The Future Potential of F2P In-game Comms

[Atsuro]

I think your own personal experience with rejection is your issue, and not the majorities.

Oh dont get me wrong I wasn't complaining about my case. In fact, I dont have any difficulties finding people to play with on my server. But im talking for the new people who will join and wont be able to get accepted in this new ''guild'' thing.

 

[Reltney]

It wont make much difference being able to make f2p guilds on servers, the servers are already cliquey to the point where you can't talk to anybody you didn't knew prior to joining the server so why not just formalize it and accept it. The only difference is that you wont be able to see what the other cliques write in chat. So now everybody can circlejerk with their ''guild''. Have fun!

This pretty much nails it. I started playing on AP in the summer 2011 and left the server by the end of Cata because of the cliquishness, which was already an issue when I arrived. I got along fine with everyone I played with, but I didn't like the atmosphere of exclusion that a handful of people were creating. This thread reinforces my decision to leave the children to their schoolyard games.

 

[Rollop]

Yeah you guys are looking at it the wrong way for whatever reason. Your fear of rejection sounds super clingy though. If people do not want to play with you, they shouldn't be forced to. This way instead of being forced into rerolling you can simply hop channels. P2ps get on just fine without being corralled into the same pen. I'm sure It'll be the same for you. If you still can't find a place to fit in, the issue is probably yours.

 

[The Saint]

Yeah you guys are looking at it the wrong way for whatever reason. Your fear of rejection sounds super clingy though. If people do not want to play with you, they shouldn't be forced to. This way instead of being forced into rerolling you can simply hop channels. P2ps get on just fine without being corralled into the same pen. I'm sure It'll be the same for you. If you still can't find a place to fit in, the issue is probably yours.

When people are advertizing their severs community, then those same people sit in their little groups and ignore you there's an issue mate.

Anyone reading this, I ask you, log on any big free to play sever at prime time and see for your selves. It's as dead as achmed's underpants.

 

[Shaket]

F2p's in 'guilds'? Sounds like exploiting, m8.

 

[Rollop]

how arrogant of u "the wrong way"

Oh you, relax. The wrong way being a "glass half empty view" Simply ignoring all pros and focusing on the cons. I'd like to point out that AP was pretty pissy when people started making new communities on different servers, with the same argument. It ended up the same way this is probably going to end up. At the end of the day you can't force people who do not like you, to play with you. It's a selfish attitude. All that aside think of the cool things this could bring about. You could have multiple channels with lots of stuff going on. Trivia in one channel, world events in another. Premading in another and so on. Lots of stuff. Being clingy and trying to impose rules on players is not going to work, It will just drive even more players away. If you actually got behind this idea and helped push it I'd be willing to bet those stragglers on distant realms would flock to the awesome atmosphere. You might even bring back players who felt compelled to abandon AP.

 

[Atsuro]

Yeah you guys are looking at it the wrong way for whatever reason. Your fear of rejection sounds super clingy though. If people do not want to play with you, they shouldn't be forced to. This way instead of being forced into rerolling you can simply hop channels.

In theory this seem like a good idea, but in reality its not. We dont have enough people to afford dividing the community like that. The servers are mostly empty/full of f2ps who dont use the addon. This game have too many servers which is an obstacle for our community, let's try not to have too many channels in those servers.

 

[Kincaide]

I got along fine with everyone I played with, but I didn't like the atmosphere of exclusion that a handful of people were creating.

Seems to me like the proposed idea would be a solution for this problem, not an exacerbation. Make a new channel that includes everyone except the cliquish people. Problem solved.

 

[The Saint]

Seems to me like the proposed idea would be a solution for this problem, not an exacerbation. Make a new channel that includes everyone except the cliquish people. Problem solved.

Wouldn't keeping everyone in the sames channel be easier? The cliquey people have /w or /p anyway.

Quick question... Do you know if 10 v 10 wargames are working for F2Ps?

 

[Kincaide]

Wouldn't keeping everyone in the sames channel be easier? The cliquey people have /w or /p anyway.

I think we're still thinking within the paradigm we're already used to. People are looking at this mostly in terms of how it would affect their current structure, rather than seriously considering an entirely different structure.

