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I actually like the *only can send nationally* while in a station/bar thing :) when in space, your kinda alone, but in a station, yeah, that would fit even now.
I wouldn't mind this but I think you should make it so that groups can chat no matter the nation so we don't have a bunch of people making guilds for that purpose.
well, I specifically listed that groups, guilds and nation chats were universe wide, with delays.
I was thinking of groups and guilds being of any mix of nations, as guilds and groups have a choice of who to invite, and groups disipate after logging off
I envisaged the 'bar chat' being like internet cafes are today, it should be possible to /msg a ship (in flight) from the bar , but only to ships that the sender has had previous contact with ( a bit like knowing a person's email addrerss or phone number) this kind of social chat would have no effect on gameplay as such, and would be open to to all players, for social interaction.
Ship-to-ship comms however should be different, they should be either short range(eg. sector chat), limited range (sytem wide group chat), or be nation/or guild specific (encrypted to prevent the enemies/competitors listening in)
Long range comms would require some sort of relay infrastructure to send messages through wormholes, or might rely on the prescence of ships to act as relay stations - some delay with these sort of messages would be inevitable, and would add realism.
I envisaged the 'bar chat' being like internet cafes are today, it should be possible to /msg a ship (in flight) from the bar , but only to ships that the sender has had previous contact with ( a bit like knowing a person's email addrerss or phone number) this kind of social chat would have no effect on gameplay as such, and would be open to to all players, for social interaction.
Ship-to-ship comms however should be different, they should be either short range(eg. sector chat), limited range (sytem wide group chat), or be nation/or guild specific (encrypted to prevent the enemies/competitors listening in)
Long range comms would require some sort of relay infrastructure to send messages through wormholes, or might rely on the prescence of ships to act as relay stations - some delay with these sort of messages would be inevitable, and would add realism.
Skystrider, this is pretty much dead on how I thought of things myself. besides, delays wouldn't just add realism, they'd add a true feeling of "if you want to chat with this person about anything at all, you'd want to be near by". this means that people would hopefully cluster and border systems would be primary places to do so, giving them a lot more value than the transit hubs they are today.
We could even have it later on the guilds would have to buy relays to better communicate. So if a guild was working in grey, say as a mining guild. And they have relays from Latos to Bracus all com would be nice and fast for them there. But if a guildie moved to Edras he/her com would be slower getting messages and take longer in sending them.
Then there could also be missions and or devices to take out relays, for military or competitive reasons.
Then there could also be missions and or devices to take out relays, for military or competitive reasons.
aye, that would be neato! you'd have to fall back to "public relays" which where either slow (1-5 second delay per hub) or costly to use!
Thinking more about the design of a intergalactic comms network...
I would suggest that long range comms would need some way of passing through wormholes, or they would take forever to travel normally between the systems (as systems next to each other on the map are actually separated by vast distances).
Maybe they messages would be stored at message nodes on either side of the wormhole and pass through only when a ship activates the Wormhole or nodes would need to be capable of triggering the wormhole to allow the passage of a data burst. These nodes would be vulnerable to attack and would only really be found in monitored space. Making Grey space even more dangerous and lonely. messages may not get through grey space at all or be delayed until a comnnection can be made.
While Itani and Serco are at war I would think it unlikely that they would cooperate on the development of a universe wide network. I think the comms network would more likely consist of a mixture of the Serco and Itani military networks, commercial faction networks, and casual ship to ship networks, where messages are relayed by friendly ships.
I dont work in computers or networks in real life but I would assume that this sort of mixed structure would, like the worlde wide web, be more resilient to attack, so that if a part of the nework is destroyed, other parts of the network would relay the message via an alternative route.
I would suggest that long range comms would need some way of passing through wormholes, or they would take forever to travel normally between the systems (as systems next to each other on the map are actually separated by vast distances).
Maybe they messages would be stored at message nodes on either side of the wormhole and pass through only when a ship activates the Wormhole or nodes would need to be capable of triggering the wormhole to allow the passage of a data burst. These nodes would be vulnerable to attack and would only really be found in monitored space. Making Grey space even more dangerous and lonely. messages may not get through grey space at all or be delayed until a comnnection can be made.
While Itani and Serco are at war I would think it unlikely that they would cooperate on the development of a universe wide network. I think the comms network would more likely consist of a mixture of the Serco and Itani military networks, commercial faction networks, and casual ship to ship networks, where messages are relayed by friendly ships.
I dont work in computers or networks in real life but I would assume that this sort of mixed structure would, like the worlde wide web, be more resilient to attack, so that if a part of the nework is destroyed, other parts of the network would relay the message via an alternative route.
make relays in wh sectors uber fast observer bots that can jump back and forth as transmissions are needed. For communication in Grey Space, if your faction is high enough you can tap into the underground relay network (pirate net).
maybe this thread can be moved to suggestions now?
And we need a Nemesis chat!! Channel 666 sends to your hated nations! Ah!
I'm still relativly new here, and I'm no RP guru, so there's a big IMHO prefixed to this post.
