Forums » General Pantheon Discussion

Offline communication with people playing Pantheon

    • 1468 posts
    September 10, 2017 10:07 AM PDT

    Is it going to be possible to chat with people who are currently playing Pantheon when you can't login to the game? One MMO I have heard of is using XMPP which I believe is a more modern equivalent to IRC as a chat protocol in-game which means that players who are at work or out and about using their mobile phone can download any of the XMPP clients available for Windows / Mac / Linux / iOS / Android and sign in with their account username and password and start chatting to guild members and other people in public channels even though they can't actually log into Pantheon.

    I think this would be a great addition as it would allow friends to keep in contact no matter where they are and seeing as the whole point of Pantheon is to be a social game anything that improves the social experience can only be a good thing :).

    I seem to remember that EverQuest had an instant messaging client at some point which I thought was great but it didn't last long for some reason which was a shame. Is this likely to be something that we will see in Pantheon? There are often times where I can't play a game but can chat using instant messages programs.

    • 470 posts
    September 10, 2017 10:11 AM PDT

    EverQuest had (and I believe still has) chat rooms of some kind once you login to the patcher. We used to chat in those while the servers were down and I think they were server-related chat rooms as well but don't quote me on it. It has been a good minute since last I gazed at any of that stuff. No idea if Pantheon plans on the same. There are certainly a number of potential options for something like that, especially since this time around they have the benefit of phone apps in addition to the other stuff.


    This post was edited by Kratuk at September 10, 2017 10:13 AM PDT
    • 1468 posts
    September 10, 2017 10:26 AM PDT

    Kratuk said:

    EverQuest had (and I believe still has) chat rooms of some kind once you login to the patcher. We used to chat in those while the servers were down and I think they were server-related chat rooms as well but don't quote me on it. It has been a good minute since last I gazed at any of that stuff. No idea if Pantheon plans on the same. There are certainly a number of potential options for something like that, especially since this time around they have the benefit of phone apps in addition to the other stuff.

    I haven't played EQ in years so have no idea what is available now but any sort of chat room you can use to chat with guild mates or just people on the server would be great. I'm one of those people who tends to enjoy anything as long as I have people to talk to.

    • 308 posts
    September 10, 2017 10:53 AM PDT

    EQ added a chat program called Everquest Instant Manager (EQIM) in 2002 which was separate from the chat rooms off of the launcher that allowed you to chat with people on your friends list and in chat channels (wasn't launched with guildchat, but think that was added later? - can't remember) but was discontinued years ago.  I used EQIM a lot in the beginning and as a wish list item, would love to see something like this in Pantheon even though there are some third party options (Discord) that can provide similar functionality but aren't integrated with the game, but not at the expense of precious dev resources.

    • 103 posts
    September 10, 2017 11:00 AM PDT

    This would be a pretty cool feature to have. I myself just use Discord to communicate with people when I'm offline, but this would actually be a lot more benifitial seeing that you might miss a lot that happens in game. Though I don't know if you're intentions would be to have this be for all chats channels in Pantheon, for every zone, or just guild or private channels. I myself would only want/need it for guild stuff, but regardless it'd still be a nice feature to have.

    • 1468 posts
    September 10, 2017 11:07 AM PDT

    Reht said:

    EQ added a chat program called Everquest Instant Manager (EQIM) in 2002 which was separate from the chat rooms off of the launcher that allowed you to chat with people on your friends list and in chat channels (wasn't launched with guildchat, but think that was added later? - can't remember) but was discontinued years ago.  I used EQIM a lot in the beginning and as a wish list item, would love to see something like this in Pantheon even though there are some third party options (Discord) that can provide similar functionality but aren't integrated with the game, but not at the expense of precious dev resources.

    Yeah that was what I remember. It was good.

    • 1468 posts
    September 10, 2017 11:10 AM PDT

    Jacasta said:

    This would be a pretty cool feature to have. I myself just use Discord to communicate with people when I'm offline, but this would actually be a lot more benifitial seeing that you might miss a lot that happens in game. Though I don't know if you're intentions would be to have this be for all chats channels in Pantheon, for every zone, or just guild or private channels. I myself would only want/need it for guild stuff, but regardless it'd still be a nice feature to have.

