I think they should do a prequel Jedi Knight game set during Star Wars original trilogy period. With a good engine and graphics compared to Dark Forces or Dark Forces II. Maybe use a different main character than Kyle Katarn. I still like being able to fight enemies like legions of stormtroopers, Imperial officers, Imperial Navy Officers, Gran, Rodian, Trandoshan, Gameorean Guards. I hope it involves a story set in aound Jabba's empire going to planets like Tatoonie, Bespin, Hoth, Yavin 4, etc. I would hope they add Quarren, Weequay, klattonians and have noteable charcters like Bossk, Greedo, IG-88, Zuckuss, 4-LOM, Dengar, Boba Fett, Jabba the Hutt, Bib Fortuna. I would also like to fight creatures like Rancors, wampas, kyrat dragons, dianoga, etc.

Actually I've heard developers and players say that the majority of people who buy games (that are both SP and MP capable) play SP almost exclusively.

They buy the game at Wal-Mart, play through it in a couple of weeks, then buy another game.

They either don't know how to setup or join a multiplayer game or they are too lazy too, or else they have a bad ISP and dialup and it's just not fun for them.


So, in a sense, he's right about the SP thing.

BUT, any of us that are still playing the game after all this time are not playing SP!

As long as the series is both SP & MP, both have to be improved, but the primary focus will always be on SP first (since it requires the most work and makes or breaks the game sale.. gets your foot in the door so to speak).

The average game has about 4 months of life after it hits the store shelves in mass release.

While what you say may be true, I don't classify the Jedi Knight series as 'average' games. The series has a long-standing community, and while people may come and go, the MP side of the community inevitably continues. It is still 'popular' online, and so the focus should really continue to be SP & MP combined.

Having said that, vanilla MP modes can become tiresome after a while. I'm not playing JA online as often as before, and when I do it's mostly Siege mode. Of course, I do have rather a lot of other games to get through at the moment. ;)

I would still be intrigued to see an MP only version, along the lines of Unreal Tournament, with some innovative new MP modes. It might not have as wide an audience with a lack of SP (or an SP 'ladder' as training for online play), but it could be a rather interesting experiement.

That's not to say I'd want that for a potential JK4 - but as a separate 'Jedi' game.

You mean like 2 compleatly seperate games? thats a good idea, How about Jedi Knight:The Hunt For Jaden and Jedi Knight Tornament 2006, or somthing like that anyway. seriosly though it is a good idea, some people never play the MP and some people use it exclusively, so paying for both is a waist of time.

Oh and to anyone who reads this and can influence lucasarts in any way, please make the next game play more like Deus Ex... with more lightsabers.

Originally posted by Smood
You are in a sense arguing that reality sucks. No. I'm arguing against this statement:

"A more realistic 'fantasy' experience may possibly equate to a greater experience."

I am arguing that at some point realism is no longer the driving force in making the game fun and playable. At some point the fact that there is a mouse and a keyboard and lag has to be taken into account, and that means sacrifices in realism, however small, have to be made so that the game works well as a game.

I am not arguing that realism is not desireable or that it has gone as far as it can go.

Originally posted by Smood
However, as games become more technically advanced, more and more of these factors that hinder our influence of the motions depicted by our screens, our 'control' weaken and even vanish which leads to steps closer and closer to truly feeling as if you are wielding the saber yourself. True. But there are issues other than realism that come into play (lag, balance, and so on). And the requirements of all those things don't always line up with perfect realism.

Originally posted by Smood

Try and let your mind grasp Please don't patronize me.

Originally posted by Smood
an entirely different level of control. Still the same mouse and keyboard movement, but think it more advanced and one with essentially a greater degree of control. But the fact is that control is still coming from a mouse and keyboard. Until control comes from a stick in your hand mapping your movement, deviations from realism will have to be made to make the game work. That is all I'm saying.

Originally posted by Smood
True, but one must not discount realism (and when I say realism I mean reality in action and not reality in context, like physics for example, but not everything must be tactical ops or some real shooter, fantasy is still extremely appealing) and its possible implementation as a tool to enhance the level of entertainment a game provides. I'm not saying at all that more realism can't be more enjoyable. I'm saying it isn't automatically more enjoyable. At some point more realism isn't desireable. CTF games aren't really based on realism from Star Wars. Does taking that game out for the sake of realism make the game more fun?

Originally posted by Smood
Wow, are you kidding me? The movies in ep1 are fast and really enjoyable to watch. But I can easily tell each and every step and swing that is taken, it is very clear. Fair enough. I'm trying to say that obi's swings are just as fast as my character's blue swings in JA.

Originally posted by Smood
Again you are putting a cap on your imagination, confining ideas, restricting evolution. No. But I understand as a software designer that at sacrifices in realism have to be made to make the game work as a game.

Originally posted by Smood
You must believe the impossible is achieveable somehow. Or I can look at what I know about implementing software systems that attempt to represent reality. For complex systems, at some point estimations have to be made to make everything work. At this point a little bit of realism is sacrificed. That is my only point. :)

Originally posted by Smood
1. How do you enforce no running and jumping in a FPS saber fight?

There are many options to this and all your questions that designers will eventually find suited to them (as games like jediknight evolve and go from engine to engine).

One idea would be to first have movement acceleration, so you cant strafe dance side to side, but when you push a direction you may start slow for a brief moment, then slowly ramp up speed (like reality, you can't just run in one direction then suddenly in a split second run in the other direction, you have to slow down, stop, change directions, speed up, run. Jumping could be connected to a constant use or physical force pool that governed basic jedi movement while a seperate pool was responsible for force. These are then scaled individually as desired for the best use. But this doesn't prevent the player from running and avoiding saber swings.

Originally posted by Smood
2. Guns vs. Sabers
Yes this is quite a problem. But it can be solved with innovation. Although what I might say could sound unattainable or foolish, only time will reveal the possibilities of programmers and designers.

Here I would say 100% manual blocking. Obvious not to difficult of blocking but tied with saber control which is a HUGE ISSUE. My vision is that of manual mouse saber control, but still regulated with certain yet deep and branching variety of animations. It is complex to explain so I will simply say that manual block would force jedi's to take their time and use their own SKILL to block blaster shots. It would also force mercs to be agressive and break the jedi's ability to block or outshoot their deflection ability (precisely like the jedi master shot off the genoshian balcony by jango in ep2), But if a gunner has to be agressive and a jedi has to be defensive, the Jedi wins. For the sake of realism, the Jedi is going to deflect, say, 90% of the shots coming at him when playing defensively. To have any hope, the gunner has to hold down the fire button and pump many shots at the Jedi. What happens to the %90 of the shots the Jedi deflects back at the gunner? They hit him and he's probably dead. I'm just trying to point out that the movie system does not work cut and paste into a game. Alterations have to be made to that realism to make the game playable.

Originally posted by Smood
3. Force Users vs. Non-Force users.
How do bounty hunters do in the movies against jedi? Pretty damn good don't they (boba, jango, and also imo the greatest bounty hunter Calo Nord [from kotor] who could probablly kick the crap out of an avg jedi). When they have the skill and the mechanisms to fight (and experience/knowledge), they can perform quite well. Well, Boba didn't do jack against any Jedi, and was actually taken out by a blind man with a stick. We saw Jango perhaps beat obi-wan and kill one Jedi before getting killed by a Jedi. I beat Calo as a level 4 scout :)

It is fine to say the bounty hunters do well against Jedi, but how to you implement that into the game rules? Exact realism doesn't solve this.

Originally posted by Smood
But again this comes to the realistic implementation. Jedi should use force powers extremely sparingly so as to achieve these kinds of epic battles that seem a good fight. Again one reality system depends on another and so on. It is a big web that must be strongly linked or fail all together. So you want to restrict when the Jedi can use the force to get realistic looking battles? There is no restrictions in the movies for Jedi using the force. Is this not a deviation from movie realism?

