Personally I hate world chats in MMO's.
Talking to everyone on the server no matter where they are at in the game.

I think it's way better if players have to meet up with people to talk to them.
For example at the town center / bank etc.. Wherever there usually are a lot of playes.

Also forces players to have to go to the town center to yell out their wares.

But problem is that if you don't have a world chat.. There will be an IRC chatroom outside the game that most players go to.
And I don't see any way of stopping that.

Do you think it's best to add a world chat even if you don't like it.. so they won't create an IRC chat?
If you make a world chat you can at least control the chat to some degree.
For example not letting them type more than 1 message within certain time periods.
Just as long as you don't make the limitations too big because then they will probably create an IRC chat anyway.

What do you think?

I truly believe that communication is very important to a healthy social environment in MMO's. That said I also truly believe that having any sort of global chat channels invites three particularly annoying pests into that social (as well gameplaying) realm of communication:

1. Trolls
   
2. Gold sellers
   
3. Emotional screamers
   

If you were able to deal with these issues then I would see no real impediment to having a world chat setup (as well localised area chats, trade chats, guild chats etc). The difficulty of course is implementing a system that enables effective policing of the above pests in such a way as to minimise their impact.

From a role-play aspect global channels really don't fit in that well (unless of course your game incorporates it as part of lore). I like the idea of bringing people together into locations in order to have that social crowd feeling but from experience I also see issues of chat scrolling way too fast, lagginess with multiple toons located in the same area, and bunches of naked male toons dancing in synch, not to mention level 1 beggars. Kind of reminds me of the Sydney Mardi Gras (lagginess = drunken crowds) now that I think of it.

Also forces players to have to go to the town center to yell out their wares.

Aion has a system where you can set up your own mini-shop and then go afk while other players can check your wares. Not sure how successful that has been (as the sheer amount of gold spam at game release convinced me to move on) but I must admit I have always had a preference for an actual Auction house format. It helps standardise prices as well focuses all the items for sale into one body which makes equipping toons a hell of a lot easier. The other aspect being that it acts in its own way as a mini-game for those who like to buy and sell though this can lead to monopolistic practices at times.

If you make a world chat you can at least control the chat to some degree.
For example not letting them type more than 1 message within certain time periods

I really hate this feature. It can be very hard to maintain the flow of a good conversation in a global chat channel when restricted by such measures and nothing pisses me more off than having typed a brilliant dissertation in reply to some point only to have the entire text evaporate with the system message "You are unable to send this message as you have sent too many recently". The fact that such systems exist is from what I have seen not so much a punishment on players but rather an attempt to minimise gold selling spam the side effect of which sadly punishes players at times during social discourse.

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What we need is a Troll Village. The person flagged for innapropriate behaviour, gold selling etc is banished to troll village where he/she must carry out a set of very mundane tasks (including interaction requiring active player input such as a math sum - to stop botting) for a set period of time. Such time increasing geometrically each time you are sent there. Completion of the tasks requiring interaction by the player ensures that the player stays to serve out their "time-out". As well an account lock that forces the player to only be sent to Troll Village until their time is done. The sentence persay should be served in actual real time of game play i.e. if you get an half hour ban - you need to complete that half hour in troll village and not logged off in another game whilst awaiting it out. A minimum set of tasks to be completed (without being over burdensome) in each time unit ensures that time is validated as having been served. Admittedly a wacky idea but it would be interesting to see if it sorted anti-social behaviour out.

Well, We have opposing views on this.. nothing wrong with that it's just a matter of taste.

But from my perspective again, I think another good way of controlling the chat to some degree is that players can right click the name of someone who typed a message into world chat and chose to recieve coords to his position. (Would scare most people from typing in chat randomly when they feel like if the game has open pvp).

Any more ideas on good ways to control world chat?

I think another good way of controlling the chat to some degree is that players can right click the name of someone who typed a message into world chat and chose to recieve coords to his position. (Would scare most people from typing in chat randomly when they feel like if the game has open pvp).

Troll 1: <in global chat> I think you all suck
Respondant: <select coordinate location>
Respondant: <Travels to location>
Troll 1: <In local chat> Sucked in loser!
Troll's 2 - 10 <Hidden in bushes> giggle..attack!

One possible outcome which makes the tool as a form of discipline probably a better tool for trolls.

It is difficult to control world chat, control it too much and players will move to alternative forms of chat. One way you might try is an ingame "pay as you speak" in keeping with the way telegraph/telegram systems work. Each word costs a coin -- the more you speak the more you spend your ingame currency.

But problem is that if you don't have a world chat.. There will be an IRC chatroom outside the game that most players go to.
And I don't see any way of stopping that.[/quote]
Who cares? They're talking about your game in, and I'm using this word tenuously, the "general public". Nothing wrong with what amounts to free advertising.

Now, the question is this: are they using this imaginary IRC channel to talk about your game or are they using it to form groups because your in-game system is so convoluted no one can accomplish anything? Only one of those answers is a problem and requires effort from you to correct.

But from my perspective again, I think another good way of controlling the chat to some degree is that players can right click the name of someone who typed a message into world chat and chose to recieve coords to his position. (Would scare most people from typing in chat randomly when they feel like if the game has open pvp)[/quote]
That doesn't work because the entire point of being a troll, a goldseller, or an emotional moron is that you either don't care or don't have the capacity to. The problem with "solutions" like this is that they generally end up spawning additional problems instead of providing tools for a solution.

