General Chat Discussion

[VortexAlive]

This has been brought up many times during my stay in FeralHeart... I think it's time we talked about it seriously.

What does General do?
General Chat allows you to send and recieve messages from anyone anywhere in the map you are currently in, resulting in quite a useful chat for advertising and socializing in general.

Now let's look at what Local does...
Local Chat allows you to use the Lyp Sync feature and only send and recieve messages from people within range of you. Not so great for communicating but amazing for Role Playing.

Some things that I encountered...

Local is better for socializing.
My thought: I disagree... It limits the range of communication and that's less social. This has resulted in everyone gathering into just one spot of a map so they can read other people's messages, which has thus resulted in lag for anyone trying to go into said map.

General was abused and filled with trolls.
My thought: There's no denying it, you'll always have spammers and trolls. Want some advice? Do NOT say anything to them (Doing so is literally asking for trouble...); Just take a screenshot that shows the chat (Do NOT edit it!) and report them to a staff member (Be sure to be as detailed as possible!).

I miss General, it was great for advertising role plays.
My thought: It was great for two things and misconcieved as being meant for only one of them.

The Movie spam is real...
My thought: You can turn the Movie chat off very easily to allow yourself to see other messages from the other chats. This is, in my opinion, not as big a problem as people make it out to be. For that matter, the same can be said for EVERY other chat.
Extra thought: Sometimes they aren't even advertisements... hidden by an uninformative "has made a Movie Clip" message...

So... The big question is...

What does everyone else truly think/believe about this? Besides Spam/Trolling.

[Azurain]

My whole thought on the General Chat is that, yes it WAS a hassle. Trolls and all that. But...you have trolls in local just as much as General so can you really use that excuse? It's why we have moderators. To watch the chats and take action when needed, no matter WHICH chat. Seriously if General was taken out just because of rowdy people and trolls...then shouldn't have local been removed as well on that argument?

I was actually looking through the thread from when General was shut down. Many people were upset and said there was a new silence in the maps they didn't like. And many people believe it was what started leading to FH becoming less active and truthfully I see it too. It makes sense anyway.


I think it would be worth a shot to bring it back, just for a little bit at least. See what happens. People are always complaining that people never talk. That FH is too silent. And with the fact that FH isn't near as busy as it was back in 2011-13 it should be WAY easier to watch. But also, it might spike activity a little. So maybe it's what FeralHeart really needs.

Just my thoughts on the whole matter.

[WolfQueen]

#BRINGBACKGENERALCHAT2K17

Okay seriously,

I am 100% supportive of the resurfacing of General chat and I've been waiting for it to come back ever since it's demise (even when the chance had been pretty bleak). It honestly made the game more active and it made it easier to communicate with people. Sure there was arguments and trolls, but you can't just prevent people from talking to each other over long distances because you don't want to deal with an issue that can be prevented.

I remember the day when general chat was disabled from the game a few years back. The forums were a battleground. x.x
Some extreme actions were taken to ease the mess, but that only brushed it under the rug. Desperate times comes for desperate measures, I guess? lol
I hope this thread stays up.

[Kuri]

General is useful on large maps.   I have seen people use movie clips a few times in cherika valley for talking to their friends far away for lack of general, and once between bonfire and the mainland.
Like the others said, might be interesting to see what would happen if it was brought back.

[Hakumi]

Interesting Discussion.

Might thoughts about this? I think it would be a nice change in pace. I want to see how 'mature' Feral - Heart has grown since the fall of general chat. Sure, we will have trolls , spammers and the like, but I think the whole thing was brought down in the first place because as someone already said, it was pretty much abused and as a community, everyone had to pay the price. Sure it wasn't fair for those that were actually using it appropriately but we can't just favor certain people now can we?

At least we're able to still use general in custom maps, but not everyone can get into said custom maps and not everyone has those fancy computers that can handle such files. Seeing general back would be an interesting thing. It might spark some activity both good and bad,
nej doubt about it. If something gets out of hand though and it's just beyond all control, we're gonna get punished for it and general might not come back period. Sucks to say, but that's just how life can be. Even if a small handful were to report said spammers, what's gonna stop 'em from coming back again? Same thing for trolls, y'know?
But yeah, if ya don't like something then yeah, you can change the settings and turn off certain chats, yada ... But even if general did come back,
 it literally depends on how engaging a person is in the game. You can say that it will help with adverts, but the person still has to do more if they wanna get out there and everything. Shoot, for all we know, if general comes back, it might make a difference for a little while but then it just dies and tapers off y'know? Yeah, we still have general but it all depends on the person as a whole, the community as a whole.. and how mature we can be about this if and when this feature kicks off again.
But my overall opinion on it, I mean it's fine and all, but I probably won't care too much because I would probably act the same and I know for sure I won't really use it all that much because of how I am as a person. But hey, more power to the ones that want it. Lol.

