Should General Chat be removed?

[BigQEd]

No. Please do not remove general chat.

We're forced to start on Tatooine.
In almost every server on SWG Live and SWGEmu, the vast majority of people hang out in a handful of places (CNet, The M.O., etc.)--if you've never spent time on those servers, you need a way to learn this. If you have no convenient way (some sort of in-game feature; because, face it, a majority of people don't use the forums), the new folks here will be lost and lonely--like I was the very first week I was online: poor, lonely, and clueless in Kor Vella. It took me hooking up with a guild before I could even afford to travel to Coronet.

And the major cities being empty is because it's way too easy to get a city and move on (city reqs too low and players have too many lots)... so the players immediately evacuate the major cities... and there is nothing that draws players to major cities.

It's all connected and players keep voting easy-mode in these polls. Everyone is thinking short-term...

The object is achievement.

[Zannder23]

My problem with faction only gen chat or high level guilds based on member count is that it alienates portions of the total population.

Not all of us want nor derive enjoyment from PvP. Under that suggestion only dedicated PvPers get the new gen chat.

For "Top level guilds" that creates an environment where new guilds cannot compete with a guild that has the new gen chat unlocked. Thats unhealthy in the long run for the players base as it discourages having a variety of guilds. It would make most players on the server join one or two specific guilds JUST for the convenience of gen chat. In the worst most extreme possible outcome: All players on the server belong to one of these gen chat unlocked guilds and then you have the same problem as you posit we have now. Theres no difficulty in joining a guild that has the new Gen chat unlocked. It requires what? A couple mouse button pushes to join a guild?

[Maldred]

I think the one thing that hits the larger cities is the city spec that player cities provides. Granted the 2.5 hr resets generally interrupt, why pay for 2 hr 17 min buffs when you can find a doc/ent team in a player city with ent spec and buy those 3 hr buffs. Quality over quantity yes, but the player cities draw a crowd for socializing as well. Take Diarmid cantina for instance, just last night alone there were 20-30 people in there, numerous interactions and several conversations going on at once. We're they distracted by general chat? Maybe, but did they care that someone was causing a ruckus and being obnoxious? Probably not, because they were to busy interacting. So no, removing general chat and adding other channels or limiting a players lots or even increasing the city requirements isn't a great idea.

Going to have to respectfully disagree with you here Lyl. Diarmid is an anomoly, as is Drei and even Helion for that matter (among a few others). These 3 cities would easily survive limited lots, increased city requirements or number of toons reduction as they should. After all, they have the most active individual accounts associated with them. For every one of those 3 cities there are 5 relative player-less ghost cities. I personally would love to see more emphasis placed on interacting within the busy cities as well as bringing the population back to static cities. In the absence of General chat, If new people "knew" they could go to one of these player hubs and interact, get answers or whatever I believe it would serve a much better purpose than having them blindly fly all over to a bunch of uninhabited cities that give the illusion of a dead server.

Keeping in mind that my own city would suffer a huge hit 2 toons per account, MAYBE 4 is plenty in my opinion. Hell we all gravitate to a few cities for our buffing needs anyway. Why not drop a house and have the benefit of less travel!

[Maximus0369]

I think the one thing that hits the larger cities is the city spec that player cities provides. Granted the 2.5 hr resets generally interrupt, why pay for 2 hr 17 min buffs when you can find a doc/ent team in a player city with ent spec and buy those 3 hr buffs. Quality over quantity yes, but the player cities draw a crowd for socializing as well. Take Diarmid cantina for instance, just last night alone there were 20-30 people in there, numerous interactions and several conversations going on at once. We're they distracted by general chat? Maybe, but did they care that someone was causing a ruckus and being obnoxious? Probably not, because they were to busy interacting. So no, removing general chat and adding other channels or limiting a players lots or even increasing the city requirements isn't a great idea.

Going to have to respectfully disagree with you here Lyl. Diarmid is an anomoly, as is Drei and even Helion for that matter (among a few others). These 3 cities would easily survive limited lots, increased city requirements or number of toons reduction as they should. After all, they have the most active individual accounts associated with them. For every one of those 3 cities there are 5 relative player-less ghost cities. I personally would love to see more emphasis placed on interacting within the busy cities as well as bringing the population back to static cities. In the absence of General chat, If new people "knew" they could go to one of these player hubs and interact, get answers or whatever I believe it would serve a much better purpose than having them blindly fly all over to a bunch of uninhabited cities that give the illusion of a dead server.

