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abysmal in-games messages

ayvinul

Well-Known Member
It's not even a suggestion by this point.

In my live worlds, I managed to switch some players over to discord.

Unfortunately, we still have some muggles who insist on staying in-game all the time.

The in-game messaging system is a disgrace.

for the chat
- no private messages
- backlog limited to 100 messages. If you got any chatty player, you will lose a lot of information
- no cut&paste... you have to hand-copy links that were posted in the chat (remember, this is the fellowship chat, so risk of spam and malicious links is somewhat limited)

for the in-game messaging
- no folder of any kind... if you have any kind of KP swap chain running, you will have notifications always. We should be able to tag discussions so that they don't set up any notifications (or notifications of a different color)
- abysmal performance. Each time a KP swap chain goes over 100 messages, we create a new one and trash the old one, because it would take too long to load
- abysmal trashing interface. If you remove a discussion by mistake, you have no solution except to tell people "hey let's kill that discussion and make another one" because the old discussion is lost to these people. Not just the existing messages.
- annoying bug that sometimes on some platforms mean you don't see the bottom of the message. Most people are working around that by adding a few blank lines at the bottom of the message... we shouldn't have to do that.
- ridiculously low limits on message lengths. You can't even post a full questline in one message, you have to cut it up.
- no search capabilities
- cut & paste is severely limited in the mobile application.

Yeah, outside chat systems alleviate all of these problems, but... how do you get all players to switch ? couldn't there be either a better in-game messaging system?... or some way to actually decide to integrate the game messaging system into something better (discord ?)
 
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Laurelin-Beta

Well-Known Member
I agree on all points made so far (as I'm sure many do) - but I'd like to add that I completed an InnoGames in-game survey a couple of months ago (can't recall exactly when), and one of the questions was along the lines of "Do you use / would you consider using Discord?". Nothing more specific than that, IIRC, but it does suggest that Inno might be intending to set up some kind of presence on Discord - although whether or not that would include an improved chat system, rather than being just another corporate promotional channel to supplement FB, Instagram et al, is anyone's guess!
 

Enevhar Aldarion

Well-Known Member
In their relatively new game, Rise of Cultures, there is a chat for that version of fellowships and no way to talk to anyone else in the game. The game also does not have an official forum and barely does anything on the official Facebook page and they really push using Discord for communicating with other players.
 

ayvinul

Well-Known Member
I agree on all points made so far (as I'm sure many do) - but I'd like to add that I completed an InnoGames in-game survey a couple of months ago (can't recall exactly when), and one of the questions was along the lines of "Do you use / would you consider using Discord?". Nothing more specific than that, IIRC, but it does suggest that Inno might be intending to set up some kind of presence on Discord - although whether or not that would include an improved chat system, rather than being just another corporate promotional channel to supplement FB, Instagram et al, is anyone's guess!
From whatever informal stats I can gather from my fellows, I've got demographics which is often over 40-50 years old. Some definitely feel like elvenar is a safe place and they don't want to learn another system.

I've tried to drag them over to discord, with very limited success... Informally:
⅓ of my players moved to discord
⅓ of my players are mostly silent, in-game, and would be in another chat system
⅓ of my players refuses to register into another chat system. They're also often the ones posting so much useless chatter in the chat that it becomes unusable... they're also the ones complaining when we "forget" to post the event info, and try to nudge them towards discord... or who ask recurring questions like "does not work" whenever someone posts a link to relevant info in the in-game messaging system.
 

PrimroseSylvia

Well-Known Member
In their relatively new game, Rise of Cultures, there is a chat for that version of fellowships and no way to talk to anyone else in the game. The game also does not have an official forum and barely does anything on the official Facebook page and they really push using Discord for communicating with other players.
Same as Sunrise Village: just a "fellowship" chat, no forum, no wiki and no Discord too, just a Facebook (private) group.
 

Alcaro

Well-Known Member
From whatever informal stats I can gather from my fellows, I've got demographics which is often over 40-50 years old. Some definitely feel like elvenar is a safe place and they don't want to learn another system.

I've tried to drag them over to discord, with very limited success... Informally:
⅓ of my players moved to discord
⅓ of my players are mostly silent, in-game, and would be in another chat system
⅓ of my players refuses to register into another chat system. They're also often the ones posting so much useless chatter in the chat that it becomes unusable... they're also the ones complaining when we "forget" to post the event info, and try to nudge them towards discord... or who ask recurring questions like "does not work" whenever someone posts a link to relevant info in the in-game messaging system.

Very often some of my fellows are well above 60 yo.
I have Discord but tbh I do not like to switch between tabs.

Once again, I will say that is not normal to have to use a 3rd party program/ site to replace the very deficient features of this game.