To wit: What if ALL the TI F2P twinks, instead of being spread over multiple servers, each with their own identity, we were ALL on the same server, with our identities defined by our sub-group rather than our server? The effective units would be the same, in that each current "group" would still have their own group, however, changing to a different group would simply involve having to leave one channel and join another, rather than having to reroll on a different server. And just as importantly, getting games between those groups, or finding people to arena with, etc etc etc would be so much simpler as we would all be on the same physical server. Yet we would still be able to identify with a particular group within that server.

It has all the advantages of how we currently divide up into servers for identity and community purposes, but it would make activities or transfers between groups so much easier.

 

[Reltney]

Seems to me like the proposed idea would be a solution for this problem, not an exacerbation. Make a new channel that includes everyone except the cliquish people. Problem solved.

Finding the maturity to coexist with people who don't measure up to whatever arbitrary standards have been set by the current crop of elitist assholes would be a solution. Giving said elitist assholes another tool with which to exclude people is the opposite of a solution.

 

[Kincaide]

Finding the maturity to coexist with people who don't measure up to whatever arbitrary standards have been set by the current crop of elitist assholes would be a solution. Giving said elitist assholes another tool with which to exclude people is the opposite of a solution.

I don't understand your response. You look at this as a way for them to exclude you. I look at this as a way for you to include everyone you want except for the people who are assholes to you. Once again I say, you're only looking at this in terms of the current structure. Please read my post above yours, consider it objectively i.e. not from the standpoint of your current situation, and respond to it objectively and tell me objectively what issues you see with that model, again NOT looking at it from the point of view of the way things currently are.

 

[Rollop]

I think we're still thinking within the paradigm we're already used to. People are looking at this mostly in terms of how it would affect their current structure, rather than seriously considering an entirely different structure.

To wit: What if ALL the TI F2P twinks, instead of being spread over multiple servers, each with their own identity, we were ALL on the same server, with our identities defined by our sub-group rather than our server? The effective units would be the same, in that each current "group" would still have their own group, however, changing to a different group would simply involve having to leave one channel and join another, rather than having to reroll on a different server. And just as importantly, getting games between those groups, or finding people to arena with, etc etc etc would be so much simpler as we would all be on the same physical server. Yet we would still be able to identify with a particular group within that server.

It has all the advantages of how we currently divide up into servers for identity and community purposes, but it would make activities or transfers between groups so much easier.

Exactly. People are far to worried they're going to be left out of something that hasnt even happened yet. Currently as is, if you don't get along with players from AP you just reroll from the server. So how is that better than setting up multiple channels to chat and hang out in. People are focused on being excluded and worried about losing players as if this isnt already happening. Like i said, If you guys really got behind this you could make your server known for something other than being bloated with trolls. It could potentially be "the" server to play on because that's where all the cool shit is. As i posted earlier having multiple channels opens up so many possibilities. If the only drawback is that you are separated from those "elitist" players, what is the issue? Imagine a server with 100s of F2P twinks...

 

[Fry]

I partially agree with this... I think the subchannels could be a good idea, however, I wouldn't encourage using passwords...
I do not play on AP, but I can say that, at least to me, it's kinda difficult rolling in a new server, meeting people and all that stuff.. and the password thing just... doesn't even give the possibility to get to know the people on that subchannel, to me, it sounds like you'd need an invitation to even use a certain channel, and that's excluding people from the beginning.

At least I've felt like that on mumble, even tho it's open and "free", but being divided in channels, according to your server, your group... i don't know, I don't feel confident enough to just go and invade someone else's channel.

Maybe it's just me being overly shy D:.. idk, just my opinion on this.

 

[Kincaide]

I imagine a scenario where there's still a server wide chat like there is today, but a person can also create individual chat channels that the creator can control access to, and one can be in as many channels as one can stand.

These are all just throwing-cards-in-a-hat suggestions, of course... any future reality depends completely on what [MENTION=7838]Yasueh[/MENTION] feels like writing, and I'm just here to get people to think of suggestions we could make if and only if he feels up to implementing them.

So far my ideas would include:
1) Multiple channel support;
2) One default channel for the server, with unrestricted entry for all and seniority-based moderation (as we already have today);
3) The ability for a user to create, name, and manage their own private channel(s) including password, and invite or accept others into;
4) A way to mute a channel by name without leaving the channel (so that you can turn off the "trade chat" when you need to concentrate etc)

I hope that Yasueh doesn't mind the speculation and that he appreciates the interest and support people have for his addon and its future potential. I continue to encourage others to personally give me feedback on these suggestions I've made, or possible refinements, and also, to add your own suggestions to the list.