I think the real problem here is we have (at least) two groups of players. Those who want spacequake and a chat room an those who want immersive RP. Neither of these groups is right, wrong or better than the other in any way, but often their needs come into conflict. I would say I fall into the RP camp, but it took me a while to actually find the RP in VO and in that time I slipped into a few bad habits.
At this point you should read http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/7/11759#141057 this excellent post. I also have played NWN quite a lot online, the NWN community is an ideal example of good RP in action. Most NWN servers are quite strict, with permenant bans for things that don't raise an eyebrow here (banning people from VO for bad RP is not really an option as it would be bad for guild's buisiness). And remember... all things being equal, RP quality decreases as player base increases.
I think what's needed here is some kind of seperation between the RP and spacequake camps. This already happens to some extent as people tend to interact with those of the same camp. I was unsure about http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/11783 this suggestion when everyone disagreed but if a dev had the same idea then it's probably a good one. The idea behind this suggestion was to allow both camps to do their thing without adversly effecting the game for each other: seperation. This has to be done carefully, we don't want to create two seperate communities. We want to allow the spacequakers to do their thing in a context that's consistent with the RPers universe and in doing so unify the community.
The other thing we need is more context. There has already been some http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/11650 discussion on how to RP our immortality. Personally I like my idea of some kind of backup clone the best, but I'm biased and the consensus seems to be for some kind of escape pod. We need discussions on things like how communications work. Is it radio or some kind of FTL communication? Can signals pass through worm holes? This already happens in the individual suggestions threads, but it would be nice to form a clearer overall picture of the details of the VO universe that we could all agree on and use as a starting point.
Personally I'd like to see delays for ship based radio, wormholes being a barrier to radio, and comms satellites allowing FTL communications. Satellites could be destructable, and if destroyed could be replaced either by NPCs or as a player mission (jettison a 100cu widget at a waypoint?). This could lead to wonderful things, like beginning an assault on a system with the simeltanious destruction of it's wormhole comms satellites. Is there a suggestion thread for this?
Forcing people to have game-generated names might be a good thing, only because giving people the ability to choose a name and then telling them to change it because it's out of context will make some people angry. I agree that callsigns could be player-selected but some vetting (by guides?) would still be nice, things like "Bin Laden", "Gandalf" or "1337 5|4`|3|2" are not good for immersion. Perhaps people could change their callsign but their name would be set in stone.
Could we get a consensus on what channels are in character and what are out of character? Personally I tend to treat 100, 1, group and guild as OOC and the rest as IC, but it depends on the conversation I'm having and what I'm doing at the time.
Concerning http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identification_friend_or_foe IFF, a lot of that I would expect to see in future work on the sensors. I'd like to see the ship varient hidden, at least for hostile ships, so a vultaris and a vult mk1 would both show up as a generic vult.
If we are going to get good role play happening it's got to be done by the players, the devs have already provided a universe in which it can happen. Role play is created by the player base, there are things the devs can add to the game to help but even 4 ppl in an IRC channel can be a role playing game if the players make it happen. If the majority of the active players begin to frown on OOC chat in sectors, and gently nudge players to better and more RP then things will improve for us RPers. We need to develop a concept of metagaming as Chano pointed out in his post, and encourage people to play roles. How can this be done without alienating people who don't want to role play?
Edit: links?
I think the real problem here is we have (at least) two groups of players. Those who want spacequake and a chat room an those who want immersive RP. Neither of these groups is right, wrong or better than the other in any way, but often their needs come into conflict. I would say I fall into the RP camp, but it took me a while to actually find the RP in VO and in that time I slipped into a few bad habits.
At this point you should read http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/7/11759#141057 this excellent post. I also have played NWN quite a lot online, the NWN community is an ideal example of good RP in action. Most NWN servers are quite strict, with permenant bans for things that don't raise an eyebrow here (banning people from VO for bad RP is not really an option as it would be bad for guild's buisiness). And remember... all things being equal, RP quality decreases as player base increases.
I think what's needed here is some kind of seperation between the RP and spacequake camps. This already happens to some extent as people tend to interact with those of the same camp. I was unsure about http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/11783 this suggestion when everyone disagreed but if a dev had the same idea then it's probably a good one. The idea behind this suggestion was to allow both camps to do their thing without adversly effecting the game for each other: seperation. This has to be done carefully, we don't want to create two seperate communities. We want to allow the spacequakers to do their thing in a context that's consistent with the RPers universe and in doing so unify the community.
The other thing we need is more context. There has already been some http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/11650 discussion on how to RP our immortality. Personally I like my idea of some kind of backup clone the best, but I'm biased and the consensus seems to be for some kind of escape pod. We need discussions on things like how communications work. Is it radio or some kind of FTL communication? Can signals pass through worm holes? This already happens in the individual suggestions threads, but it would be nice to form a clearer overall picture of the details of the VO universe that we could all agree on and use as a starting point.
Personally I'd like to see delays for ship based radio, wormholes being a barrier to radio, and comms satellites allowing FTL communications. Satellites could be destructable, and if destroyed could be replaced either by NPCs or as a player mission (jettison a 100cu widget at a waypoint?). This could lead to wonderful things, like beginning an assault on a system with the simeltanious destruction of it's wormhole comms satellites. Is there a suggestion thread for this?
