[Transcript] Dev QnA /w Smithie D: Chat Updates and More
April 22, 2018 2:30AM
edited April 2018
So, there has been a lot of complaining of late about how CG has handled information release, specifically, that it is offered exclusively through twenty-minute plus gamechanger videos without an accompanying forum post they can read through at their leisure. To those people, I have taken one for the team and put together this "transcript-of-sorts" (since transcript isn't really the right word since I'm cutting out a lot of irrelevant stuff). There's a TL;DR, TL;DW at the bottom:
TL;DR - The chat changes are aimed mostly a new and mid-game players; we're getting more guild chat channels, most notably and officer and gear donation channel; you can direct-message people in-game and independent channels can have up to 500 players; there is no set date as of yet, just "next title update"; vanity titles will be earned off things you accomplish in the game; additional guild tools will allow officers to pre-set a start time for raids, allow players to "join" raids in order to automatically post a 0, and allow officers to prevent a raid from being damaged until a certain time (whether you can filter that by level isn't mentioned);
I apologize before-hand for any errors, I was listening to this at half-speed so I could keep up with the conversation; I've edited--a bit--for grammar and clarity (and there's a lot of run on sentences I wasn't sure when to break up). CG I can be bribed with crystals, stuncuffs, and carbantis (but seriously, just post a press release of some kind at the same time, next time).
The video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKECuzE_EKc
Key: [SD] - Smithie D; [CGC] - @CG_Carrie; [TL] - @CG_TimboLando
[1:18] [SD]: So you guys mentioned in the Road Ahead blog that some changes were coming to chat, why did you decide to go with chat instead of anything else?
[1:25] [CGC]: Y'know whenever there's a movie, we get a lot of new players into the game. So obviously we've been thinking about Solo for awhile now, and thinking about what we could do for the group of people coming in with, um, Solo.
But also, last year, for us, the addition of Territory Battles and Territory Wars was a very kind've purposeful thing to make guilds very, very important and very useful and sort've to increase guild activity. And that worked, but it also worked almost too well, because now everybody in the guild is required. And I've mentioned this before in--
[1:56] [??]: Yeah...
[1:57] [CGC]: --[unintelligible] that what that means is that if you have a friend you want to bring into the game, or somebody you told about the game, that for a very long time--until, really, until they're max level, if you're a competitive player--they're going to live a kind've isolated--
[2:10] [SD?]: Hm...
[2:11] [CGC] --like, lonely existence, because there's really no way for them to understand what's going on, and talk to people and see what the life of the game as far as it pertains to other people inside of the game. So it was a priority for us knowing that Solo was coming and knowing that last year that we had made guilds so useful that we wanted something for those new players coming into the game.
[2:29] [SD]: That sounds awesome! I can't wait, so next question: So, what can you tell us about the chat changes?
[2:33] [TL]: I'm really excited about the changes we've made to chat. Um, One of the kind've limitations with the current is that there's only one channel and so [unintelligible] people are in there trying to, uh, talk about the Territory Battle at the same time they're talking about, y'know, their progress in the, uh, say the Sith raid, so on and it gets really hard to parse all the data in there and the conversations. And, so, one of the major things we're doing is adding additional channels to chat, we are opening up those channels for officers, so officers will now be able to have up to five different channels which they can can name whatever they want--
[3:07] [garbled; talking over one another]
[3:09] [TL] --Exactly! You can have one for Territory Wars, Battles, so. And in conclusion to that one advantage we can provide for players is that as players are promoted into officers they can actually have an officer specific chat and as officers are promoted and demoted it'll update those things automatically.
[3:25] [SD]: You know that's--yeah that's... really, really interesting. I like the sound of that, I'm loving the sound of that--
[3:32] [CGC]: [garbled; talking over SD] Yeah, exactly! And-and our chat system, we know, it's kind've a little bit bulletin-board-esque right now, and so, to some degree there's advantages to that, 'cause, y'know, we don't want it to get too, too spammy, so the idea was to sort've separate chat channels for people to decide what they wanted to talk about and where was kind've the impetus for that. But, y'know, there's also a couple different types of chat channels, like--
[3:54] [TL]: Exactly! Yeah, and so in addition to the guild we also have these chats that we're calling friends chats. So, a friends chat is something that can scale anywhere from doing a direct message with one other player in the game all the way to having a group of 500 people all within that.
