Would love to see a dev responding to this

What can they say? "Sorry that we've been lying to you but we want to retain your subscription with vague comments like "SOONtm"?".

I think they genuinely want to implement chat bubbles at some point down the line in the distant future. They just dont have the money/tech/resources etc. to do it now but they are unwilling to admit it.

What can they say? "Sorry that we've been lying to you but we want to retain your subscription with vague comments like "SOONtm"?".

 

I think they genuinely want to implement chat bubbles at some point down the line in the distant future. They just dont have the money/tech/resources etc. to do it now but they are unwilling to admit it.

Could it also be that just such small percentage of people are interested in chat bubbles that they simply have other things that are a much higher priorirty?? I am sure it has nothing to do with money, tech, resources.. After all chat bubbles were in the beta.. They just didn't work to well and ate up resources.. I am sure at some point they will be turned back on.. When they have fixed the resource issue and when they have nothing more important to do.. Like give us content to keep us ALL playing.. Not to mention fix bugs and issues..

I am also quite certian that calling Bioware a liar is no way to get something you want.. In fact it isn't even a good way to have anyone take you seriously.. Just saying..

Wow, that just about nails on how horrible Bioware is doing so far on what players need to improve gameplay and fun, instead of them adding more and more easy bullshiz to try to keep the game alive.

It's been going on since the launch?!!! KEEP THIS THREAD ALIVE!!!!

BIOWARE, ADD THIS SHIZZLE TO THE GAME!!!! WE'VE WAITED LONG ENOUGH!!!!!

What can they say? "Sorry that we've been lying to you but we want to retain your subscription with vague comments like "SOONtm"?".

 

I think they genuinely want to implement chat bubbles at some point down the line in the distant future. They just dont have the money/tech/resources etc. to do it now but they are unwilling to admit it.

Personally i wouldn't hold my hope high for anything they had promised before July/August. There have been so many internal changes of the studio in the past few months that maybe their priority list got changed to something else to fit the hybrid Free-to-Play model, for ex Dual Spec had been promised to be in 1.2 or 1.3 ,but it isn't even in 1.4.

What i would love to see now is their response to this matter at this point.

So your car has reached 6000 miles and you haven't changed your oil.. Its something you've known about and WANTED to do. But instead your going to add flashy new headlights and a hood scoop. Your gonna run it into the ground

Its not a breakthrough in scripting to add a chat bubble.. and whats wrong with being angry or pissed? EACH and every one of us are stockholders in this game, We pay to play with cash and our time. I guarantee if you gave 5% of the budget grossly spent on this game to a bunch of college kids in the computer department on a major college campus they would happily have shined out a gem of a game with better quality control and have been happy to meet everyone's needs. Was adding a Cathar that dire? is that going to really keep and bring new players that feel alienated?

The jury is out and the hangman is waiting

91 pages of requests seem like alot, but then again this thread has been open since December, if this was bigger issue their would be more than 91 pages in almost 9 months. (there are alot of the same people posting over and over again in this thread as well; I am guilty of that myself )

When you think about it alot of the commnity does not seem too interested in chat bubbles and it does not seem that bioware is either (hence ZERO Answers at this point)

I would like to see chat bubbles, but the mmos players just dont seem all that interested in the social interaction provided in that manner, they seem fine with general chat the way it is.

Yes, people may say roleplayers and socializers are a minority. But then again, one of the reasons is because the game doesn't support them. In games that cather to roleplayers better, the percentage of roleplayers is in the ballpark of the PVPers. The longer you don't have good RP features, the more roleplayers you will loose - and yes, a great many have been lost already.

If Bioware had launched the game without PVP except duels and still not delivered, I wager there would be even less PVPers that would still be playing TOR right now than there currently are roleplayers.

Also, if PVP didn't award gear, a great many people that boost the PVP statistics int his game wouldn't be PVPing either.

Same with other types of players, like high-end raiders, etc..

My point is that if you don't give a player group content, then one shouldn't wonder if the player group remains small or becomes smaller and smaller. But perhaps that's Bioware's plan. Weed out the roleplayers and socializers so they no longer need to add any RP features.

"If you build it, they will come."

One thing to consider is also, that roleplayers are usually more hesistant to post on the forums.

