Why the in game chat is dead ?

raynierf · Nov 5, 2014

Is this mmo ? One of icon of a good mmo is a busy general chat where players constantly add stupid comments, and some good stuff to read or to ask, a good way to make players friends an co-op gameplay.

I know is a beta dont hit me yet...
But i see a lot of players on same system or stations but no coms, i been trying to say "hi". No answer

Are they aliens from our galaxy....?
No same language i guess....

This need to be fix or encourage some how. There are players that buy the game just to talk lol, no my case don't get me wrong, i just like to ask jn game questions and tips.

insanephoton · Nov 5, 2014

At the moment chat is kind of clunky. It's easy to miss that people want to chat and with the lack of instructions some people don't know how to respond. There's also the issue of people using controllers or joysticks who may not want to find the keyboard to chat. People don't tend to hang around the stations long enough to start chatting and in supercruise they could drop out any second due to interdiction or reaching a point of interest. Having said that, I haven't seen any other players for a while, maybe I'm in the wrong systems?

Ttaskmaster · Nov 5, 2014

Try phoning them on the comms...?

Asp Explorer · Nov 5, 2014

Maybe people don't use it for very good reasons - currently it's clunky, and to be honest not many people have anything worth saying that I want to reach the keyboard to reply to.

Andy_Pipkin · Nov 5, 2014

Imo, one of the main reasons why chat is so underused here, is that every line in the comms panel has the same colour.

It can be done much better, as anyone can confirm who has seen a server-going-dowm-in10mins message ingame.
The light-blue colour of that message is hard to miss.

kb_Nomad · Nov 5, 2014

I am lucky to see the 'server restart in 10 minutes' much less someone wanting to shoot the breeze
KB

lefty1117 · Nov 5, 2014

the problem with chat is that as soon as you've struck up a convo, the other person either enters or leaves SC and you can no longer communicate. Their also needs to be system-wide chat. Really, in ED chat does not exist as we know it in most MP games.

Cmdr RZer0 · Nov 5, 2014

I have seen a few people using the text, I think someone got attacked while mining, so it started a bit of argument. All good fun. I have had people start to chat to just as I am firing my Jump drive, so I've missed convos.
Galaxy wide chat for friends would be ok if not run the risk of being spammed to death by numpties. Voice coms is a different matter, setting up local voice could possible happen but the bandwidth overheads on the servers in a busy port area would be immense and would require their own servers which be more headache for users and dev's. Guess just have to rent out TS servers for now

Uridium · Nov 5, 2014

raynierf said:
One of icon of a good mmo is a busy general chat where players constantly add stupid comments,

I would really beg to differ... however i would like to see more chatter between pilots.

Chris Majere · Nov 5, 2014

Cause Frontier does not want "Remove Local" threads. Me neither!

OVMorat · Nov 5, 2014

There seems to be a great fear of players "breaking immersion" through having a general chat channel. I'm not sure why, since meeting other players is meant to be so rare. I think we should make it easier to chat when we do actually see each other. The chat is also very annoying to use. Instead of selecting the window, selecting the player, dropping down the option and then typing - we should just hit a hotkey and type into system wide chat. Boom, done - no messing about. If people start spamming random rubbish then they should be /ignored.

Tinman · Nov 5, 2014

lefty1117 said:
the problem with chat is that as soon as you've struck up a convo, the other person either enters or leaves SC and you can no longer communicate. Their also needs to be system-wide chat. Really, in ED chat does not exist as we know it in most MP games.

Actually...if you have the other person on your friendslist then you can keep chatting to them anyway no matter where they are...sometimes at least...it's still a bit buggy.

As for system wide chat I'm not to keen on it.

