Chat Bubbles: We need an option to enable them for say, yell and emote chat!

[OrionSol]

Fleet with people talking and interacting. In a MMO... wow, it would be the end of life as we know it.

 

LOL... I see what you did there.

[Stubacca]

Fleet with people talking and interacting. In a MMO... wow, it would be the end of life as we know it.

And a beginning of a Better Life with people actually socializing and interacting int he game.

[WeadonismyMaster]

I have not linked this one in yet... screen shot of the chat bubbles search.

 

http://imgur.com/nZAER

[Stubacca]

If BiowarEA'd actually care what their players want, they'd have given us chat bubbles along with similarly requested features a long time ago. So there is no hope that they will ever care, but we can still hope that they will miraculously truly want to implement chat bubbles and finally go through with it. It all comes down to the types of players these devs are - they obviously aren't social roleplayers and don't feel chat bubbles are what they themselves need or want in a game. It clearly looks they don't give a smelling bantha poodoo about what the actual players want. Edited January 25, 2013 by Stubacca

[Drayzen]

I want chat bubbles. This **** is ridiculous. 100+ page thread over a year old and still no chat bubbles. I get your have to prioritize your work, but this should have been done during the UI revamp. I get scaleform is terrible, but make it happen.

[fungihoujo]

It's pretty mind boggling when a basic feature like this still isn't in a game a year after launch. Some things just shouldn't be absent from an mmo.

[WeadonismyMaster]

Crazy idea here...

 

We could all just go to nearest EA locations (as applicable) and put 12 (or number of months we have been without bubbles) post it notes saying <SWTOR CHAT BUBBLES PLEASE> on the the front door.

 

Walk up, post the notes, and leave. Don't cause problems, or talk to anyone (unless you know them of course)

 

http://www.ea.com/locations

Edited January 28, 2013 by WeadonismyMaster
spelling

[Izorii]

I support chat bubbles, but has there been any news on them I think it was May 2012 that they said they knew Chat bubbles are important and they are being worked on but so far nothing? Seems a very long time to add a very basic feature.

[Hyfy]

For all the people whining about not having chat bubbles its been said by at least 1 of the CS mods that they have foregone them because it caused a serious drain on the in game system leading to serious performance issues. I absolutely don't want chat bubbles and even I've seen that quote from them.

[WeadonismyMaster]

For all the people whining about not having chat bubbles its been said by at least 1 of the CS mods that they have foregone them because it caused a serious drain on the in game system leading to serious performance issues. I absolutely don't want chat bubbles and even I've seen that quote from them.

 

Fair enough. If you want to keep your anti aliasing off, or texture atlasing to low. You have that option. If you want fly text, player names, or an adjustable UI. You have that option. Options that were all talked about, adjusted in patches or updates, and addressed a set of user experience concerns.

 

I am only asking for the same consideration after a year. It seems reasonable to expect at this stage in MMO's to have chat bubbles.

[Hanszo]

i just got help on a mob ingame and wanted to thank him really fast and i wondered... where are the chat bubbles ?

i've been wondering since the game launched and always felt something amiss without the /say bubbles...

i wanted to start a thread and decided to search first and here i see it's a vastly demanded feature from the community!

so where are they ?

maybe it will be implemented in the Makeb expansion...

would be awesome!

time to take a nap and get playing again...

 

cheers

[WeadonismyMaster]

i just got help on a mob ingame and wanted to thank him really fast and i wondered... where are the chat bubbles ?

i've been wondering since the game launched and always felt something amiss without the /say bubbles...

i wanted to start a thread and decided to search first and here i see it's a vastly demanded feature from the community!

so where are they ?

maybe it will be implemented in the Makeb expansion...

would be awesome!

time to take a nap and get playing again...

 

cheers

 

Perfect illustration of how even the most basic of human interactions, a 'thank you' , enriches the game experience with chat bubbles.

[Stubacca]

i just got help on a mob ingame and wanted to thank him really fast and i wondered... where are the chat bubbles ?

i've been wondering since the game launched and always felt something amiss without the /say bubbles...

i wanted to start a thread and decided to search first and here i see it's a vastly demanded feature from the community!

so where are they ?

maybe it will be implemented in the Makeb expansion...

would be awesome!

time to take a nap and get playing again...

 

cheers

 

Perfect illustration of how even the most basic of human interactions, a 'thank you' , enriches the game experience with chat bubbles.

