Encouraging local chat and use of more areas

[Aislinn]

You have to deliberately start up a local chat; conversations that most people carry on are kept private, even when there's no good reason for them to be private. You can be in the exact same place, and most people will still PM.

How do you know it's for "no good reason"??? I want to be able to have conversations that others have no business knowing with my friends, or fellow mods...I should not be penalized for keeping private things private, which in my opinion, is VERY appropriate.

 

Local chat isn't used? It is, and quite a lot... In fact it's used more than I'd like it to, try sitting in MM or NC storage for a while and you'll see. I'm using pm / #gm deriberately even when a person I'm talking to sits right next to me, especially when we're talking in polish. Too much local chat spam (especially multilingual) just makes me mad, and I think it's the same for most other people.

To sum up: leave things as they are now please.

Also, I would pm or #gm because it stands out in all the white channel/local chat. I don't want to have to struggle to find MY conversation stuck in the middle of everyone else's.

 

Now I would be all for making REASONS for people to WANT to gather in meeting places and talking in local, but it should be in addition to what we have now, not as a substitution.

 

Edit: I agree with ttlanhil's arguments against it as well.

[Tanyia]

I can see why you're suggesting this, but coming from an official helper's point of view, I can see immediate problems with this, unless there were some workaround. What if someone sends a #help_me and then I can't help them because my mana is too low/my food is negative? I have to find food/get an SR just to help them? Ugh.

 

I don't like the idea of being forced to talk in public. So, let's say PMs are disabled at storages. So I'm mixing a bag, and someone asks me a question in PM. Now I have to either finish my bag or leave it there just so I can respond. Again, ugh.

 

I would be all for incentives for talking in local, but I am absolutely against penalties for using PMs.

 

And ditto to what Aisy/ttlanhil said.

[Roja]

Just so you guys don't continue in vain, something like this would never, ever happen. PM's are a very valuable attribute to the game that would never be taken away or penalized. They are also a BIG contributor to the community of people here.

[Shouja]

Well, just to give a fresh take on it: The objective is to get more people to chat in local. So far, most of the discussion has centred around penalising players for NOT talking in local (i.e. the "stick" method). What about rewarding players FOR talking in local (i.e. "carrot" method)?

 

I could imagine something like special areas being implemented (like Town Squares or something) where each sentence spoken in local within that area adds to the player's "Reputation Points" (or "Speaker's Influence Points", or "Gossip Points", or whatever...). Perhaps certain rewards could be given out after the player hits a certain threshold in those points, like the ability to have one more conversation channel, or something that further increases their power to socialise. (Maybe even the chance of getting a special item that gives the player the ability to make ONE global announcement?)

 

If that's the case, people might naturally gather in those areas to talk, and you'll have a constant hubbub of conversation going on, just like a real town square or central marketplace. It'll be noisy as anything, of course, and the downside to it is that it might be difficult to control the spam if all the player cares about is getting the points without saying anything useful, but still... just throwing it out for consideration.

 

There's more than one way to achieve an objective without punishing all players. I'm sure there could be more alternatives along the "carrot" method, aside from the one I just proposed.

 

~Shouja~

Edited March 22, 2007 by Shouja

[Vanyel]

Leave it as it is. Do not mess with one of the most worked out features of the game. Chat system is really good. Not many things may be done better. Just my 10000000 cents. (The ones I took from Piper's inputs >:] )