    I was thinking of guild chat and assuming they had custom chat channels you could create like in EverQuest those as well.

    Like in my guild we had the obvious guild chat channel which was automatic but we also had a chat channel for guild officers to communicate about leadership issues and we also had class chat channels so Rangers could talk about Ranger stuff, Necros could talk about Necro stuff and so and do forth for all the classes in a guild.

    It was a great way of getting hints and tips about your class from more experienced members and the leaders could discuss things in private in-game without having to use private forums on their guilds website which would mean leaving the game every now and again to see if anyone had posted anything new.

    Hopefully Pantheon will have that ability as well. Oh and the chat channels were password protected as well. That would be a needed feature.

    • 103 posts
    September 10, 2017 11:31 AM PDT

    Cromulent said:

    Jacasta said:

    This would be a pretty cool feature to have. I myself just use Discord to communicate with people when I'm offline, but this would actually be a lot more benifitial seeing that you might miss a lot that happens in game. Though I don't know if you're intentions would be to have this be for all chats channels in Pantheon, for every zone, or just guild or private channels. I myself would only want/need it for guild stuff, but regardless it'd still be a nice feature to have.

    I was thinking of guild chat and assuming they had custom chat channels you could create like in EverQuest those as well.

    Like in my guild we had the obvious guild chat channel which was automatic but we also had a chat channel for guild officers to communicate about leadership issues and we also had class chat channels so Rangers could talk about Ranger stuff, Necros could talk about Necro stuff and so and do forth for all the classes in a guild.

    It was a great way of getting hints and tips about your class from more experienced members and the leaders could discuss things in private in-game without having to use private forums on their guilds website which would mean leaving the game every now and again to see if anyone had posted anything new.

    Hopefully Pantheon will have that ability as well. Oh and the chat channels were password protected as well. That would be a needed feature.

    Aight, thats what I was thinking but you know, 2017, don't assume things :P But yeah, I'd love to see a chat like that put in place, could be very useful.

    • 1468 posts
    September 10, 2017 11:43 AM PDT

    Jacasta said:

    Cromulent said:

    Jacasta said:

    This would be a pretty cool feature to have. I myself just use Discord to communicate with people when I'm offline, but this would actually be a lot more benifitial seeing that you might miss a lot that happens in game. Though I don't know if you're intentions would be to have this be for all chats channels in Pantheon, for every zone, or just guild or private channels. I myself would only want/need it for guild stuff, but regardless it'd still be a nice feature to have.

    I was thinking of guild chat and assuming they had custom chat channels you could create like in EverQuest those as well.

    Like in my guild we had the obvious guild chat channel which was automatic but we also had a chat channel for guild officers to communicate about leadership issues and we also had class chat channels so Rangers could talk about Ranger stuff, Necros could talk about Necro stuff and so and do forth for all the classes in a guild.

    It was a great way of getting hints and tips about your class from more experienced members and the leaders could discuss things in private in-game without having to use private forums on their guilds website which would mean leaving the game every now and again to see if anyone had posted anything new.

    Hopefully Pantheon will have that ability as well. Oh and the chat channels were password protected as well. That would be a needed feature.

    Aight, thats what I was thinking but you know, 2017, don't assume things :P But yeah, I'd love to see a chat like that put in place, could be very useful.

    It being 2017 people are probably thinking I'm old school asking about chat channels :). They are probably thinking "just use Discord and voice chat with people!". I still prefer text chat :).


    This post was edited by Cromulent at September 10, 2017 11:44 AM PDT
    • 12 posts
    September 10, 2017 12:01 PM PDT

    Cromulent said:

    It being 2017 people are probably thinking I'm old school asking about chat channels :). They are probably thinking "just use Discord and voice chat with people!". I still prefer text chat :).

     

    That was my initial thought considering most of the Discord channels I've been active in are mainly text chat rooms.

    • 166 posts
    September 10, 2017 12:04 PM PDT
    Jeah, I would like to have some possibility to chat with friends, guild members or other people that are currently in game, while I'm not.

    Could already make appointments for some raid or other group action while I'm still at work. Or just chat and build relationships with others while not able to be in game.