[4:09] [SD]: 500!
[4:10] [TL]: [garbled] -- in the guild... Up to 500, that's correct.
[4:13] [SD]: [laughing] Wow! That's a lot! [laughing]
[4:15] [TL]: It is! So, y'know, we expect that in a lot of instances if people just want to reach out, to, y'know, you can go right into their player profile and click a button, you can start a chat with them. You can also go in and add more people that, people y'know, that are friends from high-school, or work for what-not, they don't have to be in the same guild--
[4:36] [CGC]: Or alliances!
[4:37] [TL]: --Or alliances. Exactly! There's this opportunity now for them to all be in the same chat, and chatting with eachother, directly in the game.
[4:44] [CGC]: And that's--I think [garbled] because there are times when you can't reach someone outside of the game, or you quickly want to ping them. And so, certainly, I think it'll be helpful for recruiting. We've been talking to guild leaders who were like "I want to tell them where they are in the waiting list" and not have to drag them in and out of game, and--and how people can apply with more specificity, all "hey, I want to be in your guild." So, we expect that this will drive sort've guild recruiting in the game even further...
[5:11] [SD]: Yeah, there's and-as--as well there's... Especially, as well,and trying to get a hold of somebody and trying to get them to do their 600 and sending them a messages and they're in game and you send them messages "do your 600 or you're going to get kicked" and then they get kicked just because they didn't open the second--third--party app or whatever, right? That they're using. And now it can just be posted, and you can just directly... Wow! that's mind-blowing! I've-I've always wanted this feature implemented, because I've come from a background of playing on the X-box live and I want to send people messages saying like "n00b!" or whatever.
[5:40] [all laughing]
[5:44] [CGC]: Definitely, could be, absolute, like, advantages to that as well when you're doing competitive stuff. You could, kind've, y'know, maybe get in there. And--And, we're conscious of the fact that we want to allow people to mute people or report people so there isn't too much spam. I think, for me personally, y'know, coming from an MMO background, it was one those reasons we didn't go straight to full open-world chat, cause when you put a world chat in a free-to-play game in particular you open yourself up to a lot of spamming and a lot've.... And don't get me wrong, I think there are a lot of interesting things about world chat, but we wanted to start with this and see how people responded to this kind've stuff and we wanted to make it not-so overwhelming so that it was kind've useful, interesting, specially for Galaxy of Heroes, our players are so strategic and intense that didn't--wanted it to be focused, if that makes sense.
[6:29] [SD]: Definitely, Yeah,... I'm-I'm so stoked! So stoked about it...
[chatter]
[6:33] [TL]: Actually, that's only the beginning... There's--
[6:35] [SD]: There's more?!
[6:36] [TL]: Um, yeah. So there's--so one of the things we're finding is that the exchange features, y'know, when you're doing donations. It can kind've easily been forgotten about because it's over there in this one corner of guilds. Um, so we've actually made it kind've so that the exchange donations will show up in your guild chat and you can donate directly from that channel.
[6:54] [SD]: That's--That's--a lot easier, then, isn't it?
[6:56] [TL]: Yeah! It'll actually really increase the amount of kind've engagement in that feature. People see that someone asked for donations and--
[chatter along the lines: When do you even go into guild exchange???]
[7:29] [TL]: So, now that'll be surfaced straight to you. And speaking of surfacing, another thing we've heard as a request a lot is, y'know, you're new to a guild, and you're not really sure if this person has authority. "Is this person really the leader or not?" You've got to do some research. Now it'll actually show whether you're a leader, officer, or member.
[more chatter along the lines of how new players will really like/need this]
[8:04] [CGC]: But, y'know, we think about doing things for all different parts of the spectrum of the playerbase. So this is one of those things we really wanted to do for the kind've newer players.
But I'm going to kind've segway, into the fact that we do have things in this upcoming update I think we didn't, necessarily, mention that all of the stuff we we're talking about that all of this stuff is coming TU12 which is our next major title update, we've been kind've cagey about giving the exact kind've month...
[SD talking over her] cause then... [talking and laughing] August is banned, no one is allowed to say that besides me.
So, yeah, all of this is into the next major title update.
[chatter about the Solo movie; SD thinks it looks like Guardians of the Galaxy; Solo Triology???]
