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MMORPG.COM News: Debate: Cross-Faction Chat
Dana
Member Posts: 2,415
Ever wanted to tell that Hibernian from Dark Age of Camelot exactly what you thought of him? Well, Frank thinks you should be allowed and that's the subject of this debate: should cross-faction chat in PvP MMORPGs be allowed? Garrett disagrees. Read on to hear their arguments, then let us know where you stand.
| Frank Mignone: I remember the first time I entered a contested area in World of Warcraft. It wasn't long before I got spanked by a nerd heard of Horde, who then spewed some profanity at me...er, wait, thats not profanity (unless you're playing Q-Bert) its gibberish! It was my first experience with a game that restricts cross-factional chat. I am still trying to get the taste out of my mouth.
I've heard lots of fake reasons for imposing this restriction. Smack talk for one. I get that some people do not like getting killed by some little idiot, only to have to listen to him say 'Dood, I pwn joo.' Yea, punk lets have a spelling contest and see who wins! It most certainly can get annoying, that's why someone invented the /ignore list (wish they had those in real life). People get way to worked-up over pixels sometimes, so we end up with a splintered community. |
Dana Massey
Formerly of MMORPG.com
Currently Lead Designer for Bit Trap Studios
Comments
Vote, then tell us why.
Dana Massey
Formerly of MMORPG.com
Currently Lead Designer for Bit Trap Studios
Games with factional based chat has some merits to it. It helps considerably to be able to have a community of like-minded folks to play with, work with, and generally have a good time with. Not being able to talk to the "enemy," however can make some aspects of the game difficult - especially if you don't believe they should be your enemy. When I was playing World of Warcraft, I played a Night Elf Druid. The night elf and tauren druids share a secret city, but because of the language barrier, you still couldn't talk to them or help them on quests. That may have changed since the last time I played, but I found it a bit annoying that I couldn't talk to or help the people the game world had set itself up to work together with. That was an aspect I just couldn't agree with. It felt wrong to be able to go to a place where two races, each from a different faction, could go together, but not be able to speak or to assist one another. The inablity to learn the language of the other really feels wrong to me, especially in such cases.
I can certainly understand that no one likes trash talk, but in moderation and at the right point in time, I feel it helps to enhance the overall feel of the game. Admitely, it takes a certain level of maturity to know when the right time to trash talk is, and to know when you've gone too far. Not all the players of a game really know or understand this. It makes sense, however, that people in Battlegrounds and other RvR type areas would trash talk. It just feels right to me that a group would declare how they're part of the better faction and to have no fear in telling you this. The language barrier doesn't cross over to emotes, thankfully, and that allows you to make your same point in a different way.
Personally, I think it would be interesting if a few characters learned the language of the "other side," and in turn began to work towards fostering a peace between the realms. It would be an uphill battle, but think of all the opportunities such a group of people could create. In games like DAoC and WoW, they would be a very small minority and I can see how people would react with somer rather - interesting - epithets. Again, it would take some maturity to handle such situations, but I think it would be neat to see.
I really dislike not being able to learn new languages in a game. It makes no sense and gives an incongrous feel to the game. It would be interesting to see people "swearing" in a language that isn't their own. It also makes things interesting because then you could have people who seem to want to belong to a culture that isn't their own which also makes sense. Sure, you could just make a character that belongs to that other race, but it isn't quite as interesting.
Yes, I am a very strong advocate for RP. Nevertheless, even in a Battleground or an RvR area, it would be interesting to see a handful of gibberish with the occassional word or two in your own language after someone is beaten down by you, or after they beat on you. Designers and devlopers should add the ability to learn languages if that is what the players want to do. I feel it would make the game far more interesting. Just /ignore the people you don't want to deal with and enjoy the more amusing and fun aspects of the players who trying to enhance the game and the experience for everyone.
Ardda
"Perception is nine-tenths of Reality. Be careful what you perceive."
With the PVP element of WOW amd DAoC, you would get to many people spying for the other faction and it would cause issues with people trying to bark commands or plans in general. all in all it adds alot of comradery to the factions, and makes the feel like a "team".
