Offline Messenger?

[Lanore]

Perhaps if the game is open source?

We could have a Messenger outside the game to determine whos buddys are offline or what-not?

Seems like a great idea.

Corey

[Karyuu]

Moved to the Wishlist :)

Currently, you can check who is online using this page. However, an offline messenger that can actually be used to send -messages- is a bad idea, since it is completely OOC and the aim is to create as realistic a roleplaying game as possible.

[dragonfire999]

Does it support RP?

Nah. Its strictly out of character. The thing is, that it doesnt suit any purpose. Its not coke music corey


Edit:
beat me to it karyuu.

[Nikodemus]

My browser ate my longer version post, so i try to keep it short
Simply, you are wrong.
It would be as ooc as is guildchat, it does serve a purpose. It is not completly OOC.
I thought i won\'t give any additionaly arguments because, above posts lack them in some sense as well ;>

Anyway, try to look at it from difefrent side. Treat offline messages as letters.
Maybe make delay of 15min before the \"letter\" is delivered, to keep it closer to letter form as it obviously isn\'t supposed to be e-mail^^
Another thing what is ooc is players not playing all the time, or at least most of it, what very often cause their chars to be rarely where hey should be and talk most of the time, like we are in real world.
So, two players who are rarely online and additionally are in very different time zones should have possiblity to send post to eachother where they can explain all this what they would  talking.
Now you will say that it is why guilds have forums, there is IRC, e-mailing and so on. All this exist and thats why it should be put in game, especally for all the people who aren\'t used to forums/IRC and gving e-mail to a stranger.

Being guild leader i have receiced some PM\'s or mails, all in IC style. I would like them to be delivered in even more RP style, through Planeshift.

Can\'t you think a bit before writing somethink so wrong as you did in above posts? I\'m waiting for arguments.

[Karyuu]

Wouldn\'t letters make a lot more sense if actually used in-game, instead of written outside of it? Your character is supposed to be writing a letter, drop and pay for it somewhere to get delivered, then the recipient must pick it up at a mail center, instead of magically receiving it out of nowhere while he or she is on Oja road. And if this is a magical sort of letter, the price of delivery must match.

Realism, Nikodemus, not convenience.

[Lanore]

Ahh yes, the Yliakum Postal Service. (YPS)  

Whats going to be funny is that a million people are going to the mail center just to check messages. It would be humourous but I know there are ways around it.

[Induane]

Wouldn\'t letters make a lot more sense if actually used in-game, instead of written outside of it? Your character is supposed to be writing a letter, drop and pay for it somewhere to get delivered, then the recipient must pick it up at a mail center, instead of magically receiving it out of nowhere while he or she is on Oja road. And if this is a magical sort of letter, the price of delivery must match.

Well what would the point of these messages be considering the guildchat and /tell chats?  I mean, sure offline messages I suppose, but who is going to pay trias to do that?  Not me - not often anyways.... magic messages even less so. Truthfully I think that the chat box should only be for help and for /says.  Guilds could possibly have guild chat too, aided by a magical spell or something else similar to explain it.  Other messages should have to be said in person. Tells should have a really short range ... shorter than /say does.  The tell is touted as a whisper, yet it has unlimited range.  Messages all over should need to be mailed, but they should be carried by postpersons on mounts so that its actually faster than just running from town to town.  These postpersons should be npc\'s but it shouldn\'t be impossible to get a temp job running mail for anyone with the right mount skills.

So synopsis:

Make tell realistic with nearly no range.  
Make group chat have a range similar to loot range.
Help channel is fine.
Guild Chat is questionable but explainable.
Say and Shout are perfect
Long distance messages sent from post office like places.  A pony express like feature.


Seriously - as much as people are so hardcore RP oriented I\'m surprised that the game is made the way it is now.

[Karyuu]

Originally posted by Induane
Make tell realistic with nearly no range.

Hm, I hope I understood that correctly.. ;) /tell is completely OOC, and often used by players to clear up misconceptions, set up roleplay meetings, explain game mechanics to new players, etc. Removing it, or shortening its range, would be quite a blow. But it already has unlimited range, so saying \"make tell with no range\" doesn\'t quite.. make sense.. :P

[Seytra]

Originally posted by Induane
Make tell realistic with nearly no range.

