It doesn't matter if it's essential or not, people deserve to be able to play the areas of FR that they want to play.

I'd say support for better accessibility, but tentative no-support for the autobattler.

What I'd like to see is the FR devs reach out to folks like OP who deal with arthritis and chronic pain to try and develop solutions together, with the input of the people most affected. I don't think autobattler is the way to go, but I personally don't know what the right solution that makes the game more accessible would be, and I doubt devs without personal experience would know off-hand either.