Just my 2 copper
Imagine the spam when you try to down one of those world spawned dragons in WoW or Lord Kazzak(sp?), I don't see why you would want to talk to the enemy, so-called 'friends' are bad enough. My ignore list was full of same-faction people, half of them beggars/gold sellers (sadly server choice didn't seem to make that much difference), trash talk already takes place within Battlegrounds or Pickup Groups, heck you get people telling you who you should or shouldn't 'gank'. WoW just seemed to attract a high percentage of arrogant, self-centred, selfish, immature halfwits that I'm hoping they stay there and leave other mmorpgs well alone. The few acts of kindness, chivalry and just common decency were like a lighthouse in an ocean of grime.
People arrange fights, to increase PvP ranking, anyway through IRC or some other outside comms so whether a game allows cross-faction chat is moot in that case. You can communicate to a degree through emotes, but most of the time you end up getting a /spit macro.
I played on a high-population PvP server, but surely my experience wasn't unique or was I just unlucky in server choice? Without my guild, mostly aged 25+, I would have quit much much sooner.
I think it adds to the game. How many guilds especially on rp servers are trying to rp peace, or talk about how they have "observed the other race and maybe they aren't savages..." Wow for all its glories is a statisc world. one of the few realistic effects of the world in my opinion is the lack of communication. Look at any point in history, look aat two opposing sides. I bet you anything a given side will tell you ALL about the other side, without ever talking to other side.
It leads to rascism, nationalism and other stereotypical reactions that are human nature.
I'm not saying those are good things but they make a great war.
Untill wow has meaningful pvp the only thing holding the war together is the lack of communication. And it makes sense... How many people here want peace in the middle east? How many people speak arabic, hebrew, and or farsi?
Overall we have a communication problem, which leads to culteral misunderstandings, which leads to assumptions which created an us vs them. World of WARcraft at its finest.
vote no on cross factional chat:)
As I see it, there are ups and downs to it. I am caught in the middle.
Pros of no Cross-Faction Chat:
Added RP value - If you have 6 or 7 races, what are the chances of them all speaking the same language? Not very good, when you consider how many human languages there are in real life. It would be based more on region and race. So, if you designate an elven language, a dwarven language, or even various regional languange, it all adds to the effect of drawing you in.
Limits Trash Talk - This one has already been beaten to death, I think, in arguements. While it may be true, I do not believe it acts in this function very well over-all. As was mentioned in the original debate, I often get as much trash from supposed teammates as I do from the opposing faction.
Cons of no Cross-Faction Chat:
Limited Communication - You have no way of talking, what-so-ever to somebody of another faction, whether racial or region language barriers are used. While it may limit spamming from the other side, it also prevents any friendly parley that may have other-wise taken place. It also means that, should you and a friend end up on opposing factions, you have to use 3rd party communications to speak with each other.
Can Limit RP - I know I said above that it can add to the depth of RP, but it can also have the opposite effect. Okay, so my elf and your dwarf do not speak the same language at first. That is fine. But characters need a way to learn the other's languages. An elf that spends a lot of time around humans, for example, would begin to learn the human language, and vice versa.
Pros of Cross-Faction Chat:
Simplified Communication - It simplifies the communication process between friends. For example, I play a lot of CoX. I have made numerous friends in CoH, and when CoV came out, most everybody I know bought it. Now, regardless of what we are playing at the moment, we can talk in global. It just makes things easier.
Cons of Cross-Faction Chat:
Lack of Strategic Stealth - I know, it sounds more pretensious than it really is. It just means that the other guys can hear what you are saying to your faction. Since they can eaves-drop, they will know what you are doing if you use the standard chat.
That said...
I like the way CoX has done it. Granted, they do not have a multi-racial chat system, as WoW, EQ, or SWG has, but it still a good model to go from. In your options for CoX, you can choose whether or not you want to hear the other side's broadcasts (region-wide chat). There are multiple chats for teams, supergroups (guilds), friends, local, global, and more. You can choose how much gets through, and how much the other side hears, by using your chat and it's options.
I do like the idea of differing racial or regional languages, but the execution often leaves something to be desired. There has to be a global option, so that you can talk regardless of what your characters can understand, and your characters need to have a way to expand their knowledge of languages. Other-wise, the RP excuse for it flies out the window. Give players a larger, as close to unlimited as possible, ignore option and your the entire trash-talking arguement goes away.
http://wuyausu.com
Who stopped payment on my reality check?
Not just no, but hell no
The one game that meet with mainstream success in PVP was the one that decided to outlaw cross realm PVP chat altogether, the game known as "doac".
Other PVP games which allowed cross faction chat or general PVP chat failed and only ended up cathering to a minority of players, games such as shadowbane. People hate trash talkers, ignore list or no ignore list, pvp politics or not.
