The value of Information
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An Idea: limited communication.
What is the text box where you can talk to people called? whatever it is, I propose getting rid of it.
Hear me out
With game-wide communication; where anyone can say anything, ask anything, of anyone anywhere in the game, doesn't that take a lot of the unknowns out of the game?
A merchant can communicate instantly with potential buyers, players looking for a guild/party can find one in minutes (assuming the relevant people are on the server)
Without out it; a merchant needs to gamble on his market, bandits can raid and get a lead on anyone coming after them.
Guilds and parties could still have some sort of 'magical' communication between their members, but otherwise, you would actually have to go somewhere to see whats happening there.This would allow for messenger/courier guilds, newspapers, (as I have mentioned somewhere a while ago) city noticeboards would be very important, etc.
it would generally make things more unreliable, more interesting.
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Wow that is pretty dramatic. An MMO with no chat? Almost smacks of heresy.
Seriously I understand your points but chat is the reason many folks plan an MMO. Also if there were no chat people would just get around it by out of game means like Discord or whatever. While your idea offers some interesting possibilities for game play, I just don't think its practical.
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For far too many people, CHAT fulfills the Socialization aspect of the game, and it is a main reason they play an MMORPG in the first place as opposed to a Solo game. Contrary to popular belief, not everyone plays MMOs for the Guild structure, raiding and shared dungeon experiences, sometimes they want to play solo, but have conversations in various chat channels with other players of the same game, on the same server.
This being the case, I seriously doubt that any MMO would gut themselves by removing global chat.
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Honestly, people would just hang out on Discord or other chat platforms and removing traffic from the game, even potentially make it more difficult to track potential risks/issues, i.e; scams, RMT, etc. etc.
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It would raise the barrier of entry. If newbies can't ask for help, they will just leave and never come back. If they don't leave, then they leave the game world to look online for the info. The hardcore players will then have an advantage since they live in discord already.
On a flipside, you should get knowledge points for adding information to an in-game wiki, so players don't ever have to leave the game. Information should flow more easily, not other way around. Anything to keep people in the game and immersed.
Then, players could add info signs that link directly to the in-game wiki page that would help players the most.
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Thats about what i expected :/, and yes it would be less easy, but here a few points of clarification:
+New players:
@Brueson In my post about new players, i suggested that the starting cities have a guide/register, to help starting players with no affiliations to join a guild/city.I have noticed that a lot of guilds have pretty intimidating guidelines for people that haven't played a lot of mmo, and that a lot of the bigger guilds with history in other games aren't so interested in new members, particularly the sort of players that would have trouble requesting membership.
But if there was a list of active guilds, members, and their guidelines/'style', then new players would have an easier time being accepted into a guild.
but you're right about information, perhaps when a player finishes the tutorial, they are directed to the guild register and the forum.+Discord: In regards to discord, that is one of the things i had in mind when i said 'magical' communication for guilds/parties, and discord groups would be guilds right?
+Practicality: aside from the previous points, i would say that global chat is mostly for ease of play; with fractureds harvesting/crafting/trade emphasis, that would be largely trade: who wants what and where? But if a typed message is all it takes for that, what's the point? doesn't get a little boring? but without that communication, there would have to be set markets, trade agreements, trade disagreements, etc. wouldn't that be more fun?
Also, i wouldn't suggest removing global chat while the game is still in testing phase, that would be far too impractical.
local chat would still make sense, it would make sense to be unable to talk to players you can literally see, and guilds/parties would be able to communicate, either 'magically' in game, or on discord.
Question: how is global chat intended to work with the three worlds? is it cross world? or only within that world? or only on each continent?
Mostly I just like the idea of a messengers guild, I feel like that would be really interesting.
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@GamerSeuss said in The value of Information:
For far too many people, CHAT fulfills the Socialization aspect of the game, and it is a main reason they play an MMORPG in the first place as opposed to a Solo game. Contrary to popular belief, not everyone plays MMOs for the Guild structure, raiding and shared dungeon experiences, sometimes they want to play solo, but have conversations in various chat channels with other players of the same game, on the same server.
Basically this.
Also community discord servers would instantly overcome what you are trying to accomplish with removal of ingame chat, which would end up, chat removal not accomplishing anything at all.
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I don't think its possible to stop the information flow.
You would only remove it from the game - outside there would be other options.
e.g. a special global trading Discord could pop up instead of the trading in chat, ...I am pretty sure a Discord will pop up anyway because messages in Discord will last longer then in chat.
Why not create different ingame channels?
e.g. trade channel, newbie channel, ...
That would make the channel overview better.
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I've always want games to directly interface with discord and use it for all chats and easy one off group voice chats. It is cumbersome for a casual wander to join a discord channel for maybe an hour and then never join it again. Why reinvent the wheel?
I can dream right?
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and, believe it or not, some of us really hate Discord...don't mind chat, can be ignored when I'm not using it, but hate discord
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So you prefer Guilded instead... gotcha
I mean... is Teamspeak even still in business? I checked.. it is.. I just don't know anyone using it... hrmmmm.... oh well (shrug)
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Interesting idea, I did play a game with just that kind of system. One hour one life.
no speaking, no communication.
