Plea for a Simple Change to In-Game Chat

[Radamanthas]

Greetings, fellow Istarians...

Like everyone here, I tend to pop in, all over the place on the internet, and of course almost every place I tend to hang out has some sort of chat system involved in it....after all how else do we socialize in a non-physical venue, neh?

All of these chat systems tend to be very similar in the mechanics of how to use them and get around, in them. As such, one tends to develop certain habits, when availing themselves of such features, and as we all know...once you develop a habit it is often hard to break that habit...

Unfortunately, the in-game chat system we have in HZ deviates from the 'norm' in a very significant way...and that leads me to my request to the devs.....

In the 'chat settings' window, could you PLEASE...FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT'S HOLY... add a simple check box labeled, "keep focus in chatbox after sent message" (or something similar)....it's purpose should be self-evident.

I am a very fast typist. I have learned to be, mainly from being online and enduring years of chat experience - many conversation in which go blisteringly fast. I had to learn to be fast, to survive. Yet for all my speed i typing, I never formally learned to type...hence, 'touch typing' remains a mystery to me...I am a hunt-and-peck typist, meaning, I am looking at my keyboard, as I type.

Now couple to that, the fact that I have learned the habit of assuming that while in a chat box the focus will always remain in the chat box, until I move it myself. (as happens in every other chat system I have seen, online), and might begin to see my problem....

You all know that a LOT of windows/functions/features in the game's UI are hot keyed to single alphabetic characters.....so imagine my frustration - after typing a huge, multi-line post to whomever I am chatting with, only to look up and see that I forgot to set the focus BACK into the chatbox, and have now flooded my UI with just about everything you can open up, and in some cases, multiple instances of the same window. My computer is a dinosaur, I am embarrassed to admit...it can *barely* manage to run the game, at a reasonable rate of speed.....once I inadvertently spam myself to death with everything I possibly can, it becomes a race, to see if I can get it all closed out, before I just freeze up my entire system.

So this is a plea....to add what I am fairly sure would be a very simple thing to implement. Those that are used to the way the chat system works wouldn't even need to be inconvenienced, as the check box makes it an *option* for us more simple-minded folks - not to mention saving us a great deal of finger leather...

Anyway...that's it...I hope you will give this some serious consideration...thank you.

The precious little sanity I have left is in your hands.......

[Velea]

Can you give an example of when the focus goes OFF the chat box? Because I honestly can't think of what you're talking about.

Whenever I hit the "enter" key (which is what I use to "start chat"), the chat remains in my chat window until I hit send.

[awdz]

it's after you hit send and then start typing a new message, if you try to tag the chat line with your mouse (but have not hit the chat line in the chat window you intend to be typing in just right) before typing, it takes all the keystrokes as if you were entering keyboard commands...

for me it opens/closes vault, knowledge window, new chat boxes, my map; often it locks my camera for me too, or sets off hotkeys. lots of things changed in my view that i never intended to do... usually not harmful unless i'm making the mistake of chatting during battle :-/

i'm very mouse-driven when going between chat windows & such.

[Sonea]

yup yup... if you forget to press enter before you start typing.. that's when it happens.

[Radamanthas]

yup yup... if you forget to press enter before you start typing.. that's when it happens.

Yes...this, exactly.....no other chat system I've encountered, requires me to hit the return key, BEFORE typing out my post, then hitting it again, to post it.

Usually (in other chat systems), once you hit the return key to send your post, the flashing cursor remains in the text box of the chat box. In HZ's UI chatbox, it does not...

[Prinn]

This is a great suggestion, thanks for bringing it up Radamanthas! I get frustrated by this every time I play...

[Favoran]

I'd like a change like this too. I don't particularly enjoy being lagged out by a loading Formula window. XD

[Shian]

On the same token though, how many of you try to fight and your character does nothing. While you're busy trying to figure out why your character isn't moving or attacking, you click on the ground in front of you knowing that stupid thing is in a chatbox somewhere instead of lag or a client crash and now you have to delete (or enter in spatial to clear it)

735123412sssssssss23waaaaaaassssssssswwwwwsssssssq qqqqqqqqqqqqq

:/

Most MMO chats I've seen requires you to hit enter twice or at least the ones I've played, so hitting enter twice feels more natural to me.

[Takora Drakan]

I have to say, those DOH' moments when you screen is furbared with tons of UI windows, have it's own charm.

UI windows hit you for 34769 damage.

[Velea]

Personally this would drive me nuts. I'd have the problem Shian talked about ALL the time if the game stayed "stuck" in chat.

