Yes you are right. What I meant is bad about them is that if they are used as a "party / alliance / fleet". If 6 friends use it to play the game together, you will split up the player base and everyone plays alone if their friends don't happen to be online. So what I mean it has it's uses but it should not be used as the default grouping tool to create isolated communities. So it's named incredibly bad.
DEVS: Why no social features like chat channels, guilds / corps and parties?
- Thread starter Dejay
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Yes you are right. What I meant is bad about them is that if they are used as a "party / alliance / fleet". If 6 friends use it to play the game together, you will split up the player base and everyone plays alone if their friends don't happen to be online. So what I mean it has it's uses but it should not be used as the default grouping tool to create isolated communities. So it's named incredibly bad.
I posted in a similar thread regarding social type features.. (perhaps would be good for the mods to merge the 2 threads) Anyway... my thoughts...
This would be my favoured option. A station chat that is not system wide. I want to be able to go to a specific station to perhaps hire a bounty hunter/ mercenary to escort me from one system to another with a valuable cargo. If i'm a Bounty Hunter hanging out in the 'station' I want that job.
Broadcasting that system/game wide would be totally immersion breaking but locally, or more to the point confined to stations would be a fantastic social addition in my opinion.
Each to their own though, I can completely agree with the anti social tools brigade, in a lot of MMO's, the chat is nothing but a curse full of foul mouthed, racist, sexist, bigots. I happen to think the community in Elite are far more mature but would still lobby AGAINST a General or system-wide chat.
Out in the 'system' if you saw anoither Cmdr, then you'd hail that Cmdr one to one, you wouldn't shout out in a system chat to that person and that's the way it should be, however, in a station, there really ought to be a 'cafe/cantina' social station chat.
I'd love to just hang out some time in game and take it all in, watch ships coming and going in a station/space port, chatting with a random Cmdr from X system just passing through. Just being social.
Adding features but having the ability to disable them is a far better proposition than not having them at all in my opinion.
I really hope that down the line station chat and more social tools develop in game. FD are developing a living, breathing, player driven galaxy,and I am all for what they are trying and hoping to achieve. A station chat would breathe life into the game, it just feels a little empty right now but its early days, I'm here for the long haul anyway and I really can see this game developing into a truly epic experience.
Rubix
This would be my favoured option. A station chat that is not system wide. I want to be able to go to a specific station to perhaps hire a bounty hunter/ mercenary to escort me from one system to another with a valuable cargo. If i'm a Bounty Hunter hanging out in the 'station' I want that job.
Broadcasting that system/game wide would be totally immersion breaking but locally, or more to the point confined to stations would be a fantastic social addition in my opinion.
Each to their own though, I can completely agree with the anti social tools brigade, in a lot of MMO's, the chat is nothing but a curse full of foul mouthed, racist, sexist, bigots. I happen to think the community in Elite are far more mature but would still lobby AGAINST a General or system-wide chat.
Out in the 'system' if you saw anoither Cmdr, then you'd hail that Cmdr one to one, you wouldn't shout out in a system chat to that person and that's the way it should be, however, in a station, there really ought to be a 'cafe/cantina' social station chat.
I'd love to just hang out some time in game and take it all in, watch ships coming and going in a station/space port, chatting with a random Cmdr from X system just passing through. Just being social.
Adding features but having the ability to disable them is a far better proposition than not having them at all in my opinion.
I really hope that down the line station chat and more social tools develop in game. FD are developing a living, breathing, player driven galaxy,and I am all for what they are trying and hoping to achieve. A station chat would breathe life into the game, it just feels a little empty right now but its early days, I'm here for the long haul anyway and I really can see this game developing into a truly epic experience.
Rubix
I would personally like to see global text chat between people on my friends list and instance (island) only chat for people who aren't on my friends list but are in my immediate environment. Obviously with the option to block / report etc.
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I've never seen the need for global server wide chat or its equivalent and have always ignored / turned this off in MMO's if it exists.
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Edit : Actually, something like this would probably be a necessity when walking around ships / stations is implemented, not to mention walking on moons / planets. I'd need to be able to shoot the breeze with my fellow Commanders while throwing back a few Pan Galactic GargleBlasters and watching the docking traffic from the bar
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I've never seen the need for global server wide chat or its equivalent and have always ignored / turned this off in MMO's if it exists.