Originally posted by Smood
4. Damage and Killing
This issue is really up to the developer and the context of the game. As I said earlier don't just JUMP to an ALL OUT REALITY GAME (like the game that will corrupt itself if u get killed so u can never play again). But instead take smaller steps to something more and more real. OK. That's my point. You can't just implement all out reality for a game and have it work well.

Originally posted by Smood
A better gaming experience is always ahead, their are almost no limits. Yes, it is always ahead, but time, money, and available resources always put on limits :)

If you want an example of "more realistic" sword combat in an action video game, I suggest you check out Bushido Blade and Bushido Blade 2 for the Sony Playstation.

THIS is the best swords combat I've ever seen in a video game, period (you'll note the Raven team seems to have learned a lot from their example).

You've got stances, great hit detection, blocking is carried out with swings or your blade simply being in the way of the other person's swing. You can do tons of different moves, crouch, jump, run/walk, roll on the ground, do knock downs, ground stabs, combos, etc. and damage parts of the environment. You can even pickup a handfull of dirt to toss in your opponent's face on certain levels.

In the first Bushido Blade you have visible damage on your player model, and not only (as in BB2) can you have one or both of your arms wounded (hangs limply at your side with only your sword arm slowing down and being less able to block), but you can also have both of your LEGS wounded as well, forcing you to crouch and making it nearly impossible to walk around!

Of course there are a few major differences...

1) While you can toss projectiles and fire guns on occasion, the majority of the battle is melee based.. there's less stuff to worry about and no need to balance other weapons.

2) There's no online play, this is strictly on the same machine (or networked through a PSX link) so you don't have lag to factor in, as you would in any online game.

3) There's only two combatants at any one time. Another issue that would creep into SP & MP especially.

4) There's no force powers. All you usually have is your melee weapon and possibly a "secret weapon" like a daggar or shuriken you can toss at your enemy.

And this is strictly dueling. The Jedi Knight series has always been about more than just two combatants dueling. There's a whole galaxy of other options that have to be taken into consideration.

For the "ultimate dueling game" this is still where it's at, but if you want the Star Wars flavor, Jedi Academy is top of my list.

That doesn't mean it can't get better, but as I see it, that is the standard set, other than JK1, which set the standard for story, cutscenes, morality choice/alternate paths, and pure speed & adrenaline. MotS's strongpoint was in its options. Tons of maps, tons of skins, tons of variables to mess with. But the series has always been about lots of options, and I think it should stay that way.

A pure dueling game would be great, but it just wouldn't be the successor to the series we've been waiting for. It just wouldn't live up to the reputation set by previous installments.

Originally posted by Kurgan
If you want an example of "more realistic" sword combat in an action video game, I suggest you check out Bushido Blade and Bushido Blade 2 for the Sony Playstation. I really need to check out those games. I've seen them mentioned as the best for sword combat a few times now...

OK, after reading ALL of that, I think I'll post what I wish JK4 could be.




Saber Combat
Technical details included

For saber combat, I hope they use an inverse kinematics system.
Someone before said that you could not use this due to having a 2d movement and needing to move in 3d. Normally this would be true, but through some thought I have figured out a way to do this.
All you have to do is imagine a circle. You have a circle around your hand, now, when you move your mouse to the left, it moves the tip of the blade to the left on the circle. When you move it to the right it moves it to the right, up goes up and down goes down. There you go, one part done.
That takes care of right or left click (when you hold it). The other button (left or right click) would then move both arms left/right/up/down. Holding both left click and right click would cause you to do both at once, allowing you to really swing your sword, moving your wrists and arms at the same time.

To calculate damage:
Time spent swinging adds to damage, if you change direction of your swing, it lowers damage. You would have to add a little buffer to this to account for imperfections, but you get the idea.
This system would also be used to calculate the "power" of your swing, used for parrying. Parrying would have the physics calculated using the already existing physics engine in the game engine.

All movement would be disabled while swinging your saber, this would allow you to concentrate much more on attacking instead of running around like a doofus. When you start to control your saber though, you would still continue moving in your direction for a moment. This would allow you to keep moving while you're deflecting blaster bullets.

Attack and defence buttons would be the same.

This system is feasible, the only hitch is with netcode, I don't know how well this would perform over dial-up.

Damage should be one hit kills for torso, neck and head, and two hit kills for limbs. When you hit your enemy's limb, it would cause his attacks to slow and attack power to lower, making his attacks easier to parry.
Leg shots make the enemy slow down.





Movement
All walking. Map sizes would have to be tweaked to make walking not too annoying. You would have a meter for stamina, and you can use this meter to run. It doesn't run out too slowly, but it takes a long time to regenerate, hopefully this would make people save it for chasing gunners.





Guns
Blasters, maybe grenades, but all blasters. Blasters, if aimed skillfully enough, can beat a lightsaber. Just like a lightsaber can beat a blaster. If you catch someone off gaurd they're dead in 1 shot, or close to it if you only hit their arm or leg.

How will you block blasters you ask? Simple. All jedi get a "force sense" power (not like the current one) that draws a line along the bullet's path. The color of this line increases intensity when it gets closer, so once it is bright red you know it is just about to hit. Bullets would still travel at roughly the same speed they do now, this would have to be tweaked.

Shooting speed would be reduced, mainly to about 2 shots a second for the fastest weapon. It would be more about aiming your shots instead of trying to get lucky.





Force Powers
Force powers would mainly move objects. They would not be a dominant thing in the game, but used more in a stealthy manner. Used most of all to set traps and move things from afar.
No lighting, no mind trick that makes you invisible. Just straight forward powers.
When you use a power, you are stationary. You put your hand up and face the object like your are concentrating on it.

Force Telekinises -
Pick up and object and control it from a distance. Somewhat like grip without damage, this allows you to pick up and object and move it. The amount of weight you can lift lowers as the distance between you and the object increases. This is for picking up stuff up to around 100-150 pounds TOPS. That's within like 5 feet.
Useless against Jedi/Dark Jedi.

Force Push -
This also only works on inanimate objects and droids. Same as the above. You hold down your force button to scale the amount of power, and wait as a meter fills up. You let go when you reach the desired power. This makes a delay between when you start using the power and when you use it, making you vulnerable for that time. If something is real close, just tap your force button.
Useless against Jedi/Dark Jedi.

Force Pull -
Same as Force Push.
If aimed at merce
Useless against Jedi/Dark Jedi.

Force Jump -
This is a bit different from the current force jump. It is not for moving forward, but almost exlusively for moving up. You crouch on the ground and prepare to jump, a meter shows up just like force push, and you let go when you reach the desired jump height. This allows for accessing higher places, without making it a superhero flying banana peanut circus.

Force Mind Trick -
This does not make you invisible. It allows you to persuade enemy AI to do things they wouldn't normally. It only works on stormtroopers for the most part, but you can convince the stormtrooper squad leader to take his men somewhere else while you sneak past them!
No use in multiplayer, not available in multiplayer.
Useless against Jedi/Dark Jedi.

Force Regenerate -
Allows you to slowly regenerate health over time.

Force Sense -
Adding points to this force power increases the radius in which you can see incoming bullets.

Those are all the force powers.
When you have your lightsaber down, your force pool regenerates faster.





Maps
Cities would hopefully boast lots of NPCs walking around. If an engine like the CryEngine was used, you could just imagine Endor with little ewoks all around in treehouses.
The game would be largely darker than JA. A little under half the missions would be set at night. Gratuitous use of weather effects like rain would be used.





Gameplay
In multiplayer, you could choose to be either Jedi or Mercenary. Jedi can't use guns, only a lightsaber and a simple blaster like the one in JA.
Jedi get points to use in force powers.
Mercenaries get points to use on equipment.
Equipment would include mandalorian armor with jetpacks, guns, grenades, flamethrowers(maybe) and deployable turrets(maybe). They could also use equipment points to buy "gyro packs" which would give them improved balance. Because of this they would be harder to knock down with force powers.
Jedi would always have single sabers. Duals and/or staves would be too hard to work out with the combat system.





