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As a 90% mobile player, yes, less clicking is always best...

And a side effect of this is one could edit standing orders from the sea without having to fix the Command tab thing.

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.

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

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.

We have these in M&F. You do need to be very careful about how they are set up, in particular being able to aggregate several "notices" into a single email. It is common that overnight my M&F notifications generate 200 or more emails.

M&F notifies on people in sight, which I find silly and non-relatable to BM... notices on messages, battles, big actions (someone issued a duel) or big outcomes (duel lost!)... I suppose I should classify what I think could be useful.

I use browser facebook on phone and it gives me notifications.

It's basically when I deactivated that that I thought "I wouldn't mind 22 notifications from BM, but facebook, come on..."

I think email for biggish things would be good.

They can both be opt-in but make it as low-key or high-key as the user wants?

Also, I'd really like to get an email a day or two before a character autopauses... and a warning on my family screen (though this is a different feature request).

Public execution was posted!

From a few days ago:

October 2018 Recent Changes
Major Changes
Make adventurers able to cast spells from scrolls, but at greatly increased difficulty

So, it was temporary, to make the game more balanced.

Title: Email reminders/browser notifications


Summary: Adding a few email notifications for big things, and browser notifications for more regular things (especially interesting for people who play on phone). Pick some: turn change!, participated in battle, received a duel challenge or a unique item offer, liege paused/quit, new referendum to vote in, new knight joined your region, marshal updated standing orders, or new order, maybe even "got letter from your /council member, liege, council member from other realms/" or "you have 13 unread letters from your realm, one of them is a private letter" (after a few days of not logging in), "realm X has declared war on your realm", stuff like that. Needs hashing out, if the discussion is positive, I'd love to get into more detail.

Details: This kind of alert, I believe could be really useful to improve new player retention. The email notifications from Might&Fealty keep bringing me back. Please don't shut it down as annoying right off the bat - if default setting has only a few notifications activated, and then you can go in and activate more, it can be quite customizable, per character, even. Some will have notifications activated for all messages, some only message groups, some only private messages, some only orders, some only character events, some only realm-wide events, some only actions you need to respond to (duel challenge, elections).

Benefits: This kind of alert, I believe could be really useful to improve new player retention, and help keep people engaged.


Possible Downsides/Exploits: Some people might abuse your notifications if they know you have them (like sending orders or PMs for instance), but this is already the case for players who are quickplaying...

+1

* Bluelake reads this whole thing and frets.

I have seen several Lagertha character portraits haha.

It seems many of the warrior women of BM look strikingly similar...

Yeah, it's unfortunate really. I looked for a good 3 hours before giving up. Most warmaiden-messy-warrior-types have huge cleavages or skimpy skirts, too cliché... Then other vikings women don't have as big a variety of imagery... *sigh*

For actual knights and iron-clad warrior types there's plenty of awesome images, though.

Maybe KK at 135yo? https://battlemaster.org/stable/CharacterDetails.php?ID=6647&InWorld=8

Fissoa could use a war...

Thank you guys, I'm putting this thread on notify so I can get your news out in a timely fashion!

I like how you Northerners collected like six armies in Winkamus. I wanna make a meme out of it. Maybe the Blue Rajah from "Mystery Men" and how you all travel in gangs like little babies. Yeah. I'ma do that ;)

Post it on the memes thread! :D Or share on Discord!