Forcing people to have game-generated names might be a good thing, only because giving people the ability to choose a name and then telling them to change it because it's out of context will make some people angry. I agree that callsigns could be player-selected but some vetting (by guides?) would still be nice, things like "Bin Laden", "Gandalf" or "1337 5|4`|3|2" are not good for immersion. Perhaps people could change their callsign but their name would be set in stone.
Could we get a consensus on what channels are in character and what are out of character? Personally I tend to treat 100, 1, group and guild as OOC and the rest as IC, but it depends on the conversation I'm having and what I'm doing at the time.
Concerning http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identification_friend_or_foe IFF, a lot of that I would expect to see in future work on the sensors. I'd like to see the ship varient hidden, at least for hostile ships, so a vultaris and a vult mk1 would both show up as a generic vult.
If we are going to get good role play happening it's got to be done by the players, the devs have already provided a universe in which it can happen. Role play is created by the player base, there are things the devs can add to the game to help but even 4 ppl in an IRC channel can be a role playing game if the players make it happen. If the majority of the active players begin to frown on OOC chat in sectors, and gently nudge players to better and more RP then things will improve for us RPers. We need to develop a concept of metagaming as Chano pointed out in his post, and encourage people to play roles. How can this be done without alienating people who don't want to role play?
Edit: links?
Eh, I'm in the spacequake crowd, and I'd still love to see this stuff.
Especially the lack of an easily obtainable callsign. It would A) cut down on the griefing, and B) create multiplayer battles that are very strategic
Especially the lack of an easily obtainable callsign. It would A) cut down on the griefing, and B) create multiplayer battles that are very strategic
...am I too late to say.... no?
as in No. the universe is too large already as far as player-interaction. Remove number channels, 100, universal chat systems... and you remove any chance of coordinating fun events, and most of the chance of encountering other players on more than a have-WH-camper-will-pirate level.
as in No. the universe is too large already as far as player-interaction. Remove number channels, 100, universal chat systems... and you remove any chance of coordinating fun events, and most of the chance of encountering other players on more than a have-WH-camper-will-pirate level.
thing is, it's not about the environment as it is today, but as a question about how one wants VO to be as a game in the future. we need to look beyond "we have few players" and think about the concept the game should provide with a "full" playerbase.
Nice suggestions - interesting ideas. I've thought about the chat distance delay thing quite a lot... and there are pros and cons to it. Personally, I think the cons outweigh the pros. Also, reading the dev's post rules it out as being congruent with their idea of the game (as far as I got)... but that can change. It might perhaps add some sense of the distance of space... true. But not necisarrily for all players. I think its more of an RP thing that effects those who choose to think of it that way, generally speaking. But most importantly... when you get into stuff like that - it is really just making the game too complex.
I'm all for complex games, don't get me wrong. But the complexity has to be worth it. I think most of the time the chat delay would be more of an annoyance than a part of RP. Although... the idea of having a chat delay between sectors does appeal to me, functionally. But of course, it _really_ wouldn't fit in with the chat system that we have now (which terjekv stated). If you try to add a chat delay to any kind of general chat... it just makes it an absolute headache to try to talk about anything. You are almost forced, in essence to talk just about game-related issues... making it entirely RP. I totally understand why people like to RP, but I'm just not one who would participate most of the time. I think adding chat delay (unless done very carefully and selectively) would just take away too many other aspects of the game and community to make it worth it.
The ship-id thing is also an interesting idea... but the idea could definitely be improved. Keep working on it, terjekv! I think the idea as it stands right now is also an issue of complexity/functionality. I'm all for making the nations more 'independent,' which is what the devs are going for.
Other than that... great ideas (well, ok... I'm against the callsign thing as well)! It is (supposedly) an mmoRPG, afterall. Just don't aim for TOO rpg. I'm not going to paint my room like the inside of a spaceship anytime soon.
I'm all for complex games, don't get me wrong. But the complexity has to be worth it. I think most of the time the chat delay would be more of an annoyance than a part of RP. Although... the idea of having a chat delay between sectors does appeal to me, functionally. But of course, it _really_ wouldn't fit in with the chat system that we have now (which terjekv stated). If you try to add a chat delay to any kind of general chat... it just makes it an absolute headache to try to talk about anything. You are almost forced, in essence to talk just about game-related issues... making it entirely RP. I totally understand why people like to RP, but I'm just not one who would participate most of the time. I think adding chat delay (unless done very carefully and selectively) would just take away too many other aspects of the game and community to make it worth it.
The ship-id thing is also an interesting idea... but the idea could definitely be improved. Keep working on it, terjekv! I think the idea as it stands right now is also an issue of complexity/functionality. I'm all for making the nations more 'independent,' which is what the devs are going for.
Other than that... great ideas (well, ok... I'm against the callsign thing as well)! It is (supposedly) an mmoRPG, afterall. Just don't aim for TOO rpg. I'm not going to paint my room like the inside of a spaceship anytime soon.
BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUMPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPPP!
Deja vu. :D
Indeed.
good bump!