Now I'm not the smartest guy when it comes to IT and such, so I have no idea how this would be implemented or how it would work, but I often find myself playing Diplomacy games and forming alliances with several other nations. However, I find it difficult to tell everyone important information and discuss issues between all members of the alliance. That's why I propose an option to create a group chat during a game, which functions exactly like the private chat, but involves whoever you want.

For example, suppose I'm Norway, and I'm in the "Scandinavian Alliance" with Finland, Sweden and Denmark. If I need to alert the other members of my alliance about a threat (let's say, an aggressive Russia) and ask how we should handle this problem, I would need to privately message each individual nation, then receive their responses individually. For the purposes of this scenario, let's assume that each have their own solution and reasons for the solution.

• Finland wants to sign a peace treaty, as they have too many vulnerable territories on the border
  
• Sweden wants war, because "the only way to fight fire is with fire"
  
• Denmark doesn't care, because Scandinavia isn't being attacked and he doesn't care about Turkey
  

Either I can take all of these suggestions and reasons and decide by myself, which is going to go against the desires of two thirds of the alliance, or I can relay each option, scenario and reason to each member, which is not only time-consuming but will still limit the amount of discussion put into something that could have a very profound effect on Scandinavia.

This is only one example off the top of my head, so it's not exactly very good but I hope you get the idea I'm trying to get across. In-depth discussion and distribution of information would be much easier with a group chat (preferably one where you can add and remove members easily) and would have a much more positive effect on gameplay.

PS. I know there's probably far more important things that Fizzer hasn't done yet, but there's no harm in posting.

Great idea! Although i suspect that the diplomacy game type would come out first.

But you should still make a UserVoice for it.

Is it already possible to do this (group discussions) with user mail?

I think there needs to be a more convenient method to do this than mail. Especially considering how many people play on the app.

That's a good point about the diplomacy game type. Perhaps the group-chat idea is one of the perks of playing with this new game type. And also, this may sound stupid, but what's a UserVoice?

As I am predominantly (and up until a week ago, solely) a mobile warlighter, I had no idea about the group discussions through usermail. Although that theoretically should make my idea easier to implement.

I agree, I have no idea how the app works in this regard though...

EDIT: CITC, I see that you're clanless, if you would be interested in joining our clans to help generate ideas?

Edited 12/12/2015 07:03:03

wct, do you reckon there would be a way to interface with the chat box in-game to control it/set our own chat there? I guess we still need to find a good program to overlay on Flash, I've never found one in the past myself, always had to go through the server traffic :/

EDIT: Thinking about it I think that's something Knyte was going to work on, I'll ask him about it :)

Edited 12/12/2015 06:57:54

The interface for chat is quite different on mobile. Upon opening the "Chat" button at the bottom of the screen, you aren't shown any chats. Instead, you see a list. "Public Chat", "Team Chat" (if any) and, if private messaging is allowed, the name of every individual player. Each item on the list leads to a different chat. Basically, unlike on the pc version, all the chats are found together in one spot on the app version.

I feel as though it wouldn't be difficult to add an extra chat type to the list.

wct, do you reckon there would be a way to interface with the chat box in-game to control it/set our own chat there?

No idea. I have major doubts since it's embedded in the Flash client. Perhaps if we have a separate tool, we could implement our own group chat, but that doesn't help mobile clients.

A chatgame could get the job done.
You can easily remove players or add them, and its also accessable from your phone. I used that method once for a diplo.

hack.chat/?(insertnamehere)
For example
Hack.chat/?ScandinavianAlliance

I absolutely support this idea. It would make communication much easier in games, and would definitely make everything less tedious.

Hack.chat looks good, I've never come across that before :)

It looks like the whole thing runs through java-script, I think we could make something similar, even if it has to be an overlay. I was looking as the chat-boxes yesterday after this chat, and they are indeed embedded Flash, which makes it really tricky to interface with them. I'm going to have a proper go at this I think soon, Phantom doesn't use Flash native, which is going to be the real crux here. Warlight it using technology which is frankly archaic these days. I know Fizz deicussed moving over, but it just doesn't seem to be happening...

Anyone know what the app runs in?

I think this is a good idea.

A similar idea I had was having a big chatroom. So people can chat outside of games. Basically like the forum but live.

You mean like we have on Kongregate? Thats sort of the thing we want to add too.