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Idea: Positional IRC
Taylors Expansion
Member
For the purposes of this suggestion, I am using IRC to mean the chat capabilities built into the game. I am not referring to the IRC protocol itself.
Maybe it is too late to implement this idea, because maybe Ashes expects us to communicate purely through our microphones, but I, for one, still like using the chat capabilities within the game. One thing I have always wondered is why this communication was not embedded into the game more deeply, and along these lines, I would ask the community to consider what I call Positional IRC.
Imagine going into a tavern, and all the conversations in that space become visible to the player in the chat, but are slightly garbled, and slightly greyed out, depending on the distance the player is from the conversation. As the player moves closer to any one conversation, the garbling becomes less garbled, and the color of the text becomes more solid. So as you get closer or farther from a talking source, it becomes easier to understand. Now imagine that a player WANTS to hear a particular conversation, and they cast a passive spell that makes the garbling go away. Or suppose some players decide to have a private conversation, and cast a passive spell that makes their words MORE garbled in the chat.
Considering this is an RPG, unless people chat as if they are in a Renaissance Fair, the immersion dimension is lost in most MMORPG chat windows. The concept I am describing gives chat a practical immersive reason for being there. This could also tie into language, which is almost ignored in most MMORPGs. Imagine you walk into that same tavern, and different species are communicating in different languages. Again, a spell, (or if you just happen to have the skill of knowing another language), makes those conversations readable.
I think you get the idea, so what do you think? And this system could be in tandem with other tabs in the chat window tied to the normal communications from the devs for system maintenance. Communication to your squad might require a crafted item. World chat by another crafted item.
Thoughts?
Taylors
Maybe it is too late to implement this idea, because maybe Ashes expects us to communicate purely through our microphones, but I, for one, still like using the chat capabilities within the game. One thing I have always wondered is why this communication was not embedded into the game more deeply, and along these lines, I would ask the community to consider what I call Positional IRC.
Imagine going into a tavern, and all the conversations in that space become visible to the player in the chat, but are slightly garbled, and slightly greyed out, depending on the distance the player is from the conversation. As the player moves closer to any one conversation, the garbling becomes less garbled, and the color of the text becomes more solid. So as you get closer or farther from a talking source, it becomes easier to understand. Now imagine that a player WANTS to hear a particular conversation, and they cast a passive spell that makes the garbling go away. Or suppose some players decide to have a private conversation, and cast a passive spell that makes their words MORE garbled in the chat.
Considering this is an RPG, unless people chat as if they are in a Renaissance Fair, the immersion dimension is lost in most MMORPG chat windows. The concept I am describing gives chat a practical immersive reason for being there. This could also tie into language, which is almost ignored in most MMORPGs. Imagine you walk into that same tavern, and different species are communicating in different languages. Again, a spell, (or if you just happen to have the skill of knowing another language), makes those conversations readable.
I think you get the idea, so what do you think? And this system could be in tandem with other tabs in the chat window tied to the normal communications from the devs for system maintenance. Communication to your squad might require a crafted item. World chat by another crafted item.
Thoughts?
Taylors
0
Comments
There is voice chat for Taverns, parties, and raids.
Not sure if it's just me, but I often find having to deal with the other side's microphone quality, audio settings, speech clarity, accents (and occasionally, behavior) quite stressful.
I'm not sure I've ever seen proximity based text chat to quite an extent before. I'm sure there will be a /say channel that covers talking to people nearby, but to have it vary across the distance of a room is interesting. It seems like one of those things thats like 'why not'? If it's not sucking up a lot of development time it might be a fun novelty thst aids in immersion in dense public spaces.
I would ask that you reserve judgement until you use a system like this and don't like it.
Do you at least agree that existing communication is not conducive to role playing? To language learning? To exploitation of the environment for the purposes of eavesdropping?
And would you prefer the entire communication system be audio?
Taylors
Discord is fine and all, BUT it's making player-communication less-and-less verbal, which I find to be a detractor to enjoyment of the game; Discord is almost more of a message-board, the way I've seen most guilds use it. When an in-game voice chat was open by default, it changed the dynamic of the game and of the guild, and yours truly found (and still finds) in-game voice chats to be a great and enjoyable boon to game-play. I'm SUPER-glad that AoC will feature this.
As far as chat bubbles go, yours truly GREATLY encourages at least the *option* for chat bubbles. I hate SWTOR's social dynamic, where walking around a crowd of people makes the game look like it's dead, or that everyone is AFK; I'd far prefer instead to be able to walk through a town and see citizens' chat bubbles, as their conversations are happening.
Chat bubbles very much add a sense of social-ness to an area - even if you're not the one talking.
My eyesight isn't the worst, but it's definitely not good. I sometimes have a hard time reading chat even when it's right in front of me. A part of roleplaying is being able to pretend things are a certain way. So if a group that wants to roleplay would like to act like this is occurring that's one thing, but I also don't think roleplaying should be forced onto anyone.
Along that note if you required a spell or such in order to clear up the chat it forces players into a choice of being able to play the game comfortably vs picking skills they actually want.
When I play Dungeon and Dragons we're at times limited to how secretive we can be, so sometimes a person's secret information might be heard by the whole group, but we simply played our characters as if they had no idea.
And no I'm not a fan of proximity chat or forced voice chat. I've literally screamed in the middle of the night because someone in ARK came out of nowhere and started talking. It takes me a pretty long time to get comfortable enough to have people hear my voice so if I'm in a situation where I need to talk to people it's usually going to be people I know and trust. (Of course if I'm in a stranger's raid or something I usually will listen, but won't talk)
Best proximity communication I've experienced in MMOs are chat bubbles. They're intuitive, obvious and communicate a lot of non-verbal cues efficiently (e.g. people who respond to things immediately/pausing to say something - it's much harder to trace in a chatbox when more than 2 people talking, or two conversations happening at the same time.)