[SD talking about retaining new players from the movie and feeling isolated; making friends on X-Box live and communication]
[10:09] [SD]: So, let's go on to, uh, what's going to happen with other platforms like discord and line?
[10:11] [CGC]: So, y'know, we don't expect people to replace discord or line or any of the other tools that they use for the kind of communication they have. I've been spending a lot of time on discord, and a lot of things that can do, we can't really do that and retain file size and all the things we want to do. We'd spend a lot of time to re--replicate that. It's kind of like surfacing that middle ground need for newer players, and to--like you said, maybe you can't log in to your discord at work and want to quick ping someone to do your 600 and whatever the case may be so we wanted to supplement those and still allow people the richness that exists in those other tools.
[10:54] [SD]: And part of the chat stuff involved vanity titles. Can you explain further on this?
[10:56] [TL]: Yeah! Definitely, so something that's really important to us was to provide some features that really engage the elder players as well. And so we wanted to create this idea of titles, which is something that's very hard to get, it's really when you have a title: it's showing that you've done some great accomplishment in the game. And so what will happen is that whenever you're in chat and you're y'know chatting with someone else in one of those friends chants, normally you'll have your guild name there--which you can show off--but you can also choose to pick one of the titles that you've unlocked for having some done some great accomplishment in the game. Something awesome about titles is we'll launch with a few early on, but it's something we can continue to add as we continue to add new features and identifying new really difficult challenges that people would consider really prestigious.
[11:40] [CGC]: So the thing about vanity, is that it's obviously that the collection is important, the GP is important, and y'know people are prideful about all those things. But there's a degree that you want to kind've have the bragging rights, and say "I'm this awesome because I did this thing," and having built some titles and achievements.
Or, I can tell you that what's interesting that over time what's considered a valuable title will shift as more and more people get certain ones and people will find even more elusive ones, and then want to get those and it kind've becomes its own kind've META of: "What's the coolest title to have right now?", "What's one that other people don't have?", or "We all want this one, just because we like the name of it," so the idea of it that titles are--kind've the first step, it's kind of just like a toe into the pond, if you will, like all the things we can do that people can use as bragging rights. And because we've now created this chat-room of up to 500 that consists of a combination of people in your guild, or on your friend's list, or on your friend's guilds, or guilds' friends, or, y'know, all those different permutations that people that you've never met, because, can sort've be all: "Oh, whose that guy?" based off the title and other things in the channel.
[12:48] [TL]: Exactly! But it's worth mentioning that the player profile will actually show all the titles you have, and so you can kind've pick the title you want to show off in various places like. chat or the leaderboards. And [you] can go in there and say, trying to do recruitment, and kind've see how many titles you've done, and maybe that's something very necessary for getting into one of the top guilds.
[SD joking/brainstorming about a Rancor title]
[13:23] [SD]: I've heard you mention that more guild officer/leader management stuff is coming. Anything else for end-game players?
[13:28] [TL]: Yes. Yes, so a common theme, we hear from officers is that they have a lot of things to do, um, and we always want to create more tools just like we did with Territory Battles and Wars; create more tools to be able to, y'know, to allow them to, you know, manage their guild easier.
So, one of the new tools that we're providing is the ability to go into any tier of the raid and actually have that raid auto-summon at a specific time. So, for example, let's say that at 6:00pm--y'know my timezone--I want to have this thing kick off, assuming that we have enough tickets, so if we have enough tickets it'll just automatic kick off at that time. The other aspect of that is that, um, a lot guilds have taken on this 24 hour rule where you have to go and post 0 so everybody gets an opportunity which y'know can bit of an annoying process...
[talking about how annoying it can be to hunt down people who haven't posted 0's yet]
[14:25] [SD]: So, what this new feature, in a nutshell--what it's going to do, if this is correct, saying, [you're] able to open raids at a certain time and will it be locked from any damage until another time it kicks in; like--another--further--an embargo! Would it be something like that?
[14:42] [TL]: Yeah! Yeah! So that's part of it there's actually even more you will be able to [garbled] the time and you will be able to kind've set a period of time that you can't do any damage to it, but during that time any member of the guild can come in and just push a "join" button, similar to what they do during Territory Wars and that'll just automatically post a 0 for them.