For FA production, for many other FS's activities, to replace AM's (quasi non existent) tools - we have to use Google SS.
Now to replace an inefficient communication channel we have to move (again!) to another site? We tried Slack but we were, I think, 7 or 8 only? We gave up.
What about the messaging system? Are we going to use gmail or something?
oh-go-on.gif
 

Deleted User - 79208

Guest
The chats used in online (mobile/browser) games are always bad. Never really saw one Game where is was really good.
The reason for that is kinda obvious as you do want to focus on your game features and not so much about a chat.

Innogames has maybe let's say 5 employees that are responsible for the chat while discord has 500+ employees doing chat stuff 24/7.
For casual players the ingame chat is totally fine but as soon as you want to archive more it's obvious to move to a more powerful tool, which is developped as a main product instead of a semi important feature in a game.

When you played multiple games competetivly you always use 3rd Party Software for communication and not the game provided "light version".

So it's more a decision that has to been made as a alliance what they want. And yes disagreeing on the communication tool is a valid reason to look for another alliance or kick members.
 

Martia

Well-Known Member
The chats used in online (mobile/browser) games are always bad. Never really saw one Game where is was really good.
The reason for that is kinda obvious as you do want to focus on your game features and not so much about a chat.

Innogames has maybe let's say 5 employees that are responsible for the chat while discord has 500+ employees doing chat stuff 24/7.
For casual players the ingame chat is totally fine but as soon as you want to archive more it's obvious to move to a more powerful tool, which is developped as a main product instead of a semi important feature in a game.

When you played multiple games competetivly you always use 3rd Party Software for communication and not the game provided "light version".

So it's more a decision that has to been made as a alliance what they want. And yes disagreeing on the communication tool is a valid reason to look for another alliance or kick members.
I play on the app and when I use multiple apps at the same time the game sometimes reloads itself, so I would not like to use an extra chat program, when I have to start the game after just a short chat. And why should a fellowship kick out a player because he cannot use an outside chat option.
It's the same as saying "no app players" please, I hope not many fellowships will consider this
 

ayvinul

Well-Known Member
I play on the app and when I use multiple apps at the same time the game sometimes reloads itself, so I would not like to use an extra chat program, when I have to start the game after just a short chat. And why should a fellowship kick out a player because he cannot use an outside chat option.
It's the same as saying "no app players" please, I hope not many fellowships will consider this

Actually, the great thing about discord is that it is a very light app. Unless your phone memory is completely full when you play elvenar, you can count on discord staying around.

As for the rest, depends on your play style: planning FA so that you reach the end of the third map usually requires at least some kind of spreadsheet. I'm in the camp that thinks people in the fellowship should pull their own weight, and that it is unreasonable to be hand-fed information by the mages and archimage... so yeah, most players doing the adventure will have to have a look at the spreadsheet anyway.
 

Martia

Well-Known Member
Actually, the great thing about discord is that it is a very light app. Unless your phone memory is completely full when you play elvenar, you can count on discord staying around.

As for the rest, depends on your play style: planning FA so that you reach the end of the third map usually requires at least some kind of spreadsheet. I'm in the camp that thinks people in the fellowship should pull their own weight, and that it is unreasonable to be hand-fed information by the mages and archimage... so yeah, most players doing the adventure will have to have a look at the spreadsheet anyway.
I have discord on my phone (elvenar I play mostly on my tablet) but I do not like it very much. And then it would mean you play elvenar on the app, chat in discord and the spreadsheet for the FA, three apps at the same time, where you have to switch fhe whole time. If my fellowship would force me to do that, I think I would quit voluntarily ;)
 

Lelanya

Well-Known Member
I absolutely love Discord, although I will say, I didn't love it the first time I tried it. I have it on my PC, where it loads on start up. I immediately change settings for any server but my own, that I maintain for the FSs that I Archmage, so it, and my friends' messages, ring a tone, and show a push notice on the taskbar icon. I also have Discord installed on my phone where it uses no noticeable space.
The App itself is monitored and vetted by my BFF. I can't say enough about that. If he says it's safe, non intrusive and best of all, not spying on us, that's good enough for me.
There is a bit of a learning curve in terms of location of various settings but Discord offers an excellent information site, and an equally great Support system. I installed Discord when Elvenar's new chat servers did not work as intended, and I have remained a satisfied user ever since.
 

Pauly7

Well-Known Member
You could also add scores of other deficiencies. Essentially the message system is so archaic that most features that have been used for the last 10 years are not included.

To add one more that annoys me particularly, though - If typing a message on the mobile app I can type about 5 or 6 lines before it seemingly runs out of memory (?) and then anything new I type does not appear on the screen until such point as I press the enter key.
 

Dranged

New Member
Agree with everything said here ... We need a comprehensive chat/messaging system for this game.
With new new fellowship adventure just started in game (on the live servers), I'm finding that the chat messages soon disapear off the top of the chat box!
If they gave it a bit of thought, I'm sure they could have a standard chat, messaging/mail and forum system that could be used accross all their games ... The one on 'The West' works quite well (and that's a million years old), could we have that for a start ;)
 
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