Chat

The Comms is the chat dock in the bottom-right corner of every page. It holds the live channels and your direct messages, so you never have to leave what you're doing to talk. On a phone it opens as a full-screen sheet.

Frequencies

Each channel is a frequency with its own color and icon. The dock along the bottom of the screen has one button per frequency, and the open panel names the one you're on.

• City — open to everyone, Hero and Villain alike. The scanner posts here (see below).
• Rookie Line — questions welcome. Players staff have made Mentors wear a badge here. Under level 10 it's your first tab.
• Alliance — private to your own Alliance. It only appears if you're in one, and it shows when someone is typing.
• Staff — staff only.
• Direct — your private conversations (see below).

You stay connected to every frequency you can hear, so switching is instant. A frequency shows a count when there are messages you haven't read, and the bell in the panel's header mutes the sound for the one you're on.

Posting

• Anyone can read and post, at any level.
• Start a message with @MaskedMan on any frequency, or tap the mask beside the message box, and The Masked Man answers right there.
• Messages are capped at 280 characters, with a 1.5-second gap between them.
• Staff can switch on slow mode for a channel (5 seconds up to 2 minutes between posts). The send button counts it down for you.
• Racist and homophobic slurs are refused before they're sent, including spaced-out and l33t-speak spellings. The same filter covers direct messages.

What a Message Can Do

Hover a message (or long-press it on a phone) to open its menu:

• React with one of six reactions. Tap the same one again to take it back.
• Reply — your message quotes theirs, and tapping the quote jumps to the original.
• Edit your own message for 2 minutes after sending. It's marked as edited.
• Withdraw your own message. It's replaced with a "message withdrawn" line.
• Report or Block the sender (see Safety).

Type @name to mention a player. Their name becomes a tappable chip, and your message is highlighted for them with a sound. The @ button in the panel's header keeps your last 20 mentions from every frequency you can hear, with a count of new ones; tap one to jump to it. You can also share [player=ID] and [item=ID] as chips, and the forum tags work too: [maskname=ID] and [alliancename=ID] show the current name, and [mask=ID]text[/mask] and [alliance=ID]text[/alliance] link your own text. Game paths such as /gauntlet or /wire turn into buttons. Emoticon shortcodes work. Donators can set bold, italic, underline and a text color for their chat in Settings.

Tap any name to open their card: level, side, alliance, fight rank and whether they're online, with Attack, Message, Add friend, Block and Report.

The Scanner

Dim monospace [SCANNER] lines in City are the city talking: a boss spawning or going down, a captured flag, the nightly Clash result, the Sunday war tally, a new Gauntlet record. They're news, not players.

History

A channel loads its last 20 messages, and Load earlier goes further back. City messages are kept for 7 days, and Alliance and Staff messages for 30 days. Staff can pin one message to the top of a channel.

Direct Messages

Direct messages are your Mailbox: the same conversations, shown live in the dock. A message sent from either place shows up in both.

• Start a conversation by name from the Direct tab, or with Message on a player's card.
• On a desktop a conversation opens as a small window (up to three at once). On a phone it opens full screen.
• You'll see when the other player is typing, and whether your last message was Delivered or Seen.
• Cooldown: once you've both written in a conversation, messages can go every 2 seconds. A new conversation, or one they haven't answered yet, waits 60 seconds between messages. Donators and staff skip the cooldown.
• You can't message a player who has blocked you.

Safety

• Report a message from its menu, or a player from their card, and pick a reason. It goes to the staff reports queue. You can file up to 5 reports every 10 minutes.
• Block a player to hide their chat messages from you, stop their mail and end any friendship. Staff can't be blocked.
• Staff can delete a message, mute a player for a set time, or issue a chat ban. A muted player can still read the channels; a chat-banned player is shut out of them. Either way they keep playing the game normally.
• The site's Game Rules apply in chat just as they do everywhere else.