Daoc had two pvp servers that allowed cross faction chat, the server failed within the daoc population because players hated trash talkers, Mythic ended up closing the PVP servers, pretty much.
Normal casual players will partake in PVP occasionally if cross faction chat isn't allowed in game. Hardcore players on the other hand can adapt to anything, though many like myself don't enjoy PVP chat either, it's just dumb (99% of the time, from my experiences).
The idea of "PVP politics" never takes off either, that notion gets lost in the stream of insults and taunting which happens in PVP. Anyone who isn't in your guild anyways (or on your side) is a free kill, that's all there is in PVP. That's it. There's nothing else to discuss here. If you want to talk tactics, go on a forum, set a discussion between leaders.
Bottom line, if you want a succesful PVP game, you need to disable cross faction chat, it'll be abused by most players otherwise and most players won't tolerate that for long. That's the sad truth
Cross-faction chat is an interesting debate, one that many of my friends and I have spent a good deal of time talking about. Since I play WoW on a PvE server, the consequences of allowing it would likely be less problematic.
My husband, son, and I all play Horde because we like it there. Most of our friends like Alliance. (So we have characters on both sides.) One of things that annoyed me the most when I first started playing was the fact that in order to determine if my friends were even playing was to make a character on the Alliance side and check. On PvP servers, this wouldn't even be possible. Another thing that always boggled me was the fact that the Steamwheedle Cartel people (goblins) can understand both sides and talk to both sides. Are all these goblins really that smart that they are fluent in ALL languages? ;-) Maybe some, but surely not all.
There are many times that being able to communicate with the opposing faction would be helpful, in my opinion. Here's an example. I remember the first time I had an Alliance character go to Desolace and find the entrance to Nigel's Point. I was running up every slope of the mountain to try and figure out how to get up there. I finally found it and was very happy. So, I was running around Desolace with my Undead priest and I saw a Human Paladin doing the same thing I had done before. So I started chasing him, using emotes like /wave, /beckon, and was jumping up and down like an idiot to get his attention. At first he didn't follow me, since he probably thought that I might lead him to some dangerous place, but he gave in after awhile since I was so persistent, and I led him to the guards, who started chasing me. I didn't mind that, though. I could easily get away. He /thank-ed me and I ran off to continue my quests. It would have been a million times easier if I could have just said, "Hey, just follow the base of the mountain until you see Nigel's Point guards and you'll find the path up to the outpost." It would have saved time, too.
There are other times that Horde and Alliance help each other out. They take turns killing some named quest mob, while the other side keeps the area clear or just helps kill it. Personally, if someone needs help with a quest or something, I see no reason why they should make it so difficult for the opposing faction to help out.
On the other hand, in the area of PvP, it's clearly a different ballgame. First there's the trash talk. Outside of PvP, there are times that I turn off most chat channels because it's so annoying, and I am grateful that I have the option to do so. In BG or if I'm running around with my son fighting flagged Alliance in whatever zone we're hunting in, I don't think it affects the PvP experience. I don't like being insulted and I don't insult others, even if it's just "friendly" trash-talk. At least, not if I don't know them. When I'm dueling my friends or something, that's a different matter.
I honestly feel that the computer allows people to say things to others that they would never DARE say in real life. It's a safe place to act like a complete jerk, and I don't believe that's right, whether it's a game or a chatroom. I know that's a little off-topic, but it's related to my feelings on trash-talk in general.
A previous post mentioned spying on the other side for tactical advantage and such. That's certainly a valid point. Again, since I'm on a PvE server, it's not quite as dangerous. However, if you're in a party or raid, keep your tactics in those chat channels and you should be fine, I would think.
My solutions? I would totally be willing to quest, spend gold, or whatever, to learn other languages. I spent hours in EverQuest learning languages by begging other races to chat with me in game. I even mastered Dragon and some other non-playable character ones. It opened up quests for me and made the game a richer experience. As for BG, disable cross-faction chat while you're in it. Or have the option to turn it on and off. That way you could minimize the spam and trash-talk, if you so desired.
Oh, and one other thing. People are always saying that the factions in WoW are at war. And well, yeah, they probably are, even though the NPC's are always talking about the fragile peace that exists and all that. Not to put too fine of a point on it, but I think there's a war going on in real life right now (note my sarcasm), and it's certainly possible for the two sides to talk to each other there, too. With all our magic and technology in WoW, are we so stupid that we can't learn a foreign language?
http://wuyausu.com
Who stopped payment on my reality check?
