Global PA chat.

I think so. At least it worked out for SupCom so far. Considering the value of a global chat it is definitely worth a try in my eyes at least. If you put in an irc client that can be configured to connect to other servers it would give you the possibility to try and offer an official chat and if it doesnt work out you could just kill the official irc channel and let the irc client display a message like: "You may join fan-based irc's right here, but we do not offer an official chat anymore." So the work of adding in the chatclient would not go to waste either way.

If each account on the official chat servers is tied to a game key, and that game key tied to a credit card number (or a salted hash of one to be more precise) then a ban would force a person to buy a new copy of the game if they wanted to get back on chat and the CC# tracking makes it very very hard for people to just buy new copies of the game over and over. (The credit card companies and banks get quite touchy when someone starts burning through card numbers.) This is what makes ban's in MMOs effective.

Since PA can be bought through Paypal the CC# thing may not work but at $40-$50 a pop repeated bans would get expensive pretty quick.

Also each person can usually put people they don't like on an ignore list. In the case of PA the ignore list could also work as a "Don't put me in games with these people." list in addition to filtering out chat messages from them. The ignore list is usually enough for most asshattery and the ban hammer works to keep out spam bots and the truly annoying parts of the human race.

However then you have to deal with the process of people appealing their bans or getting angry about getting banned for what "their friend did on their PC" and such which can be quite a pain. In EVE and FFXI they will use 7 day bans, 30 day bans, 60 day bans, and perma bans as they feel are appropriate on something of a sliding scale based on what the offender did.

So its doable but it can be a lot of work. It might be worth it though if it really creates a good community.

For a ladder this isnt the best idea as it enables you to control who you are playing against, which can be problematic. For customgames it indeed could be helpful.

Yeah I am not sure what to do about ladder matches.

For 1v1 I don't think it is a problem to play vs a total *** of a person as long as you can /ignore what he says. You can basically just show him what you think of him by crashing him ingame instead. It's a wargame after all.
For teamgames that option could determine who is put into your team and who not.

I feel the same way. It seems like few companies realize what made games like StarCraft 1 and WarCraft III so enduring wasn't allegedly superior gameplay but rather their community infrastructure and user-generated content. If you put Red Alert 2 on Battle.net 1.0 and gave it a powerful editor it would have been just as enduring. General chat(s), custom chat channels, and moderted clan/group channels create communities - communities which in time can exist independently of their chat channels. Hell, I saw some guy from Clan WA, an old Brood War clan, advertising his clan here not too long ago. I checked their website and now they're on a lot of games. That clan started the same way every clan on StarCraft did, some guys made a clan channel.

This segues into my second thought, user-generated content and the resulting subcommunities work synergistically to increase game longevity. General chat is important for establishing a general community but map editors, mods and game variants can generate subcommunities. Subcommunities (clans, groups, channels, etc.) provide community depth while also acting as a social incentive behind user-generated content. Subcommunities like the aforementioned Clan WA, stuck around Brood War because of custom maps (SC1 equivalent of SC2 Arcade) and even made some memorable custom maps. Uber has the right idea making the game moddable and providing avenues for user-generated content (robust map editor/generator?), that stuff can't be over emphasized.

The "Featured Maps/Mods", "Community Announcements", "Twitch Events" and general social features we see in modern games are nice but they're all for naught if you don't have basic community-enabling features. It's unfortunate how many great games fall into this trap, some that come to mind include Company of Heroes, the Total War franchise and even StarCraft II on launch. It's a problem of not seeing the forest through the trees and StarCraft II demonstrated exactly how impactful these community-enabling features really are. I can only imagine how enduring Relic's DoW or CoH games would have been with a proper Battle.net analogue.

Take it from me as an RTS fan who's played all the big titles and wants PA to succeed. Community-enabling features like general chat, custom chat, group chat and friendslists are the BEST way to establish an enduring community, being a great game isn't enough. PA can still succeed without this stuff, but it's a lot harder to keep developing a game when the player base dries up for a lack of community. It's crazy but I still get on Brood War sometimes to play "chatcraft" and just see who's on, that's how enduring the community is on Brood War. A lot of other people still do too. The same is likely true of SupCom and FAF.

Uber probably can't include every community/longevity feature they would like but here's what I would say the bare minimum/necessities are: some kind of general chat (could be VOIP like World in Conflict), some kind of custom/clan/group chat for subcommunities, friendslists and an easy way to play together, matchmaking and ladder, and a powerful way for amateurs to generate content (mods, maps or game variants). The last one is definitely the hardest. If 12 year olds can figure out your modding/mapping tools you're doing it right (see: Blizzard editors).

Edit: This post got a lot longer than I expected but I felt it important to share. I attribute much of Blizzard's success to their community infrastructure and powerful campaign editors, and I am probably not alone in that. I'm not sure if this is at all possible but something as low-tech as the StarCraft 1 campaign editor would go pretty far for user-generated content. SCMDraft II was a third party map editor and is considered the pinnacle of Brood War mapping tools as well as the easiest to understand/learn. A little more about it can be read here. Essentially it allowed for rudimentary unit and ability editing, map-based tech restrictions and a rudimentary GUI based scripting (players it will act on, conditions, actions).

I agree, the experience was great, but some vigilante moderators ended up ruining that. Valk....

All you really need is a functional ignore button and the toxic portion of the community can be largely ignored. Or even better still, a muffle command for the mods to exercise against trolls and whatnot. I find that generally it falls to opinion of the person doing the moderation and that can be suspect. Banning under the belief that someone is being a **** is not right due to the fact that you may be misreading the situation, but bans for exploits and cheating need to be enforced.

I think battle.net ended up with something very nice.

I am for global chat, but give users the power and tools to moderate private channels.

Most games that I have played with a global chat have someway to report users. Just like you do on these forums.

When you get down to it, global chat is just a copy of these forums, but done in real time.



An alternative would be to integrate the forums into the game. It would not be the same, but it would be close.

Block function?

Block and liberal ban hammering makes everything better.

I Think a Nice App for our Mobil devices would also be nice that could incorporate a chat function.It should work out well, plus it would help with some funding for Uber. Just my 2 cents.