First of all I’d like to acknowledge the existence of 3rd party tools for checking and sending EVEmail. CCP generally should not do what 3rd party developers themselves are perfectly capable of doing (often better), particularly when it has already been done. However, just as when CCP introduced fitting simulation in game despite the existence of far superior 3rd party fitting tools, I believe there is strong justification for the EVE Forums having EVEmail integration as part of its UI/UX.
A lot of forum discussions (often held in realtime) merit private messages between users instead of or in addition to discussions on the forums themselves (often times as a collaboration to the thread discussion), but these users - particularly those using forum alts that don’t actually log into the game - won’t be notified that they have received such a message unless they were already logged into the game or simultaneously using a 3rd party tool or EVE Portal from which to receive notifications. Most EVE players, however, do not use out-of-game EVEmail tools.
Currently the only way to ‘ensure’ this kind of private interaction is to tag users and say “I sent you an EVEmail”, which is awkward at best and often untimely in relation to the progression of relevant forum threads when the EVEmails get read and responded to, if ever. Forum users respond to forum notifications, but not necessarily EVEmails in-game or from 3rd party tools; incorporating EVEmail into forums brings EVEmail notifications to their attention so they can respond accordingly, and makes it more convenient for them to send EVEmails of their own.
Pssst. EVE Portal isn’t a third party tool - it’s produced directly by CCP (1st party).
I would love to see EVEmail access added to the forums; the EVE Portal interface is cumbersome (mobile typing is a PITA). BUT, there are some minimal QoL requirements:
A) it can be used to send 1-1 messages only (I do NOT want a deal with extra mass mails generated out-of-game);
B) is subject to a time limit to prevent spam;
C) your forum ignore list AND EVE Online block lists both apply to still restrict messages that can be sent to you.
Assuming the forum software is capable of the above, two thumbs up from me.
I personally don’t see the need to restrict EVEmail to utilize forum-specific restrictions. There’s no reason why it can’t be a full-fledged experience, at which point EVE Forums becomes a centralized communications hub for communicating with other players through official mediums (by contrast, EVE Reddit and EVE Reddit Discord are not owned or moderated by CCP and are not included nor would they be expected to be). I’m not saying that it should be able to do everything you can do in-game, but to add forum-specific restrictions is going overboard in my opinion. If you feel the need for that, you can always use the in-game block mechanism, and the EVEmail client integrated in the forums should permit you to block/unblock users respectively using the same mechanism.
My listed caveats are based around prior experiences with forum-based private messaging - regardless of whether it is leveraging an in-game mail system or a separate forum messaging system, players get all kinds of extra ill-mannered when they can private message you from the convenience of the game’s website without having to boot up the game. Especially to ‘get the last word’ with relation to an ongoing argument - too much work to log into the game just to snark someone out, but hey, if they can suddenly start EVE-mailing people from the website, they can still get their point across even if the player took the time to Ignore them on the forum interface.
I suspect this capacity for idiocy is the reason the forum doesn’t have private messaging enabled right now for non-CCP team members.
I consider this to be one of the benefits: many of the “last words” don’t belong on the forums (admittedly some of them do), and once they are sent in EVEmail, they’re a lot easier to ignore and therefore terminate since there’s no face in need of saving. There are also some conversations - not undesired ones - that should continue alongside a thread, or after a thread is closed. At
CCP used to have a first-party EVEmail client on a website called EVE Gate that had some other features (eg. “posts” like Twitter); however, it wasn’t integrated into forums and was discontinued due to underutilization. I don’t think the presence or absence of EVEmail is at all related to “capacity for idiocy”, I think it is a combination of “never came up” and “never became a priority”. Given the ability to ignore EVEmails to terminate private convos more easily than convos via threads, and the ability to block harassing players, I think the pros vastly outweigh the cons.
Go ahead. Have the last word. Let this thread go on forever. Or EVEmail me and we can take it outside…
On the techno side, doesn’t this idea overlap the area of the in-game internet browser which was removed? I’d much rather have that returned than this mail idea implemented. I think they were trying to lower the profile bandwidth-wise with that change. Is the feature proposed by the OP something that would open that can of worms?
There is zero overlap, since this is not implemented in-game. The objective is NOT to bring forums into the game, it’s to bring EVEmail onto the forums out of game. IGB was horrible for numerous reasons - even if security concerns was addressed and maintenance costs (manpower, etc) were zero, it was still horrible. CCP has made a firm commitment to never bring it back, and I applaud them for it.
IGB is not the topic being discussed, however. If you want to discuss it, feel free to EVEmail me
Oh, but if you read what I said you would have noticed I wasn’t discussing the IGB. I was asking what sort of tech would be involved. You ARE saying using the in-game mail (let’s call that the IGM) to communicate directly on the forum board? At least, that’s what it seemed like to ME.
But, if you need someone to discuss with you privately the IGB, ask on the forum. I’m sure someone will.
The bandwidth profile of EVEmail is super low. It’s also stupid easy to implement - that’s why there are so many third party tools that exist for it. Like, it’s the equivalent of the “Hello World” program to code up an EVEmail client when devs are using ESI for the first time.
(There’s no need to call it IGM - It already has an unambiguous name: EVEmail. And I have zero interest in discussing IGB; my thoughts on the subject have been well documented on the forums in the past, and elsewhere.)
