In-Game Email

[C`gan]

On the other hand, there could be a central distribution point in each town. A new NPC, perhaps. Or could be incorporated into the vault system across Istaria.

Walk up, greet NPC, fill out message, give coin and the message is there at THAT town.

Now they need people to come by to pick up big packages of messages going to another town. Who isn't making the run from Dalimond to Kirasanct by way of Acul nowadays and could drop off the package at Acul from Dalimond? So, some brave adventuring type comes up and volunteers to collect a profit from all the fees collected for all the messages going to Acul from Dalimond and makes the run, delivering them safely and getting paid. Oh, hey. There's a set going from Acul to Kirasanct.

Repeat the process any dozen times daily depending on who's sending messages where. Of course, longer routes mean more message fees and a higher collection, unless they care to get bounced around the system from time to time at a hub like Heather, Bristugo, or Tazoon until they can get to the outer limits of everywhere.

Might even make up the beginnings of a class that gains experience by crossing all of Istaria to send messages all over the place. Runner?

Hmmm, single runners aren't always safe especially if they have to do that Lerena to Morning Light overland. Get a group and they can haul trade goods too at the same cost? What do you know, you now have a second profession: Caravan hauler.

[Shian]

Log in.
You have 3 new messages.
1 New message has been intercepted by (random) Withered Aegis agent (based on character's highest rating). In order to view your message, you must find and kill (random) in the vicinity of (random location with fits Tier of character's highest level).


Hmmm. Is the message worth it?

That actually sounds like it might be fun.
Would definatly increase the need to fight the WA with a stronger hatred of them. Imagine Veela's scenario of: "I just logged in to check the mail, but one of them is missing. Can I retrieve it before I need to log off? I'm sure it was the reply to the comp hunt I posted about yesterday."

Not sure if the idea of "make message, keep message in town" is such a good idea. How would you know where a message for you is posted? Or some trickster posting a message in Harro for a low level character. We already have a bit of that with the cosigners- because the two main hubs are Aug and NT, has anyone checked for example, the Dralk cosigner for things for sale recently?

[Justa Mirage]

You could have a quest, "What has happened to Brown?"

Courier Brown is missing, last seen travelling from Augendell to Last Stand. Check the areas for clues. (similar to the old "lost patrol" quest that was near the crossroads where Fang used to be and Wolf's Paw is now)

You find the dead courier and finish delivering his package.

I like the idea of doing a quest to get your mail, that sounds interesting.

[tramsan]

While we're talking about possible complications for the mail system, I'd like to postulate that only mails with items in them suffers a (pretty small) risk of "getting lost" - no one would bother with the system if simple things like "guild meeting tomorrow at 9pm" ran the risk of getting lost, requiring the recipient to run out into the outback, kill some mob that may or may not be easy to find and arrive late at the meeting because of it. If it was only items, it would provide a distinct motivation to actually find the message, and a sense of reward when you've actually found it.

[Oakleif]

/slight digression on

For those that want this in order to pass money to an alt, there is a very easy solution to that: poor character goes to any consigner, and puts up a T1 trophy or any other piece of loot for sale with a price for the amount of cash you want to transfer. Log on rich character and buy that item from the consigner. Cash has been transferred.

No one else is going to buy yard-trash for such an exhorbitant price, or, if they do, they just gave you the cash you needed as a gift.

/slight digression off

Anyone played LOTRO? The Shire is full of delivery quests taking mail, pies, and other sundries from one town to another. Kinda fun, but kinda annoying too.

[tramsan]

There's one flaw with that system, Oakleif, and that is that the poor character still needs to have 10% of what's being transfered, and that amount will be lost in the transfer. That amount might be quite sizable for some players.

[Shar]

Greetings all,

Thank you kindly LaughingOtter for the fieldback from the dev side of things. The honesty is very appreciated and to me, the response seems very favorable.

Thank you to everybody else for your feedback as well. I did want to see where the community stood on the subject and that response seems very favorable as well. : )

Shargrailar

[Velea]

Barney... he's way more evil than anything with horns.

[Favoran]

Uhoh, the Barney dev hat. This is serious!

I know someone brought up the concern of people holding on to mails and using too much hard drive space (or maybe no one said that and I’m just imagining things, but hey), so I was thinking a good way to prevent that would be to only allow X messages to be ‘saved’ without being thrown away. Set the limit at something reasonable like 25 or 30 messages; either that, or make it so that, upon receiving the message, it actually gets saved client-side. The only issue with that would be if the player uses multiple computers to play HZ.

[Locru]

Why oh why do we not have one? It drives us all nuts (trust me, it's not just me) that there isn't. Please, I beg on bended knee, may we please get one soon?

[Deth]

Sorry soon no. I would guess this is on the pony list. But it is something that would take a lot of work along with a lot of things that would probably work off the same system. They just have a lot of higher priorities right now.

[Takora Drakan]

http://community.istaria.com/forum/s...ht=mail+system

[Locru]

Just to clarify, yes I'm proposing a WoW style in game mail system. Great dialog and information. Thank you all.

[lino]

It benefits everyone or at least a majority: not check... People have enough sources of electronic communication to be paying attention to already. The feeling of obligation to go through the process of logging in to game just to see if they have email is yet another time sink.

Noone is obliged to watch any of their (private) electronic communication channels. And from my experience sooner or later most people realize that and simply ignore the one or other channel for a while if they have better things to do.
And in my opinion learning to do that is one of the most important lessons in modern live.