It is a feature on other dip site. You tick a box to select whom the message is intended.

Multi-chat is a feature I always wanted to implement here, but I'm unsure about a good way to integrate this here.
That said using a chat-room would only be possible for a special-rules-game, so no one has a disadvantage because he can't use that communication.

"Because that would eliminate a lot of the distrust in single chats."


Yes I've played a game on that site, they use a totally different messaging system. The feature is nice, but it could take you a lot to search back for older messages because the list of messages sent/received is a mess. Also, they play only Classic, so only 7-players games. Imagine what on variants with more than 7 players.


When I need to start a conference here I usually type a message like (say I'm England):

SAME MESSAGE TO FRANCE AND ITALY
Hey mates, how about a Western Triple?

to one of them and then I Copy/Paste it on the other player's chat. It takes 3 seconds.

The issue with this is that they can't ever be 100% sure that there aren't differences in the two messages and this is what Synapse is talking about when he says "distrust" I assume. Who could say you didn't "edited" your messages?

A solution here, with our messaging system, could be to have the system to "certify" whether a message (the exact message) has been sent to other players. Explaining it roughly, you'd still have to copy/paste in different chats your message, but after the refresh you'd get a GM automatic message like "You sent this message to Italy also" in French chat and "You sent this message to France also" in the Italian chat.
Obviously the automatic message would be different for them, the French would read "England sent this message to Italy too" and Italy "England sent this message to France too".

IDK if this would be feasible and what effort it would require.
The main issue I see with it is that it *wouldn't* eliminate the distrust in single chats. Yes, sorry Synapse.
Because even if this was implemented, after sent this message to France and Italy:
"Hey mates, how about a Western Triple?"
and the system certified England actually sent that message to both I & F, then England could send this other message to Italy one minute later:
"Please ignore my Western Triple proposal. How about we both attack France?"
:D

That was the first thing I noticed on that site (stabbersomething.com or so), just 2 minutes after I shouted "WOW, what a great feature!"
Everyone worked around it and used it just to tell more credible lies. :)

So I'd be ok with such feature but - if I'm not missing anything - I wouldn't expect it will resolve the issue which is the reason why you are asking it, Synapse.

I often "copy paste" other peoples messages but they're completely false.

Some thoughts on this (as this is IMHO really a nice to have feature).

1. An additional Chat-Tab names MultiMessaging
2. It's empty if you open it, but has a checkbox for each country
3. You select 2 or more countries and press refresh.
4. You get the messages from both countries merged in one chat and a chatbox that will send the message to all these countries (maybe with an automated "To: Italy and France) as a system message.

More ideas?

If you pay for a vDip GOLD account you can see which chats other players have open, haha

Oli, PLEASE let's not do this !


Indeed, does anybody realize how many chat windows there would be ?

Guaroz has written :

"it could take you a lot to search back for older messages because the list of messages sent/received is a mess."

Well, I can tell you that it would me MUCH worse than a mess : it would be a LIVING HELL !


In a 5 player-game, for example, we would already have 16 (SIXTEEN !) chat windows !


The number of possible combinations of n elements out of a group of m elements is equal to :

█████ n
█
█ = m ! / ((m-n) ! n !)
█
█████ m

Because of the format of this window, I will use the notation C(n;m), for clarity reason.


For example, in a 7 player-game (m=6 because there are 6 other players) :

We have 1 window for notes.
We have obviously 6 windows to write to 1 other player among the 6 other players. Please note that C(1;m) = m.
We have C(2;6) possibilities to write to 2 players among the 6 other players. C(2;6) = 15.
We have C(3;6) possibilities to write to 3 players among the 6 other players. C(3;6) = 20.
We have C(4;6) possibilities to write to 4 players among the 6 other players. C(4;6) = 15. Please note that C(n;m) =C(m-n;m).
We have C(5;6) possibilities to write to 5 players among the 6 other players. Obviously, C(5;6) = 6
We finally have 1 possibility to write to eveybody else. That is the Global chat window. Please note that C(m;m) = 1

And so, that gives us a total of 1 + 6 + 15 + 20 + 15 + 6 + 1 = 64 chat windows for a 7-player game. SIXTY-FOUR chat windows !


For your information,
- A 3 player-game would still have 4 windows.
- A 4 player-game would have 8 chat windows.
- A 5 player-game would have 16 chat windows.
- A 6 player-game would have 32 chat windows.
- As we have just calculated it, a 7 player-game would have 64 chat windows !

Do I need to go any further ?
In a n-player game, we would have 2^(n-1) chat windows !

Do you realize how many chat windows we would have in a 15-player game ? Or in a 36-player game ?

Maybe just enable the feature for classic to begin with.

I think you should say "could have x chat windows". In reality, there would be only up to a couple multi chats going on for any given player.

Oli your idea sounds great. Would there be a:
5. If you get back to eg. Italy Chat-Tab you'd see only messages between you and Italy included the last one with an automated "To: Italy and France" label.
?
So the MultiMessaging-Tab would work to save you from copy/paste messages, which might take a while if you're want to send the same message to 7 players in a WWIV game.

