Global Chat

[Luthien]

As long as it can be turned off — I have no issues with it.

That's just it -- in my experience, it can't be. Oh, it physically can be, but the players rely on it so heavily to form groups, etc., that you realistically can't if you want to do anything. Therefore, you can't turn it off. Ever. And it just scrolls. And scrolls.

We need some better tools for creating parties, but they've already announced that we will have those soon.

Considering you have the option to filter /shout, then I don't think this would be any different. I conceptualize a "global channel" as just like a /shout, but server wide.

I would have conceptualized the same. But that's not been reality in my experience. I could probably try to explain a theory as to why, but I don't know if I would be right. I just know what reality has shown me: global chat channels are 10X worse than the worst Jeuno/Whitegate spam ever imagined being in FFXI.

As people come back to the game, the "feeling lonely" in the game will get better. And, in my opinion, writing this in October while this thread began in June, it has vastly improved already.

Also, I'd rather not sit with a party flag for 5 hours like you have to use to in XI just to get a party. So I don't want a LFG feature unless they make it as successful as WoW's was.

The reason the party flag system in XI wasn't adequate was that there was little content that was playable solo. In XIV, I feel comfortable with the idea of putting up a party flag and going to do some solo leves or doing my crafting leves.

I have yet to see a decent argument in this thread against having global chats. Gold sellers and spam not being ones, as you can obviously disable the global chats.

See above. The comments on this thread prove that point: People here arguing in favor of global chat want 2 things. They want a social channel and they want a place to chat for party invites and forming groups. Put those together, which the the community WILL DO, and you have a disaster. You can't turn it off because you need it to get in a party. But you can barely sift the party invites out of the mass of social talk/spam/flamewars. I don't care if you have 15 different global chat channels separated by type. People who want their particular request and/or flamewar-starter heard the best will pick whichever channel seems the most populated. I would. And that's what I've seen.

I swear to god the people who always say no to things have never actually played another MMO. Almost every other AAA MMO has global chat channels and they do FINE.

I wouldn't swear that one to God, because you're wrong. I played Rift. Does that count? And one reason I left was the global chat. It gave me NO sense of community. I HAD to pay attention to it if I wanted to get into a raid. No GMs monitored it. It was filled with spam. It scrolled incessantly. Oh, and I wasn't on a highly populated server.

Please, please, please SE -- I know several of you say you've played other MMOs. If you feel the players are truly demanding a global chat system, find a way to monitor them or something. Threaten to suspend players having general chat in the LFG channel, and vice versa, or something. (I don't see this happening because of the amount of resources SE would have to devote to doing this.) And do NOT make them automatically joined.