Is there no General chat?

On Wanderlust's side: ok, we're in pre-alpha. But if there's a time to stand up and speak your mind about what you think is (or may be, or will be) a problem, then it is NOW.

Being ready for the release is also thinking outside of the box, and cranking your brain into thinking "what-if's", or solutions to problem not yet evident, so devs can make enlightened choices based on a vast brainstorm by us guinea p... ehm... early players!

 

Well, Hraw, I can only speak for what I see and feel, I can't imagine what you or others experience. It may be a minority position *on the forum* but I'm not alone, and I suspect there will be others who feel the same at release, when the game's population will be at its peak. As I stated, I've been on at the release of several new releases, including post-wipes. It's not about how many players are online, it's about the level of ongoing conversation, which is just one part of what makes a game feel alive.

Yes, we can still be friends even if we disagree. I enjoy these conversations, I don't take them personally, I totally understand that we come from different perspectives and have different reactions, it doesn't make us adversaries. That's what alpha forums should be, good-natured, passionate discussions about what we like and don't like. The devs have a vision and they will fulfill on that vision, informed in part by their community. So it's important that we speak up.

I called it a win-win because having the ability to use a global chat when I want to satisfies my desire to be more connected to the community, while being able to completely shut it down should satisfy your desire to avoid the downsides. If I understand your argument, you are concerned that if such an option is available, you will occasionally have to use it and you don't want to have to be forced to do that. You didn't articulate why, but I think I know what you mean: if global chat is available, then other options that would otherwise be available for things like trading will not be used, forcing you to use global when you didn't want to. That makes sense, so if that's what you're saying I get it and I would concede it's not a win-win, it could turn out to be a mutually exclusive preference favoring one side over the other.

And that's why Portalarium gets the big bucks. Whatever they do, I hope they wind up producing a game in which I can feel more like I'm part of a community rather than how I feel when I log in today. As it stands, I avoid the game in favor of MMOs that I enjoy equally, but feel more a part of. I made a significant investment pledge in this game and I don't look forward to abandoning it, so I will keep poking my head in to see how things are progressing. Onward!

 

Do you mean General(local) or Global chat? We have local chat. No one forces you to use the chat interface.

 

It's actually a decent topic and concern, so details on the design would be beneficial to the community. Have you considered asking the question on one of the next Dev-Hangouts? Just remember the question has to be short and to the point. Might even be as simple as if there's a plan for in-game purchase of something similar to the Noble's Magical Discourse Orb.

 

Good post Wunderlust.

You expressed essentially the main thrust of what I did not articulate in detail.

Kudos for the constructive attitude! Not sure what time zone you are in, but the Soltown center square is pretty active most evenings (USA time zones) with chat and conversation - a few vet players hang out there regularly and several new players join in each night; it may not stay that way long (and Murphy's law pretty much guarantees you will show up when it is empty), but I've found the area to promote all sorts of engaging social interaction in just the last few days.

 

My issue with having a general chat is how much time and money it will cost Portalarium to police it. When Archeage launched, it took several months for Trion to get a grip on the general chat spam from gold sellers and the like. When it comes to SOTA which is a crowd-funded game I'd like the general chat option to be approached with caution. Spend the money on making a great game first.. . There are stretch goals I'd really love to see met and implemented prior to anything that requires policing. Maybe general chat can be added as a stretch goal, that way they can raise the funds for getting it into the game with spam bot detection software already in place. If it does happen, I would really love the option to turn it off.

 

The problem with your proposal, relative to what you quoted, is that there is nothing stopping people from spamming "WTS..." in, say, the Pickup_Groups chat, etc.

 

Wouldn't it be the same problem and cost as local chat? Internally, they have to monitor every non-private (e.g. whispers, party, etc) message. Which means internally they have to have access to a global chat, as /local is vicinity-based and every scene is instanced. The GMs will need the ability to see everything regardless if it's a /local or /global. My guess is that they will not have the resources to actively monitor all chat 24x7 and will rely on the community to /report players violating the TOS. As everything, both public and private messages, is logged they can review once /reported.

Which is yet another argument for an embedded IRC for the chat system. IRC is tried and tested and has decades of development as a chat platform. Complex scripts can be written to monitor and enforce policy. They wouldn't need to write custom code to handle this. Just use and tweak what's been available in public for decades.

And as it is IRC, players and GMs wouldn't even have to be in-game to talk with each other or monitor behavior. So if you want the game to feel "alive" (if that definition simply means seeing lots of chat activity), this is one way to definitely take it to the next level.

