Chat Channels

I would say Local, Party, Guild, Trade, "Area" (I like that it's separated by difficulty, separating by act might not be a bad idea but i'm not too sure on that one), and the wonderful Quest idea that was suggested, and than have the possibility/commands for players to create their own channels ala the IRC idea.

Hi!

I will quote something that I brought in a new thread, yet few noticed it, so I will post it here hoping devs will see it:

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Arindel wrote:

Channels should have their specific color of the messages like so:

Global channel: white
Party channel: light blue
Whisper: light purple
When someone is online/offline(party or friends): light green

It doesn't have to be as vivid as the names.

This should make easier noticing important lines on the chat.

And sorry if I'm putting it in a wrong place or going little off-topic.

Please allow for public channels like on the old Battle.net.

I'm sure something of this sort was mentioned in this thread, so this is just a +1.

So many boards, so many threads...but this seems the most appropriate place to put this suggestion.

Microtransaction for private channels. Either a one-off fee or some tiny upkeep of GGGold, I don't really care. I definitely want the ability to create a private channel, just as was possible on Bnet.

Also, whispers should be treated as tabs too. The current whisper function is horribly hard to keep up with.

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Zidjian wrote:

looks good. I would also like to see a specific trade channels. As in someone who want to sell something. Instead of clogging up the regular channels they can appeal specifically to a trade channel. There could be a local and bigger trade channels.

This would make it to where we don't hear people peddling there items in general chat and it would be easier to find items just by going to the specific chat.

In Diablo 3, the trade channels sat empty, while all the trade spamming moved to general chat.

How about an outdoor market where you could go display your wares for others to see? And if someone wanted an item, you could both initiate a trade window to begin negotiations.

Here I am, surfing the forums, waiting for the game to download, and I'm already full of opinions. LoL. All I know is that from reading these forums and seeing some videos, I can't wait to delve into this game.

In RIFT, you could open up your Options and click on a certain Tab and select the channels you wanted active via checkbox. Then, each type of 'talk' came up in a different color which you could customize from a color palate.
You could also create new tabs on your chat box, and to take it a step further, you could create tabs and invite certain people to them and password them with designated people as 'administrators' of those chat tabs.
In addition, you could designate certain types of chat (ie whispers) to pop up in new tabs.
Of course, there were the typical /g(uild commands etc. & they had trade channels. They also implemented LFG channels for dungeon runs.
It was a really nice, well thought out chat system.

In D3, chat was a joke. Font so tiny you could barely read it, character names and their messages were all the same color creating one big blur of color in the chat box, lottery style general chat channels (and the people in your party were NEVER put in the same one = rediculous), no color options making reading against certain backgrounds impossible - I could go on, but I know we're not spsd to rant about That Game here :P

More than anything, in POE, I would really like to see a customizable chat box. IE: sizeable; moveable; color options; font size options; slider for background opaqueness.

Chat customization is important. There are so many different 'sets of eyes' out there with different needs that need to be fulfilled in order to enjoy chat in a game. You also have a multitude of different monitors and graphics capabilities to consider. Making it as customizable as possible is the best way to go.

I have chat turned off because it's a bit obnoxious when trying to play this game, but feels kind of isolated and makes things a lil boring :/

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Malt22 wrote:

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Zidjian wrote:

How about an outdoor market where you could go display your wares for others to see? And if someone wanted an item, you could both initiate a trade window to begin negotiations.

This sounds like LAST CHAOS. I really enjoyed this feature of that game. You would set up a "shop" with your character and just hang around (or if you needed to go afk you could) and people would come by and check out your wares and buy them if they wanted to, or move on to the next shop.

I'm not sure how a system like that could be implemented in this game since it's not a gold based currency game, but anything's possible ;)

It was pretty cool to be able to go afk, or wake up the next morning, and find that you made a bunch of loot from your shop :D

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Chris wrote:

The question is what other channels we should support.
We obviously can't throw every player in the world into the same global chat permanently, because there would be far too many messages. However, we do want people to be able to talk to others who are not in their instance.
This is especially important for new players who might need to ask questions that more experienced players can answer.

Our initial thinking was that we'd have an "Act chat" where all the players from that act/difficulty can talk freely. That way they're not spoiling quests for players who aren't in that act. These channels could potentially split into multiple separate channels if there are too many players. Do you guys have any opinions on how many players is too many for a channel?

There are also questions about trade channels. We're anticipating much trade will take place on the forums, but some players will surely want to trade in game also.

There's a million answers already but I didn't participate yet...

Trade channel
First, trade channels will only be used by the conscentious. This has always been an issue in MMO's. People are lazy by nature, and the chat channel system has to be designed so.

Removing the ability to link items in general chat would have been one possible way of forcing players to use a proper trade channel... however it may be drastic. But perhaps you can think of ways to take advantage of this.

For example, linking more than one item would create a popup only for the 1st item, and plain text for the rest. So people can still offer something for trade in main chat, but it would encourage people to use the proper channel, because of the obvious value of being able to see the exact stats of the item. In main chat, being able to link fully one item I think would be sufficient for general discussion. For mechanics discussions when people link many gems or support gemes, it could be done in the Help channel (cf. below), where the restriction would not be present.

A dollar sign could be used to trigger a trade message eg "$need orb of regrets" ?

Help channel
Some people love to help others, and a dedicated help channel would be an outlet for all mechanics questions. This one could be enabled by default. As for the trade channel, nearly everyone will simply use the default channel, but at least that's an option to for the "theorycrafting" crowd to take the longer discussions in a place just for them.

World chat
Hard to say if we really need a world chat channel (server wide).

I do like that the chat is instanced per difficulty, it's definitely helping reduce the general chat spam, which is going to be a big issue with an incessant stream of new players in this F2P game. It is already quite a sight sometimes in the closed beta, Default league.. (eg. discussions on muslims >_>).

So it's kinda neat that the difficulty acts as a filter in that we are likely to see less chat volume in Endgame than Normal, and endgame will likely see less Diablo 3 rants (and other games) seeing as the players have spent many hours already to get there.

TLDR: People will always use the easiest, default way of typing in the chat, and at the moment, the "difficulty instanced" chat system is quite nice.

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DeF46 wrote:

TLDR: People will always use the easiest, default way of typing in the chat, and at the moment, the "difficulty instanced" chat system is quite nice.

Agreed, yet if it is not encouraged otherwise,
when will anyone ever know otherwise?
In fact promoting bad chat manners will lead to those players being rude in other games as well.

I suggest:
Removing item-links from general and global chat,
also there blocking messages containing "WTB"/"WTS"/"WTT", with a client-side error message explaining chat-tab-etiquette. Entirely client-side. I don't think anyone stupid/ignorant enough to not understand something that clear and in-your-face could handle playing the game anyway.
You have to expect people to be educated enough to understand the significance of being told "that's bad".
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Private chat channels, all I can say is THAT WOULD BE SWEET.

Keep the current system, remodify global and local, and add two more channels.

Global Chat (spam):
For those attention seeking or people who got nothing better to do but arguing. Everyone in the game will be able to see this chat, and it's default off, can be turned on. (What this does is direct all the spam into one big channel, and leave the other channels as clean as possible.)

Local Chat:
Up from map only to difficulty only. Serve as a chat channel for those that are looting/farming and doesn't want all the spam from global. Also a way to talk with people outside your party/guild. Has spam restriction like mute if entered sentence too rapidly.


Help/Advice:
For newb and for people who want to help, this channel works like global, and can be turn on/of, does not base on difficulty. Also has a spam restriction.

Trade channel:
For people who want to trade, default off, and people who doesn't mind the spam can turn it on.