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### Topic

#### Local chat 1st impressions

So far the change is great.. One large window...making it easy to keep track of what is happening on the street I'm on. It also seems to scroll much more smoothly than the old interface
The option to switch to Global chat with a tab is also nicely set up, but I don't know that I'd find it right away if it was my first time playing the game.

Posted 22 months ago by caley dunn | Permalink

### Replies

- I don't like that I can't see where my friends are now! That was one of my favorite features on the right side menu.
  Posted 22 months ago by PittyPat is sad | Permalink
- PittyPat: good call! We'll get that back in ASAP.
  Posted 22 months ago by stoot barfield | Permalink
- It looks kind of awkward to me the way the friends list is like half showing under the chat window.
  Posted 22 months ago by Fizio | Permalink
- You can see that it opens up though, right?
  Posted 22 months ago by stoot barfield | Permalink
- It took a while.
  I find the little arrow that breaks the right hand side of the game screen quite distracting.
  Posted 22 months ago by shhexy corin | Permalink
- The help channel was hard to find at first - I still wouldn't have found it without asking. That's not a good thing since its a *help* channel (for noobs)...
  Overall, I like the UI; it's clean and intuitive. Scrolling is great! Great work dburka and rest of team.
  It bugged on me once though: the draggy bit for help/local chat wouldn't move and overlapped the text.
  Posted 22 months ago by Hburger | Permalink
- typing seems kinda laggy.. like the visuals take a sec to catch up.
  but I'm not sure if that's a chat thing or related to other lag issues, or just a different load on my browser with the new avatars and whatever else going on.
  Posted 22 months ago by Another Chris | Permalink
- Another Chris: it is almost certainly not related to the new UI — just the general slowness (which is being worked on now).
  The help channel in its current incarnation does not have much longer to live: instead, new players will be offered a "live help" option and connected to devs or volunteers for actual question asking.
  Posted 22 months ago by stoot barfield | Permalink
- Where is the global chat? Someone said a tab? For the life of me I can't find it, even when I make my window full size...
  Posted 22 months ago by EgIantine | Permalink
- Yea I see it. It just looks weird to me that the friends list is like half showing. It might look better if just the expand arrow was showing.
  Posted 22 months ago by Fizio | Permalink
- where is all the chit chat. I cant see anyone talking, don't see any help channel, just a big white box. I'm afraid I don't like it at all. I now feel all alone :'(
  edit Ok I found it but im still not sure I like it.
  Posted 22 months ago by Misha | Permalink
- I think it's a vast improvement, lordy I am so grateful for a nice white space, black lettering, a larger, readable font, wonderful wonderful, thank you! Other thoughts:
  1. I like the half hidden friends tab, but I wish it was translucent when closed, solid when open. That of course is based on wishing it to be less obtrusive but I don't know if translucence would actually help with that in reality.
  2, I didn't find the tab button for friends obtrusive at all, in fact like Hburger I couldn't find it (thanks bluto). I would wish this to be not wider, but taller (longer?) and sparkly, just at first, like a vampire in the sun, On the other hand, I only it needed it to be that big and sparkly the first time, so maybe that would be wasted effort. But I will say that when I first opened it up, I actually thought the chat window was covering the Friends' list in error..I even switched browsers to see if that helped. And I attempted to drag the white chat box off the Friends' list too... Then I just IM'd bluto for help.
  3. Kaushka noted that the bullet points in front of the friends are kind of redundant and what's the pointish...agree with that.
  4. The stat at the top telling me how many lines it's been since I had anything to say...I am not clear why I would need/like this? I feel very interwebs ignorant in this moment...
  5. I still think Local chat is too big. Can't we just make it half the height it currently has? Or make it adjustable? Or will I even care once the current Help channel goes away?
  Such a pleasure to use chat now, thanks so much!
  Posted 22 months ago by Nanookie | Permalink
- ok, ok Im liking nope LOVING the chat now I finally found it. BUT can I not have help chat open and also a IM channel open at the same time. I'm only able to do one or the other. If it is possible to see IM chat and help channel then please someone tell me where i'm going wrong :)
  im still gunning for a spell checker lol
  Posted 22 months ago by Misha | Permalink
- I might have liked it if it was adjustable, but now I cant see when my friends are on, it hides everything.
  Posted 22 months ago by Teena | Permalink
