Map channel ruins the atmosphere

Masa1

In my opinion map channel totally ruins the atmosphere of this game. The game feels more like chat room than a mmorpg.

 

For example local chat is barely used.. and I think it's mostly thanks to the map channel (the other explanation is that gw2 players are just unsocial). The only time you might see the local channel in use (20% of the time) is when you resurrect other players and they say "thanks".

 

When you enter the game and don't already have a group to play with, you're going to experience singleplayer experience, not multiplayer one. Everyone around you just keeps doing heart quests and events. Technically they all work together, helping each other by ressing for example, but they don't talk to each other.

 

Thanks to the map channel the whole game feels really lonely, although it's supposed to be a mmorpg.

 

PS. if you didn't understand, by local channel I mean the "say" channel.

Farzo

I didn't quite understand you there-... Talking to people makes you feel lonely, or what?

Kakkzooka

By "local" channel, do you mean the "say" command? Because, for all intents and purposes, the "map channel" is  the local channel. The "say" command is for chat bubbles.

 

 

Masa1

Originally posted by Farzo
I didn't quite understand you there-... Talking to people makes you feel lonely, or what?

Writing to map channel is totally different than communicating with other players who are close to you. If you don't understand that, I don't know how to make you.

IamApropos

I some what agree.  Trying to get nearly anyone to acknowledge /say chat is horrible.  I watched so many people participate in an event that had a chest at the end and a bunch started running off.  I used /say chat and noone noticed, I switched to /map chat and nearly half came back...  

 

/say kind of blends in with all other chats but /map chat stands out because its red.  this is one of my issues that I feel ANET needs to address because people just tend to ignore everyone unless they use /map chat. 

Masa1

Originally posted by Apropo

I some what agree.  Trying to get nearly anyone to acknowledge /say chat is horrible.  I watched so many people participate in an event that had a chest at the end and a bunch started running off.  I used /say chat and noone noticed, I switched to /map chat and nearly half came back...  

 

/say kind of blends in with all other chats but /map chat stands out because its red.  this is one of my issues that I feel ANET needs to address because people just tend to ignore everyone unless they use /map chat. 

I think that they should remove the whole map channel, except for WvW.

XeoMatrix00

What do you want to ppl to come to u and provide company. All mmo are like that if u dont interact no one will interact with you. 

TheIronLegion

Turn off map chat, then. /Thread

But seriously. If you don't like it you can turn it off.

Masa1

Originally posted by XeoMatrix00
What do you want to ppl to come to u and provide company. All mmo are like that if u dont interact no one will interact with you. 

I've seen far more interaction in other MMORPGs (which don't have a channel similar to map channel). Even if I talk to someone in GW2, they are very likely to just ignore me. There's not really any need to form a group in GW2, so people are more likely to ignore others and just solo their way to 80lvl.

Masa1

Originally posted by TheIronLegion

Turn off map chat, then. /Thread

But seriously. If you don't like it you can turn it off.

That's the whole problem. If I turn it off, the game turns into "no chat" game. Players aren't really players, they feel more like "very intelligent AI".

IamApropos

Originally posted by TheIronLegion

Turn off map chat, then. /Thread

But seriously. If you don't like it you can turn it off.

9 times out of 10 if you don't use /map chat EVERYONE ignores you.  recommending someone to turn off map chat because they don't like the fact that nobody pays attention to regular /say chat and only notices map chat; which in turn is causing EVERYONE to only use /map chat is just silly in a very annoying way.

 

 

Amjoco

Originally posted by Masa1

Originally posted by TheIronLegion

Turn off map chat, then. /Thread

But seriously. If you don't like it you can turn it off.

That's the whole problem. If I turn it off, the game turns into "no chat" game. Players aren't really players, they feel more like "very intelligent AI".

/map is the same as other games /region. It is used to chat in the area of the "/map" that you are currnetly in. All games have this.

edit: took out local

TheIronLegion

Originally posted by Masa1

Originally posted by Apropo

I some what agree.  Trying to get nearly anyone to acknowledge /say chat is horrible.  I watched so many people participate in an event that had a chest at the end and a bunch started running off.  I used /say chat and noone noticed, I switched to /map chat and nearly half came back...  

