Speech Bubbles - Thoughts?

[Cendres]

Yeah I like speech bubbles and I think it fits the game just fine, but personally I don't like seeing floaty things in the air all the time so if they could be on a toggle and it seems SE like things that toggle now I'm all for it.

edit: Oh that's been mentioned already, sorry.

[Belial]

Chat Bubbles = Screen Clutter. Keep your shitty convos off my screen.

[Leowilde]

and it seems SE like things that toggle now

Hehehe.

[Sephr]

Talking about immersion in this context is utterly redundant. That's like saying "I'm not able to open menus in real life and examine what i'm carrying in a list, so it shouldn't be there".
Sooner or later you're going to have to come to terms with the fact that it's a game, and you can't live in it.

That said, it's even more redundant considering just about everything that gets added has some form of toggle because of whinegasms (which is not a bad thing at all).

Perhaps it would be better as someone said to have a FFXIII-like system, whereby if NPCs wanted to get your attention (this was the main reason i was thinking about it, with the PS3 release and an influx of new players they'll need better ways of guiding people where to go next, and an NPC who interacts with the char and gives context to their movements would be a good way of doing it) text could appear in a corner and perhaps their position would flash on the map. Might be a good alternative method of interaction.

I'm personally still keen for bubbles of some variety (they dont have to be giant fat speech bubbles, that's just a term I'm using for above-head text), I think there's a disconnect currently between character and player in the eyes the other people playing. In other MMOs the idea of looking in the log for what people have said is just not considered (unless its guild chat etc) because its much easier and more obvious to look at on-screen information.

Chat Bubbles = Screen Clutter. Keep your shitty convos off my screen.

As I said before, I think it would have to be optional, and also customisable in that perhaps you'd only see bubbles for party members/linkshell members etc.

Hard, right?

(Not being overly defensive here, but I think it's worth at least trying to be constructive about the topic)

[Belial]

Talking about immersion in this context is utterly redundant. That's like saying "I'm not able to open menus in real life and examine what i'm carrying in a list, so it shouldn't be there".
Sooner or later you're going to have to come to terms with the fact that it's a game, and you can't live in it.

That said, it's even more redundant considering just about everything that gets added has some form of toggle because of whinegasms (which is not a bad thing at all).

Perhaps it would be better as someone said to have a FFXIII-like system, whereby if NPCs wanted to get your attention (this was the main reason i was thinking about it, with the PS3 release and an influx of new players they'll need better ways of guiding people where to go next, and an NPC who interacts with the char and gives context to their movements would be a good way of doing it) text could appear in a corner and perhaps their position would flash on the map. Might be a good alternative method of interaction.

I'm personally still keen for bubbles of some variety (they dont have to be giant fat speech bubbles, that's just a term I'm using for above-head text), I think there's a disconnect currently between character and player in the eyes the other people playing. In other MMOs the idea of looking in the log for what people have said is just not considered (unless its guild chat etc) because its much easier and more obvious to look at on-screen information.





Hard, right?

(Not being overly defensive here, but I think it's worth at least trying to be constructive about the topic)

Not hard, unimportant. Chat bubbles may have served a purpose prior to current MMO design but to implement a chat bubble when you have a chat window is a great example of redundancy and a waste of resources. Better?

[Sephr]

Not hard, unimportant. Chat bubbles may have served a purpose prior to current MMO design but to implement a chat bubble when you have a chat window is a great example of redundancy and a waste of resources. Better?

Much. I also think that suggesting it's a waste of resources is subjective considering we don't know the setup of the FFXIV dev team and how much effort it would take, as well as it coming down to personal opinion as to how important they are. I'd also argue that new players coming from elsewhere might be somewhat turned off by log-only (The reason I made this thread was that I got a couple of friends to join up, and neither of them liked that in particular) so I would argue that potentially it's not a waste of resources at all if it makes the experience more user-friendly.

I could argue that introducing the remaining genders is a waste of resources from my point of view, that doesn't make it correct.

EDIT: To add, whether or not its redundant would also remain to be seen, as I suggested it would be useful to grab the attention of players (in the same vein as the quest "!"'s which have been added to all mission NPCs too, something that my friends found to be pretty useful in working out where they needed to go.)

[Leowilde]

Someone mentioned in a different thread that talking would trigger movement in the character, like moving arms etc. Perhaps that could be a good alternate option to bring more life into the society. And if they could implement voices to the NPCs, to actually make them shout out when you run by if they have quests. They should probably just be heard by the player himself, or else the city would be full of shouting.

[Ilean]

Sure, but make it optional.

I would keep it OFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF forever.

[Eekiki]

I don't care for the idea of speech bubbles, however I do believe the text box that appears when you speak to an NPC needs to be larger.

I also wouldn't mind it being your traditional Final Fantasy blue with white border.

[Majidah]

Sounds too cartoony, doesn't fit the game.

A line of text at the bottom of the screen (with vo's even) aka XIII would be nice though, so the idea has merit.

No its not.
Case in point vagrant story: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_5_wW2fj02S...9.00.23%5D.jpg
Case in point phantasy star online: http://images.quickblogcast.com/1014...SP231.jpg?a=43


Phantasy star online pretty much INVENTED GUILD LEVES by the way. It was a mmorpg, and the text bubbles worked great. I don't see why they wouldn't work on XIV. As we can see on vagrant story (which is a SE title with the same head artist as XIV btw) you can make it look medieval and serious.

It'd help XIV lots. It makes everything look really lively!