[Talking about how you don't need to hunt down boss-murderers anymore]
[15:10] [TL]: And kind've on top of that, we're going to be putting in some kind of dashes for players that haven't joined yet. So the leaders who want to make sure that every goes and posts that 0 can easily find the individuals who haven't posted a 0 yet and track them down and post a direct message to them and tell them to post
[15:32] [CGC]: And all three of those things are very time consuming for guild leaders and officers. And like having to go and like reverse engineers who didn't post a 0, and chase down the people who posted too much, and logging in exactly the time you guys agreed to pick up a raid and so...
And I think the hope here is that with every update, we want to think about things we want to do that save time cause we know peoples' time is precious and we want them to spend the time doing the want to do. and not tedious management stuff. And it's hard cause we want to do so much of it, that it can sometimes be overwhelming. This really felt like the priority so that's what we focused on.
[SD talking about how great it is and the times of someone accidentally the Rancor is over]
[SD asking troll questions about character that may or may not be coming and CGC telling him they can't comment]
[CGC talking about how cool it was to build up the environments from KOTOR II]
TL;DR - The chat changes are aimed mostly a new and mid-game players; we're getting more guild chat channels, most notably and officer and gear donation channel; you can direct-message people in-game and independent channels can have up to 500 players; there is no set date as of yet, just "next title update"; vanity titles will be earned off things you accomplish in the game; additional guild tools will allow officers to pre-set a start time for raids, allow players to "join" raids in order to automatically post a 0, and allow officers to prevent a raid from being damaged until a certain time (whether you can filter that by level isn't mentioned);
I apologize before-hand for any errors, I was listening to this at half-speed so I could keep up with the conversation; I've edited--a bit--for grammar and clarity (and there's a lot of run on sentences I wasn't sure when to break up). CG I can be bribed with crystals, stuncuffs, and carbantis (but seriously, just post a press release of some kind at the same time, next time).
The video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKECuzE_EKcmy [swgoh.gg]
Post edited by catharsis478 on
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Replies
Yeah, I hope they'll start releasing this information in both a text and video format--I mean, this is the kind of thing God made interns for!--and let the playerbase go with the format they're more comfortable with, or have the time for. This certainly isn't the kind of thing I, personally, will be able to keep on doing--I vastly underestimated how long this would take me--with any regularity (unless they pay me, I might do it then), so hopefully they'll add text releases/info-dumps to their communication toolbox.
Like sending a nasty message in all caps when someone snipes your right before payout?
It seems intuitive for an official channel to have some official transcript of their official announcements, but I guess common sense may not be so common after all.
Like people coordinating rotations and stuff to get Great rewards
GREAT JOB!
It’s hilarious how much shorter but yet informative the TLDR is. Why do we have to listen through so much crap, including commercials breaks, so get a tiny sliver of information?
You're awesome.
Agree with everyone who has said they would rather have simple written info. It's all we've ever asked for but once again CG has decided to develop a Looney Tunes style solution using several ropes and pulleys when all we ever wanted was for them to drop an anvil.
@Ludendorff - Would I sound like a conspiracy theorist if I said, "that's how they get you?" But, really, if they cared about our time management, they wouldn't make us sit through twenty-minutes of video for this kind of information. If you can sum it up in under a paragraph why not do so?
@JaggedJ - I'll take that bullet this time. Medic!
@Vinny_Vader_Vedi - I won't do it all the time, and when I do it'll depend on the quality of the video (gamechanger/audio/information); I will go ahead and do this Ship 2.0 video--there's a lot of interesting information in there and Ahnald gets right to the point; no one's rambling, etc--but after that? I can't say.
Also, this video took way too much time (no really, you don't want to know). Give me an hour or so to get this Ships video done (might take longer than that).
@EnderGamer87 - I have to thank you for trying to discuss the actual subject matter here.
I'm concerned with how clunky this is going to be, especially if we're going to have all of this information thrown at us at the same time. What is the UI going to look like, is it intuitive or over-complicated (given that this is CG, I know where I'm putting my bet), how long are these vanity titles going to be, and are they spelling out these guild ranks? Using a letter? Using color? How much of this can we customize?
I mean, I've got a guild member whose in-game handle takes up half the chat-bar on its own, is that going to be compounded once he's got [Member] on one side and a title like [The Devoured] (just because they were joking about Rancor titles) on the other, how much space on the screen is whatever he's got to say going to take up? Ugh.
To everyone else, thank you!