Global Chat System? [poll]

and it's moderated and it works fine. so to all you naysayers just try it, and then come back and tell us how vile and spammy it is.

I don't know the laws in the US, but I'm pretty sure that including a global chat in your software product makes you obliged to moderate it in some way. This takes away manpower from all the other things we want. Even when it is mostly moderated by community members, there must be someone at Uber that looks at it from time to time.
So I think it is not worth the hassle, at least not currently, especially since we have this:

criz.

Seeing as how most developers actually play the games they make ie: Relic, Sierra, Blizzard , Ubisoft etc...etc... your point is kinda not even in the realm of reality. Cannot tell you the amount of times I was beat to a pulp by Ghostcrawler. And please link the law cause as far as I can tell the internet is still pretty much unregulated.

that's exactly what makes it worth the hassle. you illustrated how to do it correctly and that doing it correctly is rather accessible and easy.

moreaver you do not deny it's benefits. why wait? what manpower are we missing here exactly?

I bet against it.
You do realize what most moderators on this very forums are?

Moderators?

If I understand you correctly, you think play testing or playing a game as developer is equal to the moderation an IRC channel?

As stated in the first sentence in the post, I don't know the laws in the US. I know however that under German law there are some nasty things, one is called Störerhaftung, it basically makes you liable to any fraud you "support" by providing a information transfer method. (Yes, if you have a comment section on your blog, you can get sued, just because someone insulted someone else there. Yes, that this is really an extreme case, but it is nonetheless possible.) Maybe US lawyers aren't so fond of Cease and desist letters as German ones. I don't know, I would be happy if that's the case.

But legal affairs beside, there is a user experience side of this as well. There are two possibilities:

• First one is to make it auto-join. So everyone joins the chat and every one sees the chat in the main menu. This is fine for now. The community is a small circle and everyone is nice to each other (well, at least almost all). But as the PA community grows the chance that mealy-mouthed (is this a correct word?) people will get here eventually raises. If you then don't moderate this chat, the first thing a new user will see is a text box full of bullying, spamming and abusive language. I don't think that this is the way to provide a nice and long lasting user experience. So you need a strong moderation, even when you don't have the legal obligation.
• The second way would be to make this chat opt-in. Say you need to go in the setting and enable this explicitly. So we solved the first usage scenario, and only have those people in the chat, who wants to chat. But this solution isn't really different to the solution we have now at hand, namely those two IRC serves raevn listed.

criz.

Volunteers

I feel ya but consider reality there are 'mealy mouthed' patrons of games everywhere, you can't beat them. Most games have a 'reporting' function in chats that allow other players to report them for . language, cheating etc.... to not have a global chat in a RTS is just counter productive especially if you enter into the realm of competitive play. Claiming a moral high ground against 'dirty' language and or trolls as a reason to not have one is simply not going to fly very far. Comments on a blog are very different from comments in a chat. For Uber to take a back seat and use this as a reason to not have one is like shooting themselves in the feet. In most games far older and at this point in time far more successful the main thing firing up the community in game is the global chat, it's where major clan wars come from, it's how ladder matches are made in particular between 1st tier competitors. If you do not know who is online or if your rival is online relying on third party programs such as iirc etc... is just dumb. If you do not like 'rough' language in a PG14 or 'mature' game then don't join multiplayer. Global chat has worked for many other games and kept communities vibrant and competitive.

volunteers.

EDIT: dammit ninja'd

By roughly 24h

Moderating a Chat is a slightly different beast from moderating a Forum. For starters somebody must be arround to react to reports immediately. And/or there must be some kind of "X reports, ban till mod can look at it" function.

Perhaps the most important question:
Economics. That kinda says each company must ask "what is in it for me?" and "is it worth the cost for me?".
A chat is a lot harder to farm for ideas and data* then forum (it is less structured then threads for starters).

*As described in this thread:
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/community-and-communication.64237/


I can see good arguments for and against the chat. Both short term and longterm.
I think it will be decided by the economics one.

What's in it for them? One more feature whom's absence would deter playerbase. I.E. FA has global chat, this game doesn't? Uninstall and going back to FA.

What's the cost? Just include a damn mod-manager with a global chat, if it is fairly visible a mod in vanilla menus then people will opt in a lot more.

If they wanted to make it a huge workload effort for their development time, they could make a PAHub style launcher with mod manager and mod database and plugins and stuff. If vanilla had PAHub for a launcher, with a "tab/plugin" for it being "the updater mkII", then all of PA would have global chat they can opt out of, all the options for modding in the world, all sorts of stuff.

A chat ingame as as vital because everybody is put in front of it.
The forums is something people have to search for. A global chat is a place that people just directly see, so they can ask i.e. questions. That lowers the boundary for entry into the "online community" extremely.
The cost of running a chat isn't actually as high as people make it out to be, there are chats everywhere.

The forums also needs moderators that are around 24h a day. New users, who did not buy PA, cannot even post without a moderator confirming their posts. It works. I've never seen a new user post that was older than maybe 1h, usually they are confirmed much faster.

I might just add this to my sig.

I don't want to be too much of a negative nancy, but knowing what I know about FAF's chat front end and the engagement it produces amongst the playerbase, I can't help but think that unless PA has something similar it will be quickly forgotten. Playing it doesn't feel like you're part of something any bigger than the immediate game you're playing, and the lack of continuation between games (although 1v1 ladder will help to an extent) and the broken 'friends list' features make this feeling even worse.

When I played FAF regularly I would often have the front-end open with no immediate intention of playing. But then something would happen in it that would fire up my desire to play, and off I would go. If you've only got yourself to put you in a mood for a match, then the time before you lose interest entirely is going to be that much sooner.

Me and this thread.

*sigh*.......................in the end, you guys might be right.

x'D you summed that up pretty well.

glad you're comin' round.

Grrrrrrr

If launching the PA interface was a pleasant thing (ie. by being able to talk to people having the same passion than me), PA would probably still be installed on my PC.