Keeping in mind that my own city would suffer a huge hit 2 toons per account, MAYBE 4 is plenty in my opinion. Hell we all gravitate to a few cities for our buffing needs anyway. Why not drop a house and have the benefit of less travel!

Sorry to point this out Mal but the majority of your comment isn't even on the topic of the thread...

[Kangharoux]

I voted no. I just started on the server recently and was helped right off the bat when I asked a question regarding training amid all the other colorful discussions going on in general chat. I did have to sift through all the banter, but having general chat as an option was helpful to me.

Thanks!

[KirstoAndCo]

Hoops and inconvenience make the game more difficult..

No, they don't. They make the game more annoying. Annoying and difficult are two totally different things.

Making it so it would need 10 people to take down a krayt is making the game more difficult, stopping someone chatting to people while they solo one isn't make the game more difficult, it's just making it less pleasant.

[Amans728]

Hoops and inconvenience make the game more difficult..

No, they don't. They make the game more annoying. Annoying and difficult are two totally different things.

Making it so it would need 10 people to take down a krayt is making the game more difficult, stopping someone chatting to people while they solo one isn't make the game more difficult, it's just making it less pleasant.

I agree.

Plus, didn't you guys make it so someone can group with anyone who is on another planet? That isn't "easy-mode"?

[Kaede]

No. Please do not remove general chat.

We're forced to start on Tatooine.
In almost every server on SWG Live and SWGEmu, the vast majority of people hang out in a handful of places (CNet, The M.O., etc.)--if you've never spent time on those servers, you need a way to learn this. If you have no convenient way (some sort of in-game feature; because, face it, a majority of people don't use the forums), the new folks here will be lost and lonely--like I was the very first week I was online: poor, lonely, and clueless in Kor Vella. It took me hooking up with a guild before I could even afford to travel to Coronet.

And the major cities being empty is because it's way too easy to get a city and move on (city reqs too low and players have too many lots)... so the players immediately evacuate the major cities... and there is nothing that draws players to major cities.

It's all connected and players keep voting easy-mode in these polls. Everyone is thinking short-term...

The object is achievement.

The problem here comes in the first and most potent change between Live and EMU versions. Allowing too many characters altered the design of the game. I kind of understood the need for it when EMU was a new thing and a small number of people had to work on a large number of professions to test them. At this point though, it just fragments the community with things like easy Player Cities and the removed usefulness of the major cities. Even in late stage Live I could still find activity in the major cities, everything from the Cantinas to actually buying and selling on the Bazaar. Now it's all Player City or nothing. I've sold maybe 4 things on the major city Bazaar and bought just about everything I've needed from a Player City.

The biggest 'easy mode' change was too many character slots and that seems to have, in effect, brought about the need for General Chat to keep the community tied in together. Find a way to revitalize the major cities, like true pre-CU and the need for General Chat could easily fade.

[BigQEd]

The biggest 'easy mode' change was too many character slots and that seems to have, in effect, brought about the need for General Chat to keep the community tied in together. Find a way to revitalize the major cities, like true pre-CU and the need for General Chat could easily fade.

"I" was against it. If I had it my way it would have been 3... but there was a "vote". Thus why voting might be bad when it comes to SWG... easy-mode features seem to be the result.

[Maldred]

The biggest 'easy mode' change was too many character slots and that seems to have, in effect, brought about the need for General Chat to keep the community tied in together. Find a way to revitalize the major cities, like true pre-CU and the need for General Chat could easily fade.

"I" was against it. If I had it my way it would have been 3... but there was a "vote". Thus why voting might be bad when it comes to SWG... easy-mode features seem to be the result.

This. Where do we sign on again for this??

[KirstoAndCo]

Hoops and inconvenience make the game more difficult..

No, they don't. They make the game more annoying. Annoying and difficult are two totally different things.

Making it so it would need 10 people to take down a krayt is making the game more difficult, stopping someone chatting to people while they solo one isn't make the game more difficult, it's just making it less pleasant.

I agree.