Many roleplayers complain greatly (but usually in a civilized manner) in the game OOC about there not being chat bubbles and other RP features, especially during larger RP events, but if one tells them to head to the forums and post in this and other threads, most just say things like "no, I don't want to post on forums, I will only be trolled and flamed by the anti-RP crowd anyway", "forums are only for whiners, I won't stoop to that level" and similar things.

So there are many players out there that really want chat bubbles, but don't post on the forums.

Like i said I'm throwing in my Input and i don't event represent the RP demographic.. just an example the other day i was trying to reach a Holocron and there was a guy running around me. I couldn't get his attention due to the flood of traffic on the general chat, yes i even PMed him.

I never had a problem letting someone know i was directly talking to them when i had dialogue appear through my toon .. He let me know he didn't even see his whispers because not everyone scans the left corner when they are out doing their thing. And whats more satisfying than talking smack to an enemy player when your PVPing?? its not as if Rep can talk to Imperials in any other form or fashion?? and this would ENABLE IT

Like i said I'm throwing in my Input and i don't event represent the RP demographic.. just an example the other day i was trying to reach a Holocron and there was a guy running around me. I couldn't get his attention due to the flood of traffic on the general chat, yes i even PMed him.

 

I never had a problem letting someone know i was directly talking to them when i had dialogue appear through my toon .. He let me know he didn't even see his whispers because not everyone scans the left corner when they are out doing their thing. And whats more satisfying than talking smack to an enemy player when your PVPing?? its not as if Rep can talk to Imperials in any other form or fashion?? and this would ENABLE IT

Imp and Rep can see the /say channel when they're close to each other, which did make it easier to arrange trade kill in Ilum back in the day

I seriously don't see the big deal behind chat bubbles. Is it really so hard for people to adjust their eyes to the chat box?

Or is it some die hard "chat bubbles 4ever!" sort of thing?

If I recall correctly, chat bubbles were in Alpha a loooooong time ago. Forgot why they removed it though.

As a Role Player, playing without chat bubbles cripples RP. At a cantina for instance, let's say there are 20 players RP'ing. The chat window is spammed so fast that you can't read it all, let alone reply without missing out and having to scroll up. Incredibly frustrating. With chat bubbles you can see visibly who's talking to you, and you can ignore the rest of the chat.

On that note, the /say range is 40 meters today - it is way too long and adds to the confusion when you're trying to RP with the current chat system.

Something needs to be done, BioWare, and quickly!

Love,

GreenMox

Imp and Rep can see the /say channel when they're close to each other, which did make it easier to arrange trade kill in Ilum back in the day

I gotta say thats not as fun as stock striking someone to the ground and saying "Eat my Krum!" over your head for them and everyone to see.

As a Role Player, playing without chat bubbles cripples RP. At a cantina for instance, let's say there are 20 players RP'ing. The chat window is spammed so fast that you can't read it all, let alone reply without missing out and having to scroll up. Incredibly frustrating. With chat bubbles you can see visibly who's talking to you, and you can ignore the rest of the chat.

On that note, the /say range is 40 meters today - it is way too long and adds to the confusion when you're trying to RP with the current chat system.

 

Something needs to be done, BioWare, and quickly!

 

Love,

GreenMox

This.

Chat bubbles are a must right now, especially on the part of roleplayers.

This.

 

Chat bubbles are a must right now, especially on the part of roleplayers.

unless they dont care about the roleplay aspect and this game and instead this game is based upon grinding gear (pve/pvp) with your friends.

Not saying that i would not prefer to have them, because I was surprised they dont exist.

Yet, after 9 months I think i can see what this game is about and its not a sim-world or a roleplaying game.

RP here is not much different than i guess RPIng in Call of Duty or Arkham City.

SWTOR is not an MMORPG its just an MMO and I am afraid its working as intended.

I agree we need chat bubbles.... just today I was standing outside of a phase entrance and needed help completing the next part and people were running in and out of groups and I asked about 7 or 8 people in spatial /say with no responses... it took spamming general chat to find a person to group with even with the abundance of players around me. Chat bubbles would have alleviated this problem I think.

this thread is OLD.

really old.

and still active.

could be a clue there.

the message i quoted above is a very good argument in favor.

another one is if i am running a healer i can SEE, actually SEE who is saying they are "dying over here", rather than needing to look at the little chat window and guess at who is who in all the battle spam.

so even though i am a person that would have the option in the off position almost all of the time, i agree that chat bubbles as an option is a very good idea.

this thread is OLD.

really old.

and still active.

could be a clue there.

the message i quoted above is a very good argument in favor.