Exactly. This isn't an uncommon event either. Without chat bubbles, communication and interaction between players is severly crippled. That's certainly one of the big reasons why they are so important in a MMOG for everyone that cares about player interaction and isn't asocial. People need to realize that even if they themselves don't use chat bubbles, their counterpart in the game may just have an easier time to interact with them due to having them enabled in all situations, no matter if roleplay, socializing, PVE, random world encounters, PVP and more.

[DiabloDoom]

What the hell is wrong with bioware, without chat bubbles we might aswell be playing the xbox. It's like they went for the socially inept quality of online gaming.. This game feels so anti-social it's unbearable.

[Hyfy]

Fair enough. If you want to keep your anti aliasing off, or texture atlasing to low. You have that option. If you want fly text, player names, or an adjustable UI. You have that option. Options that were all talked about, adjusted in patches or updates, and addressed a set of user experience concerns.

 

I am only asking for the same consideration after a year. It seems reasonable to expect at this stage in MMO's to have chat bubbles.

 

The way the CS mod explained it was not client side performance issues but serious server side performance issues. Which is why they have forgone them.

[Hyfy]

i just got help on a mob ingame and wanted to thank him really fast and i wondered... where are the chat bubbles ?

i've been wondering since the game launched and always felt something amiss without the /say bubbles...

i wanted to start a thread and decided to search first and here i see it's a vastly demanded feature from the community!

so where are they ?

maybe it will be implemented in the Makeb expansion...

would be awesome!

time to take a nap and get playing again...

 

cheers

 

Never once since early start have I had an issue with just typing thanks or glancing up at the chat after helping someone to see them say thanks. Its not like you have to have chat bubbles to say thanks or see someone else say thanks.

[DiabloDoom]

The way the CS mod explained it was not client side performance issues but serious server side performance issues. Which is why they have forgone them.

 

I really don't understand why text should render their very expensive servers redundant. Games I remember as far back as 1997 had chat bubbles. Well hovering text above your head, but still, that's all we need.

[Hyfy]

I really don't understand why text should render their very expensive servers redundant. Games I remember as far back as 1997 had chat bubbles. Well hovering text above your head, but still, that's all we need.

 

I'm just going off of what he had explained. Don't remember which thread I saw it in so I can't quote it, but I remember him/her giving performance as the mitigating factor for not including it.

[Glzmo]

Fair enough. If you want to keep your anti aliasing off, or texture atlasing to low. You have that option. If you want fly text, player names, or an adjustable UI. You have that option. Options that were all talked about, adjusted in patches or updates, and addressed a set of user experience concerns.

 

I am only asking for the same consideration after a year. It seems reasonable to expect at this stage in MMO's to have chat bubbles.

The way the CS mod explained it was not client side performance issues but serious server side performance issues. Which is why they have forgone them.

That server side performance statement/rumor wasn't correct. UI programmer Cory Kolek recently explained it in his post it was a client-side performance problem due to chat bubbles taking up 400MB of video memory, just like it was with nameplates during beta. They fixed it for nameplates but didn't find the time to apply the fix to chat bubbles yet for whatever reason.

So yes, having a client-side on/off toggle for chat bubbles would be an option that just like the anti-aliasing, texture atlasing, shadows, nameplates or other game-enhancing options are and those that strive for the last bit of performance or have weaker computers with less video card memory would be able to easily turn it off to reduce the performance hit.

Edited February 2, 2013 by Glzmo

[Hyfy]

That server side performance statement/rumor wasn't correct. UI programmer Cory Kolek recently explained it in his post it was a client-side performance problem due to chat bubbles taking up 400MB of video memory, just like it was with nameplates during beta. They fixed it for nameplates but didn't find the time to apply the fix to chat bubbles yet for whatever reason.

So yes, having a client-side on/off toggle for chat bubbles would be an option that just like the anti-aliasing, texture atlasing, shadows, nameplates or other game-enhancing options are and those that strive for the last bit of performance or have weaker computers with less video card memory would be able to easily turn it off to reduce the performance hit.

 

Either way it was a big hit being taken that greatly reduced the performance so they opted against it. Whether its an option I can turn off or not, which I would most certainly do and if I could would even completely lock me out from ever even being able to "accidentally' turn it on, it seems to be a big enough issue that they have forgone the option.

 

EDIT: Which does lead me to wonder, if it was actually client side what difference would it make if they added it with the option to turn it off? Now I preface that with this, in general these games have not forgone graphics updates or even parts of the graphical presentation of the game because some peoples computers might not be able to handle it. They WOULD just add an option just like you have default graphics setting very low, low, high, very high or what ever iteration they use in a game along with in most cases custom settings. That alone leads me to believe that this still is not a client side issue and is one of the servers being bogged down by every Tom, Dick, and Harry playing the game eating up bandwidth and hardware resources with every bit of tertiary crap available in the game. There is a ton of info going back and forth on these servers and adding that much crap on servers that seem a bit shaky especially of late doesn't seem to me to be the most prudent choice of action.

