Chat Tabs - Seperate global/local + Customization!

Suggestions and Contributions
1

So first of all…I’d LOVE to have global/local/guild to get their own seperate tabs in the explorer kit (annoucements go in all chat tabs).

Especially during events, local and global gets real crowded and i tend to only look for coloured announcement text instead of participating in conversation for the sole reason…it all goes too fast! And it goes too fast…because its a busy global and busy local all in one tab. Nevermind, people with guild conversations running alongside that. So essentially, i want them to have seperate tabs to

  • Reduce the issue of chat going too fast (no more everything in one)
  • So we can ignore irrelevent chat channels (e.g. especially in the rp community, people may only wanna look at local for posts. there’s times i wanna only speak on global but its a busy local too, and same with guild. and theres times…during drama that i simply cant have a chat in local because globals filled up with said drama - that put off a training run at one point.)
  • Less important than the rest but also reduced wrong chats
    While it can mean switching between tabs to keep up multiple conversations, its still better to be able to distinguish said conversations, and whats the harm in that anyway? Click one more button!

In tandem with that, if its possible, you could either 1 - give some sort of signal theres text in a chat tab, i mean im only thinking off the top of my head here but maybe like 3 dots appropriately coloured that glow when a message is sent in the appropriate chat? 2 - if impossible, inform via tutorial about different chats being in different tabs or a sign. I add this in, purely because it may discourage chatting if especially new people dont know how to access the chats.

Alternatively, you could, at the drop down menu to change chat channels you speak into, have that as the navigation between channels instead of adding a chat tab - so when you change channel via that, it also switches the shown text to the text only in that channel (ie the above idea only that drop down menu is the change between chats and not a change of tabs) though i personally think that would hide channels even more and thats bad since it means less chatting.

Green text for login messages and the text from signs could either go into local to reduce confusion for new people or have its seperate tab.

Also I want a lil more customization!
So those tabs in the explorer kit…if i could, id remove the counter and add in the above amendments but if that was implemented for everyone, im sure a handful of people would miss the counter or may dislike the tabs or whatever.

So id like there to be somehow, editable explorer kit tabs. Say i go to edit them (perhaps via other > an ‘Edit Explorer Kit’ option or something) and it gives me the option of say…9 max editable tabs (as one’s added on for a party) though empty tab slots just wouldnt appear on the explorer kit.

Using the current setup right now as an example, slot 1 - general chat, slot 2 - counter, slot 3 - friends list.
With an editable tab i could say go… slot 1 - global chat, slot 2 - local chat, slot 3 - guild chat, slot 4 - friends list, slot 5 - server messages (ie green login text, text form signs etc).

“Server Messages” is an ambiguous phrase, by that i mean all text apart from the chat. Everything has a ‘channel’ even text from signs so most or few channels could be interchangable to make someones explorer kit completely up to their preference.

Within this, any tab made a chat channel could also be completely customizable as to which chat channels go into it (e.g. you could have a tab for guild/local and a seperate tab for global…all three…all seperate…any combo.)

  • Additionally, the suggestion of seperating chat channels into tabs wouldnt be needed as people could customize this for themselves if they like it the way it is right now, and to be less confusing for new players.
  • Also, this gives way, via customization, to easily add on extra features to the explorer kit - people can easily just edit onto it to add them.

To state it just to make sure eveyrone understands (because some people i talk to do not seem to) this is a client change. client being, your personal version of the game, the game data you have stored on your computer. thats the client. editting it does not affect server data and nor do any changes affect everyone…just your version!

2

This certainly sounds like a cool idea! I actually like it. Usually in other MMOs I play, there will be multiple channel tabs so people can filter out unnecessary things. I would suggest that if this was going to work, there should still be a tab that says something like…“All” in case people still wanted to keep up with everything. Also, instead of using many tabs to keep track of the chats, why not use a filter for the chat? o: If we add filters, people can just apply it and edit it whenever they like so it doesn’t take too much in the explorer kit.

Customization for the tool kit also seems really cool! I’m not sure what will be needed besides the chat tabs, but it could definitely serve as a widgets section for small and sometimes useful stuff!

3

An all tab sounds like a good idea to be alongside them! :D

A filter would be good and could also sort out the issues with the chat right now too! Though the implementation of such should be simple. Not something we have to go into the other or options menu to find i mean, since sometimes we gotta switch chats quickly (notably, during events where global and local in the events hub tend to both be crowded, people - i at least - desire switching between them quickly, but right now theres simply too much text.)

So i think a filter should have a menu near where the current channel button is - an extension of the explorer kit down just a little bit to include maybe a tick box menu, or like a chat options tab (hover over to open instead of clicking to save time) with options like ‘show x chat yes/no’ (or a tick box menu inside of that instead).

Taking too much in the explorer kit was a small worry of mine, but i thought, like its the only tab were most info is shown easily. We can’t have a particularly fancy UI, its really the only place we can edit without needing the redo the whole thing. So with that in mind, its really the only thing we -can- expand on. Some may not want a lot of tabs and i totally understand that! Thats also why i suggested customization of tabs along with this so its the peoples choice on whether to have many tabs or not but the option would be there if so.

Ooh and extension of that, combining both ideas (filter + customization) possibly there could be just the option to add a chat tab via customizing and edit that tab via filters.

I have a couple ideas for extra widgets to add, as such as 1. a notes page (notes saved in client so the game can reaccess them upon relogging + less server data) so we can take notes in game itself and dont have to use outside programmes to access them, for example…pasting common tc routes, level goals, item places, puzzle answers etc etc into notes for easy access. 2. a guild member online list, in much the same way the friends list is, only probably with an option to notify if people come online or not. I considered a seperate thread for those, but since theyre attatched to the idea of customization, ill leave em here and see whether they deserve another thread or not.