I think the dynamic animations based on what you said could be really cool 
That sounds freakishly complicated too
Though maybe have an option to show the emotional state of your comment so you can make it look like your charracter is shoutng and so on.
Cool idea but maybe do something simpler with the here’s what I’ve said animation like holding out one palm and not leaning towards them
Maybe have smaller animations that are queued up by keywords. A hand wave for words like Hi, Hello, Greetings, Yo. A nod for words like Yes, Agreed, Certain, Sure. Maybe a slight expression change for words like Happy, OK, Angry, Mad, Confused, Unsure. If there is a lack of keywords then you could move into a neutral animation.
lovley 10 chars
Morning Heurazio, speaking to my fellow dev Joe here in front of me - apparently in-game voice-chat was considered a while back but in the end was found to be to hard to administer and various other reasons etc. Maybe that’s changed since last year tho - that would be a question for Ollie or Ben if you did want to pursue the designers to consider this in a fresh light?
Anyhoo, I’ll certainly get back on this forum when we’re on the next phase of implementing dialogue and when we have a version for you all to play and give us feedback (especially on the user experience if we limit the character count). Seeing what’s been discussed so far, I think my first gut feeling is that we’ll certainly need a few of those short answer anims. I’ll keep the long ‘out anim’ for let’s call it - ‘the waffle…’ but yes the short one’s indeed would also give it more natural variety. 
10 Likes
I like how the torch in the second pic makes it look like the character is having a brain overload 
I think what would be nice, is if the character maybe scratched his chin/head while your typing, and then moves into the position of the first pic once the text is displayed.
1 Like
I’ve talked about a chat limit similar to Twitter, 140 characters (although we’ll look at what is a good limit for B<, could be more or less than that). Consider this is a cross platform PC/PS4 game and not everyone can type comfortably.
In general, shorter chat limits are probably more suitable for what we’re planning with Boundless. We focusing on simple, in-person conversations and some log-based chat for now. Once you’ve met a player, if you want to go in-depth or voice chat there’s many, many services out there like Mumble, Teamspeak, Discord (etc) and PS4 has it’s own integrated VOIP/chat system. Guilds almost always use their own comms system, so most will already be using something they’re comfortable with. It’d be a total waste of our time to try and replicate a service like that in game for 1.0. If there’s demand in a successful 1.0, I’m sure we’d consider it in the future for convenience. Rather spend that time on stat systems and combat features!
There’s nothing stopping you from retelling War and Peace, but it’ll be in segments – not all in one go.
5 Likes
One of the reasons I don’t use twitter is that it has this limit. That’s all I’m going to say until I see the system in place.
1 Like
I think it’s unfair to compare Twitter to an actual conversation with someone.[quote=“ben, post:33, topic:4021”]
There’s nothing stopping you from retelling War and Peace
[/quote]Challenge accepted! 
3 Likes
140 Characters is to less.
You want less comfort for a PC player only because a other Player still using PS4 ?
I have played many years WoW (since Classic), Guild Wars 1 (a few Years) and atm i play Guild Wars 2. But 1 thing was every time the same, only a small part of the guild was using teamspeak. In Guild Wars 2 i have a leadership position in a guild with~ 400 player and only ~10-30% of the player using teamspeak, the rest of the player will only play but cant using voice chat (no hardware for it) and some other will not.
so it is a real bad idea to say 140 character are enough, if we want chat more we should use other software like teamspeak & co.
a mmo needs a good chat, you need for a good guild a chat. and not only with 140 characters.
if you want make as example advertising for a Guild, you need more as 140 characters(thats only one example).
so please, think again about it @ben
2 Likes
We’re going to look for a limit that works best for Boundless – but there obviously has to be some limit. Your opinion has been heard 
Again: there’s nothing stopping players from sending multiple messages, it’s just a case of how much you can say in a single message.
Right now the plan is for chat to be simple, limited to in-person and some server/whole-world chat. I can see us expanding that at some point but it’s hard to justify that over gameplay features at the moment (given there are great free alternatives). I don’t think it would the best thing in the short term for us to cut features like character progression, for example, in favour of adding a big, complex chat system.
2 Likes
we need no big or complex chat system ^^
and that we need a chat limit i know, but 140 is to less. i think a minimum from 250 is ok but i prefere this
i think a maximum of 480 characters would be real nice.
i will not that every guild make the same advertise because we only can use 140 characters and using 2 post is not so good every time. if you make advertise for your guild in world chat and you must use 2 post because chat limit, and any other player is writing something between your first and second post, looks real bad.
Ohh … i really hope there will be a “spam” limit (which you maybe didn’t mentioned because it’s too obviously) of a few messages in a given time.
I agree with you that it’s not rational to add this feature at the current stage of development or before 1.0 at all.
But i like to mention - as i did earlier - that communication (fast, flexible, everywhere) is a key aspect of multiplayer-games for me. That’s something i really enjoy in CS:GO. You don’t need to invite your party (which will be random “match-making” players in most cases) to your teamspeak (which would require time and is unhandy for a short-time-party). If there is something important to say, you just say in the team voice-chat without any delay. That’s a really flexible and handy to use system.
I know that there are a lot of free systems out there. I’m using Teamspeak for years now but there is no common consensus which of them is the best. Some of my friends use Skype while others use mumble and so on… if i need to invite other players to my server or need to convince them why my system is better than theirs i’ll never start to enjoy all the benefits (easy/fast information flow) of voice-chats.
2 Likes
Do you plan on having separate chat channels that can be managed between tabs? I love how Elder Scrolls Online does it, it’s very helpful. In ESO you can actually make any number of tabs that you want, and customize what you hear in each of them.
No tabs planned for the first version. ESO chat is good model to look at for a richer system.
3 Likes
A simple Chat is ok for the First Version, later a better
Strange that you mention the issues with communication on consoles in one sentence and “deny” a voip in the next one. Since the latter would be the solution for the sooner.
This surely has no high priority but should definitely be included in the PS4 1.0 release. (A sandbox MMO game with focus on trading & economy on a console and without Voip? :shiver: )
I also think that 140 characters are way too less for a game that heavily revolves around social interaction.
2 Likes
I don’t think that was a denial, as such, for VOIP for PS4…
Honestly, I see little point in the devs reinventing the wheel when there is already a viable VOIP option for console players! Are there any PS4 owners here that have any games that use proximity based voice comms?
Also, for those PS4 players that either don’t have a headset or are not comfortable chatting via voice comms, there’s always text based chat to fall back on.
Ben has heard your plea 
It’ll all come out in the wash (A.K.A. us testing it and providing any feedback!)
I hate being misquoted, so just in case I haven’t been clear:
We’re planning a simple chat system for 1.0.
- Why are we doing this? Because there are many options for players and guilds already available as 3rd party (eg: Teamspeak), platform services (eg: PSN, Steam) and web services (eg: Boards within this forum).
- Why this is good for Boundless: Not spending our resources on complicated chat or VOIP services allows us to focus on essential game features like professions, stats, etc.
- Why this is bad for Boundless: Using 3rd party services adds an extra step, is less convinient for players. Tight integration is almost always better.
For the future:
When the core game is complete and there are more resources available for less essential features, chat is one of the areas we’d like to improve with more features and deeper integration.
6 Likes