Forums » Suggestions
Chat system/UI revamp
First, a note about me: I come from playing a lot of fantasy-type MMORPGs, which typically have a very different UI system from VO's, so a lot of my complaints probably have to do with not being accustomed to the quirks inherent in VO. I'm used to being able to place windows where I want to, with lots of options regarding content, appearance and layout. I realize that there are aspects to this game that make that sort of UI horribly inconvenient, and probably not very useful.
After logging in last night and being treated to the highly spam-filled conversation in 100 last night, I stumbled on what I think might be a few shortcomings of the chat system:
It's an inconvenience to have to leave 100 in order to make guild/group chat readable when 100 gets spammy. In addition, there's no way to go back and look over what you might have missed while you were out of the channel. It would be nice to be able to break different channels out into their own tabs, with some sort of indicator for when a channel contains unviewed messages (similar to The Bar).
There's no in-game list of the channels (or is there? - as I typed this I realized that I did not check "help" for the information). Couldn't the dedicated channels (nation chat, roleplay, etc) be selectable from a menu somewhere, to make locating and joining these channels easier for new players?
Is "system" chat available in the main HUD? This seems like it would be a great thing for new players, who might tend to be in the same systems together during their tutorials and stuff.
What about a "region" chat. This would be different than the nation specific chat, in that your chat would be specific to the nation space you're in - Itani, Serco, UIT, or gray.
If a tab system were introduced, it would be nice if there were a way to route chat from specific players to different tabs. What I'm envisioning here is a situation where one player is being spammy, but I don't want to /ignore them, for whatever reason. So, rather than lose their chat altogether, I could just create a tab that I dump chat from spammy people into - like an "ignored" channel, of sorts.
I think that's all I was thinking last night . . . I'm sure some of it is unnecessary, but I do think the chat system needs some tweaking, and some of these ideas are on the right track.
After logging in last night and being treated to the highly spam-filled conversation in 100 last night, I stumbled on what I think might be a few shortcomings of the chat system:
It's an inconvenience to have to leave 100 in order to make guild/group chat readable when 100 gets spammy. In addition, there's no way to go back and look over what you might have missed while you were out of the channel. It would be nice to be able to break different channels out into their own tabs, with some sort of indicator for when a channel contains unviewed messages (similar to The Bar).
There's no in-game list of the channels (or is there? - as I typed this I realized that I did not check "help" for the information). Couldn't the dedicated channels (nation chat, roleplay, etc) be selectable from a menu somewhere, to make locating and joining these channels easier for new players?
Is "system" chat available in the main HUD? This seems like it would be a great thing for new players, who might tend to be in the same systems together during their tutorials and stuff.
What about a "region" chat. This would be different than the nation specific chat, in that your chat would be specific to the nation space you're in - Itani, Serco, UIT, or gray.
If a tab system were introduced, it would be nice if there were a way to route chat from specific players to different tabs. What I'm envisioning here is a situation where one player is being spammy, but I don't want to /ignore them, for whatever reason. So, rather than lose their chat altogether, I could just create a tab that I dump chat from spammy people into - like an "ignored" channel, of sorts.
I think that's all I was thinking last night . . . I'm sure some of it is unnecessary, but I do think the chat system needs some tweaking, and some of these ideas are on the right track.
Hmm, just saw the "Can't we all just get along" thread - seems a lot of this has been discussed very recently.
Yeah, tabbed chat is a good idea, although there are a few kinks to work out before implementing it.