Now imagine POTs with their own IRC channel and custom bots providing info, services, etc...and possibly, just maybe...hook up these bots to player-driven NPCs (e.g. Town Criers, Vendors, etc).

 

One thing I'd love is to have "/local" at least as a town-wide chat.

As of now, its hearing radius doesn't even cover a castle lot.

 

I would like to see lot-wide chat and town-wide chat to be available but only to lot/town owner and people with permissions.

To announce events and such.

 

I honestly have no clue how it works but I would think Yes and No. Yes I'm sure it would be the same problem. As for the cost, no I think it would be more. Maybe my logic is wrong because I have no clue how it would work but I'm kinda thinking more chat channels to monitor = more resources needed to do so. Maybe you are on to something though if they have access to a /global chat internally though. I see what you're saying and it makes sense.

 

The time and money wasted on developing and policing a global chat system could be better used on more important things. We already have good systems in place that are not being used to their full potential. We already have an irc chat built into the site that is easy to use, guild chat, and player hot spots. I've been on heavily populated UO, WoW, and Minecraft servers with global chat systems and saw little chat, spam, begging, etc. Just because the devs waste time putting in an unnecessary feature doesn't mean it will live up to the desired result.

Having a more alive feeling server will not be achieved with yet another built chat program. It will come from friendly and engaging community. Get a large open guild together and camp the popular player hot spots and start up convos with whomever you see. Host game events. Schedule conversations on the IRC chat, forums, or Facebook page. The problem isn't that we need another communications feature, if anything its that we already have too many available already.

 

Wanderlust,

I sincerely hope you and the wife decide to stay and play Shroud. Based upon your interaction so far, you are the exact type of player this community needs to stay healthy. You are intelligent, logical, opinionated, experienced, articulate, and community focused.

Without becoming too political. I would relate our discussion involving global MMO and chat to that of gay marriage. Some in the community have very powerful personal reasons for objecting to all forms of global communication. Those with objections have the ability to not participate, turn off the function, and generally ignore the activity. Supporters of the activity could participate and not directly impact those with objections.

The community with objections have very sound logic and merit but demand to inflict their belief system on the entire community. Their opinions and beliefs must overrule the enjoyment of others even though the enjoyment does not have to include those with objections.

In closing I firmly believe the benefits of a global chat, at a minimum a zone chat functionality in Shroud far outweigh the negatives and will create a stronger community and gaming environment. The solution of joining a guild would only encourage the creati0n massive and impersonal guilds. The isolation will hinder community building. Not everyone wants to or is technology capable of communicating via IRC. Forcing people to conduct activities to communicate such as jumping up and down in front of other is insanity. We play MMOs to interact with others, sometimes the interaction leads to real friendships. There are alternatives, specifically not enabling the chat or playing in Off Line mode.

Please for the love of all that is good about MMO gaming, give us a global chat function.

 

With global chat though, you also might want to give thoughts to not just the gold spammers but regular conversation that occurs. I mentioned it before once we go full online (out of beta, everything is in place, etc.), what happens if we do have global chat.

If you're in POT A and there is a local event going on there - PVP tournament. Bound to be all kinds of conversations going on, insults being hurled, bets being place, drunken conversation, ringside broadcasting of the matches, etc. etc. etc.

Now, at the same time, POT B has a wedding ceremony going on for the world record of most digital marriages at once with a hot tub party afterward, food and dance, entertainment, etc. etc. etc. Which also brings with it all kinds of conversations, words of love being exchanged, vows being said, rice, flower and garters being thrown, plus all the poolside stuff that goes on after.

POT A & B's conversations, while equally entertaining, probably will not mingle very well. Well, I guess they could, marriage and pvp being somewhat similar at times, but not really in the intended manner. And if this is what is being meant by global chat, then I don't think I'd like to follow all that conversation going on.

On the other hand, if they had localized chat for just that POT/scene, then the occurrence of events in one location would be limited to just that location. So it wouldn't disturb other events/conversations going on.

Although even that could have problems. Do you really want the whole town to know that you were the one that ***** <put in what ever you think appropriate? I mean, you were just talking in your house to a couple of friends over a pleasant evening meal. I suppose we could just open up a house chat tab for that but what if you accidentally forgot to change chat tab and started talking about it in global Would happens often enough I'd think.

 

I've seen a lot of arguments for and against global chat. Perhaps a poll should be made.