"Local area chat", basically open comms to all nearby ships in normal space would be fine (text only though) and hopefully something like that will come eventually. Wouldn't be to hard to implement since everyone is connected to each other already. The same thing can't be said about a system wide chat even if it of course could be done technically with some added server usage for handling the chat traffic serverside. A local instance chat could still be done over P2P though...

raynierf · Nov 5, 2014

I belive that as we selectt the online play option instead of solo option, system, galaxy, group or friend chat is very important. As it is co-op play of course, and pvp, thats make the game mmo, if not we just play solo, like x2 or x3 or so many other space games, but i drop all these games early because the lack of an online experience.
I know is still early on testing but i see that the chat and the co-op is falling behine on this game.

My concern is that this game may turns into solo play experience, played in an online server, where players need the forum as the only option to share ideas an their game experience

Asp Explorer · Nov 5, 2014

As it should be! There's not much worse than incessant game chat about selling rubbish, advertising group recruitment, spewed insults and arguments about wether someone's favorite little pony is better than anothers.

Game chat is just awful most of the time - keep comms between Pilots and groups, maybe implement station and bulletin board comms, but keep the junk away.

MrGambler · Nov 5, 2014

FD have already said they don't want this to be a typical mmo such as you won't get system wide chat (they may reconsider), they don't want 'clans' spawning and huge factions, which their main recruitment method would be to set up 'recruiters' in starter systems and basically spam invites and recruitment messages. Again they may reconsider this option (factions and clans that is). At the moment they wish for this to be a 'friends' game, as in the sense you fly in squadrons with buddies, e.g supercruise together, share loot and share bounties (when again, that part of the game is released).

Troy Batty · Nov 5, 2014

The current comms system is difficult to use on OR. I find I rarely look at the comms panel, meaning it isn't expanded and I don't see any messages typed there. There are no hotkeys for comms, so I can't control it via Voice Attack, which is how I manage most ship systems when using OR. And, of course, finding my keyboard and typing anything is a bit of a challenge. In general, I don't know if someone is trying to contact me and would find it difficult to respond even if I did. This whole system needs a significant overhaul. Should have an improved message notification system that is not dependent on the player looking at the comms panel, should have hotkeys for opening voice communications with a selected target, and I definitely agree there should be one or more system-wide open radio channels that players can dial into if they so choose.

raynierf · Nov 5, 2014

Asp Explorer said:
As it should be! There's not much worse than incessant game chat about selling rubbish, advertising group recruitment, spewed insults and arguments about wether someone's favorite little pony is better than anothers.

You are referring to a general chat thats one of the several tabs option you will have in a well implemented chat system, you will able to control that easy, but any proven big mmog has a very useful chat system

Raistlin · Nov 5, 2014

lantre pieces

Is there a list somewhere for a current set a commands that can be used in chat? I've never seen anything in the chat console and every time I've tried to chat I'm told it's not a valid command or something to that effect.

Flappers · Nov 5, 2014

I prefer to be immersed into the galaxy. I'll respond back to RP'ers, but those who insult me (happened a few times already) and just want general chit-chat - they're not gonna get anything from me.

Sorry to bust anyone's dreams, but I'm sure there are other people in the same boat I am who prefer to have immersion over social non-RP chats.

par2005 · Nov 5, 2014

OVMorat said:
There seems to be a great fear of players "breaking immersion" through having a general chat channel. I'm not sure why, since meeting other players is meant to be so rare. I think we should make it easier to chat when we do actually see each other. The chat is also very annoying to use. Instead of selecting the window, selecting the player, dropping down the option and then typing - we should just hit a hotkey and type into system wide chat. Boom, done - no messing about. If people start spamming random rubbish then they should be /ignored.

1. Ehm... this is exactly how it currently works. As long as you have another player as a target, just hit enter, and start typing.

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Cmdr RZer0 said:
Voice coms is a different matter, setting up local voice could possible happen but the bandwidth overheads on the servers in a busy port area would be immense and would require their own servers which be more headache for users and dev's. Guess just have to rent out TS servers for now

Well yesterday I tried voicecoms with a random person in space and it worked just fine. Actually the special effects on audio made it sound so much better than raw teamspeak.