Curse

arcanemacabre · Aug 21, 2006, 10:15 AM // 10:15

Alright, let me start out by saying that I absolutely hate the current chat system. Alright, hate is a strong word (especially all bolded like that), so let me just say I kinda dislike it... there.

That out of the way, I'm going to suggest a few things I think could be done to make the chat system so much better. These are not terribly big things, so hopefully wouldn't need too much development to make it work. Some ideas are 'plagiarised' to an extent, so I'll just say they are not 'my' ideas in case they have been presented elsewhere.

So here we go:

#1 Trade Channel Improvements

I think everyone can agree that this is a high priority beef we all have with GW. A good percentage of people are calling for an auction house/player shops kind of set up, while the rest are just simply praying for some kind of fix to the circus we call the "Trade channel".

My list of suggestions:

A) Split the channel into two. Have a Buy Channel and a Sell channel. This is a simple fix, easy to do. They already have filters that send WTS and WTB into the trade channel, just send them to their prospective channels. Also, a seller need only advertise, then shut off the sell channel and turn on the buy channel. While they surf for people WTBing, buyers are glancing through the selling channel looking at the seller's stuff. This, of course, works both ways.

B) Introduce "Item Hotlinks". Anyone who has ever played Anarchy Online will know how completely intricate and convenient their chat/trade system is. When you want to show someone an item you have, all you need to do is drag and drop it into the chat window. It shows up automatically as a link to which anyone can click and get a popup of that item's complete information (including skin icon).
I think this feature would be highly useful for trade. Just drag and drop that "Firey Dragon Sword of Shelter" into the chat window after that bit you typed "WTS: ", and it shows up as a link. From there, the developers can have fun with it. It can either display a small box on-scoll-over (like any item in your inventory), or only display the box on-click. Either way.
This idea also can cut down the use of Local Chat-trading, by simply adding a feature that automatically shifts the input to the trade channels when this feature is used (like it does now with WTB and WTS). I should say this feature should be possible in team chat/whisper/alliance/etc., just not Local.

C) District Trading. Basically, this idea is akin to the player shop ideas floating around, but involves (in my opinion) 'sensible' server usage. Basically, allow players to set up a WTS shop in whatever district of whatever town/outpost they're in. This shop has whatever they want in it, at whatever prices they want to offer (possibly even have an auction-like setup, if they wish). This shop only exists in this one district, in this one town, and only when they're there.
Now, to cut down on how long people can do this so they don't clog up the district, set a respectible time limit. For instance, they can have the shop up for 10 minutes, once each hour. Or perhaps 30 minutes, once every 3 hours. Or 1 hour, once a day. Something like that. Maybe to cut down on the chatter, it can be made so that while selling in their shop, they cannot use either the Local or Trade channels to chat.

#2 Local Channel Improvements

A) Find Player by Ctrl-Clicking their name in chat. This can be done in the reverse (Ctrl-Enter while having a Player selected will open the Whisper channel with that Player), this should be able to work this way as well. This can help tremendously with trading and grouping, both. Seems elementary to me.

B) Add a Grouping channel. People LFG and groups LFP can talk away here. If the trade improvements above are added, there shouldn't be too much trading to worry about here, and make it enjoyable for all. This is something that people would need to abide to in order to work, but the more organised, the more likely people will abide. At least, that's how I see it.
A second option, which I have seen posted before, would be an actual grouping dialog box. I thought that was a novel idea, but would of course require much more development than just a simple grouping channel. I am in favor of either one, whichever Anet sees fit they can accomplish.

#3 Chat UI Improvements

A) Chat commands. Nothing too fancy here, just simple chat commands that's been around since the dawn of telnet or IRC. For example, the command '/me' followed by a string of text will act as an emote, in that it will show in the emote channel, but your character performs no actions. This can increase immersion by allowing your character to 'perform' actions limited only by your imagination. Great addition for role players.
Other commands such as: /list all, /list w, /list wmo could give a complete list of all players, all warriors, or all warrior/monks in your district respectively. I'm sure the developers or all you bright forumites full of ideas can come up with all sorts of other commands. This is just a light suggestion.