More ideas.
Say you've just received and read a multi-message and now you want to reply all the 7 players involved in it.
How about something like a "Reply All" button which re-directs you to the MultiMessaging-Tab and:
- Message received would be displayed, so you'd have it under your eyes while typing your reply;
- the other 6 countries + the original sender would be automatically pre-selected, so you'd be safe from selecting-mistakes and also save a little time. It'd be clearly just a pre-selection, you can change it if you wish.

-------

Still, this feature wouldn't eliminate distrust, for the reasons I said before.
No feature would.

@ Ret
Yes that was my worry, but "1. An additional Chat-Tab " should mean only *one*.
I think messages would be replicated in each Personal Chat-Tab involved, which would keep the messages chronology clean and clear. With this in mind I wrote my point #5.
Anyway, let's wait for Oli to make clear this point.

A "Reply All" button would also terribly complicate the messaging system.


@ Guaroz :

You wrote :
"So the MultiMessaging-Tab would work to save you from copy/paste messages, which might take a while if you're want to send the same message to 7 players in a WWIV game."
[YOUR EXACT WORDS]

"might take a while" ? Really ? Please :
1° You CTRL + A and CTRL + C your message after you wrote it, which you should do anyway in order to not lose your message before it is sent. You send it to the first player.
2° Then, you open another's player window. CTRL + V and Send.
3° Repeat step number 2° 5 times for the 5 other players.
Seriously, how long is the extra work for the 6 copied messages ? Maybe 60 seconds ?


@ Oli and @ everybody :

Please consider that I am MOST concerned by this question and that I know exactly what it is to handle MANY messages in a game. Indeed, so far, I have sent 8974 messages during the 14 games that I have finished. I don't think that many players, if there are any, write as many messages per game as I do.

We have now a nice and MOST CLEAR system that already allows complete and complex communication. Let's not make it uselessly terribly complicated !

There's no validity to control V messages.

"France: Let us attack Munich"
"England: "France: Let us attack Tunis"

That's a feature of diplomacy that was missing in the online version; being able to have a conference with more than 1 person.

I would not put to much effort in a multi chat system.

I like the simplicity of the current system that would get lost when you add the possibility to write messages to multiple people at once (as pointed out by Retillion).

And what is the benefit? You do not have to use copy and paste for messages to more than one country. As mentioned above there is no reduction of distrust since you can still send messages to single players that revert your sent words. And isn't the trust aspect an important aspect in Diplomacy anyway? Nothing that must be reduced by the system?

Of course, it is a possibility of the board game to make group talks, but without the possibility to check who leaves the room (or who writes messages to whom), the first is not that essential, anyway.

All in all I understand the request for such a system, however, I do not see the advantages that justify the work and the lost of simplicity of the current system.

Well what if your doing a live game and you want to skype with your opponents?
It is in a way to chat globally and you can also pm a certain one on skype without the others knowing. Its like the in game messaging system but you can talk with your voice. Just a suggestion.

On playdip, you can have a 3way chat

All you should need is a "Multi-chat" option as the last tab after the list of the nations. For the chat history, you select nations with checkboxes and when submitted (not 100% on the UI for that submission) the chat history would load all messages sent by one of you or the selected nations that were sent to everyone else in that group. At that point a send message field would open up to send a group message to all the nations you selected. Definitely could get a little messy if not thought out in greater detail before going ahead with the idea. One big thing to tackle would be how the database could be modified to manage messages with multiple recipients.

What a shock, Retillion is against this.... What's the matter, guy? There's absolutely nothing wrong with this suggestion. Your asinine attempt to diffuse all rational discussion of it with absurd strawmans is a new low, even for you.

The real reason Retillion doesn't like this idea is that it would make it more difficult for him to conceal his dubious behavior. After all it's more difficult to hide the fact that one makes a habit out of offering players bribes of VDip points to take a dive in the game so that he can win. No need to attempt to decipher his formulas. The gist of them are that multiplayer chats risk exposing these schemes exponentially.

Multiplayers chats are found in FTF Dip, PBEM, Postal,a nd other forms on online play. THey are absolutely a valid form of communitcation and an essential part of the game that we miss out on here. It's not a criticism of the site that such methods do not exist as we make due without them, but to ask for them to be considered if possible is perfectly reasonable. If the site's technology do not support this, or if it is too much effort for Oliver, then that's fine. But there is absolutely no gaming/Diplomacy based reason for opposing them.

Anybody can copy/paste to notepad, alter the text, then copy paste that to the person the wish to "copy", so copy paste is unreliable. If the system just had a "send to" set of check boxes and the currently active tab were set, then you could set additional nations the message would go to and the message they received could indicate in the text "sent to: A, B, C..."

The trick though is that to really benefit from having group chats in-game, you should have a place to display the messages in order that were sent exactly among the group. If I had a group conversation with three other nations, it would be a real pain in the ass if I had to click around to three different nations to try to figure out who said what in response to what.