- Teena: which part did you want to adjust? You can expand and collapse the friends list and adjust the amount of height given over to local chat vs help or IM. Did you mean adjust the width of the whole thing? And, if so, to make it smaller? Or bigger?
  Posted 22 months ago by stoot barfield | Permalink
- It is adjustable? I tried, but failed to change the size so I thought that I misread the visual indicator.
  Posted 22 months ago by Nanookie | Permalink
- Love the new chat, but I would suggest the default should be to open with global help chat. I had trouble finding it this time around, and I'm not a n00b.
  That said, wow, SO nice to be able to scroll properly, and to resize the windows. It's a fantastic improvement.
  Posted 22 months ago by Helcat | Permalink
- Love the new chat. A couple of things I think would make it better:
  * The "slide-out" tab with friends / groups on it should be translucent, perhaps becoming more opaque as it opens;
  * The tab [
  Posted 22 months ago by Yeoman | Permalink
- Stoot - the width was fine, and having the tab to click out to see the rest was a good idea, but I couldnt resize the window. Only to open up another window (help) that pushed the local chat down to half size, but then a chat with a friend opened on top of the help one so that further obscured my friends list, to be able to see who was online, not to mention the help chat. Thank you for fixing the whereabouts of my friends.
  Posted 22 months ago by Teena | Permalink
- Was able to find and use it ok but did not see that you can resize. Would like to be able to close local chat with x.
  Posted 22 months ago by Emu | Permalink
- I was able to adjust the height of local chat.
  Posted 22 months ago by Amy Pond | Permalink
- Oh Im glad it is not just me [usually is lol] I new how to pull out the friend list and scroll up and down from it. Still hard to see who was online. At first. It just kind of dawned on me after scrolling down there were names faded out who must be the ones off line. I also did knot know you could re size the help chat window or local and I still don't know how to do that?
  Other wise I do like it now. It was just a bit over whelming at first glance. Was there a way to have both HELP and IM /GROUP chat open at the same time? At first I complained about so much chit chat in the help channel I still do really but I also love to read the banter etc. Is there any way to fit in a global chat and help. I would miss one or the other equally.
  cough cough spell checker! ;P i'm starting to beg lol
  Posted 22 months ago by Misha | Permalink
- REQUEST: The game needs to remember / save which group chats (lumping help in here while it's around) I had open as well as which one was in front.
  That probably goes for inventory/open bag states and anything else that winds up in the game UI but there was really no reason I should be redoing everything if I reload due to game bug/browser issue or just returning a different day.
  Posted 22 months ago by Another Chris | Permalink
- Yeah, I really find it frustarating to find all of my groups again. Maybe there could be a page that you could click off on all the groups you want automatically open, maybe even friends if they are online.
  Posted 22 months ago by Ani Laurel | Permalink
- Another Chris & Aniloverl — that's a great suggestion. Like auto-join in IRC. Good!
  Posted 22 months ago by stoot barfield | Permalink
- I might have forgotten to state during the test, but the new chat system is 100x better than the old one. I LOVE the notifications, the look and feel, the slidey panel, etc. You guys rule!
  (The only thing I had trouble with was finding the help channel, but I assume that it's a problem that only comes up if you have more than a screenful of group membership and friends, so it won't affect the players who need help channel most.)
  Posted 22 months ago by EgIantine | Permalink
- I wish the chat interface was open right now..it's bugging the hell out of me that I couldn't get the windows to resize.
  Posted 22 months ago by Nanookie | Permalink
- +1 for the auto-join feature. I was at work while the last test was underway so it is hard to mind chat while multi-tasking, which is think is a decent test-case for the new chat. I was able to better skim (and dismiss) messages between gameplay and get a sense of what I'd missed. So, nice improvements for those of us not strongly chatty...or at least distracted during tests.
  Posted 22 months ago by tiff | Permalink
- The local chat has pale blue on white I think I remember - it will
  vary in darkness on different browsers and monitors but it's not nearly
  enough contrast for anyone with low vision. If you test it with a colour
  contrast analyser eg
  www.visionaustralia.org.au/... you will be able
  to find out the colours that will work for colour blind or low vision
  users. It's not so important with graphics etc but for the text it needs
  to be right.
  Posted 22 months ago by Emu | Permalink