Disable all chat but 'direct' by default?

[roguetrooper 201]

What about having all type-chat and voice-chat except 'direct' being disabled by default?

Friends/clans who join to play together, use TeamSpeak anyway. And there wouldn't be 'unrealistic' zone-wide chat, to speak in MMO terms. Being able to communicate (by typing and by voice) in a realistic range contributes to the way "dayz is meant to be played" (you know: unforgiving, harsh world, survivor, real world and all that)

I also think 99% of all players are not interested in those log-in-log-out messages every 5 seconds.

The irritating bad-connection symbol might also be disabled, which every client receives when anybody unknown 'out there' has a bad connection. You can check your own ping any time in the map screen.

Don't know if these issues are a matter of the core game or if it can be handled by Dayz...

[BanditoTheBandit 23]

Its a server side setting, so server will have different settings. By default it is like this but the admins can change it to their liking.

[iceman28001 36]

Any decent server, already has this

[roguetrooper 201]

Since Dayz is a total conversion, they might be able to implement some code to force the Arma engine 'underneath' just to allow the chat and other information that the dayzdevs want...

[enforcer1975 1111]

It stupid to use the keyboard to tpye anyway. Takes you chance to react if something bad happens. And you never know who wrote something in chat unless the server has nametags on which is even more stupid. In direct com you can at least hear where the voice is coming from.

[Miragenz 71]

Havent found a server where chat wasnt disabled. However i still think there needs to be a form of communication other then the lacking direct chat.

http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/2960-walkie-talkies/

[Scene 36]

The only channels that should be enabled are direct, group and vehicle.

Some servers have changed the mission files to enable side chat again and technically this isn't allowed as it states in the Server hosting agreement that a server admin is not permitted to change anything in the mod.

I have yet to see or read of any servers being punished or warned for this though.

[Barronism 88]

I strongly disagree.

If a new player joins, what avenue do they have to learn the game? By running in and dying over and over? Without some type of interactive system that can direct new players, people who do play might quickly become discouraged from continuing to play.

Here is an example, myself and my friend Louis both bought the game together, we decided it would be an interesting play. After he died probably between 10-20 times trying to talk to other players and or get loot without knowing the controls/systems. His opinion now is that the game sucks.

I'll just say that I think the opposite, not knowing if someone is going to kill you is thrilling. You could lose all your hard work in seconds, or gain a lot more. I find this game fun.

Assuming there are hundreds upon hundreds of other people who think as my friend Louis does. Out of all the people who buy Arma II for Dayz, how many end up not liking it solely because there is no way to start out. No starting weapon to defend yourself vs zombies (Even a crowbar would work, despite how much that weapon sucks. At least it would let you deal with the lone 1-2 zombies you aggro). Not that many servers have Side channel, no way for new players to come in and ask how to do this, or how to do that. If regular/recruit servers were forced to have global channel, then newer players could learn the basics of Dayz and possibly have a lot more fun. While veteran servers would remove all but direct chat and people could experience the harsher or more realistic version.

[enforcer1975 1111]

I think they are happy enough that people host servers for their mod, on the other hand there enough in the waiting line only thing stopping most is giving them access to their server.

In the end you can only punish them by denying them access to the hive, which some servers already have overriden by creating local ones. And you can't stop them from hosting the mod if their is no physical contract i guess. It' already gotten out of control. I don't know if this kind of breach of agreement can be prosecuted.

@ Barronism

There is always a forum where you can ask for help. Trying to find out how something works during gameplay especially in a huge game like ArmA 2 can frustrate a newbie. At least he gets a rough idea of how things work when he reads the wiki. Maybe you can talk him into it and might even find the game fun after a while...it's not the fault of the missing chat.

Edited July 14, 2012 by Enforcer

[Barronism 88]

Forums are ordered chaos. Threads regarding what someone wants to know aren't always visible and the search options shows you words, not context. So if I do a search about setting up a tent, I get 50 topics that have the word tent. out of all those topics perhaps 10 have the answer I'm looking for.

If someone creates a new thread with questions, they must wait for a response. What if they need to know immediately? Like how to put on a bandage or they bleed to death. They can't wait 15mins for someone to respond via forums or take the 2-3 mins to search it via google.

An active chat systems lets them ask right away, and quiet possibly get an answer. In Mortal online, there is a chat channel just for "help". If side channel/global channel was considered just a help channel and if people just talked there often with off topic chat, they'd get a nice kick. Then normal players with questions/answers could communicate without an overly active chat that their response gets lost in.

[roguetrooper 201]

The problem with the current chat system is, that is very inconvenient and looks like a pre-alpha placeholder.

All you see in a few seconds rhythm is: x logged in, x logged out, x died. At least BIS implemented the command disableChannels[] = {}; to get rid of those non-understandable system messages that just spams away player chat.

Anyway the Arma ingame chat isn't usable by new players for learning and asking like in a real MMO. 1.) in Dayz hardly anybody answers 2.) system messages spam the few lines of chat almost instantly away. 3.) questions of newbies also immediately sink between other players' chat (which is only useless immersion breaking blah blah) that is going on already.

Further, when there are other chat channels beside the direct channel, you can't escape from other players' (who haven't heard of push-to-talk) sneezing and smoke-lungs breathing without having to disable VON completely.