while watching the paint dry

[Astram]

put on your non-Mod hat for a sec, please

First off this account can only see through mod glasses, sorry but that is the way it is.

Im not ranting

Your post read as a rant; you jumped all over the place: Monopolies, Killer apps, big business, you won't drink the Google or Apple kool-aid (my words), then you jump into "losing my constitutional* rights." That meets the definition of a rant in my book

You need/want things when you don't have a choice of providers, this is out of your control. You can choose not to have electricity, water and the like, but you are on the internet, so I have to assume you have electricity, food in the belly, and access to the internet. You get this all from?

You can't live on principles; at some point, you have to eat and drink.

(*spelling corrected from quote)

 

[StarLoad]

Brin,
You may hate me when you read this, but I pay google every month for services, I have several Gmail accounts from the week it started, I use google as my main browser, and have no issue with google knowing what I do online. Even worse I have owned Apple iPhones since release and have an iPad Pro and Mac Air, and Apple Watches, as does my wife. We even pay for AppleCare for our products. I run Windows and have since 3.1. I use Discord on multiple servers and systems. I have 2 separate internet services and drive a gas-powered Volvo.

We all make choices in life and I don't fault others if they "choose" to avoid products for their own reasons. I dislike HP except for their Printers, so I have no HP laptops or desktops, that is my choice.

You dont want to download programs ok more power to you, but to consider others as stupid/lazy is wrong because they do download them.
If you really feel that " Too many in society nowadays, seem to be both Lazy and Stupid, not to mention poor and underinformed/misinformed." then why are you even on the internet? I am sure there are Monasteries in Nepal or Temples in Kathmandu where you can get away from the world and find peace of mind. I mean really I can't say as your comment was not complete.

Anyway, the paint seems dry and before I forget Oh I had AOL from the very first, love that old 14.6 Dial-up modem service. and If I need to chat I use discord or my iPhone to chat with my wife of 42 years, what more do I need?

Ed

 

[ajqtrz]

Here are some of my thoughts on why we don't have a world wide chat channel, and probably never will.

1) The only way to communicate with everybody about a chat channel is through something that reaches everybody. Hmmm... in game notifications do that, but we can't use those as it's reserved for the devs...and they certainly aren't about to suggest or promote something that sends our eyeballs elsewhere, especially if that "elsewhere" isn't under their control. A bad experience in a chat room named, "Elvenar Univeral Chat" is going to link "Elvenar" with "bad, bad, bad" for somebody and that's lost revenue.

2) We could, and have, of course, at various times, started various communication channels in various platforms. But they never reached critical mass. All because: we can only reach a few players in the forums and in our game contacts. If we could reach the entire community, well maybe. (See #1 above).

3) To make anything work outside of the FB and other Inno controlled places, we would need to build a user base of a certain size (probably at least 100 very active posters) and sustain it long enough that it became well known and well run so it was just "where you went" when you wanted to chat with other Elvenar players. But if it's not on screen and easily integrated into the play of the player, it's probably forgotten pretty fast by, 85 of the "very active" posters pretty fast. Switching between screens to chat just plain sucks. So, the only way to do that would be to have Inno allow us to do that. (See #1 above).

4) Say, though we did get a good thing going. Say we had hundreds or even thousands of players regularly checking in. And we had robust discussions. Well, that's the problem. Sadly, "robust" to many people includes incivilities and irrational threats of coercion (otherwise known as bullying), and somebody has to insure that doesn't happen...or if it does that the poster is somehow encouraged very much to not do that sort of thing. In other words, administrative overhead and possibly a few very angry people...and a lot more irritated ones, no doubt...all for a "Elvenar Universal Chat" experience. In the end, would you want your name associated with a communication channel you couldn't control or monitor? "Elvenar" is their name and if people start having a bad experience with something using their name, that's not good for business. (See #1 above.)

In the end, see #1 above.

AJ

 

[StarLoad]

....

Like

 

[crackie]

I’m not convinced there is even that high of a demand for Universal chat. Most FS chats are minimally active or dead, even for successful and active FS. They at least share something in common and are supposed to be playing together. If they don’t even want to chat with their fellowship, what’s the draw to chat with more random people? I also don’t believe it’s a critical mass issue. You could have 200 people and they’re all just sitting idle staring at each other with no one talking cause there’s nothing to talk about. The forum at least has engagement bc the nature of it is set up to have topics to talk about. You don’t need to engage in real time, just whenever you come across it, like the people resurrecting dead threads from years ago.

 

[SoggyShorts]

I’m not convinced there is even that high of a demand for Universal chat. Most FS chats are minimally active or dead, even for successful and active FS.

Indeed, although if you had an in-game global channel then those few chatty players could connect with each other and there could be a little more interaction. This could lead to the creation of more chatty players because it may be a bit of "no one chats because there's no one to chat with" right now.
I know when I pop in I check chat, and often the topic interests me but before I chime in I run a quick "/who" and see that no one is there then close the chat instead.