B) Macros, and a macro bar. Basically, a macro is a user-defined set of commands, that can be activated like a hotkey, or like a mini-program. What I'm suggesting here is the ability to make small macros, like 3 or 4 commands you want activated at the same time, or in succession. For instance, say you want to have your character do the /point emote and have him/her say "Over there!" or "That way!", you could just make a macro that did that, and use it anytime you wanted. The 'macro bar' would essentially be a hotkey bar, much like the skillbar is now, except made only for macros. Just place you newly made macro into a slot, and assign a hotkey to it (or perhaps the hotkeys are assigned as Shift+1, Shift+2, etc.)
The developers can decide however they want the macro encoding to work, but I'm thinking something like: "/macro 1 /point 'Over there!'" This would assign 'macro bar' slot #1 with the macro that causes your character to /point and exclaim "Over there!". Real simple, methinks. Also, if the player really wanted, they could simply type "/point 'Over there!'" and the character would do both of those things at once, without the need of a repeatable macro.
For making a series of emotes and/or text, one could type something like, "/macro 1 /point 'Over there!' /delay 500 /beckon 'Come on!'" The /delay 500 means your character delays for 500 miliseconds (half a second) before performing the next action. In this instance, a macro was made for macro bar slot #1 that causes the character to /point, exclaim "Over there!", wait half a second, then /beckon and exclaim "Come on!"
I believe this macro system could encourage not just a new wave of role playing, but also of more high-end team play where some players (or all) may not have TS or Vent. The possiblities are sky high.

Alright, well that's all I have for now. Started to dry up there at the end. Now, comments, questions, criticism, or just simply more ideas, I welcome them all! Remember, I'm trying to think of useful, yet (as far as I can see) easy enough to implement ideas. Something that won't take too much time to develop, nor too much drag on Anet's servers. Basically, I consider these realistic and quite possible improvements to the chat interface.

Thanks for reading! (if you read the whole thing, have a cookie, I'm aware it's probably too long :P)

Stone Reaver · Aug 21, 2006, 10:22 AM // 10:22

Hey I really like all of your ideas. I wanted to point you to this post which I just made which has a few added things that you might want to petition for too.

Malcus · Aug 21, 2006, 01:33 PM // 13:33

/bump

Awesome suggestions with some serious thought put into them.

Stone Reaver · Aug 21, 2006, 10:05 PM // 22:05

I think that the length and intellectual integrity of this post is preventing it from getting read. I'd like to direct everyone's attention to this thread which is far more inflammatory.

Mars Dragonblade · Aug 21, 2006, 10:46 PM // 22:46

Despite its length, I still read it all. Great ideas, some I have indeed heard of, but I still like them all. I'm always in favour of anything that will to some degree fix the farce that is our current chat options.

/Signed x ∞.

xiaotsu · Aug 21, 2006, 11:21 PM // 23:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stone Reaver

I think that the length and intellectual integrity of this post is preventing it from getting read. I'd like to direct everyone's attention to this thread which is far more inflammatory.

Don't thread-jack please.

I must say, this is very well thought out, I really like the drag+drop the item onto the chat box suggestion. Although, maybe like ctrl+click it in your inventory to do it, since people are ignorant and will be trying to show off their weapons and accidentally drop them, then whine constantly about "ANet's faulty system".

An Auction House is still a better solution, but I really don't see one coming, despite how much people whine for one.

As Mars Dragonblade said;
/Signed x ∞.

ducktape · Aug 21, 2006, 11:40 PM // 23:40

I really like the WTB and WTS channels, it would sure help with trading to tide us over until the actual "trade improvements" are implemented.

/signed

arcanemacabre · Aug 22, 2006, 01:37 AM // 01:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by xiaotsu

I must say, this is very well thought out, I really like the drag+drop the item onto the chat box suggestion. Although, maybe like ctrl+click it in your inventory to do it, since people are ignorant and will be trying to show off their weapons and accidentally drop them, then whine constantly about "ANet's faulty system".

An Auction House is still a better solution, but I really don't see one coming, despite how much people whine for one.

Good point, that might be better. People are already used to Ctrl-Clicking, so the hotlink could just add a new aspect to that function.

I kinda agree about the auction house, as well. My thoughts on that, as I have said, is it just seems like it would be server-intensive as well as requiring lots of development costs. It's in everyone's best interest for Anet to make more money than they lose, so the games and support keep coming.

I appreciate the support so far with my list of suggestions. Does anyone have any more ideas they'd like to add? Think any of my suggestions are bogus? Impossible? Just plain dumb or could be done better? Keep the comments coming!

Stone Reaver · Aug 22, 2006, 01:57 AM // 01:57

An idea I thought of builds on your drag-drop (or the new and improved ctrl-click) selling idea. Instead of it just saying the name or bringing up a link, it could submit the item to a outpost- or district-wide list of links with names that buyers could peruse. This way you'd only have to put things up for sale once per session in an area, which would cut down on spamming. The number of items for sale in a given district or outpost could be restricted, and perhaps even the item type in a given area, so for example only warrior items could be sold in droknars forge, or the like.

This could even be a nightfall only feauture with towns in nightfall designated for specific types of trade, which would be an incentive for people to buy nightfall.

arcanemacabre · Aug 23, 2006, 02:27 AM // 02:27

Bumping my own thread here - trying to get this topic noticed...

