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  1. #1

    Make Chat Great (Not again, since it never was great to begin with)

    Tl;dr: Add a chat that loads up to 200 players based on their ping to one another and let players join each other's session (not just crew) to create more teamplay and a sense of community.

    Edit: To be clear: My suggestion does not aim at making it easier for you to talk to people you already planned on talking to, but aims at making it easier for you to talk to people you did not plan on talking to.

    __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ ___________

    Hi,
    one of the numerous features that was left in the dust was the chat. It never was great and almost noone uses it these days. I too just press F3 every time I start the game.
    So why should the chat get a touch-up over all the other broken features?
    Because I think the chat can be expanded to fix more than just the chat itself, but other issues as well. Also, my suggestion requires a lot of back-end coding, so it doesn't necessarily interfere with Ivory's ability to create new content.

    So here it goes:
    The chat should be split in multiple sub-categories and I'll go over each sub-catergory and give some info on how I think that category should work.

    Customizable chat window
    In this you can add or remove any of the chats listed below. Each chat will have its own color. With this you can watch multiple chats at the same time without having to switch between them.

    Main Chat
    This chat will hold about 100-200 players at the same time, definitely more than one session could handle. The chat adds new players to it based on the latency to one another, meaning that in this chat you can talk to people that would not lag out if you were to join their session. The chat also tries to put friends into the same group of people, but the latency is its main concern.

    Session Chat
    Same as the current one, holds all players currently in the same session.

    Crew Chat
    Like the current crew chat.

    Player Chat / Private
    You can combine this chat with the player chat of other players by inviting them into your chat. Works like crews, but is chat-only.

    Whisper Chat / System
    This is not so much a chat as it is a timeline of received whisper commands. I will talk about those commands in a bit, but here you can review the ones you received or issued.

    So let's talk about the issues I'm trying to fix that are not chat related, the MMO aspect of The Crew.
    As anyone should know by now, this game, marketed as MMO experience is neither massive, nor do you get to experience the multipleyer part of it, since you have almost no control over who is in your session and who's not. I'm trying to leviate that fact with whisper commands. These commands can be accessed by clicking on a player in the chat window or by typing out the players name and adding the command. Here are the ones I thought about so far:

    Whisper
    Like the current whisper, it sends the player you sent it to a message.

    Block
    Blocks the player from messaging you again. Optional it also removes their messages from chats you're in.

    Invite to crew
    Additionally to the invitation in the tow-right corner, it also adds an invitation to your chat, which stays until you join that crew, you get invited to the same crew or if that player invites you again.

    Friend Request
    Additionally to the request in the top-right corner, it also adds an invitation to your chat, which stays until you accept or decine it, or that player sends you a new one. If you decline that player cannot send you another request for one hour.

    Invite to player chat
    Invites the player to merge his player chat with yours. Invitation will stay until you accept or decline, or until that player asks you again. If you decine the player cannot send another invitation for one hour.

    Invite to session
    If accepted, it will place the sender and the receiver in a priority queue to join each other's session. This will kick both players and the players that are in the sender's priority queue from their session if necessary, so that the sender, the receiver and the players already in the sender's priority queue can form a new session.

    Anticipated effect:
    I hope that the new main chat will help making The Crew feel more alive. Since it's not bound to your current session and only loads people that have a low ping to your game, it will hopefully help meeting different players longer and more regularely. The "Invite To Session" option should help to form session with the people you want to play with more easily. For example, if you want to do some offroad action, you can ask in the main chat if someone wants to join you, and if you find someone, you can invite them to your session to play with them.
    It also helps possible streamers. Streamers can add their followers to their session by typing out their name and inviting them to their session.
    I'm also sure that there are more ways to imrove the chat and maki it less annoying, like being able to minimize it, with the chat icon just blinking if you got a new message.

    I will add more features to this list if I can come up with any, but for now I think this suggestion could help making The Crew more lively and less annoying.

    For the chats, in order for them to not descend into chaos, there should be some anti-spam mechanics in place. Here are some ideas I have:
    Spoiler:  Show

    - After a certain amount of messages sent in a certain amount of time, the player should get a spam warning, which lets him send significantly less messages for a certain time. If that player gets another spam warning, he should be able to send even less messages for a longer time.

