Chat Text Bubbles over Player Characters?

[InkB]

Well considering WoW, 17 year old game, has speech bubbles and has no issues with it.. I dont see why wouldnt we get some. I really miss this feature from it. Way easier to figure out who said what and where. For example there are lot of people who just go "stack on me" in party but that would sometimes require watching chat while doing combat and then figuring who tf is where. Small issues I guess now with stack marker but eeh - it would add more liveliness to cities too.

Example of ESO

However it would need options how far you see what. Some holidays in WoW get really messy when 20 people speak at same time :P

[BrachyXIV]

You can toggle off names and titles. I have mine set to only display names on my friends list and party members. Easy way to clean up the clutter.

EXACTLY
You could easily do the same thing with Chat Bubbles. You just said the exact same thing we say about Chat Bubbles!!

[Rongway]

I can't believe how much you people just don't want such a small change that could be easy to turn off

You said you're not an expert, and that's okay. You don't have the context to understand what you're asking or why it's even an issue when it sounds so simple.

My day job is teaching college courses in computer science, discrete mathematics, and UI/UX design. Here's my opinion on the subject.

That I or any other half competent programmer could think of easy ways to implement 99% of the feature requests people post to this forum is irrelevant. The devs have far stricter standards and protocols regarding changes to the memory structure and you're not going to convince them to change anything by making false analogies or appealing to "but it would be optional so it doesn't affect you if you don't want it". Every feature addition affects everyone, even if it's an optional feature that people can turn off, because (1) they have to program everything with the assumption that there will be players on minimum spec machines playing with every UI option turned on, and (2) because it affects what other decisions they're willing or even able to make regarding the UI or memory structure.

It's fine to want speech bubbles and to ask for them on the forums. But when those of us with programming experience and who have been keeping up with dev letters and interviews for the last decade tell you they probably won't devote resources to it right now, we're not just trying to be contrary for the sake of shooting down your idea.

There are real UI/UX problems that make the game unnecessarily more difficult or frustrating for people, such as the non-customizability of the hotbar when you're playing as a story character; or that side content that was made MSQ-required after the fact still use optional content quest icons instead of required content quest icons; or the lack of effective colorblindness accessibility options. Chat bubbles are just an immersion or convenience feature. If I were working on a game like this, I would fix those other problems before even entertaining the idea of chat bubbles.

[Roda]

Gonna throw in my voice here in favor of speech bubbles.
The fact that this game doesn't have them is a SERIOUS
drain on my enjoyment of the social aspect to this mmo.
And it's honestly a bigger issue to me than things like
the lack of inventory space, or even them cutting
the amount of max level dungeons per patch!

I can't follow conversations in crowded, talkative places.
I don't get to use any emotes during ACTUAL social interactions, because
what's the point? I'm not looking where the characters are.
The "WE ADDED LIP FLAPPING" update was laughably useless
because, well, that's such a tiny detail that I am absolutely NEVER
going to see, because it's all the way over there, away from the
actual, more important, thing that triggered the lip flaps. Like,
am I supposed to look at a character's lips flapping, then check
back to my chat box, then back to the character? That's far too
much eye movement and refocusing for such a small animation.
I don't get to enjoy someone's character while I'm interacting with them.
Like, with this formatting I've chosen, did you notice which face I
chose? I don't blame you if you didn't notice, because IT'S ALL
THE WAY OVER THERE. You're not engaging with a person, you're
just reading some text. And never mind when you add in
movement into the mix I can't tell when someone says
hi to me, or when someone tries to get my attention when I'm
questing, because all of my social interactions are quarentined
to the lower left corner of my screen nowhere near the center
portion of my screen, AKA where I look when I'm actually
enjoying the game. I can't signal to someone to do something
or go somewhere in the middle of combat (say, a new player)
because they're focused on the boss, their bars, and literally
anywhere that isn't their chat box. So instead of standing on a spot
and saying "X, come over here" I have to go there, jump up and down
play with the player markers to MAYBE hopefully get their attention.


