117 replies to this topic

[BFett]

Looked at C3 and noticed a few features were missing including the following: Allowing people with certain tags to be able to have privileges to create sub-channels; allowing any channel/sub-channel to be easily accessed with or without password; organization of friends list based off of alphabetical sorting of name, tag, last online;

Searchable list based off of player name/email, ability to add said player without having to type full name, save-able conversations.

[Cubivorre]

In UI 2.0 will I be able to block players without making friends with them first?

[Tannhauser Gate]

Im glad to see this official discussion. I cant stress enough how vital this element is to me.

Imo, MWO is only half the game. The other half is the community experience. There is rich camaraderie, rivalries, politics, intrigue, and various levels of rp that only exist in the player space. MWO’s metagame and CW elements need to let the players connect with the game. Simply said, MWO is the battle field but the player space is the experience that keeps the community supporting the game for years and years. Without it, MWO will not survive.

In addition to Bandit’s well written post of suggestions I want to add / repeat a few of my own.

The basics:
-General Chat lobby or lobbies so players, new and vets, can connect immediately, talk trash, recruit, and generally be a part of the community at large.
-Private chat room for meetings, training, recruitment etc, with the ability to let members drop into matches as a team.
-IMs between any online members (private or group)
-Offline messaging with the ability to send attachments, screenshots, links, etc..
-Contact lists - Friends list, Unit list, Block lists, etc with management tools
-Group profiles so people can look up a group (just as they would another player) and see that group’s member list, camo pattern, emblem, motto, links, and other information.

MWO integrated features:
-Multiple players drop into training games that do not reflect on player scores etc..
-Mech loadout templates that can be created shared to shorten training and ramping up new unit members. E.g. use a template to apply directly to a mech and instantly buy the needed parts.
-Dynamic information displayed in the lobby UI such as news crawler, star map with locations of interest, status of worlds currently being fought over, deals in the market, and ads placed by players and units for contracts, recruits, etc.

BT specific features:
-Game drop options that allow for duels and lore-based trials (player challenges of any kind) between 2 players with observers.
-Solaris competitions with in game unit recognition where Houses benefit from victories.

[Zanathan]

Firstly I am very pleased to know there is a separate thread just for the social / communications aspect of the UI upgrades.

So many great ideas in here already and I hope PGI is listening to them.

[Deathlike]

In all seriousness, I have no ideas, since I'd probably suck at figuring it out.

However, I will hold you all responsible if we get a cluster**** of an interface that is worse than the current awful system.

[Syrkres]

A Duel (or training) option from the social bar, where 2 players are dropped into the training groups (if they are grouped then only the leaders of either side of the duel get the mechs [for training] where everyone else is a spectator).

They then can duel it out in the training grounds with spectators.

• Good for training missions
  
• Good for Recruitment tests

Options:

• Select mech weights beforehand
  
• set limits on mech weights?
  
• set (or pick) time limit (pre-determined settings to pick from).

[slash b slash]

I hope there will be a feature that lets me share pictures of cats with my friends.

[xX_Nero_Xx]

fix everything just give us the zone style and everything be ok

Edited by fccolhitman, 22 May 2013 - 12:44 PM.

[Raso]

We need a general, lobby chat that we can access and that we automatically join. Split it into multiple channels as they increase in population and allow players to change channels if they choose to do so. There should also be a LFG channel and player help channel.

Right now the game doesn't have a community. Instead it has communities on Team Speak or Ventrilo who play the game. Yes, mostly every clan or guild or what have you in all MMOs use 3rd party VOIP programs. But you don't join a clan by just jumping into their TS server and for casual partying it's not always worth giving out your server info to everyone you play with.

Oh, and in game VOIP needs to work across the whole team. You should auto join if you have a mic equipped (unless you configure it otherwise) and you should be able to select and mute people on your team (maybe even add them to a block list).

[D34K]

If even half of the stuff that is being discussed here makes it into the UI, PGI will have done more to improve this game than 6 months of content updates.

What concerns me is that, at one point, this kinda stuff was derided as "Barren's Chat" by certain PGI team members. They just don't get that these features are fundamental to whether a multiplayer game works or not. Its the heart, the core, the vital mechanic for onboarding, organising, recruiting, and creating community. The workarounds the community has gone through just to get games, competitions, leagues, etc, running is unacceptable and has turned off more players than any other single thing.

We told you this stuff was Priority 1 ten months ago. I'm not holding my breath that you've quite *got it* yet. However, if you deliver this and fix your (still) useless/demented matchmaker, I might be able to get some friends playing this game again.

Edited by D34K, 25 May 2013 - 02:33 AM.

[Raso]

Oh we should also get a list of people we've recently dropped with in case you want to group up with them after a game (or even the ability to group up at the end of a game).

[Bryan Ekman]

We're going to be posting some WIP shots shortly. Social is a big term, that means a lot of different things to different players. Internally we have split this concept into multiple aspects - associations (groups, factions, merc units, none), and communication (channels and private messages), being the two largest buckets.