Player Customization
Using bones set in the model's face, a customization system like TopSpin would be worked out, allowing for massive customization of the face. Increase the width and height of your cheekbones, move your nose and resize it. Move your lips or make them wider. Raise your eyebrows or make them further apart.
Clothing would be one piece. Creating two-set pieces of clothing isn't worth it, being able to customise your face is enough, plus, when the whole set of clothing is modelled it looks much better than mixed up torso/leg combos.
Clothing would be dark too, consisting mostly of cloth clothing for Jedi.



Well... I think that's it. This post is getting a little hefty now so I think I'll stop. Turned out a lot longer than I wanted it to be heh. Good luck reading it, hopefully it isn't to unorganized.

I think you should all work for Lucas Arts:P

Then we would have one wierd game including tons of NPCs, a new sabering system, and lots and lots of bugs :D

Originally posted by babywax
Cities would hopefully boast lots of NPCs walking around. If an engine like the CryEngine was used, you could just imagine Endor with little ewoks all around in treehouses.
The game would be largely darker than JA. A little under half the missions would be set at night. Gratuitous use of weather effects like rain would be used.

Imagine what the requirements would be like......

Originally posted by |GG|Crow_Nest
Imagine what the requirements would be like......
I can hack it. And if not I'd upgrade.

Imagine what the requirements would be like......

Not too high if done correctly (Good use of LODing on the trees would keep the polycounts low enough probably). Of course the cryengine probably wouldn't be used, but it already can do treehouses and stuff etc.. It is in one of their official maps and it runs very well.
Only problem with the CryEngine is that the online play is fairly laggy client side, and the netcode isn't exactly great yet.

That's one of the bigger advantages of Source IMO, because they will be using netcode similar to half life, which has very good netcode since it has been out for so long.

Actually, babywax, i posted about a system similar to this wherein the mouse is an extension of your arm and thus would follow any action you would take with the saber be it blocking or slashing. It would be pretty intuitive if done right.

Such a system didn't come off so well in Die By the Sword, sadly.

I still think it could be done well :) It would require a lot of work though, however, most of the new "big name" engines coming out seem to feature this, Far Cry, Stalker, I *think* HL2 features it too, not sure if it is just part of the Havok engine or you can touch it with mods.
I wonder if Doom 3 has IK?

Ok, the AI HAS to increase in intelligence. They just aren't very smart. At all. Also there has to be more interaction (civilians, mind tricking them to tell things, and optional stealth.)
Then they gotta make cutscenes better. Watch the cutscene after you beat the last Vjun mission. Horrible. I couldn't tell wtf hapened the first time I watched it. On player customization, I hope they have the same options and clothes in JK3 and more races and genders. Also, they have to do different voices. As to the story, they should give you an option to choose weather you followed the dak or light path in JK3. And lastly, a better saber fighting mode. It's awfully easy to run up to a reborn and kill in one hit with red stance.

The one consistency I noticed across the board is the word saber. Saber this, saber that.

I will tell you this: as long as the Jedi Knight series continutes to use engines half assed to create bumbling stances, poor hit detection, and so on and so forth, the longer the series will continue to stagnate until either:

a.) people take the hint and the series dies out due to rehashing on the same principle

b.) someone figures out that a Jedi Knight game, especally since everyone is so ****ing rabid about a lightsaber, is just not possible in the current FPS engines/conventions, and an engine has to be created from scratch to get the true desired results

Yes, you heard me right, if you want to see better saber combat, then you're going to need to turn away from the Quake 3 engine. Don't bother with the Doom 3 engine. **** the Unreal engine! The one thing consistent with these engines is the fact that they are built for one specifc kind of weapon:

Guns. Lots of guns.

Face it, in games like Quake, Half-Life, and what not, melee combat is an afterthought. In Counter-Strike, for example, the knife is a humiliation kill, FFS. Raven can try all they want to try and let the fans have their cake and eat it by implementing a half assed saber system WHILE keeping FPS guns intact, but in the end it's only going to send gameplay in one direction: right down the ****ter.

It is my personal feelings that BOTH the saber system and the gun system could be stronger, however they both can't be active at the same time because it creates balancing issues and massive headaches. Especially when you factor in Star Wars' unique weaponry... *cough the concussion rifle cough*

If Dark Forces, and more specifically Kyle, never went down the path of the Jedi, we wouldn't be in this kind of a rut hole, now wouldn't we?

Then again, this could just be me being a combat purist... And since when do we say that it's so hard to use katanas Kurgan? :p

Originally posted by Rad Blackrose
b.) someone figures out that a Jedi Knight game, especally since everyone is so ****ing rabid about a lightsaber, is just not possible in the current FPS engines/conventions, and an engine has to be created from scratch to get the true desired results

Yes, you heard me right, if you want to see better saber combat, then you're going to need to turn away from the Quake 3 engine. Don't bother with the Doom 3 engine. **** the Unreal engine! The one thing consistent with these engines is the fact that they are built for one specifc kind of weapon:

Guns. Lots of guns. Rad, this is a very refreshing post.

Players should be limited to using only team chat (messagemode2) while playing.

Only spectators should be able to use general chat (messagemode). Any points scored should be retained when going to spectator.

In other words, if you want to chat (except team chat), you must go to spectator, but you would keep any points you had scored so you could go to spectator and rejoin the game later without losing your points.

Originally posted by Amidala from Chop Shop
Only spectators should be able to use general chat (messagemode). Any points scored should be retained when going to spectator.

In other words, if you want to chat (except team chat), you must go to spectator, but you would keep any points you had scored so you could go to spectator and rejoin the game later without losing your points. My only concern with this would be that players might use it to escape being killed. There would have to be some deterant to stop players from becoming spectators just when then are about to die, and then quickly joining again, which I assume would usually be in another location.

Originally posted by Prime
My only concern with this would be that players might use it to escape being killed. There would have to be some deterant to stop players from becoming spectators just when then are about to die, and then quickly joining again, which I assume would usually be in another location.

OK, then you lose only one point when you go to spectator. That negates the temptation to keep going to spectator to avoid death (because you would keep losing points) while still taking away the excuse "but if I go to spectator to chat, I'll lose all my points", which I have heard more than once when it is suggested to honor players that they should go to spectator to chat if they don't like being "chatkilled". But if someone is chatting, they clearly don't care about winning the map, so why do they care about losing their points?

Plus, there is already a restriction on the number of times you can change teams within a certain time period. Include spectator with that (since it is already considered to be a "team" by the game) so people can't go to spectator more than, say, once a minute.

that's just... absurd. the game will get abandoned at once, as I would surely not play it if I had to go freaking Spectate everytime I wanted to say something... but I would however go with the idea if you could toggle it on or off, like /cg_specchat 0 (0 for normal chat and 1 for chat in spectate-mode only) though the normal way of chatting should stay default, otherwise we'll see lots of server with this weird option that not many people enjoy.

I didn't read many posts completely here, so I might have mentioned something someone else already did.

Originally posted by Master William
that's just... absurd. the game will get abandoned at once, as I would surely not play it if I had to go freaking Spectate everytime I wanted to say something...
If it means that people who would rather chat and whine about "chatkilling" and "laming" would abandon the game and go back to AIM and MSN Messenger where they can chat all they want, leaving only people who want to actually play the game (or chat in spectator mode), then that is exactly the effect I am trying to achieve!

What are you doing here anyway? You've already said you abandoned this game, go away and play KOTOR or SWG.

Actually I've heard developers and players say that the majority of people who buy games (that are both SP and MP capable) play SP almost exclusively.

