Global Chat

[Nipa]

Summary of the thread :
"There is no reason for not having optional global chats. Every other game do well with them."
"It will never work, RTM and players will spam! I don't want them. I'd rather be eaten by an angry Lala than have a global chat!"
"But it's optional!"
"I don't want them!"
"Optional!"
"You are obviously stupid if you want them!"
"Optional!"
"For god sake, please, never ever a global chat channel in that game!"
"Optional!"
"I can have any opinion I want!"
"Optional!"
"I don't want them because you want them!"


... and I have yet to understand why anyone would not want to have them.

[MeowyWowie]

Summary of the thread :
"There is no reason for not having optional global chats. Every other game do well with them."
"It will never work, RTM and players will spam! I don't want them. I'd rather be eaten by an angry Lala than have a global chat!"
"But it's optional!"
"I don't want them!"
"Optional!"
"You are obviously stupid if you want them!"
"Optional!"
"For god sake, please, never ever a global chat channel in that game!"
"Optional!"
"I can have any opinion I want!"
"Optional!"
"I don't want them because you want them!"


... and I have yet to understand why anyone would not want to have them.

Because even if they are made optional, the people with it turned off will miss out on chat that pertains to their situation. Be it selling, buying, missions, whatever, anyone who has it filtered off will be at a disadvantage to those who don't mind all the spam.

You (not you, Nipa, just in general) would also have to be extremely naive to think that people will use them the way they are intended. ManekiKanji's comment about the market wards is a perfect example.

I'd much rather they improve shout and make it zone wide. Give us a FFXI/FFXIV hybrid party recruitment system. Give us a global feature to improve personal bazaars, similar to FFXI's /seacoms but much, much more advanced and organized.

For anything other than global general chat, there is always another solution. If general chat could be used only as a general chat interface, not buying, selling, recruiting, etc.. then I'd be all for it. I would filter it and forget it. But in reality, we all know that would never be the case.

[normalforce]

Because even if they are made optional, the people with it turned off will miss out on chat that pertains to their situation. Be it selling, buying, missions, whatever, anyone who has it filtered off will be at a disadvantage to those who don't mind all the spam.

But they already are at a disadvantage! Someone shouting in Limsa selling a particular item will miss out on a sale because the exact person who would want it is in Ul'dah. That person fishing right outside of Limsa would never know about that shout or any other shout either. A city wide /shout wouldn't fix that.

As it stands, you're missing out on, at least, 2/3rds of the chatter that could pertain to your situation. And that's just from being in one city and missing out on the WTS/WTB or LFG chatter from the other two.

This is exactly what global chat channels would solve. If there was a channel for selling, and another for buying you simply keep both open up in a tab and between fights or whatever task you are doing, you flick to it occasionally to see who's selling or looking to buy what.

You (not you, Nipa, just in general) would also have to be extremely naive to think that people will use them the way they are intended. ManekiKanji's comment about the market wards is a perfect example.

I'd much rather they improve shout and make it zone wide. Give us a FFXI/FFXIV hybrid party recruitment system. Give us a global feature to improve personal bazaars, similar to FFXI's /seacoms but much, much more advanced and organized.

For anything other than global general chat, there is always another solution. If general chat could be used only as a general chat interface, not buying, selling, recruiting, etc.. then I'd be all for it. I would filter it and forget it. But in reality, we all know that would never be the case.

This argument about missing out on potentially useful shouts because you have a particular channel toggle off is like arguing against YG having a bazaar section on their website because you don't go there to make use of it.

If you don't join a channel, then you don't get to see the chatter. Simple as that. You're already missing out on a majority of the it already. Adding the ability to hear the chatter from the other two cities can only help you. And people will still use /shout, of that there is no doubt, in addition to global channels.

Because if I had the option of selling something to the guy standing right next to me, or waiting for someone 2 zones and a boat ride away to come to meet me to buy something, I'm selling it to the guy right next to me. Hands down, no thought involved.

And I agree that there are other features they could only help improve the game, but a global chat is not the disaster that it's been made out to be. I've seen it work brilliantly in an MMO before.

Are your objections to it because you anticipate everyone on the server going into the WTS channel and having idle conversation and gossip about the latest fashion and news, overwhelming the legitimate text from people actually trying to sell something?

[Mack]

Summary of the thread :
"There is no reason for not having optional global chats. Every other game do well with them."
"It will never work, RTM and players will spam! I don't want them. I'd rather be eaten by an angry Lala than have a global chat!"
"But it's optional!"
"I don't want them!"
"Optional!"
"You are obviously stupid if you want them!"
"Optional!"
"For god sake, please, never ever a global chat channel in that game!"
"Optional!"
"I can have any opinion I want!"
"Optional!"
"I don't want them because you want them!"


... and I have yet to understand why anyone would not want to have them.

first off LOL nice. Second, I think majority of people against them is whether or not its optional it will become the most used and people hate it, in a sense their hands will be forced to use global chat because everyone else uses it for everything, so it doesn't become optional really. Its the same as someone saying (for instance) you can grind mobs for 200 SP a pop but we are making guild leve mobs 600 SP a pop and no limit on how many leves you can do...sure leves are optional but obviously you will never manage a grind party as long as leves exist.

Of course, this is just my opinion on the matter, and I personally have always hated global chat in every game I've seen it in so I will always say no but if it makes a showing I'm not gonna cry over it.

EDIT: actually a better example would probably be having an AH and MW at the same time, sure either one is optional but if everyone congregates to using one over the other, it makes the other choice obsolete and the one doesn't become optional. Its obviously not to the same degree but its a point and its been made.