    Important is that there is an easy way to join that chat. Either using the Pantheon webpage or via an standard chat protocol, where you can find clients on all the different operating systems out there.

    As I think this would not bind to much resources for to much time, this could be something that will be integrated into the game, especially because it will be a group centric game, that will support socializing.
    • 220 posts
    September 10, 2017 3:54 PM PDT

    I would just use a tool to script character animations and emotes by listening to the client microphone.  That and my #derpyBirdys would be the only means of communication in game.

    Then come expansion time, I would leverage your population against an integration contract.  If I could convince a large enough population of players to use VOIP services while playing the game, I could really save a ton of money.  So much that it would be unthinkable to host my own communication service, of any kind.

    #twoBirdysOnePotato

    • 95 posts
    September 10, 2017 6:22 PM PDT

    Honestly I think this all depends on the favorability of the game to alt-tab to switch to other programs. Some games are very controlling and to minimize they take time as well as laggy resources, but others are friendly with windowed modes to facilitate either multiple monitors or alt-tabing to another program. If it is switch friendly then discord or an alternative would be a fair 3rd party tool and not worth the developers time and energy at this time. 

    The more viable would be a web app, but you would have to justify the functionality outside of just chatting. World of Warcraft legion app makes sense, but that to to facilitate farmville style checking of timers and missions which are not likely to be in Pantheon. The Destiny web app on the other hand was very friendly and could be used for inventory management while the game was actually running (moving items between bank and inventory during specific times or between characters). These don't fit the style of game Pantheon is trying to be and I think there is not a good fit. The closest that comes to mind is if there was an automated auction house while you were out of the game (EQ auction characters for example) and checking pricing, bids, etc might make sense. It just depends on the full implementation of the economy system and all initial indications are that you should be online for the mass meet up in the favored vendor location, but i could see there being some possible compromise for ease of use versus interaction (avoiding it just being an anonymous purchase/selling and missing the opportunity to build community). Possibly a in game/ out of game mail system that allows for items to be listed for sale/creation and a way for buyers to request them with a price as well as a seller to mail them to the purchaser with a CoD.  This is the only likelihood I can see for a out of game mail/chat system to be implemented and be potentially valuable to the userbase/developer time.

    • 220 posts
    September 10, 2017 8:51 PM PDT

    I am not entirely against offline options.  I feel like they lend themselves to immersion if you do them correctly.  Like the Bazaar in EQ was step in what I think was the right sort of direction.  Logging out always felt so weird to me.  Why aren't our characters permanent?  I also enjoyed the script the character would use if you lost connection in EQ.

    I sort of feel like your character should be from a place in the game, and interact with the game while you are offline in a way that makes sense to that context, but maybe has limited possible benefits.  Like being vendors, or offering services like repair as a blacksmith.  Or maybe processing lumber at a mill, or grinding wheat.  I always felt like it would be better if everyone's characters were always there, and you logged in to control them.  And the place you were from in the game was a real place where your character was part of the "living world".

    You could treat multiple characters on the same account like members of a family or use just a checkbox for "Main Character" and limit the population to set limits making those elements adjustable.  You could make the entire new player experience be finding a community with "oppertunities" to move in to, and establishing a home area.  Or if they want to be cool kids, they can move into the nearest habitable cave system and start collecting parts for a new Abomination...  whatevz.

    The depth to these interactions, doesn't even matter.  It could be as simple as your character walks back and forth along the road between the nearest point of interest and where you log out.  Or maybe the character wanders around the area examining flora and fauna, carrying a journal writing in it.  You could even just leave a message and sit at a campfire.  Anything really that gives the player a persistent presense in the game world.

    I could totally imagine an MMORPG where you cannot tell the difference between players and NPCs in a city area.  If you, for instance, work as a city guard when you log off, to earn money, or to own property inside city limits, there should be no reason that your character can't travel to the nearest guard post and replace that NPC guard, or just fill up an empty post.  I sort of feel like all of these random NPCs should have a living world foundation supporting them, and that players should be able to replace them in these roles, at least while they are offline.  If that makes sense.