 

/say kind of blends in with all other chats but /map chat stands out because its red.  this is one of my issues that I feel ANET needs to address because people just tend to ignore everyone unless they use /map chat. 

I think that they should remove the whole map channel, except for WvW.

You do realize they added the map channel by popular demand. People complained that no one communicated in the game because there was no way to talk to 'everyone' or atleast everyone in a zone. So Arenanet added the Map channel. Now here we are complaining that we don't like it. Let's make up our minds shall we .

Also, lets just be happy that there is no "world" chat or cross world chat. I think that would just be a nasty place to be full of trolls and bickering.

heartless

People talking = bad, people not talking = bad also.

TheIronLegion

Originally posted by Apropo

Originally posted by TheIronLegion

Turn off map chat, then. /Thread

But seriously. If you don't like it you can turn it off.

9 times out of 10 if you don't use /map chat EVERYONE ignores you.  recommending someone to turn off map chat because they don't like the fact that nobody pays attention to regular /say chat and only notices map chat; which in turn is causing EVERYONE to only use /map chat is just silly in a very annoying way.

 

 

The op seems like an old school gamer (not an 'old' gamer as in being old aged). They want people to stop and have a good ol' chat with them for 10 minutes or they want people to do a bit more role playing and talk to one another in the local chat. Or atleast that is the vibe i got. The issue here is that it's a new generation of gamers who really only want to communicate through a wide area chat. This can be attributed to Facebook, a very wide forum of communication across huge barries and distances. In the current day and age if you want to communicate it almost has to be with everyone, unless you have friends that you talk with on a regular basis. In which case you can use whisper or guild chat to talk to them.

Also most of the chatting that happens in Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 outside the map chat is in guild chat. A lot of people came here with their guild, or with a group of friends. You also have to account for the fact that services like ventrilo, skype, teamspeak, and mumble offer a completely different level of communication between players. So type-chat almost never occurs between good friends. I know everyone that I play with regularly uses skye and theres usually a call going between the(roughly) 10 of us that play.

eldaris

Without a map channel,gw2 would really be a single player game.Using /say is useless because of the small area it covers.If you don't like it turn it off but I am glad arena net added map chat or gw2 would have been worse than warhammer chat in beginning. Lot of games have zone chats,some even have world chat and level or class chat and that is not making them less a mmo,in my opinion it makes them more social.For people who don't want to socialize beside their own guilds or at all ,just turn it off.

DaezAster

I think it is partially the way the game plays, in battle you really aren't going to be watching the chat. Other then that I have find people to be pretty social in game and have spurred a few non grouped groups through say chat. It's up to you to reach out but don't get upset when some are doing there own thing, maybe trying to complete the map or finish up some other stuff. 

Amjoco

IMHO the chat is pretty minimal because people are playing and aren't bored. I'm sure it will pick up in a couple weeks and there will be tons of /block running over my keys.

Masa1

Originally posted by heartless

People talking = bad, people not talking = bad also.

If every player on a given map would use map channel, it would get a new message more than once every 6s (like it is atm). So I think that only 10% of players are actively using the map channel and only 1% of the players use "say" channel.

 

We can't really say that "people are talking" when only 11% are.

Drachasor

Eh, I find people more often don't respond to me on these forums.  Seriously, I often exchange a wry comment or two with /say in the game with others.  Sometimes there is no response, but the majority of the time there is.

The only real difficutly, I think, is that it is hard to fight and type, and events are very busy.  It would be nice if Voice Recognition was to the point that it would type out anything you say.  Or if there was some sort of good voice chat system (though how to get this to work would be a big question).  That way you could type without needing your hands.  A bit annoying, but nothing new.

MindTrigger

This is par for the course for today's themeparks.  They aren't designed to be social anymore, and they don't foster player interaction much at all.

