[MUD-Dev] Better Communication [was: Better Combat]

[cruise]

Michael Hartman wrote:

> As both a developer and a player, I think game created "dead time"
> where the players' hands are free enough to chat is absolutely
> vital. If you don't have this, the game will take on a go-go-go-go
> feeling and you'll have virtually zero socialization.

> CoH is a perfect example of this. It is the quietest most dead
> feeling MMORPG I've ever played. Groups are silent. Areas are
> silent. There's no time to chat because you never have to rest
> (not even for a minute) and what little travel there is requires
> complete interaction from the player (instead of like other games,
> where everyone /sticks to the leader and thus everyone but the
> leader can easily chat).  The end result is that CoH feels like
> Diablo 2 to me. It plays like a single player game with some
> multiplayer co-op options.

I'd say this was more a case of designing around technical
limitations. The group of friends I play CoH with run a teamspeak
server, and so our group is /constantly/ chatting over our
headsets. We get constant gameplay from CoH, and yet it interferes
with our socialisation not at all.

Until broadband becomes more ubiquitos, I don't think games can have
integrated chat (and it certainly wouldn't be possible to run it
through the server - voice comms for groups only? That would limit
abuses like shouting profanity over global/public channels)
currently, but it's worth thinking about, rather than saying a game
/must/ have downtime to allow communication.

--
[ cruise / casual-tempest.net / transference.org ]
   "quantam sufficit"
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