They buy the game at Wal-Mart, play through it in a couple of weeks, then buy another game.

They either don't know how to setup or join a multiplayer game or they are too lazy too, or else they have a bad ISP and dialup and it's just not fun for them.

True, but in JA's case, I think that server bug in the beginning messed it all up, many people would be playing the unpatched version right now, if it wasnt for that. Not everyone knows about the ASE. If people could have seen the server, more people would have joined MP and stayed with the game. Many more people would have patched, and continued playing today.

If it means that people who would rather chat and whine about "chatkilling" and "laming" would abandon the game and go back to AIM and MSN Messenger where they can chat all they want, leaving only people who want to actually play the game (or chat in spectator mode), then that is exactly the effect I am trying to achieve!

You cant change the community, you cant. Theres hundreds of honor servers, and maybe 20 normal servers in all. Thats how they play, accept it. Your idea, although it might deal with the honor problem, would drive a whole lot of players away. I talk while I fight, especially with friends. In fact, its not as fun without a small ammount of chat, then hack and slash. (At least to me) I dont care if I die.... just saying a few words here or there (mainly with friends, or people I know) can be fun, then cutting them up.... :D

Originally posted by lukeskywalker1
You cant change the community, you cant. Theres hundreds of honor servers, and maybe 20 normal servers in all. Thats how they play, accept it. Your idea, although it might deal with the honor problem, would drive a whole lot of players away. I talk while I fight, especially with friends. In fact, its not as fun without a small ammount of chat, then hack and slash. (At least to me) I dont care if I die.... just saying a few words here or there (mainly with friends, or people I know) can be fun, then cutting them up.... :D
If you look at just the Jedi Academy community, that's true, the "honor" people are the majority. But if you look at all of the people playing FPS games (JA, Far Cry, UT2004, Call of Duty, RTCW, Halo, etc. etc. etc.) online at this very moment, then "honor" players in Jedi Academy are a bizarre, eccentric, tiny minority. And why is that? It's because a sizable number of Jedi Academy players got fed up with people who only want to chit-chat and whine, and moved on to games where the emphasis is on playing, not chatting and bowing and ordering bantha soup in the cantina. Talk about "driving players away", yes players were driven away, leaving behind what we have.

I went to the jk3files.com server a couple of days ago just to check up on a "typical" server. Guns and lightning are disabled (a common configuration). At any given time about half the players were in 1 on 1 duels. The rest were standing, saber off, chatting.

The result of allowing chatting outside of spectator mode (except team chat) is exactly what we have: a small community where not much playing is going on, with lots of people more concerned about chatting and following made-up unofficial rules, and enforcing those rules with admin mods, than playing the game the way it was designed to be played with all of the features the programmers worked so hard to create enabled.

And the vast majority of "normal" action game players playing other games.

Disabling non-team chat except in Spectator Mode isn't a good solution. Many times in the game you need to communicate (even if the majority of chat is either whining or trash talking) and there is simply no convenient way to do it other than taking yourself out of the game and spectating, that's just silly.

Other games have chatting and it's not a problem.


The "h0n0rz" problem is NOT due to the game itself. It's due to admin mods (ie: the developers of the game have nothing to do with mods users choose to create) and due to bad attitudes by players and admins (again, something that Raven and LucasArts have no control over).

There are many situations where communication is simply necessary. And unless you make people invulnerable while chatting (leading to many other abuses) you just have to put up with a certain amount of chat killing and whining from chat killing.

Unless of course you setup something like the Xmod2 "auto honor enforcement" rules like where you stand around for awhile with saber off and you can't be harmed by sabers or force.

The whole "saber off" idea could be removed (don't give saber users access to fists either). And that would solve one problem. The idea of
having "saber off" wasn't to signal you weren't ready to fight, it was for STEALTH (sneak up on somebody and then whip out your saber) and for cutscenes (to make you look less threatening rather than always waving a weapon in the face of everyone you talked to).


I don't think it will be possible to solve this problem unless something truly radical is done with the next game, such as:

REMOVE THE ABILITY TO BE JEDI.


Is that a radical solution? Hell yes, it is. Call the game "Dark Forces" don't call it "Jedi Knight" etc. Just make it a Star Wars FPS with some similar characters and situations.

Nobody can argue that taking away Jedi means it's not Star Wars anymore (see the new games coming out)...

I will be curious to see what happens in Republic Commando and Battlefront, two competitive (planned to be anyway) MP based games with a Star Wars theme but no Jedi, Lightsabers or Force Powers usable by players.

Take away this nerd magnet "role players lite" dream and maybe, just maybe you have the players left.

I mean we don't see the "Han Solo" role players complaining that you shot them while they were holding a pistol, etc.

People in other FPS communities DO whine when you "whore" a certain weapon, when you camp and when you chat kill, but it's much more generally accepted that these people are whiners and idiots, whereas in the Jedi Knight communities these people have a sizable power-base and many adherents on the internet.

The admin mod thing started in JK2, and it was the similarity in communities and engines that allowed them to port over the mods (and the quick "success and fame" they garnered for the authors of these mods) to the new community.

Of course NOBODY would have taken the admin mods seriously or used them if there wasn't already an in-grained "attitude" that the game OUGHT to be played in favor of the "honor bound" "role player lite" typical kind of gamer we always complain about on here and make fun of.

So I think it has something to do with the fact that Jedi are in the game.

These "fans" have a distorted view of what Jedi are and that having Jedi in the game means you have to behave a certain way in the game (even if that behavior is totally at odds with the entire philosophy of the game or even the "real" Jedi in the movies of Star Wars).

I mean, as we all know, if you are standing around and get fragged in another FPS and you whine about it, nobody will assume you're right and take you seriously. Whereas you do the same thing in a Jedi Knight game and suddenly you have tons of defenders coming to your side and ideology.

It's because they think Jedi deserve "special treatment" and "special behavior."

That's my new theory anyway, feel free to critique it....

To further explain my theory of the "Jedi" idea leading to the "h0n0rz" mentality...


I think that the attitude about Jedi being "special" is that "every Jedi deserves a battle" meaning that, like Samurai or Kendo students you are supposed to pick and choose every match carefully, that your personal honor is at stake at all times. That you have to "defend" that honor in a very specific way. There is a science to "challenging" and to "accepting" because you have to be perfectly equal at all times. That means if you have greater skill you can't take advantage of that, so you have to handicap yourself and not use powerful moves or the same strategy over and over, or you dishonor yourself. And you can't take your opponent by surprise because that would dishonor yourself or them.

So this complicated mystique arises, from the idea that the Jedi is special and has to follow special rules.

This also leads to the idea that the lightsaber is the only weapon you can use in battle. Theoretically (unless you're playing Siege) everybody gets one. But wow, somebody can just nail you long range with a gun or blow you up with a bomb before you have a chance to swing at them.

So it's also easier just to say "learn one weapon and use it only." As if again they were practicing some "real" Jedi code.

"This weapon is your life."

Etc.

So the h0n0rz player then gets the idea that not only should he use the saber exclusively and not take advantage of his opponent, but always fight him equally and one on one, but EVERYONE ELSE should follow this code as well (otherwise you'd have people getting killed right and left, ready or not, and that would be anarchy right?).

These sensitive souls who have been drawn into the pseudo-Jedi mystique now treat this as a wholly unique "world" they live and interact in.

So you're either chatting or you're dueling "Honorably." Nothing else is acceptable behavior.

Even though, ultimately JK games are just FPS games with force and sabers tacked on for variety's sake.

After all, the majority of characters in Star Wars are NOT Jedi and don't use the lightsaber or force. Jedi are a tiny minority (10,000 at their peak in a galaxy of countless trillions of beings, and only 2 Sith at any one time). But since they are the "coolest" characters, everybody wants to be them, and so they have to stop people from being anything but "Jedi" as they concieve of them.