    Little things like this, maybe with a phone app that ties in like limited interface, would be glorious.  Maybe the point of interest you are at has 3 jobs and an Inn.  And you can tell your character to do one of them, maybe share a personal greeting for other players that might encounter your character.  Something like "All hail the One True Pie".  That sort of communication, I am 100% in favor of.  Even things like being able to tell your character to move from one city to another.  So when you log in your character is closer to where you want to be in order to meet up with friends.

    Anything that you can accomplish with Discord though, I don't think Development time should be wasted on it.  Discord already does it better than any dev team could.  Why not just let them handle it?

    • 103 posts
    September 11, 2017 5:08 PM PDT

    shalmack said:

    Cromulent said:

    It being 2017 people are probably thinking I'm old school asking about chat channels :). They are probably thinking "just use Discord and voice chat with people!". I still prefer text chat :).

     

    That was my initial thought considering most of the Discord channels I've been active in are mainly text chat rooms.

    Well this would be beyond Discord, cause a lot of stuff goes on outside of Discord, in game. This would permit you to be active in the game chat, or at least from what I'm understanding.

    • 234 posts
    September 11, 2017 6:33 PM PDT

    I could imagine:

    - Option to interact with tells via text messages

    Or

    - An app with thumprint access to give

    -- 3 Factor authentication

    -- Tells and Guild chat with alerts

    -- Guild MOTD

    -- Push events to peoples calendars from the guild managment window in game.

    -- Alert people to GM events

     

    Probably more fun stuff you could do. 

    -Az 

     

     

    • 1468 posts
    September 11, 2017 7:21 PM PDT

    azaya said:

    I could imagine:

    - Option to interact with tells via text messages

    Or

    - An app with thumprint access to give

    -- 3 Factor authentication

    -- Tells and Guild chat with alerts

    -- Guild MOTD

    -- Push events to peoples calendars from the guild managment window in game.

    -- Alert people to GM events

     

    Probably more fun stuff you could do. 

    -Az 

    Yeah it would be good if an in-game calendar integrated with Google Calendar for instance and automatically emailed reminders of important events that were coming up. That would be even more useful during pre-alpha / alpha and beta (although the information saved to the calendar would have to be quite vague so as not to give out too much information because of the NDA).

    I also like the idea of SMS messages as well although someone would have to pay for them. The customer or VR?

    It would be nice to see a mobile app but they are bloody expensive to make and I want VR to concentrate on the game. If they released an API then someone in the community could make one though. That would be useful for VR and save them time and money and give the community something really cool to use when they were away from the game.

    • 103 posts
    September 11, 2017 7:47 PM PDT

    In all honesty, as GREAT as this all sounds, in the end this is primarily wishful thinking. This would require a lot of work, and VR has a lot on their hands as is. Though it'd be amazing if they were to eventually add in a system like this into Pantheon 

    • 1468 posts
    September 11, 2017 7:51 PM PDT

    Jacasta said:

    In all honesty, as GREAT as this all sounds, in the end this is primarily wishful thinking. This would require a lot of work, and VR has a lot on their hands as is. Though it'd be amazing if they were to eventually add in a system like this into Pantheon 

    The original idea of this thread should be pretty simple though. A small client which would allow people to chat with in-game people while they are not in the game. Everything else would be gravy. They could with a very simple web page that logs you into the server and just shows you chat channels and what is going on in them.

    Or they could use something like XMPP in my original post for their chat system (which has already been written for them) and then customers could use their own XMPP clients which have been written for all the major desktop and mobile operating systems. I know of at least one other MMO which is using XMPP for its chat system for this very reason.

    • 220 posts
    September 11, 2017 7:58 PM PDT

    You could just use Discord for all of those things, free.  Scheduling, coms (text, voice), finding groups, monitoring in game events.  And there is already a discord app.  And you can pay for premium discord to get even more specialized services.

    Nothing like that is reasonable for a developer to focus on.  Not when companies of communication experts already offer any imaginable service for free on a completely seperate network.  Free of unholy internet nonsense like "soft authentication"...

    • 1468 posts
    September 11, 2017 8:03 PM PDT

    ZennExile said:

    You could just use Discord for all of those things, free.  Scheduling, coms (text, voice), finding groups, monitoring in game events.  And there is already a discord app.  And you can pay for premium discord to get even more specialized services.

