Global Chat

[Majidah]

a glob chat would DESTROY the game's worldy enviorment. it'd destroy the illusion of distance and it'd kill the city's livelyhood. shouting would die and we'd all walk in silence. it'd also open place for clics and be spammy as hell. the scroll speed alone should keep SE from making something as bad as a global chat.

[Lavani]

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

you know that the number of text inputs going into a chat channel can be limited to X amount of inputs in a given Y amount of time?

[Shneibel]

there should be a Global channel, a trade channel and should be able to turn to on or off other chat, it ll be fine, better than the zombie community atm

[Lavani]

there should be a Global channel, a trade channel and should be able to turn to on or off other chat, it ll be fine, better than the zombie community atm

Exactly, and for those that say "it will become a requirement" you can turn it off and go about your buisness, if you need a party you can shout like people do now, or turn on the chat and PuG. I personally only really care about a city chat where you can talk to people in all three cities and find groups that way. I hate having to run to uldah just to shout for an hour and maybe get a group together. By allowing players to talk to each other regardless of cities that can make finding groups easier. I personally don't like the idea of a true gloabal chat which everyone can see regardless of zone, but if it is implemented i can simply turn that chat off.

[Majidah]

Exactly, and for those that say "it will become a requirement" you can turn it off and go about your buisness, if you need a party you can shout like people do now, or turn on the chat and PuG. I personally only really care about a city chat where you can talk to people in all three cities and find groups that way. I hate having to run to uldah just to shout for an hour and maybe get a group together. By allowing players to talk to each other regardless of cities that can make finding groups easier. I personally don't like the idea of a true gloabal chat which everyone can see regardless of zone, but if it is implemented i can simply turn that chat off.

Why don't we just get rid of the game's graphics and turn it into a text based mmorpg while we are at it?

[AliceKaye]

I have mixed feelings on this. I like the idea of being able to chat with more people while I fight mobs and craft my brains out, but after having witnessed "trade chat" in WoW and global chat in other games, I'm hesitant to implement this in FFXIV for fear of crazy nuts who spam non-stop.

[Lavani]

Why don't we just get rid of the game's graphics and turn it into a text based mmorpg while we are at it?

This made me lol. People seem to only think in extremes.

While we are on the subject of limiting chat options why dont we just do away with the entire chat system. Better yet why not make it a purely single player game that requires internet to use?

[Majidah]

This made me lol. People seem to only think in extremes.

While we are on the subject of limiting chat options why dont we just do away with the entire chat system. Better yet why not make it a purely single player game that requires internet to use?

Works for dark souls!

[Preypacer]

Here's the thing that I don't like about the typical implementation of global chat channels...

People never use the channels for what they're intended for.

People looking to trade or sell or buy something will typically just use whatever is the most active channel and spam it to get it in front of the most eyeballs.

People who have no reason to be in the trade channel will be in there talking their heads off about everything but trading/selling/buying.

"Just disable the channel if you don't like it" should never have to be a suggestion to deal with it, because then you're missing out on discussion you might actually want to follow or want to be part of. So, the solution of "just disable the chat window if you don't like it" should never be a required, nor suggested option.

/blist-ing people? Perhaps, though again.. not really an elegant solution to the issue and more of a band-aid to deal with a less than ideal one.

I've wondered if a system like this could be useful...

For trade, only trade-specific messages will be processed. And how do you control this? By automating it.

For example, you could tag items in your inventory as something you want to buy/sell or trade, and then enabling a sort of "advertise" toggle. If you don't have the item in your inventory to tag as a "WTB" then perhaps a system similar to the auto-translator where you locate the item that way and select it could work.

You can enter a custom message (like the search comment function in XI). Enabling it will basically automatically post an update to the trade channel on your behalf in certain intervals... like every 2 minutes or something.

The itmes you're buying/selling/trading could show up as linkable items, so people can click on them and have the item's stats show up in a pop-up window, much like you can in some other MMOs.

No regular discussion can take place in that channel, you can not manually enter messages to it. If you're interested in discussing a possible transaction with someone, you PM them personally and discuss it that way, or group up and talk in party chat or something.

Further, trade chat can only take place in the trade channel. Filters would be implemented to prevent, or at least greatly reduce, the effectiveness of trade-type messages in regular chat. This would be the much trickier part, I think, as you know people will always try to find ways around it. But I still think it would help more than hinder.

This would be beneficial in a few ways..
1. No spam of WTB, WTS etc filling up the chat log - especially with how often some like to spam them.
2. People don't have to either manually type or even use up macro space to post the messages.. It happens automatically for them.
3. Trade-specific messages stay where they belong, keeping the regular chat channels specific to regular discussion.

I think a system like that could have merit if well implemented.

[Blarp]

They just needs to scrap the chat system they have. Give us tabs, user created channels, PW protected channels, global channel, etc. You know, chat that is designed for a 2010 MMO and not a graphical MUD from last decade.