Good point, Y2K. Perhaps an "add chat tab" is in order where you select what nations are in that chat tab then everyone selected gets the tab until the choose to delete it. Kind of a per game custom tabbing system.

Or, and we already have this, a means of seeing all your chats in one place (like the messages tab). Of course, we could add filters to show or hide nations in it.

At play dip, you can select the countries that you want involved in the chat, if I remember correctly.

Yes, I think a group-messaging capability is a big loss here. This was a great feature on the Judges. It really enhances the game and despite the fact you can send an additional message to negate your group message, you do know that the same group message really did go out to others in the group exactly how it was written to you. I think this really helps facilitate group communications.

I'm thinking about merging not only the groupPMs but all PMs with these 3 or more players in that tab.

So if I (Germany) open the MultiTab, select England and France, I get all messages I've send and received to France, all to England and all to both. This should be much clearer than only the messages between all 3. So I can see my PMs to France, even if I'm in the MultiTab.

Example:
2:00 PM: (To: England, France): Let's go against Italy
2:01 PM: (To: France): Ignore my request, just go against England
2:25 PM (From England, To: You and France): Sounds good.
2:30 PM: (From England): I would suggest going against France, ok?
2:35 PM: (From France): Got it.
This conversation would be much more complex if you had to switch between 3 tabs to keep this all going...

If I send a message to France & England they would see the message in their normal chat-window (just with some Preffix eg. "Send to: You and France").
Maybe I make the "Send to: You and France" a clickable link that will open the MultiTab with the involved countries selected.

Also this would make an implementation really easy, as I just could use the normal messaging system.

A single multitab is much, much easier.

Oli's suggestion is pretty good.

Another consideration is just to keep the same number of tabs. For example, borrowing from Oli, under France's tab,

2:00 PM: (To: England, France): Let's go against Italy
2:01 PM: (To: France): Ignore my request, just go against England
2:25 PM (From England, To: You and France): Sounds good.
2:35 PM: (From France): Got it.

England's tab would be:
2:00 PM: (To: England, France): Let's go against Italy
2:25 PM (From England, To: You and France): Sounds good.
2:30 PM: (From England): I would suggest going against France, ok?

This seems more complex than Oil's, but I think it might be easier to follow when there are multiple 3-way conversations going.

@Theodosius: That's how I thought it should work.
+ 1 tab so you can merge all in.

Sounds good to me.

Just my 0.02, but I would personally hate to have all 3 chats in one tab. Especially if you happen to be using the multi chat as a deception in that situation, you'd have lies and truth in the exact same tab. Using the example above, you'd have 3 conversations going on at the same time potentially, with all of them being disjointed and broken up by pieces of the other conversation.

Not only that, but I feel it would be more confusing to have everything in one tab instead of separately in their own tab. Have you ever tried reading a long email chain with a bunch of people in it and then suddenly instead of replying to everyone, someone just replied to you? It's confusing, trust me. It happened quite a few times in the last PBEM game I played, and every single time, I initially thought it was a message to everyone, not just me. It wasn't until a second or third look at it that I noticed. I realize the thought is that the names are going to be right there, but for someone who does lots of diplomacy, I'd still much prefer to keep my private chats private, and my group chats as group chats.

Regarding this statement by Oli:

"This conversation would be much more complex if you had to switch between 3 tabs to keep this all going..."

I respectfully disagree. To me, it's far easier to talk group chats in a group tab, and then do my private wheeling and dealing separately. Especially if I'm using the group chat as a deception, I would find it far easier to keep my "truthful" chats in the normal tabs we have, while the "fake" chat is kept in the group tab. I don't see any reason I wouldn't want it that way.

I played many more-than-1-way-chats games on this site, just by playing private games with people I know 'else from the internet' and using Skype to communicate. I have good memories of these games, in which I grounded group chats for large allyships and spent much time discussing our moves and strategies with my allies. Stabbing didn't become less rewarding; in fact, a stab could had a larger impact due to allies knowing each other's moves.

I see the issue of how to implement more-than-1-way-chats is discussed here. I guess it would be difficult to code, but here an idea:
Couldn't it be made possible to just ground group chats? So, when I am Germany and I want to make a group chat with both France and England in it, I should be able to select these countries from a list, press OK and all three countries see the new-made chat. If you have multiple group chats, the buttons to go to each chat should appear in a field in which you need to scroll if it is too full, so that they don't take away too much space.

Personally, if I'd see all messages to/from one country in the same tab, regardless to which other countries it was sent, I'd become, just like drano, rather confused, especially when I plan with someone to stab a mutual ally together. I'd prefer having different tabs/chats for that.

As my time is very limited it's next to impossible to make a complete new chat-system.
Generating new tabs is next to impossible without some bigger database and usability-changes and I can't do this.
I can do:
Send a message to more than one country at once (in the database I will send the same message just a few times)
Group one or more players in a new PM-display. This is just a small change to the display-code.
Much more complex things are possible, but not with my very tight time-schedule.
.