PvP and global chat

[Worb]

I enjoy running a PvP server on harsh world gen settings and would like to open it up to lots of players, but there are a few problems I've noticed.

One of which is that when people band together, there are now suddenly lots of stomachs to feed in close proximity, meaning the resources in the surrounding area become inadequate, and people start to starve.  This means that the proper way to play the early game on these kind of settings is to deliberately not co-operate and split up.  This is all well and good.  In fact, I would LOVE, as a PvP server host, for people to break away from the spawning area and set up their own little base by themselves to begin with.  Trouble is, new people almost ALWAYS after joining ask "Where are you?", looking to immediately toss the hot potato of responsibility for their survival needs off on to some poor group of try-hards.  Currently the DST community is very pro-co-op, and so this immediately creates a bit of an awkward social situation whereby if they don't get that information, they're likely to just logout and find another server to throw their potato at, and those who didn't respond to them may be perceived as having been rude/unwelcoming.

Oddly, almost all of these woes would be forgotten however, if global chat were simply disabled, or at least limited to certain special conditions (for example, an in-game item or structure to allow long distance communication).  I understand this is how the very early versions of DST functioned -- players would eventually stumble into one another, and having never communicated prior to this event, would have to evaluate the other's trustworthiness from that period of being in PvP stranger danger, onwards.  I think this is much more interesting for PvP servers, and creates a significantly more immersive experience all round (think campfire stories).

So my proposition is for a simple mod that allows the disabling of global chat, or for it to be worked into the game's options.

Putting aside the specific settings of my server, what're your thoughts on the impact of having the OPTION (stress on the word "option") to turn global chat off? Would it add to immersion, or gimp necessities of multiplayer gameplay?

 

Also would anyone be willing to make a simple mod for us to try this out? I would've done it myself by now if only I knew how.  Sadface.

[rezecib]

I did a brief attempt at this, and as far as I can tell it's not possible at the moment. It goes directly from ChatInputScreen to TheNet, which is a C++ object (mods can't get at those). Somehow it gets out of TheNet into each client's networking.lua's Networking_GuiSay function.

 

So in order to do it the way that the networking is currently written, the mod would have to be running on everyone's computer (disabling the ability to see global chat for each of them). Automatically downloading mods will become a thing, though, but hopefully by that time we'll have the option to disable global chat in the menu.

[PeterA]

Hey Worb, I like this idea. As rezecib said, it's not currently possibly without the code running on all machines. I've put together a small mod called "Whisper Only" that you'll be able to download from the Steam Workshop after the next update. The mod disables the global chatting on the server and all the clients that connect.

[Worb]

Thank you very much for your responses, guys.  I appreciate both your efforts to give us a chance to try this out.

[Algesia]

I want to mention about frequently leaving servers after first day... if someone joins when the host is in 10 day usually they only try gather food in spawn location or if they cant find here, they leave. So is it possible to make balance of the game with stuff based on the host survived day? I think it would be quietly hard to program, but imagine how the game would improve. Here some ideas of improving: after joining the game the new survivor get 4 basic items: grass, branch, flint and carrot. The quantity of these items depends on the host survived day- each day gives you extra 4 items. So when joining in 10 day you will get all of these items of 10. In order to avoid such scenario like in 100 day every new player will have 100 carrots, the quantity wont stack more then 15 of all, so eventually the 15 day is the last of getting stuff. Also the winter gets so frustrating to join in 20 day, so at that time of joins players get winter hat. I know that this idea has some cons, like joining players throw all stuff and leaves, but in that case, this items could be binded to their souls and throwing them only destroys or others pkayers cant take it.