Global Chat

I would imagine that since people can only find FaF by searching the internet you will get a more mature group than this game will have. FaF is an unofficial patch for an old game that probably has a lot of mature fans.

PA is available on Steam.

What you need for a successful global chat:
Active community members willing to moderate it.
A good veteran community that can be helpful to noobies and that isn't going to allow conversations on it to devolve.

I think that we have a good number of both categories.

If the proper atmosphere is in place, a good global chat can allow people to easily answer the questions new players have and help preserve the playerbase. It also helps people find clans and in general is a good thing. Spammers and vulgar persons can easily be muted before they cause much trouble.

Global chat also is another opportunity for players to show off their badges. Display one on the side of your chat username, bingo, everyone knows that you were a collectors edition player/beta player/alpha player/kickstarter/custom commander kickstarter/uber vip kickstarter.

Airmech is one game where the community benefits from its global chat greatly.


Global chat is basically a way to preserve the playerbase and lower the rate of decline.

I think you're discounting the time needed to implement and maintain. And it wouldn't be a one-time deal -- it's a long-haul, continuous effort to make sure that chat never makes the game look bad or reflect poorly on the community as a whole. Plus, all it takes is just one comment a split-second before a mod can get to it to turn a person off. For me, losing a potential long-term player or fan does not make a chat worth.

I look at it like a big, never-ending brawl to keep garbage out of the /all chat dumpster. Look at what Riot had to do after years of maintaining their various global chats. They shut them down, you know? And those dudes have a ton of great resources in addition to a thriving community.

I think global chat is a bad idea personally. People have plenty of places they can communicate if they want to get together with like minded players.

Most of the current userbase is players that saw casts on youtube and/or bought it on Steam (sales).

I don't know why you have the impression that FAF has only veterans, they are a very small minority.

A poll was made last year, and 22% of the players didn't even know what was GPGNET.
http://www.faforever.com/?p=586
Probably a lot more now that they was some steam sales and we had some popular youtube channels.

Most game's I've seen with Global Chat are 90% bots spreading viruses.
I've never really liked the idea, honestly. And it's more an MMO thing anyway.

You are assuming A LOT that people only plays with friends.

For a niche RTS, it can't be further from the truth.

I made "friends" playing Supcom, and guess how? By talking in Halcyon.

I can you didn't read it :
https://forums.uberent.com/threads/my-not-so-humble-view-about-the-game-lobby.52896/
And specifically this part:

You can extend that with vocal chat (FAF is running a mumble too, only people who know each other already use it).

I would like you to reconsider some of your views.

ie. People are NOT playing with friends only.
http://steamcommunity.com/app/9420/discussions/0/
Look how many threads are about finding other players to play..

Actually, one of the reason I don't play PA right now is not having a way to play with people I can talk with.

All the RTS game lobbies with chat I seen never had that (Supcom, FAF, TA Spring, K-Zero).
On the contrary, they are/were good place to met new people and mingle.

No idea about MMO, they are terrible, chat or not, to begin with.

Sounds like the answer of what we can do is a mix. No global chat, but offer up easy-to-use alternatives for folks to set up games and meet each other (Steam forums, our forums, social media, etc.,)?

I don't.
It took me about a day to implement it in FAF, using a IRC protocol (why re-invent the wheel?). Would be even easier in PA because of the web-based interface.

To maintain, you need to put some people who trust as moderators (and be sure they are spread on every timezone).
Exactly what you did in the forums by the way.

ie. on FAF (that has currently more players than PA every week), from the poll last year:

We had 5 moderators at that time.

Like I've said in my thread, EVERY game on steam already has Chat & Forums. And friend list. It comes with the package.

Forums are often used, but it's not convenient (you have to post, wait for answer, or even having the guts to open a new thread to ask for friends).

Chat in Steam are always empty, whatever the game is.

I can tell you that doing it right the way we'd want to do it wouldn't take just a day.

Totally see your argument, btw. Just trying to illustrate why we aren't that into the idea.

Don't want to interrupt global chat holy war, but there won't be viruses in chat only for players who bought game.

A global chat that people are thrown in the moment they click multiplayer is the most important thing that actually helps to create a community. Most players who buy PA do not know of the community it has. Most of these players will play singleplayer for the most time.
They will not bother to search for any sort of active multiplayer community. But they are likely to at least click that "multiplayer" button a few times, because it's easy to click.
At that point access to the community needs to be pushed onto them. That's the main function of a global chat that opens the moment you click multiplayer. They click multiplayer and end up in a chat that lists dozens or hundreds of people. That creates a feeling of not sitting alone in front of the computer. It's a world of a difference to a plain list of games. People are so much more likely to return to multiplayer if this is present.
Let them opt out of it, for the people who do not like it. A simple checkbox in the options.
It's the most vital thing for having an active community of online players that actually "know" each other.

SupCom2 is a perfect example for how not having a global chat and a delayed matchmaking (with a mediocre ladder implementation on top of that) can kill any sort of online community for a RTS.

Please don't repeat the mistakes SupCom2 made.
Implementing a simple chat is not hard work. You already have your jabber backend. You could just make an IRC server as well. That has a ton of advantages (as it is accessible from outside the game) and basically all you need to do is a bit of UI work. Yes it needs mods, but you're sure to find some. Especially if you use a protocol like IRC that allows people to join the chat anywhere where they have an IRC client. I'd sure be reachable in that chat all day if it were IRC.

Not having a chat and not having a ladder at 1.0 is basically stabbing PA to death.

This is the kind of think I like. Why should Uber do what ever other game has done. Global chat is old news. Lets think of new ways for people to be able to come together and have a community.

Can we please quit it with the hyperbole? Comparing us to SupCom2? Really? You think SupCom2 failed because it lacked global chat? I bet other people here can come up with a few more reasons...

I'm personally not a fan of global chat at all. Internally we've discussed it on multiple occasions and I think most of us agree at this point that it's a horrible idea for the game. I think it has much a larger chance of damaging any community than it does of actually creating a good community. It's unlikely my opinion of this is going to change and the idea that our "game will fail" without this pet feature is getting more and more ridiculous every time I hear it.

Not to mention that you suddenly need moderators for that chat too. Because discussion in the global chat ARE going to derail. Badly. FSK18 is still one of the safest topics to be assumed. It only goes down from there on.

Exactly. Brad, you actually said something before I got to it and repeated you

I've never had a reason to use global chat. It's always like this:

<newb> HI WORLD!
<hipster> lfm 1v1
<idiot> SPAAAAM
<young'n> oooooh look people! Hi!
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[ProPlayer] Type your message here
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Notice how the Pros don't say anything.

If the future is a facebook page, count me out.

I disagree.