How we actually end up using the tools we could potentially have, will be a matter of social dynamics which will sort themselves out later. Simply having the tools though would greatly expand our options and give all of us even better customized play experiences.

 

[l30t53dd6p]

The takeaway message from this is that, potentially, the F2P addon will not need to mess with your friends list or your ability/inability to whisper to certain people, instead automatically connecting via a custom chat channel with all other people using the addon (which is also communicating via the same custom chat channel).

The future potential for this is huge, and could change the way we think of our F2P communities.

As it stands now, we think of an F2P community unit as being measured on a per-server basis. While there has been recent work done to make multiple chat channels possible, the fundamental default operation is for everyone on a server to essentially be in the same server-wide "guild".

However, the new technology, not depending on your friends list to know who to "whisper" to, could change the dynamic completely. I'd like to invite each of you to ponder for a minute the implications of thinking of F2P communication more in terms of a true quasi-guild chat. What if we were to imagine a future where the norm is to have multiple F2P "guilds" on a server, each one with its own secure guild channel?

The potential here is strong because it would mean a person could only have to communicate with the people they share a demeanor or philosophy with. Superservers like Aerie Peak could potentially have multiple "guilds", each with their own leadership, channel control, and personality, yet unlike the per-server model, they would have lots of other "guilds" on the same server against which they could do wargames.

What makes you think that this is not possible now? you can create multyple chat channels as f2p and form these so called f2p guilds on live just not with the <GUILD-TAG>.

 

[Kincaide]

What makes you think that this is not possible now? you can create multyple chat channels as f2p and form these so called f2p guilds on live just not with the <GUILD-TAG>.

The current system is limited by Blizzard's implementation of channel controls and moderation. There currently isn't a way to have a private, invite-only channel with moderation locked to whomever created the channel. Additionally, management of being in more than one channel at a time is, as I have heard it, unwieldy at best and impossible at worst.

Besides all that, what's possible now isn't the question. What's possible in a rewrite is what we're talking about, since it seems a rewrite is going to happen to take advantage of the new code anyway. This is a point that I seem to have to keep explaining in this thread: Let go of the past, how we do things now, what we're capable of doing now, and let yourself imagine a future where we can do so much more. Imagine if you will what you would want to see available in that potential future, and post those thoughts here. That is the point of this thread.

 

[l30t53dd6p]

The current system is limited by Blizzard's implementation of channel controls and moderation. There currently isn't a way to have a private, invite-only channel with moderation locked to whomever created the channel. Additionally, management of being in more than one channel at a time is, as I have heard it, unwieldy at best and impossible at worst.

Besides all that, what's possible now isn't the question. What's possible in a rewrite is what we're talking about, since it seems a rewrite is going to happen to take advantage of the new code anyway. This is a point that I seem to have to keep explaining in this thread: Let go of the past, how we do things now, what we're capable of doing now, and let yourself imagine a future where we can do so much more. Imagine if you will what you would want to see available in that potential future, and post those thoughts here. That is the point of this thread.

Sure, then me pointing out that some of your ideas are not a future thing but a pesent thing makes me totaly not understand the point of this thread.

I doubt that blizzy will give f2p more acces to the game but more options for f2paddon would be great.

 

[Vail]

What makes you think that this is not possible now? you can create multyple chat channels as f2p and form these so called f2p guilds on live just not with the <GUILD-TAG>.

Even when an F2p is the creator of a channel, and/or no one else is in that custom channel, that f2p does not have the privilege to write in it. The thread is about speculating what could be possible now that Blizz is altering what addons are capable of doing, and the current aspect being discussed is custom channel creation; control and functionality to be more specific.

I don't think the idea of dividing the community is a good one. It's small enough as it is, especially on realms that are not AP. Even other popular realms like BWL and MG suffer from having no one on at certain times of day.

 

[Kincaide]

5) If it were possible to allow individuals to make and manage their own channels, then perhaps an option would be possible to list all the channels on a server and who owns them. And also an option for the channel owner to have their channel listed or unlisted.