Plus, didn't you guys make it so someone can group with anyone who is on another planet? That isn't "easy-mode"?

That's an excellent example of what seems to be being considered to be about difficultly but is really about convenience.

Convenience and difficulty are not the same. A good game should, in my view, have convenient, easy to access content that is challenging to complete. For instance, there should be an easy way to meet people and to form groups to tackle content, in this game that is general chat, but the content itself should be challenging. Removing general chat would make the wrong part of that endeavour more difficult, ie, the finding a group rather than the actual content.

Sorry Ed, I'm really not trying to be obnoxious with you, I love what you've done here. I just, respectfully, think you're wrong on this one. I agree things, particularly at high level, should be difficult I just fear you're going for inconvenience over true difficulty of content.

[Kaede]

The biggest 'easy mode' change was too many character slots and that seems to have, in effect, brought about the need for General Chat to keep the community tied in together. Find a way to revitalize the major cities, like true pre-CU and the need for General Chat could easily fade.

"I" was against it. If I had it my way it would have been 3... but there was a "vote". Thus why voting might be bad when it comes to SWG... easy-mode features seem to be the result.

This. Where do we sign on again for this??

Same. I voted 2-3 on every poll I've ever seen since the EMU started. More than 2-3 and you end up with a fragmented community. I always thought one of the keys to original SWG was the interdependence and community aspects.

[BigQEd]

Don't worry and it's fine to disagree but in 3, 6 or 9 months I'll remind folks why I was against it.

Right now, you might see it as an inconvenience because it "bothers" you and you want to focus on something else. You'd rather travel faster and speak globally... it's unimportant and minor. Hard NPCs means hard-core to you!

However, some people believe fighting over powered mobs for the same or less loot is a pain and that bothers them. To them that's not harder it's just stupid!

Some people enjoy hanging out in more populated centrally located Cantinas, chatting in a more local manner and find that fun but that is diminished because everyone is rushed along to smaller player mini-cities. They'd rather general chat be removed and/or city requirements increased so that people would start the old recruitment routines and spend more time in the big cities instead of the mini-city mentality that plagued SWG later in PreCU.

Some people like the old days when people would strike up a conversation while waiting for the next shuttle. .. then see a battle break out and decide if they wanted to go Overt and help in the fight. They don't mind hanging out in the bigger cities and waiting and chatting with people.

For the record I'm for... less characters, higher city requiements, no general chat, TEF, instant PvP, tougher NPCs. All of it contributes to more difficult and longer lasting gameplay.

[Maldred]

For the record I'm for... less characters, higher city requiements, no general chat, TEF, instant PvP, tougher NPCs. All of it contributes to more difficult and longer lasting gameplay.

Ed, please get out of my brain. Kthx. ;D

[Kaede]

For the record I'm for... less characters, higher city requiements, no general chat, TEF, instant PvP, tougher NPCs. All of it contributes to more difficult and longer lasting gameplay.

I like the trend here.

I'm looking for a long term SWG home and this seems to be the formula for it. Also hoping for faction declared cities (as a crafter, yes I realize this may limit my buyers, I'm okay with this!) and a more robust GCW.

[muney]

For the record I'm for... less characters, higher city requiements, no general chat, TEF, instant PvP, tougher NPCs. All of it contributes to more difficult and longer lasting gameplay.

I like the trend here.

I'm looking for a long term SWG home and this seems to be the formula for it. Also hoping for faction declared cities (as a crafter, yes I realize this may limit my buyers, I'm okay with this!) and a more robust GCW.

Amen

[BigQEd]

I'm looking for a long term SWG home and this seems to be the formula for it. Also hoping for faction declared cities (as a crafter, yes I realize this may limit my buyers, I'm okay with this!) and a more robust GCW.

Just an fyi... we will eventually implement full GCW... planetary control that flips the cities.

Jedi/BH enhancements and balance, more GCW and better PvP are on the development table currently. [align=][/align]

[muney]

So excited for the new changes to come, also the TEF system! (sorry for getting off topic)

[Tonkakid]

Of course going to have more votes to keep it. Trolls and shit takers want this and will be kept. I most mmo's all world chat is for the world of trolls and smack talking in or about pvp! Which ruins chat for most anyways have a great day and may trolls live on lol

[Celt]

Ironic post is ironic.