Say Chat (Text Bubble)

[Tupsi]

memory limitations? in 2014?

It's not the memory limitations, it's just not a priority feature to add - It works for NPCs because they're static entities, but thousands of people with text bubbles everywhere is just unnecessary strain in the long run.

The PS3 can handle it actually, it's just they want to allocate as much resources to important features as possible, even the PS4 version won't have it and it's not because of memory limitations (they say it as an "easy" way to understand.)

[Ildur]

It's not the memory limitations, it's just not a priority feature to add - It works for NPCs because they're static entities, but thousands of people with text bubbles everywhere is just unnecessary strain in the long run.

Please, I have been in Mor Dhona, where there's dozens and dozens of people at any time and yet people barely speak in /say, which is the only time when 'thousands' of chat bubbles could appear in my screen. /say and /party should have chat bubbles. And also add a toggle in the options so people can choose to not have them.
Unless Squee is using very stupid programming (wouldn't be surprised) or is target of an ancient vodoo curse that will make their eyeballs melt, I don't see why they couldn't implement it. Every MMO I have played had chat bubbles and they were never a reason for 'unnecessary strain in the long or short run'.

[Errors]

-snip-

Your server's Mor Dhona must be differently populated than the my server, or at least less chatty. There are shouts, says, yells constantly on Exac. I personally don't want my screen being filled with chat bubbles period. I don't want the scenery to be blocked out, the sky, characters, people's names, NPC's, building, plainly anything being blocked out by speech bubbles.Speech bubbles in parties makes no sense, how often is your full party all in the same spot outside of instanced content? In instanced content how often are all your party members in line of sight? And are you really going to read that chat bubble as someone runs by? It just seems like a silly feature request that bring no added value in my opinion.

The small NPC chat bubble is fine because I'm talking to the NPC directly which is a direct action by my character. But folks just cluttering my screen because they will use it as a free visual advertising platform since it's so visible...is not my cup of tea, and breaks that immersion feel for me. If a feature implemented that is mostly going to be turned off...it shouldn't be implemented in the first place. I'd rather SE continue with other features in the game that don't feel intrusive.

/shrug

[Tupsi]

Please, I have been in Mor Dhona

Huh, wasn't aware the server only takes into consideration 1 zone at a time and every other zone is unloaded when you're not there.

[Bixby]

Huh, wasn't aware the server only takes into consideration 1 zone at a time and every other zone is unloaded when you're not there.

What's the server got to do with it? Showing chat bubbles is purely a client side function. You're not sending or receiving any new data, it's just being displayed differently.

[Ildur]

Huh, wasn't aware the server only takes into consideration 1 zone at a time and every other zone is unloaded when you're not there.

Of course it only takes into consideration the zone you are in. You know why? Because chat bubbles are an UI element. Or even if you design it to be some kind of special effect, it's still the player's computer who handles it, not the servers. You can go check this simply by going into options and checking that you can deactivate FXs on your machine without it affecting everyone else in the world. It would incredibly stupid for Squee to have every player's computer handle every single FX in the whole world when they are not there. And not stupid in a light way, but so stupid they'd need to have put their window cleaners to program their game instead of a certified or at least experienced programmer.

Or to put it clearer for the silly people out there: visual elements are not loaded by the servers. Chat bubbles are a visual element. So they aren't loaded by the servers.

[Naunet]

It's not the memory limitations, it's just not a priority feature to add - It works for NPCs because they're static entities, but thousands of people with text bubbles everywhere is just unnecessary strain in the long run.

I have a hard time believing it's just "unnecessary strain" when every freaking MMO - even one almost ten years old - has this feature. This is not some innovative bit of technology here. If you don't want them, you can always toggle them off.

I'm on the side against having visual speech bubbles. I don't care what reason was given about limitations. My concern is the screen clutter.[/IMG]

Again: If you don't want to see them, you can just turn them off.

[Errors]

I have a hard time believing it's just "unnecessary strain" when every freaking MMO - even one almost ten years old - has this feature. This is not some innovative bit of technology here. If you don't want them, you can always toggle them off.

I hope this doesn't come across as snide, but if you don't understand the strain it's because you don't understand programming and resource management nightmare when it comes to dealing with screen rendering, memory, and well a slew of hardware configurations that you have no control over. ie They have to hit the lowest common denominator. Comparing older games to new ones is also a bad comparison especially if you just are trying to compare one feature. You have to look at the whole picture. How different are the games you trying to compare. Are the graphics more intense, can they render the same amount of glyphs on the screen, sounds, textures, animations, events, etc..

The "unnecessary" part is simple because it's not something that is required to play the game. /shrug It's not as simple as I'll just add this new feature to the game, it will be perfect and not effect anything else that's already in the game. I mean don't get me wrong I'd love to see development get to the point where hardware can just provide oodles of resources to play with, sadly we're not there. There is also creative direction to keep in mind, which tends to get pushed aside a lot of times. FFXIV was built with speech bubbles not included in their original design. Will it come in the future? Maybe, maybe not, who knows. But currently the demand for something like this is so low that it doesn't even register on their radars.

For the role playing folks out there, I get it. But in all honesty, speech bubbles isn't how I'd like to RP. I'd rather just have voice integration at that point. And well we all know what type of topic that is.

Out of curiosity, can you provide me a list of MMO's that have speech bubbles? I'd like to do some research and see what they look like, in perfect conditions (low usage) and in the worst conditions (high usage).

Trying to find this speech bubble standard in other MMO's and came across this:
http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?p=415849

It's like the same topic we are having here. XD

[Naunet]

Out of curiosity, can you provide me a list of MMO's that have speech bubbles?

I can give you the names of the ones I've played. Obviously it's not all MMOs, as there's no way in hell I'll ever play all MMOs out there. However, MMOs that I know have them as I have played them (and they in no way affected performance): WoW, Rift, Aion, LotRO, and TERA. There are two MMOs currently under NDA that I can't remember if they have it or not, but I think they did.

[edit] Thank you, Ildur!

[Errors]

I can give you the names of the ones I've played. Obviously it's not all MMOs, as there's no way in hell I'll ever play all MMOs out there. However, MMOs that I know have them as I have played them (and they in no way affected performance): WoW, Rift, Aion, LotRO, and TERA.

Thanks for the list, not exact what I was expecting after you mentioned that almost every freaking MMO has them. :/ I'm poking around these now and seeing what they look like. I'd like you to reconsider your last statement though, saying that a graphical element has no way affected performance is a blank statement with no substance, and quite frankly not true. Every single UI element, effect, model has an effect on performance. If a game has speech bubbles then it means that the engine was designed to handle that element rendering. It's how that's balanced that matters, it could be that FFXIV is specifically designed to not support speech bubbles because that want other things to render on the screen. It doesn't mean they can't add them in the future, but when they do they'll likely update the UI performance in general.

Funny enough I came across an older FFXIV thread about the same topic:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...bbles-Thoughts