Omega X · Aug 23, 2006, 05:00 AM // 05:00

Any kind of good chat improvements. /signed

bigwig · Aug 23, 2006, 07:05 AM // 07:05

i too dislike the chat, i've seen better chat systems in games from 1995. That said i don't think any of your suggestions would improve the chat to a level i would actually like.

I'm not sure splitting the trade channel in to buy and sell would change much. People would still probably spam local chat, which is the main problem with the chat channel.

Some of your other ideas are good, item hotlinking definitly. Stalls are one of the options i'm sure anet is considering for improved trade. a grouping channel sounds ok, control click for finding players as well.

I don't really like your chat ui suggestions. Macros? really? Are you sure you've thought this through? and i don't see the use of the /list, /me is nearly universal and i don't see why it isn't in gw, but why the /list?

Stone Reaver · Aug 23, 2006, 07:32 AM // 07:32

/bumping to reinforce the support for /me and everything else.

floppinghog · Aug 23, 2006, 08:43 AM // 08:43

like all the ideas, whatever is possible ill take. anything better than how it is now.

plus being able to hotkey things like, kill monk first, go for the necro, go for the mesmer. retreat. pull back mobs. or whatever if its customizable then theres no reason for pre-worded phrases.

arcanemacabre · Aug 23, 2006, 08:54 AM // 08:54

bigwig, I really like the feedback, thanks! Now, in response:

Quote:

Originally Posted by bigwig

I'm not sure splitting the trade channel in to buy and sell would change much. People would still probably spam local chat, which is the main problem with the chat channel.

Agreed, doing just that wouldn't accomplish much. However, doing that in conjunction with the other features I mentioned could really help sort everything better, IMO. Once people realize the hotlink feature doesn't work in Local, they're going to want to use that powerful trade tool, so they're going to resort to the actual trade channels. At least, that's how I see it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bigwig

Some of your other ideas are good, item hotlinking definitly. Stalls are one of the options i'm sure anet is considering for improved trade. a grouping channel sounds ok, control click for finding players as well.

Definately appreciated. One thing, what do you mean by Stalls? Do you mean the 'player shops'? If so, then yeah, I think it's the best idea for bandwith/server space issues, and improved trade.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bigwig

I don't really like your chat ui suggestions. Macros? really? Are you sure you've thought this through? and i don't see the use of the /list, /me is nearly universal and i don't see why it isn't in gw, but why the /list?

The /list was just another example, couldn't think of much else. Though it could be of use for grouping, if you're looking for all the Monks in an outpost, just do /list Mo and whisper each accordingly. Would just make it easier to find what the team wants.

As far as Macros go, sure, why not? When I played Anarchy Online, that was one of the single best chat/UI features I used all the time. Sure, it could be abused for trade spam, but again, if the other trade features I listed are added as well, I think the spam would be minimal. One could hope

Even aside from being able to create macros, just the ability to do 2, 3, 4, or more things at once or in a sequence for RP purposes I think would be a wonderful thing to add. As I said, all these things should also be easy for the devs to accomplish. Should being the optimal word.

Knight Othin Of War · Aug 23, 2006, 03:05 PM // 15:05

i like all your ideas and would love them to be implemented
/Signed, definately

arcanemacabre · Aug 24, 2006, 10:06 AM // 10:06

Bumpin' the idea!

arcanemacabre · Aug 25, 2006, 10:29 PM // 22:29

Bumpin' the idea again!

mega_jamie · Aug 25, 2006, 11:05 PM // 23:05

#1

A) I like alot, I hate trying to sell something, and having to see countless WTS just looking for the one odd WTB that might be what I'm selling.

B)What an excelent idea, but probably impossible under current game engine.

C)Don't like this one, i've played Silk Road and I know how annoying it can be to navigate around 500 stalls just trying to move around a town, and no stall owuld see much action without them still having to spam whats being sold.

#2

A)Agreed, its annoying that often in larger towns the only hope of finding someone is to try to add them to your group, which might even involve typing out an often confusing name

B) Personally this is what local allways seemed ot be meant for to me, LFGs etc, and "Can smeone helps" etc together, making too many channels will just get far too conufsing

#3

A) All well and good with sensible players, but what happens when someone does /me *something rude to other player*, obviously no action, but people could still be abusive and rude and the target/mods/concerned individuals may not even pick up on it. And who actually has emotes channel active?

B) macros would be ace in many circumstances, instead of having to ^arrow through previous stuff.

Overall I like alot fo your ideas, but some im not to keen of.

brokenmonkey · Aug 26, 2006, 07:51 AM // 07:51

amazing

/signed

/signed for auction house gaile=/