Message System - Feedback Wanted

[Tom]

I've been working on concepts for a better messaging system for a long time now, and thrown away quite a few ideas.

Now I feel like I'm slowly getting somewhere, but I'd like to have your feedback here, before I move too far. Here's the question:


How complex do you need recipient selection to be?

What I mean by that is that we have tons of options in the game to message all of these or some of that. There's a really huge selection of whom you can send your message to, and I'd like to know if that is really needed.

I am asking because it would make coding life a lot, a very big lot, easier if the number of options could be cut down. I'm thinking of having the message system be more oriented on the actual game entities, so there would be options to message people belonging to a region (lord and knights), to a duchy, to a realm, etc. - the idea is to move more towards a forum type of threaded conversation than to the e-mail type of discrete messages that we currently have.

The main thing is that it would make reading and filtering the messages a lot easier if we had a comparatively small number of "channels".

[Anaris]

Are you saying, essentially, "would it be OK to do away with sending messages to manually-selected groups of people?"

[Indirik]

Eee.... Getting rid of the "Some members of" option would be catastrophic. I think you'd have an open revolt on your hands.

[Poliorketes]

I don't understand what you mean exactly...

I can tell I never have used the "hierarchy" messages, or the "realm military leaders"... occasionally the "same region" or "guilds" messages... Others messages are used more or less usually.

[vonGenf]

the idea is to move more towards a forum type of threaded conversation than to the e-mail type of discrete messages that we currently have.

I wouldn't mind an easier way to classify letters such that you can easily look at and search a subset of them - it would be normal for a noble to have a "Military" folder and a "Food" folder, for example.

However, I like that they are actual letters. I feel it would be a loss to have a system where the urge to treat letters as forum posts is even more overwhelming than it is now. The atmosphere would suffer for it.

[Anaris]

I would also note:

While simplifying the interface is a very important goal, and simplifying the code certainly makes it easier for us to work on it, removing features purely so that we have a slightly easier time with the code should not be one of our goals. Features should only be removed if they add less to the game than their complexity, whether in code or in user understanding, takes away from it.

The message system is, as I have said on a number of occasions, the core of the game. Making it less featureful for the players is absolutely, 100% the wrong way to be moving with it.

[Foundation]

My understanding:

You can still message anyone personally.
You can even send multiple people at the same message at once.

[Solari]

There are probably too many options for messaging right now. You could do with less static groups. On the other hand, dynamic message groups could behave like a forum-style conversation that's easy to follow if it were dead simple to continue the conversation. If we can do "reply to list + the sender" for message groups, can we not do "reply to list" for a group of recipients that were part of the original letter?

[Anaris]

My understanding:

You can still message anyone personally.
You can even send multiple people at the same message at once.

And how would you know that, when only Tom knows what he has in mind for these hypothetical changes to a system even we've only seen parts of?

[Foundation]

Intuition. 8)

I could be way off, but those two cases seem to be used quite often.  Each character is an entity, so it would have its own conversation, and it's not a stretch to add a message to every personal conversation for a group of people.

[Tom]

Thanks for the feedback.

Let me share some more of my mind on this. The basic idea is that I would like to make it possible for messages to be linked to game entities because this allows many nifty things. The main one is to access older messages related to something. For example, right now when you join a realm you start at nothing. But in the new system, you would be able to access the last 30 days or so of in-realm messages. This is especially for new players who right now start very slow with no guidance. But it would also allow people to check up on what the old ruler was up to upon winning the election.

There are other interesting uses for this, like the ability to post a notice to the local bulletin boards when you are in a region, so that people who come through later can read it.


And the final thing is that it would be easier to actually see a conversation, i.e. all the letters and their replies in an exchange, not the jumbled mess we have right now.


However, this all would be quite overwhelming if we added 100 conversations that you are suddenly part of. So I am looking for where things can be simplified, not in the sense of taking away features, but in the sense of removing options that are almost never used, or moving them to somewhere less obvious. I want the message interface to be less intimidating.

[Anaris]

I think that one big way to help ensure that no one is overwhelmed by suddenly getting 100 messages of a conversation dumped on them is to not put all the messages visibly into a single message stream.

It wouldn't be that hard to collapse conversations like that into a single item: [ + 100 previous messages in this conversation ]

I'm also not at all sanguine about the idea of converting "all in region" messages to some kind of bulletin board, without any ability to send normal messages to this group of people. That's not a particularly rarely used feature, and I think removing it would be a very bad idea.