Likewise the majority of weapons, tactics, maps, etc in the game were NOT designed for one on one battling, but for mass fighting, or team based fighting. Most h0n0rz players disable Force powers too, because they think these powers interfere with "pure dueling" again that goes to show you the developers don't subscribe to the same belief system these folks espouse.

Sure you have the option to play sabers only, dueling, but these folks are not satisifed with that, they pile HONOR CODES on top of that (ideology) and admin mods (force ideology) to "punish" people that don't wish to follow the codes and made up rules.

It's the idea that the "Jedi Way" (as they concieve of it, which really has little to do with the movies and how Star Wars Jedi actually behave) is superior to all other "Ways" of playing the game.

They say that without this "Jedi Way" this is just another generic FPS and that is the ONLY way they play and the ONLY way they can have fun (and thus they must FORCE all other players to adopt the Jedi Way).

Yet, they forget that the game was designed to have Jedi and non Jedi playing side by side, using a variety of weapons, tactics and strategies to play Standard FPS game modes.

JA and JK2 are still very unique games in the scheme of things because of the inclusion of Sabers and Force. But the game really wasn't designed only for the "Jedi Way."

Still, even with its default setup, JA allows you to be more like movie Jedi than like the pseudo Jedi of the "Jedi Way" (the h0n0rz way).

Adherents of the h0n0rz philosophy say that the Jedi Way is " respectful and a good way to have fun " once you've proven to them that it's nothing like the Jedi in the movies.

But again, they ignore the fact that thousands upon thousands of FPS players enjoy the type of kill or be killed gameplay the games were designed for.

If Raven had intended for the "Jedi Way" to be supreme law, then Duel would be the only game mode, and the lightsaber would be the only weapon. Force Powers probably wouldn't even exist (except maybe Neutral powers).

Also they would have made you unkillable except during a Saber Challenge with your saber turned on. They would have done a lot more things to ensure that the game followed the "Jedi Way." Otherwise why rely on fans to make up these rules and enforce them with means outside the game?

Without Jedi, this entire philosophy goes down the drain. So you'll be left with the standard FPS mentality of kill or be killed, do the objectives, PLAY THE GAME not worry about who's honor is being slighted or how to challenge someone to and honorable battle of egos (and it IS about egos more so than it is about points, winning or anything else).

You know I just stay off servers I don't like...

Originally posted by Kurgan
Disabling non-team chat except in Spectator Mode isn't a good solution. Many times in the game you need to communicate (even if the majority of chat is either whining or trash talking) and there is simply no convenient way to do it other than taking yourself out of the game and spectating, that's just silly.

There are many situations where communication is simply necessary. And unless you make people invulnerable while chatting (leading to many other abuses) you just have to put up with a certain amount of chat killing and whining from chat killing.

Please give me examples of times (other than team chat) when communicating while playing (as opposed to while spectating) is "necessary". What, to say "pwned" after you kill someone? :rolleyes:

I'd allow general chat at the end of the map, while the final score is displayed, so people can say "gg" or "cya later" or whatever. But I disagree that you "need" to chat while playing, because it is "necessary" to communicate something (again, other than team chat, which does generally communicate useful information i.e. "need team heal-energize", "enemy approaching on the left", "I've got D, go get the flag", etc.).

It's like it is on a duel server: the spectators are chatting not fighting, and the duelists are fighting not chatting. Pure and simple.

Again, please give me some examples when it is "necessary" to chat while playing. And while you are scratching your head and struggling to come up with some, look at all the problems that come with general chatting:


Killtrackers. Need I say more.
Auto-repliers. Screens filling up with "Hi so-and-so" even though he doesn't know who he is saying hi to. That's "necessary"? :rolleyes:
Chat-bind spamming. Idiots filling up the screen with binds like ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this ignore this
"lamer", "use a saber you pussy", "guns are gay", "you suck", etc. etc. etc. etc.
Encouraging people to stand around wasting bandwidth and causing lag while they chat about ordering bantha soup in the cantina.
All the "comedians" constantly spamming newbies to "type /disco in the console for cool breakdance moves" or "type /qui in the console for the hidden Qui-gon skin".
Creating the possibility of the "horrible crime" of "chatkilling", one of the things that drives the creation of admin mods and the abuses that follow.


Don't forget, during the past year I have spent countless hours playing and even more hours reading server logs. I know what is said in general chat and 99.999% is not "necessary". I'm not saying people have to be mute, just go to spectator if you want to bore or insult people (or even better, use a real chat client). I also know that when you have a real game going on and people are playing hard, it's amazing how little general chat is going on, even with 20 people on the server. And the people who are playing instead of chatting are having a damn good time.

Bottom line (as you like to say): the tiny percentage of general chat while playing that is useful is totally outweighed by the problems it causes.

Think outside the box.

Kurgan, I think you're reading too far into the Saberist Code and such. ;)

Anyways, Amidala, by removing public chat you are removing a key component to online games that has been around since people playing Doom over direct connections with 14.4/28k modems. It's not the function that's the problem, it's the people using the function that is the problem. Some of us have learned how to get around it (console commands, ignorance, etc), others are continuously bitching to have some sort of constraint on it.

At the same time, go look at other FPS games and see where public chat is used, and in what manner? On the CS server that I have become a regular on, it's mostly used for dicking around, throwing a few jokes, the occasional pwned/Family Guy one liner, and shot compliments. Sure, there's the occasional "H4X!" outcry, but those are by people who don't know what the **** they are talking about.

What I am saying is the public chat system is a tool for public play, especially if someone wants to coordinate something, etc. Removal of that tool is like suing a gun company because the murderer of your friend used a gun they manufactured (remember, guns don't kill people, people kill people).

If you REALLY want to get around it all, just add an ignore feature for certain people, and make name changes not visible while tieing a player to an ID# that can be traced through the "status" command, and gives an FYI to those logged in with rcon.

Damn easy.

Now if you want to remove a certain aspect of the chat system, remove the PRIVATE chat function (the 1v1 chat function).

I'm not saying remove public chat, but allow it only for spectators and at the end of the level for players. Players could use team chat and private chat.

I don't think DOOM had true chatting. I think it allowed some chat binds to be stored, but not real-time chatting.

Maybe players in other games can use public chat without ruining the game, but Jedi Knight gamers have clearly proven otherwise (see my examples above).

Instead of your gun analogy, when a group of people (teenagers) have demonstrated they are too immature to use something responsibly (guns, alcohol, the vote), you restrict their access to it.

Again, I'm not saying don't chat, just do it only as a spectator (except team chat, private chat, and at the end of the map).

Originally posted by Amidala from Chop Shop
What are you doing here anyway? You've already said you abandoned this game, go away and play KOTOR or SWG.

I play them everyday, thank you. I am here to discuss, help newbies with questions if they any, etc. And I still do play JA, just not as commonly as I used to, I'm more into SP, though MP as well. It's just that I rarely found servers without the Honor code, so I don't play MP so much.

On topic, I have never seen any other game with this Honor code. Because I'm surprised they haven't tried to convert it all to other games... or perhaps they have? Anyhow, if there's gonna be another Jedi Knight game, they'll go with the same rules, which will quite annoy me... I used to go along with the honor code in the beginning, but now I am tired of sitting around chatting, it's like playing The Sims Online.

Is the problem really the chat, or the Honor code? I say the real problem is the Honor code. I would be satisfied if at least 50% were normal servers with no Honor code, but that's kind of rare these days

Originally posted by Master William
I play them everyday, thank you. I am here to discuss, help newbies with questions if they any, etc. And I still do play JA, just not as commonly as I used to, I'm more into SP, though MP as well. It's just that I rarely found servers without the Honor code, so I don't play MP so much.