[trinta]

EDIT: actually a better example would probably be having an AH and MW at the same time, sure either one is optional but if everyone congregates to using one over the other, it makes the other choice obsolete and the one doesn't become optional. Its obviously not to the same degree but its a point and its been made.

That is a perfect example, I agree. A superior system will always effectively replace an inferior system, and both "AH v. MW" and "global chat v. shout" are shining examples of this.

[Viridiana]

So, just so I'm clear. . . people are against having a "global" chat, but are fine with having a zone-wide chat? That's. . . just as likely to be abused as a global chat is. Don't get me wrong, having some sort of "global" (or just certain areas/zones) chat would be an awesome improvement, but people thinking that /sh or anything else won't have all the same problems is just strange.

[Xandre]

I think what others are trying to say, which I agree with, is that throughout these forums players have suggested implementing optional commands in order to compromise the different player types, but really these options are forcing some to use "X" feature. In this case however, I don't see that being much of an issue, as I can't see anything being shouted or what have you that would necessarily be important or put anyone at a disadvantage, at least more so than what we have now.

Concerning people abusing the chat, unfortunately that's going to happen, but players should take it upon themselves to be courteous and actually post in the right log if there are multiple channels. If people use it correctly, I feel others would be inclined to follow by example. Perhaps constantly using the wrong chat will cause a GM to step in to help put things back in order.

With all that being said, a greater part of me is still against a global chat and would rather them adjust and expand on the features we have now.

[MeowyWowie]

Meh, I don't see why I even bother. Instead of encouraging SE to improve the systems that were designed for thee types of things, many still resort to the least common denominator. In this case it's using chat channels for things like party recruitment and trade.

There are MUCH better solutions, but who cares, because chat channels are easy to implement. We've all seen what happens when SE is lazy, why not let them continue that trend and see where it takes them. If SE really thinks that this is the best solution then whatever, I don't really care.

It's quite obvious that they are going to implement it anyways, so I'm not even going to argue against it anymore because it's pointless. This is one of the aspects of the game where they can actually afford to be "different," in a good way, but instead they want to copy what's been done in so many other MMOs.

Everything about the game is beginning to scream "WoW clone," and while this is not necessarily one of them, it's still a lost opportunity to stand out if they decide to go this route.

[normalforce]

Meh, I don't see why I even bother. Instead of encouraging SE to improve the systems that were designed for thee types of things, many still resort to the least common denominator. In this case it's using chat channels for things like party recruitment and trade.

There are MUCH better solutions, but who cares, because chat channels are easy to implement. We've all seen what happens when SE is lazy, why not let them continue that trend and see where it takes them. If SE really thinks that this is the best solution then whatever, I don't really care.

It's quite obvious that they are going to implement it anyways, so I'm not even going to argue against it anymore because it's pointless. This is one of the aspects of the game where they can actually afford to be "different," in a good way, but instead they want to copy what's been done in so many other MMOs.

Then let's start up a new topic on the types of improvements needed to make party recruitment and trade easier and more intuitive. That an idea I'm all for!

Even if SE created something like that, it still doesn't negate the usefulness of global channels. Because they aren't just for a few specific topics relating to trading, crafting, fighting, but rather dynamic enough for a wide range of topics.

Some of the topics would be the "official channels" that SE would setup while other channels would be player created ones.

These channels could be about anything that people have an interest in talking about. Watching that play-off game while crafting? Join that channel and chat to your hearts content. Making lots of mats and feeling benevolent enough to give some away to interested parties. A quick shout out to a crafting channel is all it takes. New players get signed up to the help channel and are able to ask questions about the game as they learn their way around.

Basically, it would be an IRC-like system, for those familiar with what that it. Along the lines of what I mentioned earlier, just a few pages back. A similar system was used in an MMO I played 11 years ago and, from what I can remember, it worked out quite well for everyone involved.

But this sort of system can only encourage more chatting and expand the social aspect of this game. All a good thing, as far as I'm concerned.

However if it is being implemented the same as the msg option via POL from 11 i would be ok with that. A way to keep in touch with friends who changed servers, not a way for gil sellers and power levelers for rl money to hound our every game momment.

I'm all for messaging like they did with POL. It was a great way to leave messages with friends and to stay in contact with them when their schedule wasn't synched up to yours. But it not a replacement for global channels.

I think the cause of a lot of the discussion here is the idea of global chatting (like how WoW seems to do it, or just one, single channel available to everyone on a server) does not quite match up with what myself and others are purposing.

[Rentahamster]

Reposted from my "add right click functionality to the chat log"

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...g-Improvements

Additional Chat Log Improvements:

Add the functions /l1, /l2, /l3, /l4 etc so that we can change linkshells without having to access the menu.

Add more tabs for each window.

Add more categories for chat text color. Specifically, the ability to alter only the chat log text about "parry", "evade", and "block", so that it is easier to use reactionary skills like Phalanx, Fracture, Haymaker, and Jarring Strike.

Add 4 new global shout categories that broadcast to the entire server rather than just the immediate area. Each one would be for each of the different languages (Japanese, English, German, French) (/jp, /en, /gr, /fr)

Add 1 global shout category just for party finding. Limit each player to one shout per 20 minutes to prevent spamming.

Add 1 global shout category just for buyin/selling. Limit each player to one shout per 20 minutes to prevent spamming.

This would actually lead to *less* spam in /sh since you can relegate all trade and party search shouts to a separate tab.