At first, I didn't really like the idea of no cross-faction chat when i first started WoW.
But later on, i realized that it added greatly to the PvP element that the game has.
If you see an enemy of the opposite faction in a contested area, you would probably try to kill them if they were near your level. Since you guys can't really communicate, you don't really adapt to each other and become friends, therefore you have no real problem in killing them
On the other hand, if you were able to chat with the other faction, you may become friends or w/e, and find out that they just started WoW just like you did, and you may feel bad if you killed them (i know i would)
Anyways, thats just my thought about it.
Hello
I belive ther eshould be corss faction talk. When i used to play wow me and a few guld mates sometimes would imagine a quest where the horde and alliance would have to learn to stop fighting and defeat a common enemy. Now i play eve and if any one smack talks wich is very rare i just add them to an ignor list. I have seen some pretty amsuing conversations in local after a big fight.
However it does depened on the community of the mmo i guess. I defenatly understand that the player's in wow might want to limit the sheer amount of crap that goes over chat as it is. Just allow the players to decide, have an easy UI that allows you to turn off diffrent parts of the chat.
Kinda off topic:
i have tried to follow these debate threads and i may be wrong but alot of them seems to deal w/ players freedom vs. structured game play. (ie. class vs skill's ) I do not think this has any thing to do wit an individual players intellegence i think it shows how diffrent our game styles are.
Welcome Home
rev
Though I understand why cross-faction chat is not allowed from a real world standpoint (smack talk, griefing, etc) I do not understand it from a roleplaying standpoint, especially in light of blizzards very nicely developed backstory and published fiction where members of both factions speak to one another quite frequently.
There are many potential solutions. Allow for goblin characters who can speak to all factions. Allow for a quest, or series of quests that would allow for the learning of each of the other side's languages (via a scroll/spell of learning). This in turn would allow you to gain access to a special ingame chat channel "joint-orcish" for example, which would allow those players who wish to chat, the chance to do so. If you didn't like what you heard, you could just add people to your ignore list or just turn the channel off altogether.
Just a thought. Peace now.
I think WoW has done it right in this area.
While many players aren't aware of it, cross-faction communication IS AVAILABLE in WoW. All you have to do is use the '/emote <text>' command and you can say anything you want to everyone in the vicinity. I like to think of it as sign-language for RP.
I'm glad that other factions can't understand your /say and /yell or even know if zone wide communication is occurring. There is already too much spam there. Horde Barren's chat sometimes sounds more like an AOL chat room than an online game.
The solution is pretty simple if you ask me. Cross faction chat should be consensual. Like a 'white list' sort of thing -- only those on your white list can talk to you.
It's *very* difficult to RP without being able to talk to your enemy. As a WoW player and guild leader, I know I go through all kinds of fuss to arrange and plan events and meetings and battles. I wind up using forums and email and even have two accounts so I can have a 'translator' at meetings. It's really too hard, and serves no purpose, to prevent people who *want* to talk to each other from doing so.
The only problem I have is the spam tactics that would always pop up, but allowing players to use team speak handles that nicely. I also like overhead speach for roleplay reasons and immersion, and a toggle for that works well. On top of that, a spam filter is always good, so a particular player is limited to so much text in a time period. UO instituted that, and it worked pretty well. They also allowed players to choose the color of their speach, and that was used by guilds to easily identify their own guild commands. It was just another tool, but I'm not sure if that would work very well in a 3D game with overhead speach.
Overall, I would prefer to allow cross faction chat. But I also like the idea of languages, and learning them. But you shouldn't have to get that knowledge from the enemy, not neccessarily.
I don't like to have some dewd spew slang or profanity at me after killing me, but I get over that faster than having artificial restrictions. Profanity should be bannable, in my opinion. Filters only serve to block the particular words for the filter user. The problem with profanity goes beyond who's offended. But that's another subject. Generally speaking, I want to know what another player is saying, and if they want to rub it in that they beat me, I'm ok with that.
Once upon a time....
for mmorpgs:
"Good", "Free", "MMORPG" - Pick 2.
Tamic
Games should really add racial/factional chat filters.
Don't forget that in Wow, hordes and alliances have two totally separated chats servers. If inter-faction communication was possible, you could only speak or yell. There is no risk of making a /tell or being on the same zone chat as someone from the opposite faction in this game, the game is simply not build like that.