[Edolicious]

Well, the only issue I see here is that the 'difference' between general and local trolls is while trolls in local you can just walk away from, trolls in general span the entire map. Once they say something, there's no taking it back. Everyone in the map has seen it. Unless you feel like leaving the map, there's not many other options to 'instantly' stop them. But like said above, that's fixable via the handy dandy block button or reporting.

There's always going to be trolls, yes. That's a given. Some of those trolls have matured, and others not so much, and there's always new ones. But like you said, Hakumi, the news spreading that General chat is back? That'd boost activity. Now this might bring back some not-so-friendly faces, but at the same time, I think the amount of people on here would be taken up a notch. I'd really love to see General brought back; a lot of people would, though I guess this bit is a tad obvious. Maybe even bring it back for a 'trial run' for a week or so? Then depending on how it was used/misused, the final decision would be released with the next update.
Hearing that the game both updated, and general is back? Here come more names to the game, woot!

Just thinkin' aloud. Would be neat to see that green chat put back into play.

[turtlies]

I'm happy to see a polite discussion thread about this, I've noticed a lot of times this topic can bit a bit heated, but I think it deserves a bit of discussion.

My opinion is to return it. General was much easier to advertise in compared to the often glitchy and limited movie clips. There was sometimes trolls, yes, but as a few people mentioned, all the other chats are littered with trolls too, especially Local. And the return of General would definitely give some older players the interest to rejoin and might even give a bit of a boost to Feralheart's reputation (I mean, there's no denying that the removal of general is a common complaint about FH, whether you agree or not.)

Ideally it'd be best to change how General works---limits on amount of posts, filters to reduce spam, etc., but since we don't have the source code, I don't believe this is a possibility. I still think General can work in the state it is right now, as long as the community helps to keep it clean and to ignore/report trolls.

(Apologies if my post is a bit rushed or all over the place, I just woke up )

[VortexAlive]

Thank you all for keeping things calm and for your contribution to this discussion so far.

@Azura
I was not around back in the days of General, but considering the videos I've watched and what I've heard others say about the activity comparison between then and now, it is quite interesting to see how something that seemed insignificant has affected the game and its community so greatly.

@WolfQueen
I have no doubt about the battleground thing... and if General does get revived, there's sure to be confusion after so much time has passed with the previous adamant attitude of keeping it disabled. In the end, it all depends on how well those that are confused will be able to understand it.

@Kuri
Using Movie Clips for long distance chat instead of whisper/party/group? Oh my goodness... xD

@Hakumi & @Edolicious
I would also like to see how well the current community can cope with the General chat and you are absolutely right about the community needing to play its part.
As for the bit about rule-breakers simply returning... It's been pointed out several times that players can easily block or report them. Rules are rules; They exist for a reason. I'll recap this bit since it's very important "the community needs to play its part." by helping the staff help you, which helps them. =)
>>
I agree that if people learned that a feature they liked was brought back, they'd probably come back to check it out, along with the other new stuff. There will likely be a period of time after the update where, if people learn about it, there will be a huge spike of activity until things smooth out and those that came because of news decide to either leave or stay based on their judgement. Let's not be fooled by that possible spike of activity, if General is brought back then it will likely have to be watched (and monitored, without that it'll all go south...) for an extended time to properly judge it. If things go well and the confusion mentioned above can be straightened out, I don't see an issue even if the use of General fades away. As it stands now, Local fades to silent during the morning hours my time but can easily become active again with the help of a nudge.

@Torskite
I happen to agree with General being easier to advertise in, it provided an up front method of showing others what you have to offer, rather than having others guess and watch several movie clips that might not even be advertisements. Let's not forget that it can be used for long-range public socializing as well. =)

[Bawfle]

Tbh, bringing General Chat back will not do FH any good, and things will go back to the way they were. However, if the General Chat had a different use, then it could be a whole different story. It could have the soul purpose of advertising.

If "General Chat" was changed/renamed to "Advertisements", it wouldn't be a repeat of the general chat previously. The only trolls would be the ones looking for trouble or doing it to harass or irritate others. Just thought that should be something to keep an eye out for, and it would be a different alternative to General Chat, but at the same time the Chat would have it's use and it will separate advertisements and chat in general. People could switch this off too, so if they wanted to have advertisements away from local, it would be more cleaner for them too.

Simply shown below:

Renaming


Box Resizing


Preview


The Issue


The only issue is presented in the final image, that cannot be changed without the source code, I don't think.

[VortexAlive]

@Bawfle
Thank you for contributing.
I can not really agree or disagree with your claim about it being no good, nor can I be certain that it will be a repeat of previous events as I was not around when it happened and we have many helpful paws to keep things in order.
>>
General is more than just an advertisement chat, just as Local has been used for the same purposes, to socialize and advertise. but with far less effectiveness due to its limited range.

The idea was interesting to read though. =)