Suggestion: Chat Tabs 2.0

[Fubukin]

Hi!

First of, I really, really like Warframe and, besides a few questionable hickups and decisions (*cough*frost*cough*), think that the game gets better and better with every update! The new tilesets alone are awesome, for example, and melee 2.0 is for the most part, very solid! Little tweaks like the power timers or even just that you see what everyone's equipped Dragon Key improve things so much, too!

Now that I dont appear too negative and naggy, though, one of my biggest peeves ever since I started playing, up to these days is the chat system.

The biggest issue here is that I constantly miss Clan chat when I am in a mission. Half an hour later I notice that I was asked something, or that someone wanted to host a mission I could have joined.

Another issue is that there is - to my knowledge - no logfile system, so, any interesting conversation, or even just something note- (and proof-worthy) is lost, if you didn't snapshot it in time.

Here is a long term improvement suggestion to fix this:

-Give us custom chat tabs.

-Let us select what chat channels we want to add to those tabs.

-give alert notifications one channel, Dark Sector notes another, split up Region into Region and a Help channel, have Trade, have a Clan Recruitment channel and a Team-up channel, then whispers opening their own, but why not also have a 'whisper channel'?

No worries if one of those are used less than the other, it's not that each channel needs it own tab!

Hotfix- and other Red-text should of course still be global and added to at least one tab.

A great example how this works would be the now sadly defunct City of Heroes' chat system.

Here - http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Chat_Window - is a thorough explanation of how it was working.

Furthermore:

-Set the time-stamp to be 'on' by default.

-Have the game keep simple txt chat logs and use them (the last 20 lines, for example) upon re-entering the menu.

-Dare I dream, but I'd love a chat window to be omni-present - meaning that it stays at its spot and is always there, whether in the menues, the dojo, a mission or even the load-screens (I guess if the load-screen one isn't technically possible, we could make due without that little bit).

-Give us a little 'pinned down' option (probably best through a right-click menu option). More often than not, I end up moving the chat window all over the place when switching through the tabs in the menu for whatever reason, having to grab and drag it back to where I want it to be.

-Let us close tabs with the middle mouse button! Hey, let us re-open the last closed tab by clicking on the empty space after the tabs, too, to prevent mistakes that way!

What would this bring us?

-No more whisper tab spam when you host a key, unless you want it like that!

-No more losing the chat after the team dissolves!

-We decide which tab flashes up when an alert gets announced, or whether it is every tab or none!

-We can follow two or more channels at the same time in one tab! Follow the trade channel while you wait for someone to host a Void mission you want to join! I know I wanted to be able to do that before!

Barebones fix suggestion:

If all that is too much wishful thinking, then at least, pretty please, make the Clan / Alliance chat work like direct whispers, which plop up in a different colour on the Squad tab - or have the Clan tab flash. Let me somehow notice that someone is talking on there, let alone, talking to me.

Thank you for your time.

Edited April 27, 2014 by Fubukin