litphoria

I like it too - as long as we're confident that people are aware they should always use roleplays for actual roleplay, and not chat. If necessary, maybe options for jumping into both should be available?

I thought that this is supposed to be equivalent of easy IM system to gauge interest of person before making actual roleplay if there is some. Chat is already pretty butchered when it comes to roleplay-specific functionalities, so I don't think it will make people who actually care stray away from them.

Can you elaborate, Roel?

Hmm, I've used both. Chat is fine for RP. The line seems to be whether you want multiple paragraphs or not, unless there is something I'm missing. Certainly, I don't see how it could be characterized as 'butchered.' It currently doesn't post in IC by default, which is a problem, but that can be fixed.

In any case, I envisioned it would pop into a minimally configured Role play that is in Chat mode. When I say that it can be 'switched' or converted to RP, I don't really mean there's anything special going on. The initiator just can set a more appropriate title, set it to forum mode if desired, make it public or invite additional RPer's, and change it from Staging to In Progress. All standard stuff. Technically, the chat is a role play from the start. It's just a more-automated, minimally configured one for the purposes of instantly-initiated, real-time chat.

I meant, more or less, that from what I remember chat is not really saving anything besides 100 last messages? Which in turn would mean that you won't really be able to have it saved or showcased as a whole later on. Unless there is some magic going on I am not aware of.

Roel, a Roleplay saves all messages. You can freely switch back and forth between chat and forum modes. In the chat mode, the messages that can be seen are limited to 100 max and less than 24 hours old. But they are all still there. It's just a view filter. You can seem them all again by switching back to forum mode.

Ah, so that it works... I wasn't aware that switching the type makes them all visible again.
But anyway, as far as the idea goes - I understand the primary purpose is just like "Hey, so I would like to RP with you and thought I will ask and maybe talk some stuff out?", is that so? Because it seemed to me.

I mean, you can drop it in case of lack of interest or just convert to roleplay where you have ooc chatter done and can go and play... and with that in mind, chat defaulting to OOC messages is a feature.

Well, like someone PMs you about an RP, and you can quickly start a chat, more like going instantly into a PM chat on FList. But better because you can invite a third person, turn it public, all posts persist, etc.

Let's be completely clear.

Chat:

• removes any posts older than 100th
• only shows the posts from today
• does not generate any new notifications for a post
• looks like a convention chat scroll
• defaults to OOC
• no pagination
• updates live on default, scrolls to bottom on load

Standard:

• persists all posts
• paginated to 20 per page
• has IC/OOC filters
• looks more like a traditional forum
• updates live optionally
• defaults to IC
• generates notifications for all new posts

As they both update live, it makes more sense to me to default this as an easy way to create a standard roleplay with someone. The chat really is just meant for light chatting where posts being removed after a period of time is desirable. While it is true you can switch between the modes freely, posts lost in chat cannot be recovered by switching to standard mode.

But, I should also be clear that I still find creating a roleplay to converse with someone more desirable then making the inbox update live. It allows for easy "promotion" to a play where you can stick ads/interests/etc. onto it and invite others, among other things. Plus, it really encourages people to always roleplay in there, instead of trying to make do with inbox.

Ah, so you do permanently delete 'filtered' chat posts. (Side note: The fact that chat posts can be permanently lost should be made more clear in the RP setup, and this may be the best reason yet to make chat posts live for ~36 hours, if not longer, so if you come back the next evening, you can switch it to Standard mode and save the chat, if desired.)

Currently, I'd prefer this to start up in Chat mode.

• Immediately live up-dating.
  • Don't have to click Connect, which I know is currently not clear enough to new users, which itself can be addressed separately.
  • The concern is that new users are setting there forever expecting a message to pop up, or they are treating it like a forum, refreshing manually.

However, my original desire was to get connect live to someone I know was online and PMing me. The general use might normally be connecting to PMs that were sent hours ago, and the sender is less likely to be online, however I also would like to initiate this chat from the list of online friends. I admit in the former case, Standard would be better than Chat.

The 'filtered' posts are not lost, only the ones older than the 100th post. You can get the 'filtered' ones back if you switch to standard mode, but not the ones pruned.