Offline SMS to Discord

[Smilesville]

Short description: Allow SMS messages sent offline to be linked to discord accounts.
 

Detailed description: Not sure if this is something we actually want to go ahead with, but we have the technology, so may as well put it out there and see what we all think about it. Just like business ads go to the GTAW discord, I presume it wouldn't be a giant leap to route offline text messages to an individual player's discord to be treated as IC receipt of a message. This would, of course, only work so long as the phone was in the character's inventory.

 

Returning SMS messages seems like it would be a bit of a complicated feature to implement, but I doubt it's truly outside the realm of possibility.
 

Commands to add: /linkmyphone [name/number] [discord acct]; alternatively N/A (done through UCP)
 

Items to add: N/A
 

How would your suggestion improve the server?
While we do have offline SMS's, the real-time notification of incoming messages could make a big difference and allow easier get-togethers - as well as reduce the narrative dissonance where an individual part of a large organization finds themselves uncharacteristically the only one online at a given time. No one goes anywhere without their phones nowadays, and this would be effective in simulating that.
 

Additional information: N/A

[Marksman]

No thanks.

 

I'd rather just have an offline inbox. You log in and your phone gets a notification, you have unopened text messages.

[Griz]

I think this is an awesome idea! I do wonder what the repercussions would be should that player's phone get lost / stolen / changed. Perhaps there could be an auto-disconnect when the player moves the phone out of their inventory. For example, if they put it in their house, it gets stolen, or just simply leaves the player's inventory, it would automatically remove the "/linkmyphone" tie. I'm not a developer, and I don't know how any of that works. Either way, it would be cool and would definitely help keep things going from a continuity standpoint!  That, and, it could be optional. 

Edited October 9, 2020 by Griz

[Ms KarMagick 🖤]

HUGE +1 on this, especially with what Griz said ~

Edit: For this to be used and not abused, sending notifications via discord to random people, it should be just: "/linkmyphone" with no arguments to the command. It grabs your active from number from your current main phone (/setmainphone) and your Discord tag from the UCP, which means having to link your Discord to your UCP account.

Edit 2: On a development side of things; This is easily doable. It only requires the player to 1) Link their Discord via the UCP, 2) Being in the GTA.W Discord, so the Discord bot shares a mutual server with the Discord account, allowing it to message the person. I've worked plenty with the Discord API (not that I can make bots myself) and this is 100% doable. Just gotta link said bot to in game events and it's golden.

Edited October 9, 2020 by KarMagick

[Tree]

I'd prefer to just have offline texting and for the texts to be present when you log back into game.

[joshua]

it's a decent concept and considering it'd be completely optional, if the ability is there to create it then i can't see it being a bad thing at all! especially as i'm sure a lot of people would make use of it.

 

but overall as others have said, i'd like offline messaging back tbh. i can't quite remember why they removed it to begin with, but it was nice to log in and see what people had texted while you were offline, and still be able to communicate like that even if both of you are coming online and offline at different times.

[bncal]

5 minutes ago, Tree said:

I'd prefer to just have offline texting and for the texts to be present when you log back into game.

^

[ingenv]

7 minutes ago, joshua said:

 i'd like offline messaging back tbh. i can't quite remember why they removed it to begin with, but it was nice to log in and see what people had texted while you were offline, and still be able to communicate like that even if both of you are coming online and offline at different times.

This. ??

[effion]

For the folks saying "bring back offline texting instead"

 

 

With that being said, only devs will be able to tell how feasible this really is. Personally, I'd love such a feature.

[HerpToTheDerp]

This sounds super useful. I know they have some API's set up between discord and in game already too. I'd totally love to see this suggestion in place.