The extra capabilities for premium players are very important to keeping some money flowing into the site. 

That said, messaging might not be the best capability to discriminate with. 

1) People can send me messages (in-game and directly to my account out of game) but I can't reply. That doesn't just hurt me, it also hurts the premium players who'd like to start a game with me or otherwise carry on a private conversation. 

2) Private messages to make alliances and gang up on people. My personal view is that this should largely be frowned upon, mostly because in traditional risk alliances are public. Even if someone walked out of the room for a conversation, everyone knows which two players are talking. I would personally eliminate in-game private messaging, perhaps with the exception of fogged games. Now, I understand that a lot of people like using private messaging for in game alliances. If we are going to keep them, they give premium players a huge and secret competitive advantage. You can lose a game because two players allied against you, never knew it, and had no chance to argue your case. You may as well have the opportunity to offer your alliance as well. 

3) Capabilities should be mostly about ease of use, number of games, stats, etc. Maybe we can create a new discrimination and eliminate the discrimination in messaging. 

I think you have a good point.  Even the 'perception' that lack of Private messaging ability is too much of a liability could be harmful to the site.

I on the other hand, find the feature to be not much more than a convenience (I avoid alliances), and think the statistics and count feature features are what help me to be a much better and more effective player.

I suspect game count alone is the draw for a majority of Premium Members.

I guess the economist might be asking what % of players buy Premium because they want the feature vs. how many 'potential' Premium members leave the site because they feel too much at a disadvantage without it.

Teams and team games?

ratsy wrote:

Teams and team games?

This has been discussed before, but it was a while ago. I'm not sure but I think non-Premium members can PM in team games.

M57 wrote:

ratsy wrote:

Teams and team games?

This has been discussed before, but it was a while ago. I'm not sure but I think non-Premium members can PM in team games.

Non-Premium's can team message, but not PM, in team games. 

M57 wrote:

I think you have a good point.  Even the 'perception' that lack of Private messaging ability is too much of a liability could be harmful to the site.

I on the other hand, find the feature to be not much more than a convenience (I avoid alliances), and think the statistics and count feature features are what help me to be a much better and more effective player.

I suspect game count alone is the draw for a majority of Premium Members.

I guess the economist might be asking what % of players buy Premium because they want the feature vs. how many 'potential' Premium members leave the site because they feel too much at a disadvantage without it.

Thanks for the reply. I agree with you that the stats and count features are extremely helpful. I suppose a dedicated non-premium could do the counts him or herself, but they are a pretty big incentive to buy premium membership. 

What do you think about whether it would be preferable to extend PM to all or eliminate PM in-game?

all the talks we've had in the past have a conclusion of keeping it the way it is. not that it's bad to ask again. good things have come of it (like standards getting team messaging capability)

I think a reasonable compromise, would be to allow the game creator to allow/disallow private msgs in game. 

Ozyman wrote:

I think a reasonable compromise, would be to allow the game creator to allow/disallow private msgs in game. 

..but only if they are Premium members, said the tongue to the cheek.

But seriously, what non-Premium Member wouldn't use the disallow setting, and what alliance-loving Premium Member wouldn't avoid games using that setting.  The result would probably be schism.

I'd definitely start games with disallowed PMs, but I guess I'm not "alliance-loving".  But if there is a schism between those who love alliances, and those who don't, isn't that ok?

Ozyman wrote:

I'd definitely start games with disallowed PMs, but I guess I'm not "alliance-loving".  But if there is a schism between those who love alliances, and those who don't, isn't that ok?

What question we should be asking is, "Is membership large enough to support yet another division of players?"

Already, there are players who exclusively play lightning game, 1 day games, 7 day games, fogged games, team games, etc.  Would the feature be extended to tournaments? All to be considered..

I would worry that this particular "division" would be between Standard and Premium, which I think would be unhealthy.

fair enough.

I'm not massively averse to opening up messaging to all players. i've also been thinking about unifying all the messages (private, game, tournament and chat) to make the site more consistent.

tom wrote:

I'm not massively averse to opening up messaging to all players. i've also been thinking about unifying all the messages (private, game, tournament and chat) to make the site more consistent.

Sounds like a good idea to me.

tom wrote:

I'm not massively averse to opening up messaging to all players. i've also been thinking about unifying all the messages (private, game, tournament and chat) to make the site more consistent.

By 'unifying,' do you mean to simply make all types of messaging available to all players? ..or are you talking about somehow consolidating some of the messaging features - like the chat bar, in-game messages, PMs?

M57 wrote:

tom wrote:

I'm not massively averse to opening up messaging to all players. i've also been thinking about unifying all the messages (private, game, tournament and chat) to make the site more consistent.

By 'unifying,' do you mean to simply make all types of messaging available to all players? ..or are you talking about somehow consolidating some of the messaging features - like the chat bar, in-game messages, PMs?

I mean separately to opening up private messaging to all players, I'm thinking it would be beneficial to have a single 'message centre' which includes messages from all those areas.

Sounds cool Tom.  It's been brought up before about wanting to be able to message several players in a single game at the same time.  Would be cool if that was integrated into this.

Amidon37 wrote:

Sounds cool Tom.  It's been brought up before about wanting to be able to message several players in a single game at the same time.  Would be cool if that was integrated into this.

+1

tom wrote:

I mean separately to opening up private messaging to all players, I'm thinking it would be beneficial to have a single 'message centre' which includes messages from all those areas.

This would be in addition to in-game messages being entered and shown in the game and player pages, right?  I'd hate to have to go to some common page with messages from all my games jumbled together...

NewlyIdle wrote:

tom wrote:

I mean separately to opening up private messaging to all players, I'm thinking it would be beneficial to have a single 'message centre' which includes messages from all those areas.

This would be in addition to in-game messages being entered and shown in the game and player pages, right?  I'd hate to have to go to some common page with messages from all my games jumbled together...

Yes - it would just be a single place to view all messages that impacted you in addition to the existing pages.