Chat window is disaster

So, the chat window is complete disaster and whole bucket of pain to use:

- It clears it self quite unpredictably (zone to overlay map change, whatever whatever - I just know that I can hardly find information from three minutes ago)

- No chat bubble over avatars head when in party chat / whisper - do we really have to stay there all "silent" from RP point of view? Do I really have to look into chat window while we are exploring dungeon? It does not maky any sense to me and I completly ignore any party chat and use /local instead

- No chat tab flash when you got whisped, party chatted, or any other way - most of the time I dont even know someone is writing to me, because I am in diffent chat window, which switched automatically to it self and is cleared now .... disaster

- No chance to change the background transparency so I have to watch the "dark box" ruining my world experience

- When pinned the window disappears and you can only bring it back by hitting Enter key (or maybe some hotkey) ... it should automatically appear again when there is new content

- NPC conversations in chat .... It is very unpolished and feels very "forced" - I like the idea, but thats about it....

 

as for NPC converstaions - why dont they display their lines in chat bubble that appears only to player in dialogue?

I really hate to turn my eyes into chat instead of looking at the guy I am talking with ... you made effort with nice zoom-in conversation scene, dont make me look down into the right bottom corner of my screen...

 

I agree. Yes we have discussed it before many times. Hopefully it will be revamped someday. There may be an option in the settings regarding chat bubbles so check that out. I also hate hunting for when someone has written to me through all the other noise going on in the chat window. Well I do use whisper and party chat sometimes since you can talk at a distance to someone perhaps who has run past you or if you wanted to say hello back and they have already gone by since I was too slow responding. Also you can make the chat window pretty small and move it around, but I know it needs work still. Welcome to Shrouds czcore also. **cheers**

 

Welcome pirAte gAmbit!

 

Yes, all of the above. But devs already stated often they want to iterate on chat window - which is largely in its original state, without any love being applied since dawn of civilization.

Regarding the unpredictable clearing, tho: keep in mind the chat window has a limite scrollback buffer. And the buffer keeps EVERYTHING you receive, even if you filter it out with your filters.

So, for example, if you end near plagued NPCs/PCs, and they spam your chat window with their "xxx received yyy damage from plague", even if you filter the messages, they will fill up your buffer, and older lines (or all of them!) will be cleared for no apparent reason. Been there, done that!

Regarding chat bubble: thorny issue. Chat bubbles "stay on" for a certain time, while chat lines in chat window can scroll past very, very quickly. So, it becomes also a matter of synchronization between the two. If you need to know something as soon as it happens (or is said, like a countdown in a competition!), your best bet is still to look at the black box!

All other aspects will hopefully be iterated when the time for chat love will come. And it will come, because devs themselves are unsatisfied with it.

 

I am very glad to hear this, thanks for your responce peeps.

 

/signed

Good opening post.

 

Soooooooo many travelers I pass that I wish I had the dexterity to simply say "Hey!" to as they roll on by...unfortunately the interface and implementation aren't optimal for these types of spontaneous interactions.

 

One of the few good quick keys in EverQuest (and most other MMOs) is the 'H'ail,where you can quickly target someone and call them out by name. At least it's a good way to get attention. I'm hoping for something like that here.

 

The current iteration of the conversation system does not encourage conversation amongst players

 

I know and it happens to me. I sometimes will right click them and add to friends and whisper later since whispers show away from the person as they are on their way. A pretty easy, not the best way but what we have, is to just /l to get back to local chat or x out of whispering from that person. I sure hope it improves some day though.

 

Would it be to far off the bat that we could talk and the words are typed?? Dragon Type thing?

 

Great feedback, and the good news is BurningToad has a task open just for chat ui improvements!

You can see me earlier feedback here: https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/forum/index.php?threads/chat-ui-feedback.23761/

 

You can already do this by using 3rd party applications, but voice recognition is still not reliable enough for something like that

Except you use pre-set phrases, my voice and hotkey macro tool VoiceMacro has this function "Speech to text" where you can define several "chat phrases" and send them to a chat window via voice commands, or you can use hotkeys to start macros that sends pre-set phrases to a chat window

 

It would be easier to just have voice chat in "push to talk" style...you would limit the voice chat according to your needs (friends only, guild only, public ...)