On topic, I have never seen any other game with this Honor code. Because I'm surprised they haven't tried to convert it all to other games... or perhaps they have? Anyhow, if there's gonna be another Jedi Knight game, they'll go with the same rules, which will quite annoy me... I used to go along with the honor code in the beginning, but now I am tired of sitting around chatting, it's like playing The Sims Online.

Is the problem really the chat, or the Honor code? I say the real problem is the Honor code. I would be satisfied if at least 50% were normal servers with no Honor code, but that's kind of rare these days

People are trying to form honor codes in The Specialists (Half-Life mod)... Needless to say we're beating around the bastards senseless.

That One Guy (who used to be known here as Dracofyre of the Anti-Saberist Code) started the Anti-Scrub Code in The Specialists just for the sake of continuing the cycle.

The problem is the honor code. The chat is not the problem.

And Amidala: I quite remember being able to tell my best friend in middle school to go **** himself when he used the BFG in Doom without having to pick up a phone. ;)

I used to go along with the honor code in the beginning, but now I am tired of sitting around chatting, it's like playing The Sims Online.

Yeah, about 2 years ago when I first got the game, the first server I joined was honor, so naturally, I thought that was the game (of course, I had owned the game for about 2 months after it release, just no internet, so I played with bots) but anyways.... Gradually I changed, and got annoyed waiting around for a duel, especially with admins who are "too good to duel" or "have to keep the peace" so... yeah, I switched.

Encouraging people to stand around wasting bandwidth and causing lag while they chat about ordering bantha soup in the cantina.

Umm.. yeah, its not that much bandwidth, so little its not really worth mentioning.... unless its like the JK3files server... where 20 people are constantly talking...

Amidala, play with a friend and see how much you talk while fighting. ;)

REMOVE THE ABILITY TO BE JEDI.

Remove weapon disable, and force disable. Crap, just let them choose light or dark, then they get light or dark force powers. And remove voting to kick people off too. That was originally there just in case people were cussing and insulting other players.. but... well... it was obvious people wouldnt use it just for that. Instead insulting and cussing is allowed, while playing the game gets you kicked....

If you remove that, It will just be another FPS with "star wars" written on it... basically.



I play them everyday, thank you.

I played KOTOR through once, light and dark (I saved before the choice of light and dark) but.. I just cant play it again, I beat it once, I know what happens, I know what people are going to say... I cant sit through listening to people talk for 10 minutes again...


The "h0n0rz" problem is NOT due to the game itself. It's due to admin mods (ie: the developers of the game have nothing to do with mods users choose to create) and due to bad attitudes by players and admins (again, something that Raven and LucasArts have no control over).

We need an "anti-ban mod" that players can put in there base directory that prevents them from being banned. :D

If you look at just the Jedi Academy community, that's true, the "honor" people are the majority. But if you look at all of the people playing FPS games (JA, Far Cry, UT2004, Call of Duty, RTCW, Halo, etc. etc. etc.) online at this very moment, then "honor" players in Jedi Academy are a bizarre, eccentric, tiny minority. And why is that? It's because a sizable number of Jedi Academy players got fed up with people who only want to chit-chat and whine, and moved on to games where the emphasis is on playing, not chatting and bowing and ordering bantha soup in the cantina. Talk about "driving players away", yes players were driven away, leaving behind what we have.

True... the normal players *might* come to JA, but theres no garauntee (spelling) :( It already has an honor reputation. Maybe if they are gone in JK4/JK3 (whatever... I dont care) the normal players might come to JK4/JK5 (whichever) :rolleyes:

"This weapon is your life."

I see what your getting at, that might the case for some, but, I recall playing JK2 and telling someone Vader and Luke didnt bow to each other. Luke didnt cry when vader threw the saber at him when his saber was down (in ROTJ) so... yeah.. they replied with "Im not luke or vader, im playing Jedi Knight 2)

Originally posted by Rad Blackrose

The problem is the honor code. The chat is not the problem.

And Amidala: I quite remember being able to tell my best friend in middle school to go **** himself when he used the BFG in Doom without having to pick up a phone. ;)

Honor codes are part of the problem, but you still have the problems of killtrackers, auto-repliers, chat bind spamming, all the "use a saber you fag" "guns are gay" "I'd own you in a duel" whining, bargain-basement roleplaying, "type /disco for cool dance moves", etc. that public chat creates, separate from the fact that a lot of the reason that honor codes exist is to protect chatters. Public chat by non-spectators in Jedi Knight servers is more trouble than it's worth.

Again, I'm not saying no public chatiing, just you have to be a spectator to spam, bore, or insult everyone on the server.

EDIT: your memory is correct. I was thinking of the chat macro feature that was added later:

From the Official DOOM FAQ
How do players communicate using Chat Mode?
----------------------------------------------------
In a multi-player game you can communicate with other players in the Chat Mode. To enter into Chat Mode and broadcast a message to all the other players, press the letter "T". A cursor will appear where your messaging is normally placed. To broadcast to a specific player, instead of pressing "T", you'll need to press the first letter of the player's color: (B)rown, (I)ndigo, (G)reen, and (R)ed. For example, to send a message to the brown character, you would press the letter "B".

In DOOM v1.2, a macro capability has been added. After defining ten macros in SETUP.EXE, pressing the player color, and then "ALT-" will send a macro.




I'm still waiting for Kurgan's examples of "necessary" public chat....

Hi all. Regards Kurg and Stormie.

Moving chat to observer is not going to eliminate game whiners. Chat is the one tool that allows some form of communication, flawed though it is, in game.

It's just plain obvious why you need chat in-game. As was mentioned, you need chat to communicate your team strategy, and make basic comments to each other, such as "nt," "gg," "afk," "brb" "hi," "i'm going to a better server with this IP#" etc., etc. Just because you communicate in game doesn't mean you don't intend to play and win. It's ignorant to say otherwise.

A player-enacted mute or ignore toggle is a much more effective option. Simply mute the player you don't want to hear. Everyone else will hear them, just not you. A very old idea that works well.

Don't move chat to observer. If the state of online gaming is so bad, just play against bots! Password protect your servers and play only with players who meet your exacting standards of online behavior!

Amazing after two years to see continued "analysis" of an imaginary battle between "honor" players v. "pro" players. I don't remember the Obi1 boards ever carrying a conversation like this. Maybe it was there, I just didn't pay attention.

I have yet to see anyone in JA give me a hard time about "honor" although I have seen plenty of complaints about the use of force and guns. These complaints have nothing to do with any sort of imaginary "honor code." They are just par for the course for any online game.

Why the frequent confusion of "honor code" with "whining"?

Every online game I've ever played for past ten years has players who complain about weapons/spells/playstyle. And the complaints always come when those weapons/spells/playstyles are used to kill the complainer. It's not unique to JO/JA. It's just one of the laws of online gaming.

Anyway, looking forward to Star Wars Battlefront.

JK 4 wishlist :

Doom 3 Engine
Coop Play
Tournament Mode for Multiplayer
ignore player function

Originally posted by Wilhuf
Moving chat to observer is not going to eliminate game whiners. Chat is the one tool that allows some form of communication, flawed though it is, in game.

People who are spectating tend not to whine "use a saber you fag" or "rockets are gay" or "lamer" because, um, they aren't playing. You are right, it won't eliminate whining, just reduce it by 95%.

Originally posted by Wilhuf
It's just plain obvious why you need chat in-game. As was mentioned, you need chat to communicate your team strategy,...
*sigh* as I said numerous times, I would allow team chat and private chat for players as well as general chat for spectators. Please read the posts more carefully before commenting.

Originally posted by Wilhuf
...and make basic comments to each other, such as "nt," "gg," "afk," "brb" "hi," "i'm going to a better server with this IP#" etc., etc. Just because you communicate in game doesn't mean you don't intend to play and win. It's ignorant to say otherwise.

If you are "away from keyboard", going to "be right back", or leaving to go to another server, you can report that extremely important, critical, earth-shaking news to the whole server from spectator (assuming you only lose 1 point for going to spectator while afk) since you aren't\will no longer be playing.

