Rejected: In game IC chat

[Bluelake]

Title: In game IC chat

Summary: Implementation of an in-game live chatroom in region. I'd love ideas for what it could be, that nobles would frequent: a tavern? an inn? the local lord's court?

Details: I am thinking of a live chat with limited abilities, no logs, maybe a few commands (like buying the other drinks, buying a round, /me or whispering so only one person gets your message), click to enter, "see who is at the wayside inn right now". Exclusively for IC interaction, no nick changes, just character name and heraldry. I played another browser game where this was *the* feature that kept it together. It was mostly used to answer questions, getting to know each other and banter. Since there's no logs, official business must still go through letters, and since it's only to region, scope is limited. I'd take it one step further and make it possible to "enter guildhouse" or "enter temple" and there's a chat in there too.

Benefits: Drastically increase new player retention and increased sense of community. Battlemaster, more than a medieval roleplaying game, is a community. I strongly believe we must nurture that community and give it the tools to thrive. Combat can be broken forever, if people can interact in many different ways, they will make their own fun.

Possible Downsides/Exploits: Unlogged IC plotting (wouldn't show up on torture reports - or maybe hidden logs that might?), perhaps will crank up the pace of the game (which can be a good thing, for this day and age, but not sure about older players), courtiers might be excluded from most of it since never with the main army... Possible downside is people not wanting to move, ever, just so they can chat. The one thing that worries me is that it might remove healthy chatter/discussion from letters, suddenly letters become just a formality, and people not in region won't get the news or scoop. However, in that other game it didn't really happen, and I do believe the benefits far outweight this risk...

Please discuss.

[Anaris]

This would be vastly complex to implement from scratch, and I'm very skeptical that it would even do more good than harm, frankly.

I can understand the desire for it, but this is one I'm going to have to reject fairly firmly.

[Bluelake]

Would you like to look up the example game?

www.renaissancekingdoms.com

I have to say, Ethan had already shot it down for complexity, I thought I'd try anyway.

Discord is currently our main new player retention tool. Those I can't get into discord are much harder to stick around. And yet, it's an external software, third party, and well... not everyone can or want to go into a third party thing. Despite being an OOC environment, a lot of community building happens there, even realm culture, be it from own realm mates ooc banter or "enemy" ooc banter. I would rather we had a more inclusive tool, in game, that people wouldn't have to make a new login for... maybe better OOC, to mitigate the risk of reducing realm-wide messaging.

Well, this is wishful thinking by now. I'll ask again in 5 years.  ;D

[Vita`]

This would be vastly complex to implement from scratch, and I'm very skeptical that it would even do more good than harm, frankly.

I can understand the desire for it, but this is one I'm going to have to reject fairly firmly.

I've seen this being talked about on the Lemuria/M&F Discord and it got brought up a couple times in private messages to me.

I absolutely agree on 'from scratch'. That's way beyond what our development team can handle and should be rejected. But when I imagined this proposal, that wasn't what I pictured. I'm almost certain there are libraries out there that allow generating a real-time chat interface that could fit our needs.

And I don't think its a bad idea either; I'm ambivalent if its a good idea. I'm *not* saying it should be approved and I told Tali and others that privately, but I don't think the concept of an in-game real-time chat should be flatly rejected either. As I understand, M&F might implement this soon and I'm more interested in observing that first than coming to a firm decision for having such a thing in BattleMaster yet. What I did tell Tali and others is that even if I think its not a bad idea, I do not think our development team can reasonably put that on any near-term agenda if we were convinced to approve it.

*If* we were to do it, it seems most sensible for those characters physically in a region, members of a realm, members of a religion, those at a tournament, and prisoners in a dungeon.

[Medron Pryde]

It would depend on how easy it is to setup.

That said, I think it would be best used by those in a realm, religion, guild, or tournament.

I think region would be too small an area, though there are times it could work very well.  When vast armies are arrayed together, bringing up a chat and just talking could be fun.

I can certainly see the positives of the idea.  The issue would be how difficult it would be to implement.  If too difficult, I agree with the idea of not doing it.  If I way can be found to make it easy, then I think it would be an excellent tool to use.

[MTYL]

My opinion on that matter is this:

IG chat would be awesome

Does that change your mind somewhat Mr. Anaris?

[Anaris]

My opinion on that matter is this:

IG chat would be awesome

Does that change your mind somewhat Mr. Anaris?

If Tali hadn't thought it would be awesome, she wouldn't have suggested it. So...if that didn't make me want to do it, why should this? ;D

[MTYL]

Damn it. I didn't think it through.

[De-Legro]

I've seen this being talked about on the Lemuria/M&F Discord and it got brought up a couple times in private messages to me.

I absolutely agree on 'from scratch'. That's way beyond what our development team can handle and should be rejected. But when I imagined this proposal, that wasn't what I pictured. I'm almost certain there are libraries out there that allow generating a real-time chat interface that could fit our needs.

And I don't think its a bad idea either; I'm ambivalent if its a good idea. I'm *not* saying it should be approved and I told Tali and others that privately, but I don't think the concept of an in-game real-time chat should be flatly rejected either. As I understand, M&F might implement this soon and I'm more interested in observing that first than coming to a firm decision for having such a thing in BattleMaster yet. What I did tell Tali and others is that even if I think its not a bad idea, I do not think our development team can reasonably put that on any near-term agenda if we were convinced to approve it.

*If* we were to do it, it seems most sensible for those characters physically in a region, members of a realm, members of a religion, those at a tournament, and prisoners in a dungeon.

M&F probably will implement it, but soon is probably a stretch. We have one active dev, and myself pretending I will get to doing something eventually.

[Behemoth]

With the power of Discord, it's not actually too hard thing to do.

Would need to link character and discord username and have a feed to discord bot about character locations.
Discord bot would then each turn manage channels and put correct players to correct channels, purge message history and so on.

[Zakky]

I don't see why we need this when we have discord already.

[De-Legro]

With the power of Discord, it's not actually too hard thing to do.

Would need to link character and discord username and have a feed to discord bot about character locations.
Discord bot would then each turn manage channels and put correct players to correct channels, purge message history and so on.

Great, only then you are reliant on a 3rd party API which may or may not change at any time, may or may not break the integration at anytime ETC. Much better off just doing as we have always done with IRC and now Discord.

[Bluelake]

I don't see why we need this when we have discord already.

Discord is out of character and not everyone wants to have yet another account in yet another service...

That said, how would the devs feel if I tried the following experiment (suggested by Behemoth really):

Make an IC channel in a discord server for roleplaying purposes, where people can chat IC in a setting previously agreed on, then paste the whole thing in an RP message and post in game? It doesn't address any of the issues I would want to fix with IC chat, but, still seems slightly borderline so I thought I'd ask.

[Anaris]

Make an IC channel in a discord server for roleplaying purposes, where people can chat IC in a setting previously agreed on, then paste the whole thing in an RP message and post in game? It doesn't address any of the issues I would want to fix with IC chat, but, still seems slightly borderline so I thought I'd ask.

I encourage this sort of thing. It makes roleplays with multiple people much smoother than the slow and disjointed way they happen in-game, while still having the whole thing entirely in-character and entirely accessible to everyone in the realm (once it's posted in an in-game message). I've done this many times over IRC (many years ago, sadly).

As for the rest, I am still very firm on the in-game message system remaining the only form of in-character communication.