I look at it differently. Chat systems require you to have chat as the active window. (You can't type a message to someone who is an AIM contact if MSN was the last window you were talking in.) You have to activate the right window. When you hit "send" on a message in game, you "deactivate" that window, is all, and need to activate it again by hitting whatever key it is you use to start chat, or click in the chat window again to activate it.

Serious question... does any MMO have this feature where you remain in the chat window until.. what, you click out of it? How do you "deactivate" the chat window if something like this were implemented?

Note I am not saying yes or no to this, nor am I the developer who would. I have nothing to do with programming, and this would be a programming thing. I'm merely thinking about it from a player point of view and how useful (versus pain in the backside) something like this would be. Obviously I see it as "pain in the backside", but that's because I'm well in the habit of hitting "enter" to start chat.

[Sigi]

I have to say, those DOH' moments when you screen is furbared with tons of UI windows, have it's own charm.

UI windows hit you for 34769 damage.

Agree, it is rather funny and it happens at least once every time I play.

[Thangorodrim Atanatari]

in other mmo's the cursor gets removed from the chatwindow after pressing enter without any text typed...

im not sure i would like this change, because when hunting it would require 2 enters after typing to go back to a combat action again, instead of just 1 enter. this could kill ya.

so i kinda like the way its being done currently in horizons over other games

[awdz]

I'm well in the habit of hitting "enter" to start chat.

I had no idea we were supposed to do this.

Is this related in any way to the bug where when you first login, you have to click through the multiple tabs in a chat window before being able to send a message out? Did I miss an obvious something here too?

[Thangorodrim Atanatari]

hm allready unable to edit my post.

just wanted to add that the cursor thing problem (ui windows doing damage, or you not doing damage but typing aaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwwdddddddddssssssssssss1231 2541213) also happens in other games. just here it takes 1 more enter to go into the chat for every line after the first, in other games it takes 1 more enter to go out of the chat. going out can be more critical if there is 7 t6 undead making a move for you....

[GalemThawn]

C is a keyboard shortcut for Character.
E is a keyboard shortcut for Equipment.
I is a keyboard shortcut for Inventory.

The way I look at it:
Enter is just a keyboard shortcut for typing Text or Chat.

[awdz]

Enter is just a keyboard shortcut for typing Text or Chat.

if you have multiple chat windows open, which one does enter activate? the last one you used or your primary chat?

[Radamanthas]

Serious question... does any MMO have this feature where you remain in the chat window until.. what, you click out of it? How do you "deactivate" the chat window if something like this were implemented?

This is why I suggested it as a check box option in the chat settings. Those of us who would like to see the change can do so...those who like the way it is can ignore it

[Mahja]

I guess I am used to pressing space to chat in ffxi, so hitting enter isn't a far stretch. I keep a main window that monitors all my other chat windows and I use prefixes in that same window to reply back, (unless it's a channel with that whole having a space in the name issue). So I don't have problems with it going out of focus. I use chat tabs for filtering so I can isolate different types such as guild and group (for viewing).

[Shian]

if you have multiple chat windows open, which one does enter activate? the last one you used or your primary chat?

Last one used. In here and in other games. Like Veela, I'm curious as to what game does this 'feature'.

Only game I've played where you don't hit 'enter' to start and end chat was pre-CU SW. Alpha keys weren't used for anything else but chat, so it was easy to just have them be 'default to chat'. I don't think I've seen any other game where alpha keys aren't a shortcut to something ui related.

[Velea]

I'm honestly still trying to figure out how this would work and still allow you to use the keys as they are now. I just don't see how it could, because as people have said, you'd get "stuck" in chat and not be able to use combat keys, etc.

As a note, since it seems this is something long time players didn't know about...

What key is used to start chat is fully customizable in the options window. And you can have two different keys, in fact, if you want. For example, I have both the "return" (enter) key AND the slash key that will start chat. If I just want to talk in whatever chat tab (and window if you use the multiple window approach) was last active, I hit enter. If want to send to a different channel, such as guild, group or a tell, then the slash command works.

What I'd like to see long before I see something like this is the ability to link various chat channels to a numeric shortcut. I HAVE seen games where you can do this. So, for example, the first chat room you enter becomes /1 if you want to talk there, the next /2, etc. (Or even if you had to set what chat number goes with what channel when you join it.) To me that would be a huge change, as I am much more likely to type out a big message and not realize that Dragon chat (for example) wasn't "active", and the whole thing goes to "say" when I hit enter.