The Chat Window

[wadlo]

I'm thinking some of the chat window's issues are more recent. There have always been a few issues and they drive me crazy. Here's a list of the issues I know of. Hopefully some of these have not been talked about before.

 

1) When a mission ends, the chat switches back to a the private message instead of staying in squad. I don't remember it doing this before this last update, and it doesn't seem like a dev would have made this change on purpose.

 

2) They added the ability to chat while the mission is loading/exiting, but there are still a couple bugs, where you can't see the chat box but you can still type and press enter.

 

3) Moving the chat window around can be clunky, and the many tabs are difficult. There's no real handle to grab onto, so I try to drag the area between the Region tab and the left arrow. Can we have the tabs scroll gently based on mouse position on the bar of tabs? I've seen this effect with photo galleries on the web, where if you are scrolling over the right-most part of the tab-bar, the rightmost tab is visible, and as you move you mouse to the left, the tabs scroll such that when you reach the left side, you are hovering over the left-most tab.

 

4) Can I please close a global chat? I don't want to be in the Region, Trading, or Alliance channel. I don't interact with those.

 

5) NickBoay had a really fun idea where chat was something that the tenno holds up (https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/300730-what-if-chatbox-was-a-tablet-thingy-in-your-hand-when-press-esc/) I (too) think there will be issues making this show during missions, but it got me thinking... could the chat window be added more as part of what the tenno sees rather than being a window that appears on top of everything that is happening in the game? So many games slap on what looks like an IRC window that I've tabbed into. With the new HUD... can we do something better?

 

6) If I'm in a mission, I can't talk to Recruiting chat. If I'm in the Void, random people don't join. If someone disconnects, I would sometimes like to access Recruiting chat from within a mission. Other people might want to do other things like keep an eye on Trading chat for what they are hoping to trade.

 

7) The size and position of the chat window resets when going into/exiting a mission. I'm not sure if people want it to reset but I wish i could get it perfect and leave it there.

 

8) Sometimes when you click the text input area, it doesn't allow you to type. You have to click it several times and keep checking if you can type yet.

 

9) I see a lot of people start chating with things like "tAre you ready?" and "tHi" as well as the dreaded "okaywwwwwwwwwwwwwww". I'm guessing these are related, where a keypress isn't being detected at the right time. From my experience, the "t" appears because you have to press "t" twice but the first keypress might be part of bug number (2).

 

That's all I can think of off the top of my head. I hope this is helpful towards creating something everyone can enjoy and keeping the UI team employed!

[HolidayPi3]

I'd like to piggyback onto this topic, as it has a lot of solid advice. I'll chime in with closing tabs-- its functionality changed for some reason, and it's extremely noticeable if you're closing down tabs for 15 different people that messaged you for T4.

 

I'll sum it up with this picture.

Instead of there being a "Close Tab" button as there was previously, it has been replaced with a "Talk" button. Why?? This adds an extra click to the process, as you now have to click on their name, and then right click on the name you just left clicked, and hit close. Before you could go straight to closing it. There's no point in having a Right click -> Talk option, when you can already do that by simply left clicking them in the first place.