Edited February 2, 2013 by Hyfy

[anonnn]

That server side performance statement/rumor wasn't correct. UI programmer Cory Kolek recently explained it in his post it was a client-side performance problem due to chat bubbles taking up 400MB of video memory, just like it was with nameplates during beta. They fixed it for nameplates but didn't find the time to apply the fix to chat bubbles yet for whatever reason.

So yes, having a client-side on/off toggle for chat bubbles would be an option that just like the anti-aliasing, texture atlasing, shadows, nameplates or other game-enhancing options are and those that strive for the last bit of performance or have weaker computers with less video card memory would be able to easily turn it off to reduce the performance hit.

 

Was that 400MB of video memory perhaps during a mega-stress-test of the implementation that involved 1500 characters in one area, all spouting a few Chat Bubbles per second? I mean, 400MB?? I'm sure rendering text is non-trivial, but isn't damage/heals fly-text also the rendering of text strings? Why not just re-use that rendering mechanism, however it works, and put a nice white box around it? I'm sure that fly-text in 16-person Ops groups during the boss fights could never take up 400MB of video memory, and the fly-text there should be quite an amount per second. I don't think I could be more skeptical about the 400MB.

 

Now that all areas are instanced, perhaps it's impossible for there to be a sufficient number of Chat Bubbles that will peg it to 400MB. Biggest mob of peoples seems to be at the GTN terminals... which now and then is probably 100 to 150 people at the most. Just for the sake of Chat Bubbles, I would be ok with the instance population maximum to remain at 250 indefinitely. It's an interesting question though, what happens if a large guild someday can get more than 250 online at once, and wants to congregate for a huge guild meeting that involves bubbling?

 

I would expect there to be a group of performance-tuning settings for Chat Bubbles that any user could adjust in order to lower any excessive Chat Bubbles load on their particular computer. These settings should at least include:

• chat bubbles on/off ...on by default I hope, but there should also be a quick on/off toggle in the quick-UI-menu that's on the health bar
  
• on/off of mirroring of Chat Bubbles to the chat window in a custom color, so that there is scroll-back ability to go see recent Chat Bubbles... i would expect most people want this off by default
  
• number of seconds for each chat bubble to remain on-screen ...maybe default to 8 seconds?
  
• maximum distance for displaying chat bubbles... any chat bubbles beyond maximum distance could possibly still be shown with only an empty, small, and visually distinctive bubble in case the player would want to run towards that player to have a bubble conversation (the person beyond maximum bubble distance could be a group member or friend) ...with perhaps a default of 50m
  
• maximum visible bubbles per player that is adjustable between perhaps 3 to 15 so that no player can spam chat bubbles and get an obnoxious totem of bubbles to show up... with the default number set to 5
  

 

I would like to see advanced features considered also... such as double-clicking of a chat bubble to lock it on-screen for a certain amount of time, or somehow cycling through a targeted player's recent chat bubbles, in case there is important information in the bubble, such as coordinates to some location, or Ventrilo server logon info, or if you just plain missed a couple of bubbles because the cat knocked something off the table.

[SelinaK]

I am shocked that after 2 years they still have not done anything...

[Seon]

I just came back to SWTOR and just got frustrated trying to follow an rp event. I simply skimmed through some posts, so I might be missing something.

 

I understand that a client side clogging might frustrate many players, but could it be that the client side RAM consumption could be due to the chat bubble frame? Why not simply put the letters there? It will be over the head of the player so this way you will know who said it. Also it will appear in the /say channel so you can verify it momentarily.

[esos]

I say no to chat pubbles, never liked them.

[Stubacca]

I just came back to SWTOR and just got frustrated trying to follow an rp event.

Welcome back! Unfortunately, that's what many still to have to endure here thanks to Bioware not understanding how important chat bubbles are for many of us and the overall quality of in-game communication.

 

I simply skimmed through some posts, so I might be missing something.

 

I understand that a client side clogging might frustrate many players, but could it be that the client side RAM consumption could be due to the chat bubble frame? Why not simply put the letters there? It will be over the head of the player so this way you will know who said it. Also it will appear in the /say channel so you can verify it momentarily.

Not sure. Maybe. While I'd like to see chat bubbles that actually point at the character that said something on the screan, Overhead chat text would already be worlds better than not having anything but the chat box at all as it is now.