Chat Text Bubbles over Player Characters?

[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.