So, I've just stopped participating in this game socially, which sucks
because my MMO-player types are explorer/social.






I've made a similar post before and I won't stop echoing these sentiments
until I can actually have a natural conversation in the game with another player character,
instead of through a scrolling jumble of unconnected chatter.

here are my previous words on the subject

can we please get an option to give players the same speech bubbles that npcs have?

I've got this real problem with how xiv's emotes and chat functions work.

On one hand we've got the most extensive and detailed animation and emote list that I've seen in any mmo. Unique motions for each race and gender (and clan if you're hyur!), all context sensitive depending on where and how you place your character.

And on the other hand, I can't see any of it, because if I'm interacting with another player, I'm focused on the lower left hand corner of my screen, nowhere near where any of these beautiful animations are happening. I don't even bother to use them in any social context anymore, really they're only for gpose for me right now. :T


Take this scene as an example


Take note where my chat box is, and where my characters. I've got the chat box where it is so that I can see the game world while running around and engaging in combat, this means it need to be fairly far away from my character. And to be honest this placement is the standard for mmos.

Now, if I were engaging in a real conversation and I wanted to talk with someone while still observing the animations my eyes would have to dart from the chat box, to the center of the screen, then immediately back to the chatbox, and since our brains aren't wired for multitasking it'll go a little something like this:



Not getting enough information from either chat, or emotes, depending on how rapid the chat scrolls and how naturally the emotes are triggered. This method is inefficient at best, and fatiguing at worst. Plus it causes you to miss chat or react sluggishly, so to avoid being rude, I, and I assume many people, experience their social interactions like this:



Ignoring the entirety of the game screen save for the chatbox. Ignoring all those animations, all the work on character creation, and glamour that both you and the people you're talking to have done, and just using the game as a massively resource intensive IRC

pmuch the same as using chat rn:

So, to fix these (admittedly personal) issues I suggest allowing players to toggle on player speech bubbles for each individual chats, like they can toggle on visibility of different channels in their chat box. The bubbles could even be tinted for the different chat channel colors you've selected. (like not exactly, but if you have a bright green FC chat, maybe the fc chat bubble could be a light, desaturated, lime green. If party chat is a bright sky blue, the bubble could be a light powder blue, etc.

Just something to bring my eye back to the center of my screen and interacting with people with all the tools available.





(side note, party speech bubbles would help immensely when trying to guide someone in the middle of a pull. People rarely are looking in the corner of their screen when they're fighting something, so having your message displayed right where the fighting is happening would be a boon to party communication!)




Here's how other games handle their speech bubble sizing:

Keep in mind these are the maximum lengths I could force. Regular use of these things rarely see the entire length used.
GW2

The best imo, roomy but not too much, and the textbox fits in nicely with the whole aesthetic of the game's UI

Wildstar

Not great, but better than nothing. It allows you to fit a LOT into it, and people rarely use that much (and the length might be due to an addon idk). The transparency is nice, but not for everyone.

Blade and Soul

Simple and fits in with the UI. I enjoy that it shows the player's name on it. Though the image doesn't show it, these bubbles have a problem with not being scaled with distance. Meaning if someone far away has a bubble visible, it is hard to distinguish from the foreground/more relevant bubbles, and its actual graphic could eclipse the speaker's entire character and those behind them.

Tera

Kinda weird behaviors when the character is close up. It has a good length, but it may be too wide and have too few lines. I much prefer gw2's use of text wrapping.

SWL

Not a fan, but once again, better than nothing. Imo it's too small and cuts off waaaaaaaay too much of the sentence. Due to the cut-off it's hardly useful for anything meaningful.

The fact that the UI artists were so bored they put speech bubble stickers in
GPOSE before adding them as a social accessability option
really rubs salt in my social butterfly shaped wound.

[Iscah]

The fact that the UI artists were so bored they put speech bubble stickers in GPOSE before adding them as a social accessability option really rubs salt in my social butterfly shaped wound.

