While the combat is much smoother and vastly improved in the festival zone (and I presume later exploration areas), the half-minute wait to move each step makes exploration a chore instead of fun, and wandering around trying to find something interesting to do quickly loses its novelty.

One of the things I loved when I started playing Sylestia was that I could just click casually through the combat areas, flitting directly from one fight to another with the occasional booby-trapped crate in between. Now, its exploration is put to shame by random flash games.

I was really excited for the festival, but the sheer aggravation of how long it takes to do anything is already making it hard to want to continue. It's actually more satisfying to spend those hours nurturing egglings or making a new breeding plan spreadsheet instead.

In conclusion, if we could just get the nice, convenient skip-to-the-interesting-part-already button back, it would save a lot of frustration and wasted time. :-)

EDIT: Or, a 'wait in current location until someone attacks' button, that way exploration wouldn't be obsolete, as you'd still have to go places to do things, but you could find fights without having to wander around an already-explored area.

I'm not sure I fully understand. There should not be a half minute wait time between steps - it should be less than a tenth of a second on average, but never more than a second unless the server is having issues.

Also, the new system is not Flash, it's just basic HTML and Javascript.

The new system is meant to be more explorative. It allows us to have a 2 dimensional world instead of just a 1 dimensional world. This gives us much, much more flexibility when it comes to coding content and that's the main reason we upgraded to the map style.

It would not be possible to add an "explore the area" button like the original system and we do not plan on going away from the map style in the future. However, we do plan on further upgrading and improving the map system by adding more to do, making it perform better, and improving the interface.

I did exaggerate somewhat, it's usually more like 3-15 seconds than a literal half a minute, and if we're lucky it may be as low as a second and a half, but it's still enough to make it mind-numbingly boring to wander about once the initial scouting-the-zone is done.
(Though I'm sure most of the blame resides on my hideously slow internet.)

I didn't mention flash to imply that you were using it, heh. I just meant that I've seen plenty of games that manage to have movement without pausing to validate every step, and many of them that I would otherwise consider of much lesser quality than Sylestia. :-)

Is there any way to allow a client-side movement buffer or something that could be verified with the server in batches while still allowing smooth movement, rather than every single step?

Or would it be possible to add a 'wait for something to attack you' kind of button? Even if you limit the number of combats per exploration screen to keep balance or something, it would really break the monotony if we could choose to jump directly to combat.

Thanks for taking the time to answer, I've never seen a game whose admins are as willing to actually communicate with the community as you guys are, and you definitely have my respect for that.

Ah. I apologize for misunderstanding.

While it definitely shouldn't be that slow (I'm exploring atm and everything is as fast as it can be for me), a slow internet is something we can never really help much.

As far as improvements, the explore system still uses the old layout which is incredibly inefficient and slow. When I switch it over to the new system, it will use a new layout and be much more efficient. I will also try to figure out how to better have the entire system run to make it even faster.

So yes, there should be many improvements to the system over time - both in performance and content.

I understand where you are coming from with this Xo
But the exploration zones are more fun with being able to move around beacuse it adds more freedom to the zones
Also I think there would be a problem with the server being updated back to the old style, which like Krin said, was much slower and laggy compared to the new one which is faster and more fun instead of clicking a button and just selecting options.

I definitely understand what the OP is trying to say. Even for me, which 20mbit Down and 2.8mbit up still causes me to pause and wait for my next move to process when there's more then 40 people in the region.
It'll increases to like a 2-5sec wait when there's about 60ish in the Region.

At this point in time, it shouldn't take that long at all. If it is, there must be something wrong with your connection route to our Site.

If it's a persistent issue, you can try running a tracert and pings to our site.