I believe the best solution would be for guilds to be able to appoint an ambassador, a SINGLE character per guild that could speak every races languages (but only doing /say or /yell). A very good restriction on him could be that his "highest rank ever reached" (PvP rank) would be lowered and stuck at 0 and he would stop gaining honor points. "ambassador" would be written before his name instead of a PvP rank, and he would not be able to wear any PvP rewards. Doing this would make "ambassadors" the voice of their guild and would significantly reduce swearing and ganking (because gankers will never want not to be able to gain any honor).
What do you think of this?
edit:
Thats simpler but it's an excellent ideaI know Common and Dwarvish, but cannot learn filthy Orkish? /LoL
But like Frank Mignone says, in WoW i really missed not being able to kill some avatars in my own faction...
Actually, the emote text command has been "fixed" apparently, and changes for cross faction to "makes some strange noises" or something like that.
However, so far the only class that can do "cross-faction" chat is a priest, using Mind Control, but they're supposedly fixing that as well.
I agree all-out cross faction chat would be very bad, however I like the idea of learning other languages. The longer you play, and the more you hear (see in says, yells, etc.) the more you would pick up and start to understand. Eventually, you would be able to somewhat communicate with cross-factional characters in your area. Since you don't share a chat channel, there would be limited communication, but you would be able to, say, switch from gutterspeak to darnassian and use say or yell to talk to them. How much of that they understand would depend upon what level your mastery of the language is. A level 1 knowledge of the language would come out mostly gibberish, where a level 300 would come out fairly smoothly, with only some words not translating (Blizzard can use this to filter out trash talk as well, getting rid of the "omfgpwnzr"s and the cursing).
After doing some thinking and reading everyone's comments I have came up with some ideas and suggestions on how to make cross-faction communication to work in a game like wow
First some back history on the conflict between the horde and the alliance..
The horde and alliance have been at war for many years manly because the horde invaded and has taken over alliance land, however in the past the alliance have worked together. The problem here is that yes the horde and alliance are at war with each other, however the alliance and horde also share a common enemy the burning legion (The true enemy of the game) So it could easly be assumed that for the horde and alliance to team up to defeat their common enemy they must first be allowed to communicate with one another.
Now the Suggestions on how Cross-faction communication could be implemented
We all know that each race has it's own language why not make it so that each faction has it own universal language (Common). First you must have a revered repuation with the goblin cartel. Once you are revered with the goblin cartel you will be given the option to take a quest that would teach you your opposing factions universal language (common) which would be a long line quests that once finshed would open up twonew chat channels for you, Global Chat and Faction chat, also say chat would now display chat from both horde and allinace in the area.
To me this seems simple enough although it would require more faction grinding. Also by learning your opposing faction language you would be able to get quests for horde npcs(as long as they don't try to kill you first) as well as work as an ambassder for your faction.
Using WoW as a base why not just do it simply.
Make 2 General Chat channels for every region/area except instances and battlegrounds. The second would be a mixed faction channel. That way if you don't want it you can just turn it off, and it solves the 'spying' problem (although whats to say someone isnt running 2 accounts with 1 allie, 1 horde?).
Area/local chat and yells would remain factional as well, so smack talkers would be restricted to one channel where you can quickly block them.
Well, I'm for faction chat. I play planetside, and when you overhear your enemies talk on the general channel (which is only local range, it's not a broadcast type thing) it helps you get a bearing on what's going on. Especially useful for cloakers.
Sometimes though, we do inter-empire ops. I play TR on Emerald mostly, and we work with small groups of NC from time to time. Usually just a gun/vehicle exchange, but sometimes they actually help us against the Vanu (again, they're in small enough groups to not be tide turning or anything... but they help) It's a lot of fun and really makes you feel like you can affect the game. Too many games are static and the player has little to no effect on it. Admittingly, Planetside is one of them. But at least we can side with one enemy to help defeat the other.
NC gauss rifles... *drool* Anyway, I just find that a system that gives players control over the game world is a lot more fun. Like Eve online, where even the factions and companies are made by the players. That's an awesome and realistic idea, and I'd like to see more games like it. But I'd also like to see more games that incorporate different languages. I remember when playing a Wookie in Star Wars: Galaxies seemed like a good idea until you found out nobody else understood wookie. It led to a lot of RP, with that one guy who decided to learn wookie often gaining many powerful and furry friends
(and on that topic... being able to learn every language in the game seems kinda stupid. It should at least take a bit of work)