The fact that they put it as a sticker in gpose is not proof that they're able to do it with live chat in the game. It's not about priorities if only one of those things is achievable.

[Roda]

The fact that they put it as a sticker in gpose is not proof that they're able to do it with live chat in the game. It's not about priorities if only one of those things is achievable.

I didn't say anything was proof.

It's the fact that they think that, composition-wise
putting text physically near the speakers is easier
and more pleasant to read than having all the text
jumbled up in the corner, scrolling by, as the interesting
part is happening away from the text. THAT's what
annoys me.


And speech bubbles are absolutely possible
as npcs have no problem performing player-like actions
and displaying bubbles AS WELL AS a certain
tool that some players may or may not use has the
ability to actually display speech bubbles. I haven't tested
this feature myself of course, 'cause i'm not a naughty nancy
but modders have also done the "absolutely unpossible no way to
do it because the game doesn't work like that" by giving the viera hats
( though clipping does exist because they're missing
some assets that every other model has and since these are
unofficial mods QA isn't really a thing since they don't have
the resources and are doing this work for free). So yeah I'm dubious
whenever some forum contrarian comes in and speaks for the game
engine and developers' ability whenever anyone has a feature request.


Just because you can't think of how to do it, doesn't mean the developers can't.
Just because it hasn't happened yet, doesn't mean they've considered trying.

[Ftail]

There’s a way you can get chat bubbles like you want in this game but I wouldn’t recommend breaking the TOS and risk getting banned. I know my fc mate uses chat bubbles above heads from a screenshot he provided.

[testname]

There’s a way you can get chat bubbles like you want in this game but I wouldn’t recommend breaking the TOS and risk getting banned. I know my fc mate uses chat bubbles above heads from a screenshot he provided.

Fates have Npc with them, the bubbles are implemented in game and it works

switching ON bubbles for players is easy that is why your friend has them from 3rd party software

for devs it would be even more Easy to do

[Iscah]

...

The only thing you're achieving by right-aligning your text is making it literally impossible for me to read, so I can't get to your point.

I'm not saying this to be flippant. I start to read and my eyes skim off the page and can't handle it.

There's a reason I only managed to reply to the bit of your previous post that was short and isolated enough to read.

And again, if the system can't handle it in the first place, there's no use making a point of why it would be useful to have it or why it would be more reader-friendly than the chat log.

[Raikai]

Right click on the name in the chat box and you can 'target' the player if they are close enough.
Mouths move as you speak in game so it's not like they're *just* standing there.
Chat bubbles above the characters would litter the screen with unnecessary clutter. I know, you already said something about that, but still bringing it up.
As for the mod thing, they really don't care unless it gives you an advantage/cheat I believe. At least they don't really enforce action against folks that use mods like that from what I'm aware of.
Tbh also, I'd rather they use time and resources to fix or add other things than this.

Also, if folks be talking like, that much and constantly around you... wouldn't the chat bubbles like really get in the way/possibly overlap? You'd still not be able to read everything that fast if you can't read the chat box that fast, because the chat bubbles would have to disappear for whatever they say next.

This just doesn't seem like it'd be that much of a fix as you think it would, but perhaps I could be wrong.

There's one thing about the right click on the name... The chat reach is completely out of sync with the right click reach. Sometimes I can even see the person but can't do the method you suggested because it's still considered too far away, even if the emote/say/etc reach me.

I'm all for chat bubbles, much like the other interface options like names, etc, that I macro a keybind to show or hide depending on the situation I'm in. If it's optional, and you're feeling like it's cluttering your screen, just hide it.

Chat bubbles are a good thing especially for group content, because sometimes, you're too busy looking at telegraphs, etc, to pay attention to the chatbox. The bubble popping right where you're looking at would be pretty good to catch whatever people are saying/asking, etc.

It works for every other MMO out there, I doubt it wouldn't for XIV.