Guild members need an option to leave pertinent messages to the rest of the guild or guild leadership.

It doesn't really have to be fancy, perhaps even a 150 characters or so or maybe a single line of text. The messages could have an indefinite lifespan, but automatically delete after X number of lines (5 or 10?). A date/time stamp to game time would be helpful.

I'd think the usefulness of this feature would be obvious, but as examples: one guild-member could leave a message for another on later in the day; trade guilds could post warnings about pirates; pirate guilds could post cautions about certain traders; inter-guild events could be coordinated or planned ("Let's take Latos I-8 on Saturday, 10:00 GMT!").

I envision this as being an additional tab along the bottom of the Guild tab in the Comm section right along side the Guild Activity and Bank Activity buttons. Could the information not be stored in the same manner as these two functions? Only it would be less data since the messages could be allowed to age after X number of lines.

This is the kind of thing I think would benefit the Devs as well, since improved communication could promote additional player activity, and people playing the game having a good time is good for business.

+1

No.

A general purpose e-mail system that could be used to send messages to any player is more practical.

Communication systems that look and behave like irc and email do nothing but hurt vendetta's image. They do nothing but enforce a sense of being outdated and are directly contrary to an immersive environment.

"IRC" and "e-mail" may seem like outmoded forms of communication, but really they're just one step along the evolution of communication. In the grand scheme of things, almost all forms of communication behave like IRC or e-mail. If you can't provide some example of an alternative that is not like these and is in some way better, then you're not providing constructive dialog.

I don't see general purpose e-mail being more practical for this specific application (though it would be useful in its own right). General e-mail would be more suited for communication with a handful of people, not an entire guild.

A mechanism for coordinating event times would be handy too to be able to see who's available and perhaps even to reschedule if too many people decline. Maybe it would be best to only allow guild members in leadership positions to set up events, though.

What are you talking about in regard to IRC and email hurting VO's image, cellsafemode? The existing communication interface is pretty much directly an IRC interface. Your argument does not make sense.

I like the idea of messaging specific guild members as well (call it whatever you like: email, irc, VO-Twitter, whatever).

But it seems to me that would be a complicated and more resource driven solution to a different function. A short, easy public message board has much utility. Think of post-it notes in offices, message boards in lobbies, refrigerators, etc.

Low-tech; low-resource; easy implementation; high-utility. The epitome of high-speed; low-drag.

I think in terms in-game immersiveness IRC and email are the furthest things from the VO universe that you could devise. You have a mechanism that has a scope such as monitored or guarded that requires range but general communication does not. It makes no sense. You have bullshit command structure that is borderline CLI but want to conted that this is a game for 2015. No .. I think any resemblance to irc or email is a very mistaken direction for a futuristic space combat game compared to it's peers.

meridian, what is a guild-message system other than e-mail tailored for the guild environment? They'd need to implement e-mail in some way first to make a guild message system. If it also supported many common features of existing e-mail systems like mail lists you can then easily send messages to large groups of people.

I guess I'm envisioning a system more along the lines of the current in-game news posts, where there is a central repository that keeps something like the last 100 messages on file, rather than having separate inboxes for each guild member. The problem with a mail list is that it would just be a static list of guild members at the time the message was sent. Anyone joining the guild would not be privy to prior messages before their join date.

The other reason that general e-mail is clumsy for this application is that guild-specific messages would be intermingled with all other e-mail messages. Sure, you could implement some sort of search function or filter, but having the messages relevant to the guild visible right on the guild tab makes sense.

For the case of a guild member wanting to get in touch with just the CO, for example, using general e-mail might be the better way to go.

Hey cellulosemode, you know what's really unfuturistic? Ice. Ice is old. It was literally around during the ice age, and earlier! Ancient news, man. Why does our future space game have ice? So unrealistic and immersion breaking!

How about just buffering PMs sent to you when you're not logged in, and show them some place in the PDA. In fact stick all PMs in said list in the PDA (in addition to how it works now)

There is already a buddy note system. Extend it to include guild members and guild wide messages that get written to a comm >guild tab.

+1 Savet

Buddy notes sux because it only saves the last one you send to a particular person. I mean if I sent you two, you only see the second.

Yes. The buddy notes system needs overhauling or replacement by email.