Goblin Squad Member
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In this thread I am not concerned with the real world technologies like Mumble and Team Speak. We know these will be used by groups to provide instant communications and tactical support to teams of adventurers and larger settlements. That’s fine. But it is an out of game technology. Here are some in game technologies that would be good to see added. I have grouped them into “Voluntary Comms” (horns, bells, whistles) and “Involuntary Comms” (footsteps, fires, combat).
Voluntary Communications
Sometimes things happen in the River Kingdoms that we, as characters, should tell others about. People need help when attacked, settlements need to warn its residents of a crisis, or one settlement needs to warn another settlement of a strategic discovery. Since there will be many thousands of players from all over the world playing on one server, and these players speak many different languages, how might this be accomplished? Here are a few ideas:
Bulletin Boards in a Settlement – Messages may be posted someplace near the town center for all the citizens and visitors to read. These might be warnings of danger areas outside of the settlement, contract offers, wanted posters of bandits and villains, items for sale, groups looking for members, company recruiting posters. This bulletin board would be posted in a busy area of town and would have plenty of regular foot traffic as this would be a core way for residents to let each other know about this in their settlement.
Town Crier – Most settlements in civilized lands have a town crier, calling out the time (if no other method is available), shouting out warnings and news, and telling citizens about decisions made by the settlement leadership. (This feature might not be practical for the traditional town crier, as voiceover is expensive, but certain things could be standard and the town crier could be a settlement DI feature to add flavor to the settlement, bringing old world charm to the area.)
Carrier Pigeons/Ravens – The trusty carrier pigeon or raven can be used to send messages from one settlement to another. After a mission is completed these birds must be taken back to another settlement to repeated use, so their transport creates a need in game. It would also allow a note to be written in the language of the sender and read in the language of the reader so international communications may be achieved without out of game interpretation. If this is not practical, the text could be taken out of game for correct translation. (Here I would like to add that the ability to cut and paste text is very important when only one server is used, as an international audience needs to be able to translate text in languages other than their own.) Useful to warn other settlements of events, wars, and dangerous enemies/areas, or to conduct political negotiations.
Signal Fires – A system of signal fires might be used to communicate calls for help and assistance over distances to known friends and allies. This technique was used in “The Lord of the Rings” when Kingdom of Gondor needed the help of the Kingdom of Rohan in fighting the army of Mordor. Pippin lit the first fire in Minas Tirith and set the system in motion. Pippin lights the first Beacon of Gondor at Minas Tirith
Lighthouses – I don’t know where a lighthouse would be put in the River Kingdoms, but if there is a place, you can be sure the waters nearby will be dangerous. Lighthouses have long been used to warn passing ships of dangerous waters, and to tell the ships where they are relative to the coastline. Even the color of the signal can change is chemicals are added to the fire or colored glass is used to change the hue.
Drums of War – Drums have long been used to warn others of impending war. One of the methods settlements might use to warn its residents or to muster its troops is to have war drums at the ready.
Horns – Horns of various types have been used to ages to denote an event, proclaim a king, signal the troops, or welcome a dignitary with a royal fanfare.
Boromir’s Last Stand
Gimli blows the Horn of Helm Hammerhand
Bells – Alarm bells call out a warning for fire, church bells ring for special events, and holiday bells jingle to denote a special season. All these could be used as crafted items and could become part of a settlement structure, or as a novelty item for in game special events.
Wands, Staves, Bindstones, and Beacons – Certain fantasy items have been used in books and movies to call for help or warn others of trouble, or to mark a spot on the shore, or to find another person in deep fog or smoke.
Bird calls, bird whistles, animal sounds – Many animal sounds have been used to communicate when in tactical situations, or to sound a warning. These are usually used in the wild when the real communications want to be masked by the sender. This type of communication could be a trained skill, and even subdivided into different skill sets.
Involuntary Communications
Other types of communications include things like a campfire, monster speech and shouts, spell effects, monsters reacting to nearby aggressors, billowing smoke from a building fire, the sounds of combat, the sound of footsteps, or other animal sounds characters would hear while exploring in the wilderness.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Harad,
I like the feel of many of these.
Message Boards - I think this is a must. Not everyone visiting or even living in your settlement will know everyone else or be on the same Team Speak server. A message board not only allows various groups to advertise (either their needs or their services), but they make a great RP tool.
Town Crier - Utilized by the settlement management, these NPCs could help keep residents abreast of the latest settlement news...upcoming events, the sponsoring of new companies, war status, etc. It may be more practical to make the town crier a one-way message board than actually calling out all the latest news.
