You can use the in-game chat as just like local chat with changing local-chat-mode to true in the config.yml. It works just like the regular chat but only players nearby will be able to see it. (Message distance is same with /local chat)
Auto punctuation has now been replaced to text formatting. In addition to auto punctuation, this feature is now also changes the first letter of the message to uppercase.
Role Play Basics (/rpb) command has been replaced with graphical user interface (GUI). Now you can see message distances, message colors and feature modes (local chat, text formatting etc.) in the game without checking the config.yml. For now, you can't change the settings in the GUI but it will be available in the future. (Sooner than you think I HOPE )