And again, I said more than once that I would allow players to say "gg" or whatever they want at the end of the map. Again, please read the posts more carefully before responding.
It's ignorant to do otherwise.

Originally posted by Wilhuf
A player-enacted mute or ignore toggle is a much more effective option. Simply mute the player you don't want to hear. Everyone else will hear them, just not you. A very old idea that works well.
I agree, if you have players chatting\spamming\abusing those are great features and should be built into the game. Doesn't get rid of the "you chatkilled me you f***ing lamer" problem however. No player general chatting means much less whining about "chatkilling" and "laming" (CTF players who get killed while team chatting tend not to whine about it).

Originally posted by Wilhuf
Don't move chat to observer. If the state of online gaming is so bad, just play against bots!
It is that bad in Jedi Academy, and many people do prefer playing against bots instead of reading whining\spam\abuse\profanity\racism all the time. The rest have moved on to other games (like UT2004, Far Cry, etc.) that are less infested with the type of whiny, chatty player so common on JA servers.

That's why there's another thread in this forum called "JA dying?" and not a thread called "We need more servers because the ones we have are always full".

Originally posted by Wilhuf
Password protect your servers and play only with players who meet your exacting standards of online behavior!
Fortunately I don't need to do that because my servers tend to attract players who want to play, not blab blab blab. Thanks for the suggestion, but people who know me and my servers know I don't have exacting standards. Why, I'd even let someone like you play there ;)


Originally posted by Wilhuf
Why the frequent confusion of "honor code" with "whining"?
We're not confused, we've just observed that one leads to the other as beans lead to flatulence.

OK, *brushes off hands* another one down. I still haven't seen any good examples of "necessary" general chat from players during a game (again, one more time for the slow, NOT spectator chat, NOT team chat, NOT private chat, NOT "gg" at the end of the map chat) that outweigh all the bad stuff that results from it.

Next? Anyone? Anyone? Cat got your tongue? :amidala:

I've skimmed thorugh a lot of the debate on this thread, and recent stuff has gotten my attention.

Remove general chat from players, make a game in the image you want, and it will never see glory, JK4 will be a joke. However, if they give the game general chat, and the people who want it removed, can use mods. (like editing the scource code of JA+, using a silence command for everyone not in spectator) Then you will be able to have that, and play among the (few) people who would enjoy that type of gameplay.


In a nutshell: People will complain no matter what, and producers of game want more money, no matter what. Removing general chat would destroy 75% or more of the player-base, and that's a BIG No-No for lucasarts/raven.

And THAT is why while it may help the gameplay, it will never happen. :vader3:

I run my own JA server sometimes. I don't go ballilstic if people occaisionally say "hi," and take a bow or two before fighting. I haven't lost sight of the general goal of having fun with the game.

In the final analysis, "necessary" text in general chat is completely subjective. Everyone will have a different opinion on this. It isn't worth my time to further illustrate "extremely important" commos to an unimportant and very slow forum-goer. The need for general chat is self-evident to 99% of online gamers, multiplayer game developers, and publishers. It's good enough for me, and that is all that matters to me.

And, since when does in-game chat have to be "extremely important, critical, earth-shaking news?" ... *sigh*... Not a good gaming atmosphere. Not good enough for me.

I suppose sanctimonious server admins would set that kind of "standard" though.

Ultimately the game admins will have to decide what is permissable. One person's bad attitude shouldn't ruin everyone else's access to commos. In the same way that lamers/flooders/whiners should check their spam.

By killing general chat, you're just letting the lamers/flooders/whiners "win."

Allowing general chat is just like allowing people to say "hi" and take a bow before dueling. It really shouldn't (and thankfully isn't) going to be eliminated on the whim of one hostile server admin.

We all know that no example of commos will meet your personal subjective standard of "necessary," "chop." You can claim 'victory' on this 'issue' and move on, if it makes you feel better, in an appropriately petty way.

In reality, in-game chat won't be leaving, and you're just wasting storage space cryin' about it. :D

CLEANUP ON AISLE THREE!

Originally posted by AIVAS
...Remove general chat from players, ...[and] JK4 will be a joke.
In other words, it would end up just like JA. Refer to my comment above about the "JA dying?" thread.

Originally posted by AIVAS
However, if they give the game general chat, and the people who want it removed, can use mods. (like editing the scource code of JA+, using a silence command for everyone not in spectator) Then you will be able to have that, and play among the (few) people who would enjoy that type of gameplay.
Bad mods like the one you mentioned have done enough damage to the game and community already. There's no point making a change that will be undone by some mod to cater to the whiny\abusive\spamming people that this game and it's mods attract. The cycle will just repeat itself (large numbers of real players being driven to other games by the incessant chatting and whining).

Originally posted by AIVAS
In a nutshell: People will complain no matter what,...
But no one will have to see it unless the complainer is a spectator.

Originally posted by AIVAS
...and producers of game want more money, no matter what. Removing general chat would destroy 75% or more of the player-base, and that's a BIG No-No for lucasarts/raven.

And chatting has kept the game from declining? (see comment about "JA dying?" thread above).

*brushes off hands and watches as they drag another corpse away* hehe, this is kind of fun, it's me against the whole chatty world. Bring it on!

(Don't worry all you chat-aholics, no one is going to take away your precious ability to chat and whine and say "lamer" and "guns are gay" and "I'd own you in a duel" and "I'd like some bantha soup please" and "type /disco in the console for cool breakdance moves" and various racial and homophobic slurs, no matter how much it kills this game. But I can dream, can't I?)

EDIT: anyway, communicating by text is yesterday's technology (as Rad Blackrose point's out, going all the way back to 1993 and DOOM). Real-time voice communication is the wave of the future. Beyond Teamspeak and Ventrilo, games are now coming out with built-in voice-over-IP (VOIP), such as Unreal Tournament 2004.

New Technology
Unreal Tournament not only brings new content for hardcore fans to relish, it also delivers a tremendous technology update over its predecessor, delivering a faster, slicker, deeper experience than ever before. New technological features include:

*Voice-over IP support - command and coordinate. Give orders, rally your troops or talk smack with the enemy.

*Voice recognition - give orders to bots; no more typing when you should be fighting!

Amen to that last part! Some day (soon I pray) all this whining about "nice chatkill, lamer" will be a thing of the past.

And some of you will finally realize how dumb it was that you had to stop playing to type something in chat.

Originally posted by Amidala from Chop Shop
In other words, it would end up just like JA. Refer to my comment above about the "JA dying?" thread.


Bad mods like the one you mentioned have done enough damage to the game and community already. There's no point making a change that will be undone by some mod to cater to the whiny\abusive\spamming people that this game and it's mods attract. The cycle will just repeat itself (large numbers of real players being driven to other games by the incessant chatting and whining).


But no one will have to see it unless the complainer is a spectator.


And chatting has kept the game from declining? (see comment about "JA dying?" thread above).

*brushes off hands and watches as they drag another corpse away* hehe, this is kind of fun, it's me against the whole chatty world. Bring it on!

(Don't worry all you chat-aholics, no one is going to take away your precious ability to chat and whine and say "lamer" and "guns are gay" and "I'd own you in a duel" and "I'd like some bantha soup please" and "type /disco in the console for cool breakdance moves" and various racial and homophobic slurs, no matter how much it kills this game. But I can dream, can't I?)

As for the mods, there always will be mods people hate, and mods people love. You could implement a spectator only chat and have no other functions to the mod, yet it would appeal to a fairly small percentage of players.


I meant people complain about the game, not neccisarily IN it.

And no, but a game with spectator only chat will decline much faster.