As a basic example, consider your proposed effort: the key issue here is what happens when a perpetrator dies. Are dead people allowed to talk in General? If yes, then your idea is just hot air since there is no barrier to prevent the instigator from continuing to rile those around them. If no, then how do you deal with all the boundary cases where a player has a legitimate need to use the General channel (perhaps to call for help?) but is, for whatever reason, dead? In the end, decisions like that tend to become poster children for "things we did to curb bad behavior but really just screwed over innocent people and newbies", since first-time players tend to be the unintentional victims of such measures.

Social applications are frustrating because you will always have a small minority who actively seek to ruin everyone else's fun. Unfortunately, in a lot of cases the cost to try and correct such behavior tends to be far greater than the benefit. This is the main reason why a lot of otherwise interesting features for various games are cut - it's much easier and much more pragmatic (read: a very good business decision despite the popular idea that game companies are lazy. That is not to say that companies aren't lazy, but sometimes there is a valid reason for a company's decision.) to not waste the effort and direct it elsewhere. All the time, energy, and manpower you might spend on controlling the riff-raff in the General channel could potentially be translated into a bevy of new content instead. Given that players have other methods of communication, which do you think they'd appreciate more?

However, to distill this down to my opinion to your question: global chats are useless. There's nothing wrong with an "All" chat, per se, but take a leaf out of most MMOs' books and compartmentalize it. Good chat control is less about Stalinesque moderation and more about empowering users to help themselves - in most games, simply leaving the area allows a victim to be free of whoever is currently terrorizing General. Allowing players to use short-term tools to punish, or block, someone else gives them (and you) leeway to deal with people who didn't know better while providing relief from those who did. Setting up a good "rules of conduct" allows you to have the moral high ground when you need to intervene and allows users to gauge for themselves what is and isn't appropriate against an identifiable standard.

Of course, preventing General chat all-together encourages players to meet as you'd like them to. It doesn't make a lot of sense, to me, to base your social gameplay around proximity and then undermine it with distributed communication.

Other than that, I agree with Stormynature: communication is pivotal in an MMO and arbitrary restrictions do nothing but drive players away.

One way you might try is an ingame "pay as you speak" in keeping with the way telegraph/telegram systems work. Each word costs a coin -- the more you speak the more you spend your ingame currency.

I can't believe I didn't think of that!
I've even heard of this method before.
It's a great idea, Definitly going to be using that.


I think chat moderation by GMs is bad.
I don't think games should need DEV/GM intervention.
If you have that it's because you couldn't solve it by good game design.
Another problem of having GMs is that there's risk for corruption then.

Troll is also very vague word, Most people don't even know what it means when they use it and mistake it for a griefer or an entertaining person.
Griefing is a part of gaming just like all other player styles.
And the example you gave of someone using world chat to lure someone to come gank him when in fact it was an ambush.
That's just cleverly thinking.. Not something that should be punished.. I've done that in games where I've said for example "Can someone help me please, I died and lost my might armor of ultra greatness in the dungeon of darkness." And then someone comes and drops into my trap
Besides he wasn't going to return the armor to me anyway since he dropped in unannounced.

But the coin system for talking in chat is great, It solves the biggest issues with it.. People using it too casually and gold sellers to some degree.

The only other thing I can think of that some people think you need GM's for is protection against scammers.
But that's something else that should be part of the game if you ask me.
Games should be challenging and make you think, make decisions that make you win or lose.
And it takes a very stupid player to fall for a bad, obvious and well known scam or a genius scammer to pull off a masterpiece of a scam.

You can think of scamming as being a thief.
It's way more "gamelistic" word I came up for just now that is "realistic for games" than having just a skill for thieving where you press a button just.

It's just unfortunate you can't do this with all skills, Like crafting.. Right now you just press a button if you have the materials for it.

If you try to make players pay for in-game chat, once again they'll simply resort to out-of-game systems like IRC or Skype.

The same applies for any other measure you might think of that players disagree with.

Yeah, It's a possibility for sure.

But if you take a irl example what some powerful people do in mexico for example
(Can't give too many details it's just something I heard/read somewhere once and got a vague memory of it)

They make a village work for them, almost like slaves.. And they only give them some minimal pay/food that's just enough for them to not want to rebel since they have something to lose (water for example).

So question is how much can you charge players to type in world chat (if any) to make them fed up enough to create an IRC when there's already a world chat that's "good enough".
Not that creating an IRC is hard but to get all players to join it is harder and will take time to get it populated and even then it will mostly just be people that read the forums etc.

It's worth to test at least.. If they make an IRC that gets popular anyway.. Simply remove the world chat.

As a thought for the constant spammers/annoying people, set up a system where if you are constantly spamming, you can still send out messages, but for a time they get sent to nowhere, or perhaps a channel for everyone spamming. They may not even realize this and still send out messages, extending the time they are in that channel. You could still allow them to do PMs and such, but this would save your world chat, especially if they didn't know that no one but spammers were seeing this. As for selling wares, have a channel just for that. Sure it could be annoying to look at, but it could be filtered out or turned off. If that option does appeal, why not make like a wares listing. Everyone inputs their stuff, and when someone wants to see what's for sale, they pop open a window with an entire list.