You had to work together to build a life together.
What ended up happening was people figure out how to spawn with friends and just chat in discord with eachother.The problem with systems like that, is people will always build around it.
Warframe has no market place - someone made a webpage for selling things.
Same with path of exiles (what now has the worst trading system to date...)Talking system would be the same. Likely someone would make an overlay (haven and hearth people did that - its gone now since the dev said fk it and gave up the chat back)
Point is. people will just build around interesting systems and it then becomes an advantage for players; new players will have more and more to get use to and it becomes a slippery slope of what they should know and people might take advantage of that.
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@Ostaff TS is still doing fairly well, actually. For the more security minded groups, like EvE players, it provides a lot more functionality, and better audio quality. I haven't used it myself in a very long time, but apparently it hasn't lost its appeal.
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I prefer TS to Discord.
I only use Discord as forum replacement.
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@GamerSeuss - I feel you! The one thing I find discord really useful for is voice chat during group activities. It's really hard (for me) to battle mobs and use a text chat. Having a way for a groups to coordinate is really helpful. But it would be so nice to have that feature in-game, instead of needing a separate app. Is that even a thing? I don't play many games...
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@PeachMcD Some games do offer built-in VoIP, but I personally think it's cancer. Usually ends up with some knucklehead(s) blasting music, racial slurs, or 12 year olds screaming at you when you kill them in PvP, cuz swearing is super edgy.
Then you either have to just disable it, or live with the toxicity. It's not like chat where it's easy to just report someone if they start crossing the line.TL;DR: Yes, it is possible, but brings some potential downsides. Using out of game voice chat is better, imo.
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@PeachMcD In addition to what @Trug said, the other problem with in-game VoIP chat is the server load. Same as when you play Board and RPG games on Roll20.net. Yes, the service has its own VoIP system, but because the same servers are trying to handle the game, and VoIP, everything slows down, and the VoIP gets really choppy for people. This is of course made worse on Roll20.net by the fact that it provides not only voice built in, but Cam as well. Nice to have, but actually better to use a separate system for your voice and/or cam chat.
I know years ago, when I used to play Diablo II with people all over the country, cell-phones had just started to put Free long distance and conference calling, and we used to create a Cellphone chain on speakerphone for voice, played Diablo II together, and for typed chat, we used our shared IRC channels (we were all IRC DJs for an internet IRC Radio Station)
When Team-Speak came along, I know a lot of the more serious guilds used it, especially to coordinate Raids.
Nowadays, if I am playing with more than just my Sister and GF as a group, we'll probably use Facebook Voice, so as to avoid Discord. If it's my Sister and GF, Sister is in Cali and I'm in Missouri, but I'll call her on the Cell and put her on Speaker, and Me and GF will be side by side on our laptops.
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Don't get rid of all chat. Get rid of wide chat - no global chat, no "zone chat". There's no faster way to destroy a fantasy game world than to include Twitter in it.
Because that's what it is. Why else is my character able to hear every petty thing that every other character in the game ever says? Either I've got Twitter on my cellphone or everybody is yelling really, really loud like all the time.
Wide chats are centralized and centralized = exploitable. That's why global and zone chats are full of 12yo trolls and spam bots. You don't see anywhere near as many of them when you remove wide chat, because they have to go to the 1 or 2 most populous spots to run their mouths. Fewer of them will do that because it isn't efficient, those that do can be easily avoided, and it's easy to moderate when you only need to check a few predetermined places rather than scour the chaotic storm of a global chat or scour the entire game looking for bad boys.
Guild chat is acceptable for practical purposes, but it isn't strictly necessary, because any guild that would need it will be using out-of-game chats like Teamspeak or Discord anyway.
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@GamerSeuss - I try really hard to stay away from FB these days. Hate hate hate their biz model & want to avoid supporting it. But after reading responses, I totally understand why the in-game voice chat would be problematic. I guess Guilded and discord are how it's gonna roll for me.
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@PeachMcD said in The value of Information:
I try really hard to stay away from FB these days....
I probably would too, unfortunately, I'm far too invested in the FB platform in my other endeavors. Just like how I have to have discord for a few things, even though I hate it, I have to have FB even more...I help run a local gaming convention (On the Board of Directors), I run the Biggest Karaoke Group on FB in my area, I run a FB group for Nerds with Pets, I run a Player/DM LFG group for Tabletop, Our Crafting and Editing side business has a FB page, The local gaming store where I'm a Store Sanctioned DM primarily uses a FB group, with Discord being the only backup (if given the choice, I will do FB over Discord, anyday), I have major health issues, and FB is how my Friends and Loved Ones keep up with my status in that regard, I'm involved with several other Gaming and Nerd gatherings/conventions, and finally, I'm a member of several Authors' groups where I network as an Author myself, and also solicit our Editing business.
Frankly, I'm kinda stuck with FB until like every other platform, it eventually fails. I was hopping Google Hangouts was going to take them down (was a MUCH cleaner system, in fact) but it just didn't catch on and couldn't take on the Juggernaut. Like with MySpace, FB will only go down if they actually have a server crash that keeps them offline for a week to 10 days, giving time for people to actively search out an alternate avenue for social media contact.