 

I continue to favor global chat, but I understand the arguments against it and reasonable people could disagree on the point. The most valid objection in my view is based on experiences in other games where there was only one global channel and all the others were local or zone based, including the Trade channel. This is a very bad idea because the global nature of the global channel makes it the only one that will be used by gold spammers, traders, LFG'ers, and anyone else wanting the most expansive audience possible. So the guy who doesn't want to deal with global chat, but wants to trade, is forced to use global chat whether he likes it or not. This is why a global chat channel only makes sense if Trade, LFG and other specialized channels are made global so that the trader doesn't feel the need to abuse global chat. Those who don't like global chat but want to trade, then have an option to leave global chat off and still visit the trade channel.

And therein lies a big problem. I love the idea of local markets and I want to see them promoted. As far as I've seen so far, this game's crafting doesn't really involve true craftsmanship, where individual skill matters (e.g., the original SWG, or The Repopulation). Here, all crafted widgets are exactly like every other crafted widget, so the only basis for competition is price. If you have an AH, then all crafted products will be truly commoditized and the only thing differentiating them will be price. This is what happens in EVE Online, where everything is a commodity and the only basis for competition is price. They deal with this to some extent by the requirement of delivery so location becomes a product differentiator too, but this game doesn't have that so an AH in this game will create a very boring and unsatisfying marketplace. Local markets and reliance on local vendors helps mitigate that problem and was the main reason SWG was able to have a good player economy without an AH. Local markets are fun, I love the idea of hawking my wares in my community and getting known as the go-to-guy for my particular widgets.

But local markets mean no global trade channel and no global trade channel means that, if there is a global chat channel, it is guaranteed to be overrun by trade spammers, and there goes your local markets.

So I don't know what the solution is, but I'll trust that the people whose job it is to make these design decisions are creative enough to come up with a good solution that preserves local markets and at the same time a strong sense of community that feels alive.

 

Actually this will not be the case going forward. Crafting skills and crafting mini games are in the next couple of releases.
Yes, there will be a standard result, but there will be outlier results as well where you can add customization on top of customization.
You can already see the basis of this with the items crafted getting properties from the materials used.

 

This is bound to change.

Devs already said many times that once the crafting skills are in (there are none, atm, just gathering), and some other mechanics are put in place, crafting any object will yield a variable result, depending on many factors. It has been mentioned skill level, quality of reagents, production level of char, quality of station, random rolls sprinkled here and there, etc.

Since there's no way to weigh in this aspect right now, I can't say how much a noob crafted rusty sword will differ from ArchMaster Katrin the Smithing Hammer of the Gods crafted humongous claymore of world destroying++, after they apply the same longsword recipe.

But I'm confident we will soon see an implicit added value to the tooltip line "Crafted by XYZ", as a quality mark by top notch artisans.

So you will know that by obtaining my finely handcrafted weaponry, you have to travel to my remote crossroad village and visit ye olde shoppe, either to wield the masterful blade, or to bring them in Brittany to sell it at a premium price. Or keep poking at the enemies with that puny device you insist calling a sword, that you made in your shack basement with leftover iron.

About specialization of global channel: if global comm is added, they must absolutely be split by subject. A single global channel will become the cesspool we all loathe, in no time.

 

Personally I prefer UI magic to be gear based.
This makes them opt in instead of opt out.

So, sure, have a global chat function if people wants to but make it an item you need to purchase and maintain.

Just like I think the compass should be an item. Especially that magical, over here is a POI thingie.

Journal should be item(s).

Etc.

 

It seems to me the solution is simply making it intuitive for one avatar to walk up next to another and start a conversation or up to a group and ask a question or to be aware of a conversation going on in the general vicinity. It needs to be intuitive so that even a brand new player (and hopefully even someone who has never played an mmo) can do it easily and reliably. The tone of this whole thread changed (on page 1) when the above failed in-game for the original poster (Wunderlust).

There is a thread in a different subforum discussing the Chat UI with 25+ really good detailed suggestions where a dev dropped in and said this recently:

So this is another one of those "pre-alpha" issues - the focus right now is on refining and organically growing a game still in early stages, the burden of building community seems to be mainly on us for the time being (this issue is just growing pains).

Portalarium knows the importance of community building and the "community feeling" and I'm certain they want to attract new players to the game while running off as few as possible due to frustration over poor communication capabilities. I'm glad they also seem committed to nipping in the bud the "bad" elements that other mmo's have by (what I would say 'lazily') just allowing any player to put something on the screen of every other connected player as often as they want to and with whatever they want to say.