The first WIP will deal with the later, featuring more about the interfaces to communicate with other players, regardless of association. ETA later this week.

Thanks again for all the great feedback. We're integrating as much of the bigger concepts as possible for UI 2.0.

[Bryan Ekman]

[Nicholas Carlyle]

Liking that, glad you are listening to us.

[Chavette]

Holy moly that looks perfect!

Only extra thing I can think is a status message, where ppl can write "invite for game"/"dont mind me"/"afk for a bit"/"drops at sat 8pm" and so on.

[Banditman]

I see some missing things already. If I am reading this wrong, I apologize, it's difficult to understand complete functionality from a mock up screen shot.

1. I should not have to add players from my unit to my friends list. There should be a separate list for players in my guild. "Friends" (to me) are people who are not in my guild, but who I want to keep track of.

2. After that, the only filters I should really need are simple checkboxes. "Show Offline Friends", "Show dropped Friends". You've got a lot of superfluous filtering and stuff there.

3. Tabbed chat looks good, assuming it's configurable. Placing the tabs below is a little odd, but I can adjust.

4. Tabbed chat needs an option for "flash on new messages" . . . if something new pops up, I should be able to tell that tab to flash so I know to read it.

5. I assume you're standing up an actual chat server of some kind? I hope so. Make it IRC. This will allow folks from outside the game to enter their guild chat and converse.

I'll try to study the screen a bit more.

[Corvus Antaka]

1. mentoring channel

2. challenge channel for private matches

3. createable channels and ability to multi-select 8 people and instantly invite them all to 1 group from a channel

4. ability to make channels public/private

5. preset channels for clans, houses, etc, looks like you've got that.

6. ability to block/mute/ignore players, preventing them from dropping on your team, but not against you to prevent griefingand cut down on ticket filings.

7. seperate friends from guildies, no need to have guildies on friends list, or if you do, different colour.

8. option language filter on/off that works, some of us dont like the filter.

9. public channels where evryone can hang out - like "the solaris Bar" would be fun - id name public channels more for Roleplay than utility, and have a descirption on each channel like the "cadet channel" with flagged mentors, community mods/volunteers, etc.

ability to launch matches with any size as a guild to handle clan trials of combat, practice sessions in peace, etc etc.

private messages/whispers

Edited by Colonel Pada Vinson, 31 May 2013 - 03:15 PM.

[Nixak]

I little thing that I would like to see are time stamps on when the messages were sent in any chat.

Edited by Nixak, 31 May 2013 - 08:18 PM.

[Bryan Ekman]

Colonel Pada Vinson, on 31 May 2013 - 03:14 PM, said:

1. mentoring channel

2. challenge channel for private matches

3. createable channels and ability to multi-select 8 people and instantly invite them all to 1 group from a channel

4. ability to make channels public/private

5. preset channels for clans, houses, etc, looks like you've got that.

6. ability to block/mute/ignore players, preventing them from dropping on your team, but not against you to prevent griefingand cut down on ticket filings.

7. seperate friends from guildies, no need to have guildies on friends list, or if you do, different colour.

8. option language filter on/off that works, some of us dont like the filter.

9. public channels where evryone can hang out - like "the solaris Bar" would be fun - id name public channels more for Roleplay than utility, and have a descirption on each channel like the "cadet channel" with flagged mentors, community mods/volunteers, etc.

ability to launch matches with any size as a guild to handle clan trials of combat, practice sessions in peace, etc etc.

private messages/whispers

[1,3,4,5, 6 but you can't prevent the matchmaker from matching you, 7, 8, 9] - are all part of what you see in that screen.

10 will be private match functionality
11 yes.

Banditman, on 31 May 2013 - 02:12 PM, said:

I see some missing things already. If I am reading this wrong, I apologize, it's difficult to understand complete functionality from a mock up screen shot.

1. I should not have to add players from my unit to my friends list. There should be a separate list for players in my guild. "Friends" (to me) are people who are not in my guild, but who I want to keep track of.

2. After that, the only filters I should really need are simple checkboxes. "Show Offline Friends", "Show dropped Friends". You've got a lot of superfluous filtering and stuff there.

3. Tabbed chat looks good, assuming it's configurable. Placing the tabs below is a little odd, but I can adjust.

4. Tabbed chat needs an option for "flash on new messages" . . . if something new pops up, I should be able to tell that tab to flash so I know to read it.

5. I assume you're standing up an actual chat server of some kind? I hope so. Make it IRC. This will allow folks from outside the game to enter their guild chat and converse.

I'll try to study the screen a bit more.

1 We haven't shown the unit screen yet.
2 Players like choices, so we give them.
3 Yes it's configurable.
4 It does this.
5 Chat has to be a closed loop to prevent outside spam and abuse.

[Nicholas Carlyle]

Loving the responses for this.

Any chance we could see this sort of communication for other aspects of the game?

Look at how well this sort of back and forth is going.

Having player support really helps the game.

Maybe an LRM thread where you and Paul respond directly.

Or an Information Warfare thread.

Or something.

Yes I realize offtopic.