Location-based in-game Chat (similar to Ingress)

改善/Improvements
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現状/Current Status

Currently, there’s no way to interact with other hunters nearby except through group hunts, and even then, the interaction is very minimal. There’s very little help in allowing hunters to meet each other even when they desire to do so but have no idea where the other player is at.

提案/Suggestion

Ingress, another game by Niantic, has an in-game chat feature that allows players to send and receive messages like a global chat room. The in-game chat feature can filter by the distance as well so that players can limit the number of messages by excluding messages that are sent when the sender was further than the chat filter distance. For example, if I filter the messages to 5km or lesser, if I see any messages there, I know that those players had sent those messages within 5km from my current location. With this information, I can then better understand who are near me and can therefore decide to interact with them.

I always thought that this is one of the defining features of geolocation-based games, and I appreciated this feature in Ingress.

I hope to see such a chat feature in Monster Hunter Now as well, so that we can establish contact with regular players who are not in any of the Campfire groups that I am in or in my friend list (i.e. hunters without prior contact).

The implementation for MHNow can be a single “Chat” button on the field map with the following features:

  1. Has a filter function that stays remembered unless user uninstalls the application or deletes the game data. The filter should allow filtering by distance from the user, so that user can filter the messages by the distance from them when those messages were sent. Similar to Ingress’s chat function.
  2. The Chat button should have a number on it with the number of new messages since the last time user has opened it. The new message count can go up to 99, with “99+” displayed when there are more than 99 new messages since the last time user has opened it. The design of the new message count can be similar to the paintball button’s count of marked monsters.
  3. The Chat button can be hidden if the user doesn’t want to use this feature, by having a Setting that controls the visibility and functionality of this Chat feature. If the feature is disabled, none of the relevant functions will be available, whatever that may be (e.g. if it is possible to mention another hunter by their username and cause a notification on their device, when the mentioned user has disabled the chat feature, they will never receive notifications of being mentioned in the chat this way).
  4. The Chat feature should allow a “do not disturb” mode. When enabled, the user will never receive any notifications from the Chat feature.
  5. The Chat feature should be disabled when Streamer Mode is enabled, the same way the Friend List feature is disabled when Streamer Mode is enabled. The disabling of the Chat feature should be similar to point 3.
  6. Messages sent through the Chat feature should allow deletion or editing. Deleted or edited messages should leave a mark on those deleted/edited messages to indicate that the message has been modified since it was sent. For example, deleted messages should still leave a mark in the chat history like 17:38 Stampeder: <message deleted> (the message should be formatted in a way that cannot be reproduced by players and therefore it is clear that it is a system-generated message). This is to reduce the mis-use of the chat feature by leaving indelible marks in the chat history, and if players want to report an abusive player for offensive messages, they can still long-tap on the now-deleted message and report the offensive message, and Niantic should be able to review the reported deleted message and take appropriate disciplinary actions.
  7. Players can report a message for being offensive by long-tapping the target message, included deleted messages by long-tapping on the placeholder message.
  8. If a player chooses to delete their account, prevailing Niantic policies regarding account deletion applies.

I believe this will help build up the local MHNow communities and connect players better by warming up through digital interaction before committing to physical interactions.

TL;DR: Import the in-game chat feature from Ingress to MHNow.