Topic

Separate Chat Channel(s)

I think it would be a good idea for there to be another chat channel or two. The help channel seems to end up being used for general discussion like a "world" chat in addition to helping others. If additional chat channels were added, like "world" chat and/or group chat it would clear up the issue.

Posted 24 months ago by angelic_knight Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • There are already chat groups there is a glodal/social chat as well as a new streets chat, just join the groups. Unfortunately when the game goes live there will be too many people to have a world chat. It is like a conversation with 10,000+ people listening in. The group thing works for me.
    Posted 24 months ago by Ani Laurel Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Fully agree with Aniloverl's comment about the help chat not cutting it when the game goes live.

    It would be nice to combine group chat with the regular help chat to make them easier to find... Make them as sub rooms or something. For me, I didn't even know groups and group chat existed until I stumble over the groups section on the website.
    Posted 24 months ago by nightning Subscriber! | Permalink
  • How do you access group chat in-game? I didn't know about it...
    With this being the case, my suggestion is pretty much pointless.
    Posted 24 months ago by angelic_knight Subscriber! | Permalink
  • there is an area in the chat panel called "friends and groups"

    from there you can open up a chat interface for any group you belong to.
    Posted 24 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • The Help channel is supposed to be long gone by the time the game goes live. It's only there to help testing.
    Posted 24 months ago by Tingly Claus Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Really Tingly? Then I hope the devs are replacing it with a more complete chat system. For me, a huge part of in game social interaction comes from the current help chat.
    Posted 24 months ago by nightning Subscriber! | Permalink
  • i've been in group chats with the same activity level as help, like new streets.

    i've also started party chats with the same activity level as help, like for barnacle parties and pork fountain planning.

    these don't have nearly the staying power as help chat but are used frequently enough and with enough vibrancy to call into question a global chat's necessity.
    Posted 24 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Global chat scales horribly. Doesn't stand a prayer of surviving. If it did, global chat would scroll too fast to be useful.
    Posted 24 months ago by Tingly Claus Subscriber! | Permalink
  • A single global chat wouldn't work, but a global chat with specialized subrooms (accessible within an in game menu) would be just fine. Something like Ventrilo or Teamspeak...
    Posted 24 months ago by nightning Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Here's something that wasn't designed to work this way, but worked pretty well in the ancient Prodigy system. Have a bunch of thematic chat rooms (could be by group, or just about anything else). Let players see a list of them, along with how many people are in each one, and maybe even who's in each one. Then let them join whatever one they want for as long as they want. Have a limit on the total number of people in each chat room so it doesn't get ridiculous.

    It turns out that thousands of people self-organize! People find their friends, find popular rooms, organize people to leave one room and go to another to continue a particular discussion, and so on.
    Posted 24 months ago by Plurp Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I missed a couple of tests, and I have to say the change in the Chat interface is *mostly* wonderful. However, the Groups function is probably the most poorly introduced part of the world. You have a limited number of Groups you can join, which is excellent... but some things are so basic and/or intermittent you shouldn't have to join a group for it. The best example I can give is, an Auction Channel.

    I've seen Auction Channels work very well in MMORPGs and very poorly... the biggest difference being an anti-spam delay of 5 second or so. This one change would reduce the traffic on the already overloaded Help Channel by about a third (all of the buy/sell want/need could be viewed by those interested and ignored by those who aren't)... an in-game channel called Global Chat (which is what the Help Channel currently functions as) would divert the rest of the chatter (theoretically) and leave the Help Channel for those needing help , questions, and (currently) organizing some of the build project needs.

    The various game messages can get lost in all of the scroll, especially if a bunch of people are coming and going, or there's a lag bubble. Perhaps all of that could go in a place by itself?

    In theory, the players would self-police... by nicely pointing people to the correct channel. The biggest asset to the entire Groups format would be to find a way to create and join them from within the game. Yes, we have the Party function... but it tends to fall apart if you get disconnected for more than a second or two.

    Kudos on the improvements! I was able to keep local chat, plus one other (usually the Help) open *most* of the time... but I didn't like having to leave one or the other in the background when working within a party or responding to an IM. Much, much better though. Perhaps allowing for resizing of the windows, or moving them around...

    As the game gets bigger... you might want to think about an Ignore option. We've got a fantastic group of people right now, but eventually people are going to start having the normal chat issues. It would be nice to have a way to *not view* comments from specific people on occasion, and I didn't see that one or a Report Abuse... course I haven't had a reason to go looking for one :D
    Posted 22 months ago by Travinara Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I cant help but think unless your able to open a help channel at the same time as a global chat. That the help channel will be very quiet indeed. Unless you actually need help why would you be looking at it? At least this way and the confidence to keep on asking, you do get an answer. I know that does not help some one not as vocal as I am :)

    @Travina you can resize the window but it is not very clear if not pointed out. Next time you have game on and help open look in between the help window and local chat. There are some faint horizontal lines. use this to drag up and down to resize windows.

    Also than you so much for the help with the peat bog quest last night :) what a pain in the ass that is! :)
    Posted 22 months ago by Misha Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Peat quest is kinda cool, because there is such a thing as too big a group - and it introduces the concept of shared work.

    The way the channels worked in this last test was you could open more than one, and it threw them to the background with a little counter of how many unread items there were. So when the help channel in the background it quickly spiked to infinity, but my other channels (or IM's) would move slowly.

    As for the help channel... I'm one of those oddballs that opens it up and answers questions. I have the patience to answer the same question 100 times, but want to shut it off at 101. If we had a live place to help new players, I'd be watching it when I was just goofing around.

    I read somewhere there was a thought given to live greetings... with some sort of badge that could be turned on... perhaps it could also 'tune in' a help channel available to ummm those under Level 10 and the Greeters? Perhaps it just refines the global chat so those comments appear in a different color... maybe by auto-joining them to a hidden Group?

    I *do* hope the Groups are somehow mentioned in the Tutorial. We've had loads of down time to mess around with things, people in Live will probably not take the time to explore them until long after they should have... and wind up finding help when they go looking because they have a question.
    Posted 22 months ago by Travinara Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I love the global chat feature and hope that when it gets revamped it stays as something. I think the best way would be a subgroup arrangement. You would have to concede that some people would be left out at some times though. Not to keep bringing up FS but we had bubbles that appeared above our heads. One was a mentor badge, one was busy/away status. So maybe those kinds of things could be put to use like a badge on the avatars shirt or a hat or something. I would be willing to help new players and I think there are many others who would as well. The other thing I would like to see is an audible beep/ding when a friend enters the chat. This was a helpful thing on FS too because you'd often get wrapped up in the game play and not even notice your friend was there asking you a question. Those who don't care for that could just adjust there sound levels to mute it.
    Posted 21 months ago by Holly Waterfall Subscriber! | Permalink