 

[BrinDarby]

Of course, while playing poker I enjoy chatting,
usually tho thats just those @ your table...
2 former text games, and 1 pvp flight sim, all
had chat. While the flight sim, just had a lobby
to launch games from, there was a site that kept
all the stats from the tournaments they ran.

The 2 text games were vastly different.... 1, global
chat was mainly used to trashtalk or as a diversion
and the actual Alliance chat was in AIM. The 2nd
game had the most innovative chat I've ever seen.
Main (global) chat took up the bottom 6 lines area
in the browser, yet could be detatched into its own
tab, thus browser size was chatroom size, and full
width. The best part was that any chatroom could
be created, and PW protected. While Main chat had
rules, private chats didn't.

For that 2nd game.... 24/7 there'd always be @least
10-15 ppl on, and up to ohh 50, @ peak times.
Neither of those were as fast as the old AOL rooms
with 150-200 ppl in them. So chat was usually civil
and not that hard to follow 2-3 conversations @ once.

It sure seem'd that the addition of chat, increased the
sense of community, the players felt. It increased the
efficiency of thier Forum, beacuse the BS just wasn't
there.... the players left that in chat. The Forum wasn't
diminshed in any way by having chat also.

I usually see 7-15 ppl here on, while in most FSs I don't
seem to be on when others are. When I have a few hrs to
kill, I don't wanna be busy for 15 min, then twiddle my
thumbs for 3 hrs.... there's only soo much else there is to
do, like city-planning and such. It would be nice to connect
more with ppl, and actually get to know them. It also helps
when you're reading a post, if you have some context of the
other person, because you've actually talked with them,
outside that particular post.

I'm not part of the Social Media ethos, and I don't wanna
suggest/petition Inno for Chat, if its just never gonna work
here. Its just so hard to play a "watch-the-paint-dry" game,
when there's nothing else to do while waiting.

Inno wants the eye-balls on the game, they want those endless
logins from us, yet ask them for a path where I can log on for
a couple hrs str8 and keep my eye-balls on thier pages, and
the answer seems to be no.... I find that illogical.

 

[SoggyShorts]

Inno wants the eye-balls on the game, they want those endless
logins from us, yet ask them for a path where I can log on for
a couple hrs str8 and keep my eye-balls on thier pages, and
the answer seems to be no.... I find that illogical.

I'm not convinced that's their goal at all. I've always been under the impression that this is a "pop in do a thing and log out" kind of game.
When you log on and don't have enough widgets to do the next thing, maybe you wait, and maybe you pay- that's the model.

Playing for "a couple of hours straight" sounds like something almost no one does. Maybe on day 1 of an event, or the most hardcore of manual tournament fighters? The few times I've spent that much consecutive time on the game have been 95% elven architect.

---

I see 2 realistic possibilities:
1. In-game chat. An expansion of FS chat to include a few more channels. This would be popular simply because it's totally built-in and instantly accessible.
2. a real Push for Discord that includes official support from inno via in-game announcements and Facebook. It's a superior platform that has recognition, popularity, and ease of use.

A forum chat window for a dozen regulars and some random visitors here doesn't seem worth it, and might actually kill off the forums. There's barely enough content here to keep regular readers engaged, so if a significant portion of that moved out of forum threads and into the chat window there'd be even less to see when you come here and hit the "What's new" tab.

I usually see 7-15 ppl here on

I usually see 1-5 including myself and not counting bots regardless of time.

 

[crackie]

Indeed, although if you had an in-game global channel then those few chatty players could connect with each other and there could be a little more interaction. This could lead to the creation of more chatty players because it may be a bit of "no one chats because there's no one to chat with" right now.

I'll be honest...I'd prob stop playing if there was no chat component in Elvenar bc this game is too slow-moving for me. However, the implementation of a Global Chat would not be what keeps me playing either. I just peeked into FoE to see what's going on in their Global Chat since they have one. I believe they have a larger user base than even Elvenar too. Anyway, mostly a lot of unmoderated trash talking about groups and some recruiting messages. Some questions scattered in between. Otherwise, not very active. Large chunks of idle time by the look of the timestamps. Hmm, yeah, no thanks. Not very appealing. It’s like if the forum feels like a raging dumpster fire, I’ll retreat to the sanctum of the FS than hang out here.

A forum chat window for a dozen regulars and some random visitors here doesn't seem worth it, and might actually kill off the forums. There's barely enough content here to keep regular readers engaged, so if a significant portion of that moved out of forum threads and into the chat window there'd be even less to see when you come here and hit the "What's new" tab.

I have seen forums with a “live” chat component attached and it doesn’t kill the forum. Outside the drama, bickering, and general echo chamber of complaining, the forum is mostly to ask and answer questions or discuss the game. If questions were to be answered in a real-time chat, then it is not archived and not searchable. A lot of lurkers come by the way of search engine results of old threads trying to find answers to questions they might have. A live chat format would answer a question for the now moment, but we’d also just be answering the same questions over and over if there were no archive component like the forum. I mean, we kinda already do that now when things are searchable. Imagine if answers fly by at live chat pace and isn’t searchable? Oh, gotta go help someone figure out why they can’t collect ambrosia from their Fairy farm…