I’ve noticed with the PM’ing system we have in-game, you can only message someone when they’re online.
With this command, /mail, you could send a message to someone and they’d receive it - even if they’re not online!
You’d sent a message by typing !mail “user” “message”, and the recipient would type /checkmail to see all of the mail they’ve received.
Once the /checkmail command is used, the system would respond with the number of new messages you have.
/readmail - this command would open up the earliest UNREAD message received.
To read any message you’ve previously received, you’d have to type /inbox to open up your inbox. It’d show a log of messages with a message ID next to each of them, alongside a username and time-stamp.
/readmail [message ID here] - using this command would open up the message you specify.
I think this is quite an interesting idea. But instead of IDs, we could use the housing center for a postboard of mail, and if you get a lot of mail, then you could check it in a dropmenu. That way, you don’t have to memorize IDs and it doesn’t waste too much space with recording these messages, instead deleting them two weeks if unread to prevent mail being overboard.
But, to be honest, this would put a load on PMU’s server, so I will have to disagree with this suggestion. After all, the forums are supposed to be used for Offline Messaging. :< If the server was more powerful, then maybe this could be implemented for a future date. Even then, there would be a problem of someone spamming someone else’s mail from a person they don’t particularly like, and we know how PMU feels about the /block command…
Implementation. The easiest “issue” to debate.
I don’t like the idea of using the already very easily crowded chat to read mail. Its incredibly inconvenient. (using the /news command is a great example of how little text the chat shows at one time and how easily it can get clogged. bonus: use the /news command during an event for added inconvenience.)
Plus the new range of text commands associated would be tedious to use (most players know commands by word of mouth - people tell them they exist. additionally, text command based everything is pretty complicated, and annoying to type commands to do almost everything featuring wrong chat and forgetting to put the / or ! as well as having to remember IDs and other info).
“we could use the housing center for a postboard of mail, and if you get a lot of mail, then you could check it in a dropmenu… instead deleting them two weeks if unread to prevent mail being overboard.”
This sounds like a better way to implement it.
Easier to access - no need to be told commands and to remember a whole bunch of them.
And less chat intensive, it won’t be crowding up the chat box. Drop menu or board either way works since niether are gonna get in the way of much.
“Even then, there would be a problem of someone spamming someone else’s mail from a person they don’t particularly like”
Which brings me onto my second issue.
2. There WILL be spam. This is inevitable. Joke spam or spam to bully. Both. This just provides another platform for it which is far harder to moderate.
Plus its more difficult to moderate the bad words in messages too - especially words don’t get an auto-warn, staff would have to be on 24/7 and constantly check the mail.
“After all, the forums are supposed to be used for Offline Messaging.”
3. This. Granted, the forums aren’t inclusive of the entire playerbase and rely on people being active here. Right now i don’t think its worth adding in a new messaging system when we already have one that can contain more text, can be way more easily moderated and controlled, and can retain messages for longer. It’s superior in every way except access.
Though, if access is desired then it isn’t a bad idea at all, but would first require quite a bit of work both on the idea and game.
I mean firstly to combat 2, we’d need an auto-warm system in place as well as a limit to the amount of messages one player can send another player (preferably amount of messages one account can send to another) at a time (i.e. between checking their mail).
In summary:
I like the concept (though it should not rely on the chat box) i just think pmu needs more development first, it should be at the bottom of the priority list if at all.
People have suggested that we could have different chats between local, global, guild, and party, instead of one folded up deal of all chats. I would think that would be the best thing to implement first when coming to chatting.
To add on to Azzrianda’s addition, I would add that if they did try to implement a filter of some sort, it would cause a lot of lag and make messages appear just like Croagunk’s Swap Shop’s messages; slowly.
They do put the Forums on the main site under “Community”. It’s even the first slot. And all you have to do is make an account and activate it. This has less steps than installing PMU, so even accessibility isn’t much of an issue with this. If this is the biggest issue of the forums, then the forums are much better than in-game for long chatting purposes.
I believe that PMU has implemented an auto-warning system for cursing at the least. It warns the staff when a player uses a whitelisted word. But if there aren’t any moderators on, they cannot do much about this. So if there’s an auto-warning system on these messages, it would be a lot more difficult to scan through them.
As for the limit, I’ll agree with that. It would alleviate spamming. But, there would also have to be a limit on size. After all, we wouldn’t want the Bee Movie’s Script to somehow be copypasta’d to multiple people. Even with these limitations though, there would be a lot of problems with them and the server.