Signals, Horns, etc. - I definitely think any of these would be fun. Part of that fun would be that you might hear/see any of these and have no idea what they meant or, if you're in the know, they could be extremely important (a signal to spring a trap, a call to arms for the settlement militia, etc.).
Specialized Message Boards - As mentioned many months back in another thread, if each settlement's management is going to be able to generate its unique set of laws (even if this boils down to only which law tabs they toggle on and off), then people entering that settlement need a means by which they are made aware of the local laws. Something like a settlement law poster or board stationed near the settlement entrance would be helpful.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I like some of these ideas Hardin. Especially the message boards and the NPC mobs using audible noises to sound alarms that we can also hear in-game. Maybe a kind of thing were the agro range increases if you are not quick and/or quiet enough with their outer sentries.
Also it would be very useful to have cut and paste utility for message boards and for whatever text chat systems are implemented.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Elsewhere there was talk of a /tell command and a /yell command with a greater range. Within settlements (with very large numbers of people) it might be useful for the settlement to control which characters had /yell permissions - they could be the town criers.
Within settlements, the local /tell zones might have to be smaller than out of town as well.
The various noise-makers: horns, drums, bells, could have a longer range than a /yell, for signalling across a battlefield or in a forest.
Sadly, OOG comms makes most of these less useful than they could be.
bards, travelling traders, pilgrims, prospectors, gypsies (in my Kingmaker, the traders especially tend to act as spies for one faction or another)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but it is not possible to have directional audio queues. So a bell tower could be heard, but you would not hear the sound coming from the bell tower's direction, you would hear it in stereo.
The visual queues such as smoke in the distance or the circling of carrion birds would be a great touch.
But, as Urman points out, OOG communications makes all of these just nice to have fluff.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It's not fluff as much as it might be, as the audience will be global and languages are not as easily translated (accurately anyway) as native speech. Sure, OOG methods will be there, but we aren't expecting one language so these methods might make universal communications easier.
Not sure about mono versus stereo, but that would be a nifty feature(a bullseye lantern versus a regular lantern).
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Hardin, I guess that it isn't all fluff. There would be some overlap with OOG comms, but also some extension of those comms.
For example, the town crier and a settlement "what's happening today" page might have similar capabilities. But the IG town crier reaches everyone in his range whether they are a resident or not. The town web page is probably looked at by some fraction of residents, but not everyone. And it would be easy to post updates through the IG crier.
Likewise, the town crier and OOG voice. Not everyone is on the settlement channel (and in a settlement of 1000s, you probably don't want them all on at once.) IG chat also makes a record, so people can scroll up and see what was said.
Notice boards could let the readers filter stuff in ways that chat doesn't. Maybe a given reader is only interested in job postings. Or maybe they want to read official proclamations, the local law list, or just browse. All of that could be done with filters.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but it is not possible to have directional audio queues. So a bell tower could be heard, but you would not hear the sound coming from the bell tower's direction, you would hear it in stereo.
You're wrong. It's very easy to have directional audio queues. The most memorable ones for me were the waterfalls in LOTRO. As I turned my character around, the sound went from one speaker to the other. It was very clear which direction the sound was coming from.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would like to see some alert other than email. I am not sure what channel that would be on, but I advocate an app that would provide these.. My emails is full on 1000's of jun
k every day. My social and work phone voice lines should be separate from my games.llan
Simple solution for email issue. Create an email account from one of the many free services just for the game and nothing else.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Simple solution for email issue. Create an email account from one of the many free services just for the game and nothing else.I would like to see some alert other than email. I am not sure what channel that would be on, but I advocate an app that would provide these.. My emails is full on 1000's of jun
k every day. My social and work phone voice lines should be separate from my games.llan
This is what I do, I have an email that I never check and only use it when I "Need" an email for something, but then I have my main email that I give to friends and work and important stuff.
Back to topic being discussed, (Great topic BTW) I agree with others that the OOG comms will remove the true need for ingame comms for smaller, tight nit groups that stay on TS all the time (I fall into this group) but at the same time, not everyone is on TS, or for the larger groups, the IG comms are essential.
I love the ideas presented, bell towers and /yell and such. It would be nice if there was no global channels. I know why they are there in other games, but I don't see a need for them in this game. GM's would have access to a server message for important server wide messages, but no one else needs access to it. We do not need a "trade chat" or even a "General chat" as it leads to "barrens chat." Plus, not having those channels will lead to more interactions and that is one of the main goals of GW isn't it? Find friends, ask questions, or even sit around in a town and seek assistance.