While some RP /tell as whisper, I think it isn\'t. A whisper would have chance to be overheared nontheless, so it should be in /say: (/me whispers \"\"), though that requires more RP experience and discipline on part of the other players (who now must therefore decide for themselves if / what their char overhears).

Originally posted by Induane
Make group chat have a range similar to loot range.

Tell and /group are more or less for mere coordination than to be used for RP. In some instances, they can be made into IC, but mostly they are OOC.

Originally posted by Induane
Help channel is fine.
Guild Chat is questionable but explainable.
Say and Shout are perfect

Ignoring that you can hear the entire way from the fireplace to the top dormitories in the tavern, and that you can\'t vary the loudness of your voice, focus on a conversation or temporarily boost your speed (i.e., you need to assume OOC positions because /say has a fixed radius. Especially when moving around, /say is highly unreliable, one has to meet or resort to /group in order to simply keep the conversation flowing (disregarding movement + typing difficulty)).

Originally posted by Induane
Long distance messages sent from post office like places.  A pony express like feature.

IC postal service has been wished for and discussed before, and it\'s a good thing IMO if, and only if, it is, as Karyuu said, fully ingame and realistic. The pricing is an issue that needs careful handling, and it might be necessary to have it free or almost free, but overall such a system would, if done well, add much RP options, especially if you wouldn\'t use an email-like inbox system, but instead scrolls for individual messages, that can be given away, dropped (i.e., lost, stolen, etc.). Your char should write them and ideally have a writing ability. It would be nice to be able to select handwriting styles and place spots, smudges and other things on it to make it look more like your char wrote it, but even without it would be nice for RP.

Edit: @ Karyuu: you beat me to it. :)
However, the \"no range\" probably was meant to be \"extremely short\" (just as a true whisper) instead of \"unranged\" (as in \"unlimited range\").

[Nikodemus]

Nikodemus draws a circle on the wall and marks it \"hit with your head here\". Then he follows the instruction.
I\'m not myself today...

I missread what was wrote. I though Lanore wanted it to be inside game, not outside.
Treat the idea after my post like it was inside.
Really, i would like the game mechanics allow as much communication as possible withing RP limits. I don\'t want not ingame tool to be used ingame.

[Farren Kutter]

I\'d use it a lot even if it was offline, because often I can\'t get on my game and need to talk to people who refuse to get a messenger, never read their e-mail, and I myself don\'t use IRC.

[Karyuu]

Originally posted by Farren Kutter
I\'d use it a lot even if it was offline, because often I can\'t get on my game and need to talk to people who refuse to get a messenger, never read their e-mail, and I myself don\'t use IRC.

But Farren, the whole point is about it being more realistic in-game. This isn\'t a messaging tool meant to talk to people who are in-game whenever you wish - that\'s completely OOC, and any messaging application can take of that. If they\'re too stubborn to get a messaging application outside of PlaneShift, that\'s their problem. Why does the development team have to accomodate such? The point is realism, which only an in-game mail system will achieve.

[Farren Kutter]

I was just saying I\'d use it.... a nice in-game one would be even better, the whole mail thing.... In fact, i suggested it once, long time ago, but never really posted it on the forums

[houz]

What about leaving messages at a NPC? For example if I have done Harnquist a favor (made one of his quests) he\'ll do me a favor in return: tell someone what I told him if that person either asks him if I left a message or Harnquist tells him whenever the other is coming for shopping.
If I haven\'t been nice to that person I might have to pay a little fee for that service.
It could even be possible that the message is forgotten after some time. That\'s where the writing skill would be handy - if i\'m good enough in writing my note (skill level might influence the length of the letter?), I can hand it over to a NPC or even a PC like the librarian in DR or the guys in the tavern and they can give the scroll to the recipient.
I wrote \"can\" since it might be possible that the note is stolen, sold, copied or whatever can happen to a piece of paper.
Speaking of paper one has to find a solution for the problem of paper being quite expensive and the potential need for a lot of notes.
It might even be nice to have a kind of ingame notebook to remember things that aren\'t quest related so that you don\'t have to abuse the quest book all the time.

I hope that at least a few of my ideas are helpful and not too confusing...

Tobias

[Karyuu]

I do like that idea :) Arka mentioned it before, here.