Chat UI feedback

i'm the only one that must do a font-resize to 12pixel every day?

 

I don't change mine Gatsu. Is it that you can't see the words well? I don't like that our talking to other players is mixed in with the npc chat and combat chat etc, but when I find chat from others I can read it fine.

 

I changed mine to 14px and it has stayed that way ever since. I also do not kill the chat tab once I change the options on it (that little x just wipes out everything).

Like always, thanks everyone for the additional input. We'll have a decent chat experience someday!

 

dreaming: something like old-UO chat that can be used on cities... movement and chat together...
when right mouse is pressed .. direct output of keys to player chat (not to npcs..) and player running on direction of mouse cursor (this by a flag on options)

i love to enter on a city and do some "HI!" "HELLO" to people without stop my walk
on this phase of game seems that all "speaking players" are STONED.

this can be do very fast just now... when all 2 buttons of mouse are pressed.. just redirect all keyboard output to chat ... (maybe multiline chat on real world like UO ... that has 4 lines if i remember well)

P.S. maybe an option to reduce font size on NAMES/CHAT on the 3d renderer

 

Links in chat shouldn't be clickable. Opens space for goldseller or other badboys to lead to bad websites

 

As long as I can copy/paste them (with other text) I am happy.

 

Hello! This is a lot of good feedback. I agree that the Chat UI needs a lot of improvement, because it is a very essential part of the game. It has been a bit neglected as we work on new features.

I've created a task to work on improvements and have included a link to this thread. It will be a process, so not everything can happen at once, but I hope to work on it over time. To start, I just implemented the CTRL + Arrow Key functionality to move the cursor around and skip whole words.

 

I am in profound agreement that the incremental build and release processes that you are using at Portalarium is one of the best systems for open and responsive development I've ever seen publicly used.

Thanks so much for chiming in here.

 

I may have missed this in the posts above - did you have anyplace the option to save your chat files?

The way it works now, I sometimes want to go back to see what the name of the player was that I spoke with before I fought those wolves or whatnot, and of course, it's never there because the chat window, even when enlarged, only shows so much.

Never mind!! I found it - #17.

(That's what I get for trying to read quickly.)

 

Kudos to Portalarium

I also would like to add the possibility of having an audio "ding" if someone near me types a /local message or anyone sends me a whisper

Too often a new player is trying to get someone's attention by chatting and everyone around has some other thing holding their attention

Obviously this would need to be optional and not ding too many times per minute for a long local conversation

I know that if all of the other items are implemented, this may not be necessary, but it is nice to have options and this one might be very easy to implement in the interest of helping players new to the game - also mega agreement on no global chat - just my 2 cents

 

Thank you BurningToad for listening. We just don't always know if someone has written to us if we are doing something else, there is no ding or up in the right hand corner it could say you have a message, but really split windows separating those messages would feel better, with a flashing tab to see them at least. Something lol and again thank you so much.

 

This post deserves more likes.

 

Suggestion:
- clickable small area/button on the chat window that opens the emote menu for selecting an emote via mouse.
- Copy marked text from chat window into the clipboard (e.g. mark text > rightclick > menu > copy selected text)

 

I would personally see this falling into #23.

Thanks for the additional feedback, I do try to consider everyone's input.

 

Ok - it doesn't seem the same to me, but I am very weak with emotes. If the 'ding' is not enabled by default, I can't see many people going to the trouble to set up a filter for all /local and whisper text to make them do an emote (if I understand the item correctly). And then we'd be at the same spot we are now where a new player chatting to local in a crowd of people talking to a vendor thinks they are being ignored.

I'm just trying to improve the experience for new players based on what it was like for me the first day.

thanks

 

Time for elaboration! (I love this part because it means I'm not giving unsolicited feedback)

So here are my thoughts on chat tab (window) notifications. It should be a standard feature that if any of your chat windows receive new updates, they should highlight and subtly pulse. Nothing too annoying or intrusive, just something that we can become accustomed to seeing that will let us know there is new stuff to read. This naturally means that if you have a tab setup for specific filters (just like now) those will be the things that will alert. Let's say you do not wish to participate in Local chat messages, you would not see any alerts because that would never be a window or tab that receives an update.

Now, if we get a few of the IRC-like options added (highlights, name-click, etc), then I think a nice feature would be an optional "You were mentioned" sound. I would want that to be both optional, and discreet. I'd like to add that and attribute the suggestion to you Hraw.

 

Thanks but I didn't need/want anything attributed to me

I just perceive new players struggling and even if an acclimated player tries to communicate with them, it usually doesn't work well. Highlighting and pulsing are great ideas also - the key is not fostering a bad first impression, a lot of new players are trying SotA right now and it very well could increase with each Release going forward. We don't want new players feeling ignored because either they or the acclimated players around them are having one-sided conversations (because the other side is oblivious). This thread and community is awesome - I hope we are turning away a minimum of new players due to that lonely feeling some are getting.

 

While these are all good ideas, here is what I was really asking about...
My concern is the dual competing ideas of WASD movement and chatting with Players (much less NPC's).
I am sick of jumping and/or opening closing windows when I alternately attempt to move or do stuff.

I have already forced an "Alt-Reset" into the game controls, such that you must hit ALT+I to open/close you inventory, but this does not stop jumping.
Not one member of the Port team supports what I would personally prefer which is the Ultima IX interface, where a-z & A-Z are ALWAYS chatting, CTRL+Alpha is commands, and the mouse is used for movement, with CTRL & ALT for starfing while mouse moveing.

Bottom line question:
How do we fix the accidental jumping and opening / closing of windows.

Thanks,
Richard / Lord British

 

I would say it all depends on how important movement is whilst typing.

If it is not important then you should only be able to communicate via typing whilst focus is based upon the chat screen (pressing enter or clicking on it). As soon as the focus end (click on the main screen) then you go back to standard controls.

If movement is important whilst typing then then there would really have to be a viable pure mouse option, probably something like right click to move forward with changing direction by moving the mouse left/right. Then there is the added problem of how do you then target, use skills without it impacting on the chat window. Then the biggest issue is players touch typing across the whole keyboard with the 'wrong hand' whilst pay attention to movement of their character.

In truth I don't believe typing and movement is viable. There would need to be voice integrated for it to become an option..........until that day I will probably just stick with ventrilo

 

I support the Ultima IX way of controls my liege!