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Chat improvements
Ok, I have been called the queen of chat, chatmistress (both in a nice way), and who knows what else...Thanks for the compliments, but I still mistell more than most of you :P ...but I got to thinking (oh no, Cat is thinking, head for the bunker!), "maybe there is a neat, simple way to make it even MORE reliable and useful?"
Many of you/us use a messenger program to send messages, as the chat client still leaves much to be desired...So instead of or addition to that, for Urgent tells, why not have a way to add a sound to those on your preferred buddy list, or even make a third (pageable) section for those who can always have extra special access to you, so when they send you a tell you get a sound like a beeper, so if you are fighting you know that it is urgent. Give us also the option to use sounds or not, so if it is not urgent, we will not annoy the person at the other end...Seems with the addition of voices, this would be even easier now...
I also have seen some using a script or proggy to say "hi, I am in a mission getting pummelled now but will get to you as soon as I can" message, instead of having to ie and use the "User is currently AFK." Having a set of buttons or scripts to automagically respond depending on what we are doing when we might be covered up with battle spam or tells would be nice.
Lastly, as FunCom is adding more and more irritating and potentially useless messages to our chat window, please remember that some of us will always need/want a way to turn it ALL off, and you have added some that we cannot remove or ignore...thanks ;)
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Nice ideas, Cat! Where have you been? I want to turn you to leet!
/me changes to his Neleb's Nano-circuit Robe and recharges nanos...
CAT? Come here.... I know that you are somewhere here...
One additional suggestion to Cat's great-uber-leet suggestions:
I am calling this "prioritized chat message scrolling"... I have seen this somewhere, but I don't remember where :(
PROBLEM: When player is fighting against other players or mobs (or doing something else) which cause continuus flow of status messages (=spam) to chat window, he/she doesn't have necessary time to read those messages. This might cause that player "miss" important chat message (for example /tell from other player or server message).
SOLUTION 1: "Multiple chat windows" (bad solution, I think)
Player can open multiple chat windows. This way different message types can be directed to different windows.
For example: player could configure that chat window 1 shows all messages and chat window 2 only /tell, vicinity (from player) and server messages. This way player could see how battle is going in chat window 1 and read all important messages in chat window 2.
Problems in solution 1: Windowing is taking lot's of space from user interface and graphics - chat windows are either showing less messages at time or taking more space. Also player need to configure chatting windows to receive different kind messages, move and resize them.
SOLUTION 2: "prioritized chat message scrolling" (my suggestion)
Player can change from settings how long each message should be visible in the chat window at ideal case. If topmost message in the chat window have been visible this "ideal" time in the window and a new message is received, topmost message scrolls out from the chat window normally. But if topmost message has been visible less than "ideal time", lowest priority message starting from the top is removed from the chat window.
For example: Message "A" is a "tell message" with priority 2 and it is topmost message in the chat window. Under message A there is another tell message "B" (with same priority). After that there is a message "C", which is "OOC channel message" with priority 1. And then there is a message "D", which is "battle report message" (spam) with priority 0. So chat windows contents would be:
1: Message A (tell message - priority 2)
2: Message B (tell message - priority 2)
3: Message C (OOC channel message - priority 1)
4: Message D (battle report message- priority 0)
5: Message Y
6: ...
N: Message X
When client receives new chat message it will first check: How long topmost message (A) have been visible for the player. Let's assume that it have been visible 1 second (player is currently fighting). Player have set in the settings that ideal time for message visibility is 10 seconds. So message A hasn't been visible long enough.
Because message A's priority is higher than 0, client tries to find message with lower priority. Message B's priority is same with A, and because it isn't topmost message it actually have been visible less time than message A. So client shouldn't remove message B before A from the chat window.
However message C's priority is lower than message A. So client should remove message C (regardless how long message C have been visible) from the chat window before removing message A (or B). But because message C's priority is still higher than 0, client continues to next message D.
Because D's prioriority is lower than the message C's, client should remove message D from the chat window instead of message C. And because message D's priority is lowest possible (0), it can safely remove message from the chat window.
So when message D is removed and new message is added to chat window, window's contents would be:
1: Message A (tell message - priority 2)
2: Message B (tell message - priority 2)
3: Message C (OOC channel message - priority 1)
4: Message Y
5: ....
N-1: Message X
N: New message
Problems in solution 2: It is possible that is new message's priority is lowest in the chat window, so it is newer going to be visible for player -> solution: either a new message is exluded from the priorization process or there is "protected" area in the bottom of the chat window where priorization is not used.
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