    Nothing like that is reasonable for a developer to focus on.  Not when companies of communication experts already offer any imaginable service for free on a completely seperate network.  Free of unholy internet nonsense like "soft authentication"...

    Except Discord doesn't show you in-game chat which is the whole point of this thread. Oh and IRC and XMPP are still more popular than Discord. If the games chat was handled by XMPP it would all be sorted and people could use already existing clients to connect and chat with no problem.

    I use Discord all the time. I also use IRC all the time. Both are good for different things. If Pantheon used XMPP it would solve all these problems and be reasonably easy to implement. There are already open source libraries available that handle XMPP on both the client and server side. It would be extremely cheap for the developers to switch to XMPP.

    • 220 posts
    September 11, 2017 8:45 PM PDT

    Discord has chat.  That is the whole point.  You can let an outside service like Discord do everything, and just limit players to local emotes based on a realistic shouting distance and "inside-voice" chat range.

    Discord could be, THE in-game chat, completely seperate from the game servers, but connected by players, and organized for each server.  These communities already develop organically.  You could just let them take the wheel entirely on long range, guild, and group communication options.  They would be more than happy to.  And might even agree to a reasonable full-integration contract down the road that would result in the most comprehensive communication service ever offered with an MMORPG, without the Development staff ever needing to lift a finger.

    It would destroy all in-game spam at least.  Permanently.


    This post was edited by ZennExile at September 11, 2017 8:45 PM PDT
    • 1468 posts
    September 11, 2017 9:30 PM PDT

    ZennExile said:

    Discord has chat.  That is the whole point.  You can let an outside service like Discord do everything, and just limit players to local emotes based on a realistic shouting distance and "inside-voice" chat range.

    Discord could be, THE in-game chat, completely seperate from the game servers, but connected by players, and organized for each server.  These communities already develop organically.  You could just let them take the wheel entirely on long range, guild, and group communication options.  They would be more than happy to.  And might even agree to a reasonable full-integration contract down the road that would result in the most comprehensive communication service ever offered with an MMORPG, without the Development staff ever needing to lift a finger.

    It would destroy all in-game spam at least.  Permanently.

    It would be interesting to see if Discord could be used as the chat service for Pantheon. I know they have GameKit or whatever it is called that is in closed beta at the moment that lets game companies use Discord for exactly that purpose. The problem is that Discord are a for profit company and you don't want to get into a situation a couple of years down the road where the relationship breaks down and Discord withdraw their services and that breaks all forms of communication in Pantheon.

    With XMPP the Pantheon devs can run their own chat servers and handle all of the management themselves and use free and open source software for the vast majority of the work and they don't need to rely on a third party company.

    If they did use Discord I certainly wouldn't complain though. It is one of the 4 applications that is ALWAYS running on my PC whenever it is turned on no matter what I am doing.

    I guess what I am trying to say is: I don't care how they do it but it would be cool to be able to access in-game chat channels when you can't launch the game client itself. I think it would be a really useful service to the players especially when you are trying to organise things within a guild and not everyone can be playing Pantheon but still need to talk to the guild.

    • 220 posts
    September 11, 2017 10:01 PM PDT

    Yeah I have just grown to hate any sort of global chat in MMORPGs.  First it became a sales channel, then mutated into dick jokes and Chuck Norris Memes, then it turned into an advertising platform for whoever feels entitled, and now it is a combo meal of unholy nonsense, with a cascade of constant phishing scams.  Some of which, if Netflix is to be trusted, are actually coded communications for networks of Credit Card scammers.

    I say amputate before it spreads.  In my humble opinion #derpyBirdys are the only true solution.  I can emote my way into a group.  I can't un-see a mountain of spam and toxic nonsense.  Even if I don't focus on it, apparently your brain can still process it.  It's all very toxic and annoying to think about.

    • VR Staff
    • 587 posts
    September 13, 2017 6:51 PM PDT

    All I can say at this point is that communication is very important, especially with a game like Pantheon being so truly social, community focused, most content designed for groups, etc.  What that means is a general 'yes' to having ways to reach people in and out of the game.  Beyond that too early to go into specifics.