*Rises from the grave*

Some pople use chat for good things, other bad. ***holes will be ***holes, and will eventually find a way to express themselves, and no system will ever stop that, the best any can do is delay it.
And what's to stop people from posting that crap on forums? admins can lock/delete posts, and admins in game will always have kick and ban. As for other servers, a person has no right to say what others should do on servers that do not belong to that person.
You want a game where people never do that stuff? Buy a board game.

See my edited post above. Voice communication is the wave of the future. Some day very soon, you will realize how dumb it is (was) to stop and type something in the middle of a battle. Especially to say something dumb.

Originally posted by Amidala from Chop Shop
See my edited post above. Voice communication is the wave of the future. Some day very soon, you will realize how dumb it is (was) to stop and type something in the middle of a battle. Especially to say something dumb.

I read the edited post. Curently, all pc games I've tried, as well as XBOX live have problems with quality, partially due to problems with voice communication, partially because peepowe tahk wif da mikofonz in deyr mowf, or have another problem with using them. But when voice comunications come to be the standard, then you'll have to HEAR people whining about laming, it's not all chatkills. Honourz will be honourz, no way to avoid it.

Typing in battle to communicate, when there are no other comms tools, is not a dumb idea. Yes, it is very dumb when you do have other options.

Voice comms, which are a wave of the present, partially address some of the problems presented.

Roger Wilco voice comms has been available online for several years, along with Teamspeak. Half-Life introduced voice communications more than a year ago. The same is true of XBOX Live titles and Tribes2. UT2K4 also supports this technology as was already stated above.

Yes, type kills will be a thing of the past, and that is a good thing. But consider this "fun" new trend:

In Half-life, more than a year ago, I've heard players cry and moan, curse and swear (homophobically, par for the course) over the voice channel. Not only that, but the voice technology allows them to actually jam the voice channel with annoying songs and pre-recorded sound effects. A great idea gone wrong!

Thankfully, Valve included an /ignore function, so it really isn't that much of a problem. More of an inconvenience.

I've said it before: the whiners/lamers are not unique to JA. Everywhere you go, you find this kind of immature, attention-starved behavior. As long as the developers give players the ability to mute it, it's really little more than an inconvenience.

Originally posted by Amidala from Chop Shop
I'm still waiting for Kurgan's examples of "necessary" public chat....

Well, we could move to the "voice only" model of the Xbox version of JA.

Then we'd have to adopt the "suicide spam in protest" model for getting people's attention!

; )


So for now I stand by my theory that as long as this game has Jedi in it, somebody will use it as their personal fantasy world (and you better not try to ruin their fantasy or face their wrath!) rather than a game. As Wilhuf rightly reminds us, silly online people aren't unique to the JK series, but that seems to encourage it (the "uniqueness/geekness of the Jedi" factor).

Chat has its advantages and disadvantages. In any case, I can see more of an argument for adding an /ignore feature rather than removing the ability to communicate in game altogether (or confining chat to spectating non-players).

Amidala: Arguing to make a point eh? Can't fault you for that. Team chat is necessary, especially in public games. Chat is necessary when newbies are present (or else it just means they have to spend more time outside the game researching, but learning by doing is even better for many folks).

While solving technical problems and teaching people how to play are not the "jobs" of every player in a public game, many actually enjoy helping others in this way, so this form of communication can be helpful. Likewise somebody might simply be ignorant about something (shooting the wrong team, forgetting about some objective, obviously getting frustrated because they don't know a certain strategy) and a simple one sentence explanation will correct the problem and keep them playing in your game and have more fun.

Now granted you'll say, this could ALL be accomplished through Spectator Mode chat. But ask yourself if it would be convenient. In the middle of a game its much faster to just fire off a sentence (as long as you don't get hung up on "he chat killed me!" and whine for hours if you get fragged while typing that one sentence) rather than having to go into spectator mode, grab the person's attention, get them into spectator mode with you and then start chatting up a storm.

Besides, you'd still have people just sitting there typing away like it was IRC rather than a game, they're still wasting bandwidth and taking up a player slot. So you disable spectators and that goes by the wayside.

Then you have voice chat, and you have people who turn down their speakers (maybe they're tired of the bad singing, lol).

Ultimately it's about freedom. If people abuse basic freedoms, it sucks for the rest of us, but it's better to put up with those random abuses than to remove the freedom entirely. The ignore feature would deal with most of that.

The microphones will use up more bandwidth and lag more than typing. What exactly is your point about the talking thing? People will still shout 'lamer' into the microphone, whether its dumb or not. I might not be able to chat kill, but I can still kill them with there saber down, and they will then talk about that.

I type now, because JA doesnt have a microphone feature. I dont think its dumb, its just the only option if your trying to communicate with someone in JA.

Originally posted by Wilhuf
In Half-life, more than a year ago, I've heard players cry and moan, curse and swear (homophobically, par for the course) over the voice channel. Not only that, but the voice technology allows them to actually jam the voice channel with annoying songs and pre-recorded sound effects. A great idea gone wrong!

Normally I stay quiet on this issue, but in this case I'll bite.

I happen to be friends with one of those people who created a program that "jams the voice channel with annoying sounds and pre-recorded sound effects." While some of it may be abusive, a good majority of it is actually poking lighthearted fun. I have used Half-Life Sound Selector, and will continue to. No, I don't spam my stuff, but when the right quote fits the moment or morale is going down the ****ter, you damn well will be hearing a Family Guy quip or two.

Plus, there's a convention you're not using that you so rabidly promote in your posts: the mute button. Use it and shut up.

The microphones will use up more bandwidth and lag more than typing. What exactly is your point about the talking thing? People will still shout 'lamer' into the microphone, whether its dumb or not. I might not be able to chat kill, but I can still kill them with there saber down, and they will then talk about that.


That's only the case if Raven does not clean up it's ****ty netcode that was made very apparent in JA. Half-Life's engine has been using it's VIP technology for more than a year, and it barely puts a dent in system resources.

If you want to have the tech, you have to be willing to eliminate system resource hogs, such as bad netcode.

Hmm, never liked voice... I certainly hope it is not put in to the next Jedi Knight game... I mean, use Ventrilo if you wanna talk, because I don't want to talk to a stranger through a microphone, nor listen to one. Normal public chat, just that.

The Honor code cannot be stopped, I mean there are servers who enforce this rule, not just players entering a normal server crying "lamer". I can play both ways, but I just think it's annoying that 90% is with the Honor code and the rest 10% are some servers in USA or Brazil with 400 ping, but without the Honor thingie. Frankly I only visit European servers for better ping.

But as Rad said, if I don't want to listen to some strangers talking, I can just mute them. Even though I prefer the option of not having implented into the game to begin with.

Originally posted by Rad Blackrose
... there's a convention you're not using that you so rabidly promote in your posts: the mute button. Use it and shut up.


You clearly, possibly intentionally, missed the following:


Thankfully, Valve included an /ignore function, so it really isn't that much of a problem. More of an inconvenience.


Be attentive when reading, or go back to your normal silence. Inattention is as rabid as chat or sound selector spam.

The "spam/honor code/comms" issue is a dead horse really. It's a simple dilemma solved easily: The need for communication online v. the need to restrict spam. Easily fixed with user-controlled ignore. The old gray mare ain't quite what she used to be.

Anyway, looking back at Stormhammers's excellent "Stormy’s Jedi Knight 4 Wishlist" on 28 April. I have to echo how good those ideas are. I especially like Stormy's idea of 'arbitrarily deformable geometry' as found in Red Faction. This would be a perfect way to extend the Jedi gaming idea, and focus level design in an innovative direction.

I also like his idea of more environment/incidental information terminals and interaction throughout the game level, as found especially in the Jupiter-engine type games (NOLF1 & 2, TRON 2.0, AvP2, etc.)

And tearing objects from walls and hurling them at your foe? Too much fun! Especially if you have deformable walls, where you could use the Force push walls over, tear holes in structures, levitate chunks of debris, and throw them at targets.