So, I’m curious. What do people still use in-game mail for? I know that PMs and jobs and notices have replaced a lot, but what’s left?
I use it for IC messages that aren’t texts. Or for trying to get a group of people to sign up for a whenisgood when some of them aren’t currently online. And sometimes just for sending messages that could easily be PMs, because I’m old-school and I can’t help muscle memory.
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When I need to make sure a select group of people see a message. Mostly for scheduling purposes.
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All the things mentioned above, also for longer things than a couple lines that could be a PM. I dunno about other people, but I like to send longer IC messages, OOC messages, and generally organize stuff as a player with my mails. Propose ideas, generally anything that’s more meaty that tweet length. Pitches, between plot info (PrPs), that kinda thing.
I even still use it when I’m staff somewhere for some of the same things. Mainly player-side usage tho. 
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I’m curious by these parts of the comments:
@Roadspike : when some of them aren’t currently online
@KarmaBum : when I need to make sure a select group of people see a message
PMs are just as easily seen as mails - probably moreso if people ever use the play screen, and they work just as well when someone’s not online. Is this just a habit thing, or is there some tangible difference I’m mising.
PMs eventually time-out. Where mail is forever.
Mail also feels more official. I use Teams and I use Outlook; some things are appropriate for an IM, and some need an email, and some need a full-on live-chat - and some need a mail as a follow-up to an IM which led to a live-chat.
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I use mail to send lengthier messages that include plot information (particularly when they are player-to-player plots rather than staff-run plots), links to WhenIsGood for scheduling, or other information that I might want to hold onto for a long time and not have to go digging through my PMs to find. I delete all my mail save for the particular items I want to hold onto for as long as I need them. I can’t delete or clean up my PMs at all and I don’t want to spam people with big paragraphs of text in their PMs. Particularly if they are client users and it’s going to fill their screens and then be hard for them to go back and find and reference.
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Just what KarmaBum and Clockwork said. If it’s something that a player might want to reference later, I like to send it via mail. Player-run plot information is an excellent example. And yeah, sometimes folks don’t notice PMs – sometimes -I- don’t notice PMs, but that’s a player problem, not a design problem.
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I used to use mail a ton for scheduling, but now I’ve kinda migrated to using PMs/pages (or request notes if that’s applicable). There are still things I prefer it for, particularly longer-form IC or OOC messages if I don’t have access to the req system (like if I’m sending something like an email IC) but I find the interface a little clunky. I sorta wish it behaved more like the jobs where you saw the conversation string on a page, but I don’t know if anyone else would like that. I do think something like it is better for longer-form IC communication that’s just between certain PCs but idk if mail as it exists is perfect for that.
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I still use mail for quite a bit of OOC stuff. It’s permanent and can be categorized by the subject line.
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