I feel like this is trying to achieve ideological purity (ie, all fundamental message groups are connected to a game entity) for its own sake, rather than for what it will give us in usability or clarity within the game.

In general, I believe that 90% of what we need to do in making the message system work better and be less intimidating has to do with the interface, not with the backend structure. That 10% is important, and I think adding support for conversations will be a huge step forward, but in order to really make a difference to the players in the message system, we need to stop treating the messages characters receive as one monolithic stream and displaying them as such.

Being able to seamlessly filter messages based on sender, recipient, or conversation would help so, so much.

[Tom]

Tim, I don't disagree with you. The point where we have different opinions is that you want to hack up the existing system, while I want to improve it.

There will be personal messages, there will be messages to lists of recipients, that's not going to change. What might change is just how many "convenience shortcuts" are all lumped up on one screen. That screen might change into something with a bit of AJAX and more of a selection wizard. Yes, maybe two more clicks, but a much more convenient interface.

However, there are advantages beyond the ideological in having threads tied to game entities. Some of them are technical, on the database level (no need to store thousands of MessageLinks for everyone) and some are features.

I agree that for letters between random characters, a simply addition of a conversation field, retained on reply, would allow threading and most of the other advantages. But that is not the main reason I'm thinking about this. The whole filtering thing is the main reason. You see, right now there is NO WAY to get, say, all messages from the general, if the general has changed at any time during the past 30 days. Or all messages sent to the army. Or just all the mesages sent to the realm, or even just all your region status reports. You can come close, but you can't really do it.

And I think you should. Getting all the past (30 days) region reports should be easy for a region lord.

[Penchant]

However, there are advantages beyond the ideological in having threads tied to game entities. Some of them are technical, on the database level (no need to store thousands of MessageLinks for everyone) and some are features.

I agree that for letters between random characters, a simply addition of a conversation field, retained on reply, would allow threading and most of the other advantages. But that is not the main reason I'm thinking about this. The whole filtering thing is the main reason. You see, right now there is NO WAY to get, say, all messages from the general, if the general has changed at any time during the past 30 days. Or all messages sent to the army. Or just all the mesages sent to the realm, or even just all your region status reports. You can come close, but you can't really do it.

And I think you should. Getting all the past (30 days) region reports should be easy for a region lord.

I like the filtering option but I agree on two points:

The message system is, as I have said on a number of occasions, the core of the game.

I wouldn't mind an easier way to classify letters such that you can easily look at and search a subset of them - it would be normal for a noble to have a "Military" folder and a "Food" folder, for example.

However, I like that they are actual letters. I feel it would be a loss to have a system where the urge to treat letters as forum posts is even more overwhelming than it is now. The atmosphere would suffer for it.

In other words with the message system being the core of the game, it would hurt the atmosphere if it just looked like a forum. So I like how its all individual letters but also would like seeing a "Military folder" or the region reports of the last 30 days if you are lord. One way it could be done is if its stored in the database as the thread/folder but when you look at new messages or messages from today its still in chronological order so that it feels more like an individual letter, but can still be looked at in the thread manner for ease of seeing the entire conversation, if that makes sense and is doable.

[Indirik]

For example, right now when you join a realm you start at nothing. But in the new system, you would be able to access the last 30 days or so of in-realm messages. This is especially for new players who right now start very slow with no guidance. But it would also allow people to check up on what the old ruler was up to upon winning the election.

It sounds like it may be interesting, especially for new players, to get a pre-built history. I do see some issues, though, with characters switching realms and suddenly getting access to the last 30-days of messages.Great way to find out exactly what's going on in an enemy realm: Have someone join it, and *BAM*, you get the last 30-days of messages sent within that realm.

There are other interesting uses for this, like the ability to post a notice to the local bulletin boards when you are in a region, so that people who come through later can read it.

I'm not a big fan of the message-board style approach to this. When entering a region, why should I be able to see what was said there 30 days ago? I've done region-based RPs before where I definitely would not want some random person wandering along to be able to see.

And the final thing is that it would be easier to actually see a conversation, i.e. all the letters and their replies in an exchange, not the jumbled mess we have right now.

Threaded-style conversations would be a great addition. It would really help deal with the massive message traffic that we sometimes get in certain circles.