Attacker / Defender Outpost Channels?

[xeraphim]

Everyone using region chat just creates confusion and acromony (as seen in the recent Berello Gorge assault where 80 or so homins took part)
Attack and Defend channels should be a must.
They managed it in ep2 didnt they? (cant remember exactly)

[oldmess]

as far as i am concerned i'd never coordinate an op battle via auto-inclusive ingame channels, way too much of a security risk. (ts/irc ftw )

I think the main reason for calling for Attack and Defend channels is that it should be a relatively nominal programming task (we've already seen faction channels). But you're right, it's not perfect.

The ideal would be the ability to build some sort of multi-team group (Battallion?). Unlike teams, you wouldn't be able to see everyone's health in a special window. All you'd be able to do is have a special chat channel that everyone in the team can see. Even better would be if they limit talking in that channel to team leaders, but everyone in the linked teams can see it.

But if the coding for that is too much, an Attack/Defend pair of channels would be a reasonable alternative for the short term instead of everyone using Region or Shout. Those are even bigger security risks and tend to encourage name calling and taunting.

[tridman]

that'd mean to constantly monitor the whole op region so you can always know who is in which channel at any given moment...

It would most probably mean you would have to monitor any outpost on atys.

The current system seems to use only one global list for attackers/defenders. Not one for every single outpost.
I come to this conclusion, since the following happened during an OP battle:

One guild (say guild A) was supporting two independent guilds (say B and C) in two independent outpost attack battles. When guild B decided, that the help of guild A was no longer wanted they banned the whole guild from the OP battle.
The effect was, that also the members of guild A who where supporting guild C in their fight for a completely different OP where immediately kicked out of the OP battle.

Hence, introducing additional chat chanels for OP wars in their current implementation would mean that any attacker or defender of any outpost would read and write to exactly the same chanel as all the others. And, besides the great possibility of spying, I think this would be quite confusing.

So unless Nevrax has the time and resources to change quite a big part of the OP-PvP implementation (introducing separate atack/defence lists for the OPs) without delaying the (hopefully) upcomming non-PvP content, I wouldn´t count on this feature.

[vguerin]

The spying is happening now, and will always be there... lets not stop that from making this improvement to gameplay.

[oldmess]

It would most probably mean you would have to monitor any outpost on atys.
...
Hence, introducing additional chat chanels for OP wars in their current implementation would mean that any attacker or defender of any outpost would read and write to exactly the same chanel as all the others. And, besides the great possibility of spying, I think this would be quite confusing.

Quite right. We've all been focused on the individual battle we cared about, but this could absolutely happen and would create great confusion.

Given these issues and the upcoming Spires, I think the only viable solution will be some sort of multi-team channel as I suggested below. Much more controlled and flexible. And before we assume that Spires can be handled by faction channels, remember that multiple faction battles could be happening at the same time. A single faction channel would be just as confusing as a single "Attack" channel.

@Devs - please consider doing something on these lines before you release the Spires. This communication issue is only going to get worse.

If multi-team "battallions" aren't possible, then allow us to create temporary named channels that can be accessed by invitation only and where the channel creator can boot people from it if needed. Given the potential size, make it so named channels can have multiple moderators if the creator so designates. For non-battle use, allow the creator to designate a channel as "open" so anyone can join if they wish.

Don't be afraid to make the interface for this entirely command driven if it'll save time. For example:

/Channel Create ChannelName
/Channel Drop ChannelName
/Channel Invite ChannelName InviteeName
/Channel Boot ChannelName InviteeName

(if it's command driven, creating a macro to add lots of standard people would be relatively easy without any special coding)

The only command that really needs to be in the GUI is the "Invite". Add that to the popup when you right-click on a player character. Obviously, additional GUI elements wouldn't be a bad thing, but if it's quicker to do this with commands, I say it's OK, IMO.

Bottom line: We need a better communication method for this PvP thing to work out the way you hope it will. Something with generic flexibility will provide the maximum amount of usefulness for your efforts.

[xenofur]

heck, they could make it easy on themselves and set up an irc server to which the game connects, would save a lot of hassle with the other channels as well...

[rushin]

The spying is happening now, and will always be there... lets not stop that from making this improvement to gameplay.

hehe yep, some of the karavan guilds are quite persistent with their alt-spies

*nods in agreement about better forms of communication being needed*
maybe the quick and easy answer is for team leaders to be able link with other TL's for combined chat channels. Just in case the dev's read this can u pretty please allow a team leader to pass the position onto another in team (ie demote themselves and promote another in team to leader) =)