    - Players that are blocked by over 80% of all other players in the main chat should be removed from the main chat and added to another. If players get blocked by over 400 players in a certain amount of time, a ticket will be automatically sent to the support to investigate why that player was blocked by so many other players.
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  2. #2
    Woah.... How long did that take you to write?
    And nobody replied as well.....
    Jeez
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  3. #3
    MindaugasXLTU's Avatar Senior Member
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    It's already been asked but nothing changed till now. I agree that it needs improvement but this is very low priority I guess.
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  4. #4
    It is strange that the game devs have chosen not to improve the communication system in a multiplayer game.
    I mean, people play multiplayer games because because of other people.. so one would think a robust communication system would be essential to have in place.
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  5. #5
    GSG-nWo89's Avatar Member
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    It's not the Devs fault when players refuse to use the chat -and also, many things suggested above are already built in. And for Crew-invite, Friend req etc there is the smartphone menu which can open the player list at any time. Even in the intro of a race.


    • Whisper = private chat = F6 today
    • Blocking is available
    • Session chat = F7 but why would you want to get this running globally? It would end up like on twitch where hundreds are writing stuff and you will most likely miss the parts you wanna reply to.
    • Invite to session is a good idea but then it will not work if your session is full
    • The Chat actually IS split into multiple tabs and there IS different font color btw


    So most of the wall of text is already available. Plus, what some players don't know -you can resize AND move the chat window.

    In my opinion, the only thing stupid is that we can't whisper to ANY player, that should be fixed.
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  6. #6
    title remembers me to "make america great again".
    trump FTW
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  7. #7
    arcticgamez's Avatar Senior Member
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    i remember a time when you could read chat wish that would come back

    crew chat was green
    freedrive chat was white
    whispers were blue
    system chat was yellow
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  8. #8
    Originally Posted by AlexTayIor Go to original post
    It's not the Devs fault when players refuse to use the chat -and also, many things suggested above are already built in. And for Crew-invite, Friend req etc there is the smartphone menu which can open the player list at any time. Even in the intro of a race.

    It actually is mostly the devs fault for the chat system not being used. Right now there are at best 12 players in one instance I think, which means there are at best 11 other players in chat. Now, the game tries to load in players that are close to your current position, so if you jumping all over the map or starting missions, all those players will be removed from your chat and new ones will be loaded. This leaves you no time to really communicate with those players. Ergo, the chat system doesn't get used.

    You are correct that most of the stuff I mentioned is already implemented in some form, but if you go back to my suggestions and compare them with the current situation, you'll find that most of my suggestions will build on what there is today in order to imporve those features.

    The two biggest parts of my suggestion is, for one, the main chat, which includes 100- 200 players at the same time based on their ping to one another. This should fix the issue that players in your instance, and thus in your chat, are changing too for you to engage in any meaningful conversation.
    The other part is the ability to directly control which players get loaded into your session, so you could for example ask in the main chat for other players to help you with a test, and if someone wants to help you, you add each other to your priority-queue so that you can play together. This would also somewhat help out streamers, who want to play with their followers, since they could add their followers to their priority-queue in order to play with them.

    In general, it would make the game feel more alive and more like an online game, since you are able to really see many other players playing the game at the same time as you are.

    Originally Posted by MindaugasXLTU Go to original post
    It's already been asked but nothing changed till now. I agree that it needs improvement but this is very low priority I guess.
    The sad thing is that the chat, if it would be more useful, could add to the game's longevity.

    Originally Posted by Nigeri4n_Prince Go to original post
    Woah.... How long did that take you to write?
    And nobody replied as well.....
    Jeez
    Not too long actually, but thanks for kicking things off. :P
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  9. #9
    All very good ideas and it's what I would expect in an "MMO". Unfortunately, like already mentioned, the game is not live server based so chat is limited to current session, which means no one uses it because our current session is always changing every time someone fast travels or jumps to safe house or enters an event. If the game were like other MMOs where you had game wide chat channels I think communication would be very active.
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  10. #10
    P6tu's Avatar Senior Member
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    While in general the chat window is OK, my main issues are:
    - text not readable due to wrong colors
    - not adjustable opacity
    If those things would be fixed, then I'm good with it.
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