Masa1

 

Originally posted by TheIronLegion

Originally posted by Apropo

Originally posted by TheIronLegion

Turn off map chat, then. /Thread

But seriously. If you don't like it you can turn it off.

9 times out of 10 if you don't use /map chat EVERYONE ignores you.  recommending someone to turn off map chat because they don't like the fact that nobody pays attention to regular /say chat and only notices map chat; which in turn is causing EVERYONE to only use /map chat is just silly in a very annoying way.

 

 

The op seems like an old school gamer (not an 'old' gamer as in being old aged). They want people to stop and have a good ol' chat with them for 10 minutes or they want people to do a bit more role playing and talk to one another in the local chat. Or atleast that is the vibe i got. The issue here is that it's a new generation of gamers who really only want to communicate through a wide area chat. This can be attributed to Facebook, a very wide forum of communication across huge barries and distances. In the current day and age if you want to communicate it almost has to be with everyone, unless you have friends that you talk with on a regular basis. In which case you can use whisper or guild chat to talk to them.

If you think that map channel is an improvement to say channel, I'd say that you are wrong. Map channel gives you a chance to "order groups", but that's all there is to it. If you want to make friends, map channel doesn't really give you an opportunity for that while say channel gives.

 

What I mean is that say channel is more personal than map channel. In map channel you are just 1 anonymous bastard.

rodingo

This just proves that people can find just about anything to complain about.  Has someone complained about having to kill things for certain quests  or having to push buttons to activate skills yet?  Oh who am I kidding?  At this rate someone probably already has.

 

Edit: Which MMO only has Say/Local channel ?  Which mmo doesn't have people talking in Region/Map?  The problem isn't the game, it's the players.  To say it's only GW2 players is rediculous becuase a lot if not most of GW2 players also play or have played other mmos as well.

Masa1

Originally posted by rodingo
This just proves that people can find just about anything to complain about.  Has someone complained about having to kill things for certain quests  or having to push buttons to activate skills yet?  Oh who am I kidding?  At this rate someone probably already has.

I think that social aspect of MMORPG is not such a small problem your post might suggest. If you seriously think that it is, you might as well take RPG out of MMORPG or better yet, go play a singleplayer game.

itgrowls

Originally posted by Masa1

In my opinion map channel totally ruins the atmosphere of this game. The game feels more like chat room than a mmorpg.

 

For example local chat is barely used.. and I think it's mostly thanks to the map channel (the other explanation is that gw2 players are just unsocial). The only time you might see the local channel in use (20% of the time) is when you resurrect other players and they say "thanks".

 

When you enter the game and don't already have a group to play with, you're going to experience singleplayer experience, not multiplayer one. Everyone around you just keeps doing heart quests and events. Technically they all work together, helping each other by ressing for example, but they don't talk to each other.

 

Thanks to the map channel the whole game feels really lonely, although it's supposed to be a mmorpg.

 

PS. if you didn't understand, by local channel I mean the "say" channel.

got an easy solution for you, either put map in another tab that you hardly use or unselect it altogether then you'll never see it again. simple.

Aerowyn

Originally posted by Masa1

In my opinion map channel totally ruins the atmosphere of this game. The game feels more like chat room than a mmorpg.

 

For example local chat is barely used.. and I think it's mostly thanks to the map channel (the other explanation is that gw2 players are just unsocial). The only time you might see the local channel in use (20% of the time) is when you resurrect other players and they say "thanks".

 

When you enter the game and don't already have a group to play with, you're going to experience singleplayer experience, not multiplayer one. Everyone around you just keeps doing heart quests and events. Technically they all work together, helping each other by ressing for example, but they don't talk to each other.

 

Thanks to the map channel the whole game feels really lonely, although it's supposed to be a mmorpg.

 

PS. if you didn't understand, by local channel I mean the "say" channel.

better than my experience with the last 10 MMOs i played where people hardly talked AND there was no reason to really even play/group with anyone. GW2 offers more chances for people to come together, work together, and achieve a common goal than any other MMO i can think of... the talking part is really up to the individuals. Also curious what MMO doesn't have any sort of MAP chat? I can't think of any really