Tree of Savior Forum

Chat system needs a lot of work

Gameplay Feedback Features
#1

I like the emoticons and the fact it displays your character’s face in the chat, but otherwise the chat system needs a lot of work. I’ve written down a summary of what I’ve seen on the forums, plus what I would like to see.

Needs a fix:

  • There is no way to move the cursor, if you mistype something, you have to delete everything you typed up to that point
  • The scrollbar can not be controlled via mouse - all clicks are ignored. You should be able to click on the up/down scrollbar arrows and click&drag to scroll the chat. Mouse wheel scrolling works, though
  • When scrolling up the chat, a new message forces the chat to scroll down a bit. This shouldn’t happen - only start to scroll down on new messages again when the user has scrolled all the way down.
  • There is a weird empty space above the “all” tab - as if a channel is missing. Shift the “all” channel up.

Usability:

  • Channels should be only changed via the tab key if the chat window is focused
  • Make enter send message to different channels based on modifier keys (e.g.: enter -> send to current channel, shift+enter -> send to party, ctrl+enter -> send to guild, alt+enter -> send to shout), maybe make modifiers configurable.
  • Typing, say, /s followed by enter key should change the channel, not send /s to the current channel. Changing by tab should still be possible though.
  • Allow re-sizing & re-positioning the chat window in both dimensions (currently only re-sizable vertically)
  • Allow re-arranging the order of channel tabs
  • Give us an option to show the timestamp along the message
  • As stated here, clicking on the name in chat should allow interaction, like putting /w charname in chat
  • Give us an option to toggle whether the chat input stays open after sending a message.
  • In mouse mode, clicking anywhere except the chat input should close the chat input window. This is intuitive and enables using the skill keys in one click
  • The chat currently saves the input if you haven’t sent it yet. Add the possibility to use up/down arrows to cycle through recently sent messages - useful when someone misses a message because of a disconnect, etc.

Bonus usability

  • Instead of fixed channels, give us a system where we can create up to x channels, then configure each of them, picking what we want to be displayed from a list. This would allow to view multiple types of messages in a tab, instead of having to follow all channels to not miss anything.
  • Give us a “system” channel/option that shows info like damage dealt/received, exp earned etc

Readability:

  • The difference in color between party chat and normal chat is not immediately clear
  • Allow customizing the various channel colors
  • Use less whitespace around the text for the chat bubble, or alternatively allow switching to a plaintext format. This would waste less space.
22 Likes
A few mandatory interface improvements
UI feedback and suggestions
Are the UI really that bad?
#2

Agree wholeheartedly. Aside from the obvious bugs like party chat not working sometimes. The entire chat system is just nearly unusable. It needs all the fixes you listed and probably more.

#3

I think they should remove the chat change when pressing TAB, just use /s /y commands and we should be set, because everytime i had to switch to the browser to report a bug the chat was on a different mode and i missed some msgs lol.

#4

That’s a bug though, no application should track the tab key while it’s not focused.

#5

Its not a bug, its a mapped key,i had to edit one of the xml files to remove the tab from there, now when i do ALT+TAB the chat dont change.

#6

Yes it is. There are two entries for TAB in hotkey.xml:

<HotKey ID="Tab" Name="타겟변경" DownScp="None" UpScp="None" Key="TAB" UseShift="NO" UseAlt="NO" UseCtrl="NO" OnEdit="NO"/>
<HotKey ID="ChatType" Name="채팅변경" DownScp="ui.ProcessTabKey()" UpScp="None" Key="TAB" UseShift="NO" UseAlt="NO" UseCtrl="NO" OnEdit="YES"/>

See the UseAlt="NO" part? It’s not supposed to react to alt+tab, but it does. Alt+tab and tab are two different keystrokes.

In any case, that doesn’t add anything on topic.

#7

I would like to apologise for making a post in a thread with last activity of 24 days ago, but I would like to indicate my agreement with the OP that the chat system requires a lot of work.

I would also like to add one additional suggestion:
A function that allows you to chat with all of your friends at one go. Not a chat group window that will hinder your game play but something like…a chat command that allows us to send a message to all friends at a go.

I am not good with breaking down into details, so please allow me to use “Diablo 2” as an example.

In battle.net, we can use /fa to send a message to every single person in your friends list.

#8

I’d rather do without the silly speech bubbles. It takes up space and makes it hard to track who is saying what.

#9

I don’t want to lose the character heads though. So maybe making the bubbles smaller in height would be a solution. They should also display your head on your bubble.

@Tsugumi: That might be possible via mail instead, but I wouldn’t mind a “friend broadcast” system either. Most people just spammed in shout for that in iCBT.

What did you NOT like in ToS?
#10

I second this suggestion too
Those suggestions are quite user friendly and intuitive to most chat systems nowadays :+1:

#11

Made my own suggestion, but it’s almost the same : D
+

  • Need area channels
  • Need an on/off checkboxes for channel types
#12

I mostly agree, I’ve never really socialized on the game but the few times I tried the interface and chat system didnt really encourage me in that direction.

One more suggestion, although I’m not sure it can exactly be counted as the chat system, the censoring program needs to be tuned down. Class, cockatrice, assertive and many other words are not insults although they contain strings of characters that might be if written by themselves. The worst in that is when the program erase an entire sentence just because it contains a few words that are detected as injurious while being perfectly normal words.

#13

@Soukyuu

Interacting by clicking on names in the chat actually already exists, it’s just broken right now. Instead of clicking on the name itself, right click to the right of the name and you’ll get a context menu.

A couple more features they need:

-Allow us to to create custom channels or customize the existing channel

I love that there is a separate window for every person that has whispered you so that you can see just your conversation with that person. It’s a really great idea and will be amazing when chat stops deleting everything when you switch zones. HOWEVER. Especially when guilds come out, I’d really like to be able to see guild chat, party chat, and whispers (FROM EVERYONE) all on one channel, without switching. And obviously if you turn it to all, everything else just zips past because of shouts. So I’d like to be able to see those channels minus the shouts and especially all chat if you’re in town. When I’m in the middle of supporting a party during an instance, I don’t have time to check my whispers in individual windows or cycle through different channels.

-Please give us a shortcut to reply to the last person who whispered us. /r or something to automatically change it to /w -last person who whispered you-. PLEASE. It’s so helpful, instead of having to type /w and a person’s name, or right click their name to reply.

And please tone down the censorship. The fact that you cannot even link certain in-game items without them being censored says just how badly the censor system needs a massive overhaul.

I mean, just look at this:

Linked item and in-game item names censored

#14

There are several bugs with whisper system:

  1. they are not saved if you change maps, so you can easily miss them.
  2. if you are typing whisper to some player and another whispers you at that time - your whisper will go to the player that last whispered to you. Even there was proper recipient name in chat window.
#15

The second one is an interesting one. I’m not popular enough to have had that problem yet. lol.

#16

just send “wts > max pentamion” or something else in shout…
in my case that was plants bracelet.