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Edit : Actually, something like this would probably be a necessity when walking around ships / stations is implemented, not to mention walking on moons / planets. I'd need to be able to shoot the breeze with my fellow Commanders while throwing back a few Pan Galactic GargleBlasters and watching the docking traffic from the bar
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I think a chat that lets you send to a "your friends channel" would be excellent! Of course the chat channels should able to be combined in one window. I would prefer a localized chat (maybe one or two light seconds) to whisper all in all. Imagine someone wants to pirate you. If the local chat is the easier option (simply press return to activate chat) that would make encounters more interesting. Others might hear you talk with the pirate and know "what is going on". You could still whisper of course but an open local chat would make it so much more colorful.
I've never seen the need for global server wide chat or its equivalent and have always ignored / turned this off in MMO's if it exists.
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Edit : Actually, something like this would probably be a necessity when walking around ships / stations is implemented, not to mention walking on moons / planets. I'd need to be able to shoot the breeze with my fellow Commanders while throwing back a few Pan Galactic GargleBlasters and watching the docking traffic from the bar
Why do you see this differently for first person and ship? Until the expansion you could simply hang around the entrance of a station to chat and check out others ships etc.
I'd like to see comms follow a more sci-fi realistic approach. Take Star Wars or Star Trek e.g. Ship to ship comms on a common channel, system-wide comms if your ship can fit the size and type of tech, and then varying ranges of galaxy-wide comms for the bigger ships. All with common channels, private channels, merc channels, trade channels etc etc
If you want solo then don't chat to anyone. Simple
Secondly, as a haulier, I want a regular cargo agent who sends contracts my way as opposed to picking up random contracts on each station visited.
I want to employ fighter escort to dangerous places, other players
As for guilds and the like, the universe is way big enough to accommodate these and to maintain lonely empty quarters and busy populated quarters where uninterrupted solo play can flourish
Edited to add, the balance to big powerful guilds is bigger more powerful authorities (federation and empire etc) and alien invaders
If you want solo then don't chat to anyone. Simple
Secondly, as a haulier, I want a regular cargo agent who sends contracts my way as opposed to picking up random contracts on each station visited.
I want to employ fighter escort to dangerous places, other players
As for guilds and the like, the universe is way big enough to accommodate these and to maintain lonely empty quarters and busy populated quarters where uninterrupted solo play can flourish
Edited to add, the balance to big powerful guilds is bigger more powerful authorities (federation and empire etc) and alien invaders
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Rule #1 for Multiplayer games is to have social features.
Rule #1 for social features is to not force your users to use external methods to socialize.
Rule #1 for social features is to not force your users to use external methods to socialize.
Don't know who created those rules, but there are plenty of games that do not have social features and are multiplayer.
Most FPS games, Most MOBA games...
In fact, the only ones I can think of are MMORPG's... which is a whole different genre.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
So, in your view, everybody should play the game in a way of your choosing that the game (as it stands) does not support?
You mean FPS games like Call of Dookie? Even in COD you can group up with your friends, chat, and it even changes the color of the name tag so you can stay grouped up in game.
I'm surprised to see how openly hostile people are towards social features in a game that has 400 BILLION systems. If 1,000,000 buy into the game each person/group/clan can build a vast empire spanning well over 300,000 systems and never run into anyone else. What's the problem?
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
I'd like to see how one pilot would attempt to control a single station, much less a single system (without drone fleets, of course - 'cos, as we know, they're not in the spirit of the game)....
Did you miss the point I made on purpose?
There not that different really, but what I meant was that, while it may be something that 'could' be done without for ships (like now for instance), it's pretty much a pre-requisite for first person walking around type stuff. The reason being that this can be seen as a more personal way of playing rather than impersonal ships and not having a 'voice' while walking around is quiet alien to most people (in real life). Besides, it's massively better than 'speech bubbles' which you just know will be asked for after the first person walking stuff is implemented
There's not much point in corporations / guids / clan support directly in the game since it doesn't have any facilities where this would be useful other than co-op mission running. There's no territory control, no industry, no crafting, no storage hangars, no player stations so collaboration options are limited.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
No, I'm merely pointing out the apparent impossibility of territorial control on the scale that you refer to.
So a red herring then. I'm beginning to understand why the OP keeps talking about logical fallacies.
Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
You introduced territorial control into the discussion in your post.
The point I made is that if you could have territorial control, you can build an empire without ever running into anyone. And I wasn't saying it is even possible right now. You then pointed out that it isn't, which gives more credence to the need for social features since the likelihood of not running into anyone is even greater without territorial control, since even with territorial control you're not likely to bump into anyone.
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Robert Maynard
Volunteer Moderator
Even if there was territorial control, it is unlikely that many non-affiliated players would pass by any station "owned" by a group of players - the galaxy is rather big as you have already pointed out.
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