Say Chat (Text Bubble)

[Errors]

Guild Wars 2: http://www.guildwars2guru.com/topic/...on-and-the-ui/

Hehe I'm just laughing because it's hilarious that I'm finding other MMO's forums having this exact same topic conversation at some point in time.

I'm just doing basic Google searches to figure out which games have speech bubbles and which don't. :X

[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!

[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.

[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

[Ildur]

NPCs have chat bubbles, Errors. You can walk among some cases where you can see up to 4 chat bubbles showing up at the same time. That automatically means the game can handle them and that it does. Sure, you could get, theoretically, a case where thousands and thousands of chat bubbles show up because there's a lot of players. But you can bypass that with just a limit to how many chat bubbles the game can render at the same time. So you could have that chat bubbles stop appearing after 15 or something, which is a hilariously small effect on performance. We already have a hard limit on how many players/effects can be rendered per sector, after all, so the effort to implement them wouldn't take much work and wouldn't put some giant magical strain on our PCs.
I mean, seriously: the game can handle a crapton of UI and 3D elements on screen at the same time without freaking out but chat bubbles are somehow way too much work? That makes no sense.

EDIT: Other MMOs with chat bubbles: Champions Online, SWToR, Lineage 2, Everquest 2, Blade & Soul, Guild Wars 2.

[Bufkus]

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.)

Terrible excuse on their part. They should make it a priority feature. Every single other MMO in the world has this feature.

[Errors]

-snip-

Yeah, except it isn't the same, it's not quite the same when dealing with dynamic data. How far away do you render the chat bubbles, the same distance of /say? How close do you want to render them (ie cover the screen if someone is close to your camera)? Is that distance to far to read text, what's the happy scaling number to keep it readable? At what resolutions is it readable? How large to you make them? How much text do you allow to be displayed in them? Do you make them transparent? How long to you keep them displayed? Can you click through them to target another character behind them? How much processing resources does it take to render 1 chat bubble, how about 10 chat bubbles, 100 chat bubbles, on low, medium, high settings? Does it affect current rendered objects on the screen, by how much? Do you allow limit on how many chat bubbles can be display on the screen (similar to how many character models can render). What is the rendering priority? How much additional memory does it take up? Is the textual data tied to proper render space? Which speech bubble take priority over the other, distance, time event is sent, do they stack or overlap?

If you turn off flying text in the game right now it affects the game's performance...just food for thought.

I don't think folks quite understand, it's not that chat bubbles can't be done, it's a matter of choice and style the games direction has. I personally think it's that I rather have more room to do environmental additions that comic book speech bubbles being worked on. And not nearly as many MMO's as you folks claim have them, and some that you have listed only added it at a later date. SE has already said they aren't planning on adding it after viewing how it would affect the game.

In any case, it's been fun folks! \^^

Terrible excuse on their part. They should make it a priority feature. Every single other MMO in the world has this feature.

And I think that it shouldn't be a priority feature. Where does that leave us now? This thread alone shows that there is little to no support for this feature in the community.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...58#post1772158

Also, really? Every single other MMO?

[SoulKhan]

Like sometimes I am in town and someone says in say chat, Hey soul. I can see a lot of players but I have to look at each character or the names to see which person is talking to me. Its not the end of the world though it would be nice to have for say chat since it shouldn't in no means take a strain on the server.

P.S. One thing I like about this game is the lip sync characters can do while you chat (can be turned on or off) Also when we look at another player our head moves. Now that is cool and others can see this.

[KupoNuts]

I support this, as I've played many MMOs and they all had chat bubbles.

It makes dungeons and similar stuff easier because watching the chat log as a hawk in case you don't miss something can be really distracting, but with chat bubbles you don't have to take your eyes off of encounter. It's not a cluster and servers have nothing to do with it, your PC/console renders it.

Also just when you're sitting somewhere in game with someone and chatting, while trying to enjoy the scenery, but you can't because your eyes are peeled on the chat log, it gets annoying.

You have my vote. People who are against it are either deluded or haven't played any MMO prior to this.

[Naunet]

Also, really? Every single other MMO?

Every MMO that XIV is in actual competition with.