Can we get a rethink from Uber over having a global, pre-game chatroom?

Uber have stated that they don't have any plans to introduce a global, pre-game chatroom. The main reason for this as I understand it is that it would be too open to abuse, and that trolls and crapflooders would render it useless and impossible to police.

To my mind this is not good enough reason to write off such a potentially beneficial feature. As I see it the benefits of having a global chat cannot be underestimated.

Quick Spreading of Information

Information about mods, clans, tournaments, upcoming events, things that may be of interest to all players of PA. This information will be visible on the forums of course, but only the most committed of players even visit the forums of any game. By having a global chat where people freely discuss these things, it will make new players feel like they are part of a community, and will reduce the barriers to people joining, clans, tournaments or otherwise making friends.

In games like this it is surprising how many little facts about nuances of the game can add up to make somebody a much better player who understands and enjoys the game at a deeper level. In the Forged Alliance community, there are hundreds of little facts that you just have to know if you're going to be any good at the game. I mean things like "A Holkins consumes 4 advanced power gens worth of energy at all times during its firing cycle" - knowing this sort of thing can be very helpful.

Making the Game Feel Alive

By having a central lobby where everybody online hangs out, it helps make the experience feel cohesive. Not sure you're in the mood for a game? Go and have a look in the chat, maybe somebody will say something that inspires you, maybe you will see an interesting game that you can spectate. Either way, being badly defeated and then having a room full of people you can sound off to/get advice from is a hell of a lot better than just getting a game over screen and getting dumped back in the main menu.

EDIT: One specific time where this would be very helpful is when a frustrated noob gets defeated ten times in a row, then comes and asks the room in general, "How the hell do I defeat [dominant strategy here]?". Currently he's going to have to figure it out on his own, or put in more effort than somebody who is not already invested in the game will make. With global chat, straight away somebody would reply with a decent build order that he could try, and he'd feel like he was making progress.

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These reasons are qualitative rather than strictly measurable. With a global chat I believe that everybody's experience will be improved in a general way, making people feel more attached to the game and more tolerant of any perceived hiccups. Let's say there's a new bug introduced at some point - casual players will just know that the game is broken and Uber are dicks and they're going to go and tell all their friends about it. If there was a global chat, it would be very easy for them to find out that Uber are aware, that it was unforeseen, that it'll be fixed soon and in the meantime let's have a chat and a laugh.

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As far as the argument against, based on the potential for trolling? Nonsense. For one, this genre attracts much less dicks than say Call of Duty, and for two having automated spam protection would not be difficult. A simple algorithm would stop 90% of attempts at disrupting the room (e.g. warning for ALL CAPS; detection of repeated messages; limit on number of messages posted per minute; with short-term chat bans handed out for infractions). If there were any particularly bad repeat offenders, they could be manually banned.

I don't know if there are legal issues around having a chatroom, in case people say anything they shouldn't, but robust disclaimers and an active choice needed to access chat should mitigate that.

The other issue I see is one of cost associated with manual moderation. That needs to be discussed, unfortunately I'm not in a position to volunteer myself, but I bet there are some people here who would volunteer some time towards it.

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This is a shot of the chat in Forged Alliance Forever. Functionally it is perfect, so copying features from FAF can only be a good thing.

Oh boy, flame war incoming.

I support the Global Chatroom idea, but I also acknowledge that it would require full time monitoring and moderation.

I'd be up for monitoring.

^

To be honest i'd rather see some functionality for people to create their own chat groups, possibly even self moderate? heck, how many dozens of clans are there who would do that straight away as a recruiting tool anyway, just allow for some sorta functionality to create and moderate their own chat zones, and then some sort of way to filter people off into those rooms, you can even have new players put in the 'new players' chat group which can basically act as an on-demand FAQ room.

We already have an IRC that you can join from the main menu.

That's PA stats actually.

And the only way of knowing about it is if you come to the forum, so it doesn't solve the problem of making casual players feel involved.

I'll just leave this here.
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/wip-pa-community-hub.63174/

Or of you look around on the starting screen. Its hardly a tiny button.

He's referring to the need to go to the forums to learn about and download the mod (pastats) first, I believe.

Ah ok. I apologise as I thought the IRC chat button was in the vanilla game instead of being part of PAStats.

That sounds excellent, and exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about. But without Uber's explicit approval of it, pushing it onto all players, it won't solve the problem. I'm sure that when this is a mature community of several years' standing, there will be all sorts of standardised mods that everybody uses. At this stage though, it's absolutely critical to turn the interested noobs into committed long-term players, and the only way to do that is to make them feel engaged.

That would work. As long as there's a place where all players are put into at login, extra bells and whistles are always welcome. For some reason SupCom's global chat was limited to 100 people, but the FAF version has no limits and works fine. I haven't played on FAF for a long time, but I think the daily peaks are around 700 players, and absolute peak is around 1100. And that's all logged on simultaneously, with little to no trolling or other problem behaviour.

While I am personally against it, im not going to really put up a fight about it this time.....

Same here.

One specific time where this would be very helpful is when a frustrated noob gets defeated ten times in a row, then comes and asks the room in general, "How the hell do I defeat a Dox rush?". Currently he's going to have to figure it out on his own, or put in more effort than somebody who is not already invested in the game will make. With global chat, straight away somebody would reply with a decent build order that he could try, and he'd feel like he was making progress.

same.

I'd like to see this; people like to talk and the community feels somewhat more alive when there's a global chat

I think this is best handled by mods.