 

another one is if i am running a healer i can SEE, actually SEE who is saying they are "dying over here", rather than needing to look at the little chat window and guess at who is who in all the battle spam.

 

so even though i am a person that would have the option in the off position almost all of the time, i agree that chat bubbles as an option is a very good idea.

Old yes, 92 pages in 9 months, is not that many though and its mostly the same people. Myself included.

I want chat bubbles, you want bubbles. But the majority of the playebase does not seem to mind it and since we have heard nothing from bioware in this thread, its safe to say neiher do they

I had to decide to either play Old Republic or Guild Wars 2.

I decided that I would get Old Republic instead, as it's Star Wars and I loved it's predecessor Star Wars Galaxies back in the day, especially for it's wonderful social features, including the wonderful speech bubbles the game introduced to MMORPGs. And a relative asked me to give it a go so we could play together. I didn't have the fondest memories from beta/pre-launch, especially because of the missing social and role-play features including speech bubbles, but I thought that surely after a year things would have improved. Boy, was I wrong.

I am a very social player. First thing that happened, I met another player and greeted him. He didn't even notice, because speech bubbles were disabled.

Another time I didn't notice some other players asked me to group up and quest with them. Again, because there were no speech bubbles showing.

I am a healer. I don't see when to heal someone. When I get on the fleet, there is so much chat spam I can't follow any conversations.

The game feels dead and like a single player game instead of a game alive with players without speech bubbles.

When I first started, I didn't understand why speech bubbles were disabled by default, but I thought I'd just go to the options and enable them. So I opened the Preferences menu and looked through all the options, looked at the chat options in the chat window for an hour - I couldn't find a speech bubbles option! I remembered that it was promised to be in at launch or in the first patch after it, so I headed to do a google search. The first result was this thread. To my shock, I found that this thread shows all the broken promises regarding speech bubbles and how they are still not in the game after almost a year! And what's at least as worrysome is that there hasn't been a single Bioware reply to this thread, even though it has existed since December 2011! It's proof that Bioware doesn't care about suggestions from the players.

I now regret that I have decided to buy this game instead of Guild Wars 2. At least the Guild Wars 2 has speech bubbles and their developers don't treat socializers like dirt!

If I want to keep my eyes on a chat window all the time instead of the beautiful graphics while interacting with other players, I could just as well play a MUD or use ICQ, Skype, Xfire or IRC.

Safe to say I won't be prolonging my subscription after my initial game time is over, as I am incredibly disappointed. The missing speech bubbles are a deal breaker for me, one of the most important features in any MMO, as without it, communication with other players is near impossible.

I hope I can get a refund for this game, as contrary to what's advertised, it's not a MMORPG, it's a Single player game with some limited multiplayer capabilities! I really can't understand how this supposed Massively Multiplayer Online role-playing Game is missing such an important, basic, standard feature like speech bubbles that even it's predecessor Star Wars Galaxies had almost 10 years ago!

Shame on you, Bioware! Shame on you! Not even free to play will save you if you don't implement important, basic features that have been a standard for nearly 10 years in the MMORPG industry. By going free to play, you are probably trying to appeal to the masses, but without such helpful, basic, industry standard, quality of life features as speech bubbles, you won't. MMOs are made and broken by socializers. If you don't have the proper social tools in your game, your community will falter and your game will ultimately fail. Don't say I didn't warn you.

I used to be a fan of Bioware and EA games. But now I will never buy another Bioware or EA game again, because I lost faith that your company can make top quality games anymore that cather to all aspects of the player base.

Will speech bubbles bring me back? Maybe. Maybe not. It depends greatly on how Bioware's attitude about social players and role-players changes.

Edit: Sorry for the rant, but I just feel massively betrayed by Bioware and had to get it off my chest and I feel it is my right as someone that purchased their product to complain. I hope the original poster and the other supporters of this thread will finally get Bioware to listen and grant them their wish soon. I have added a link to this thread in my signature to support the cause.

As a Role Player, playing without chat bubbles cripples RP. At a cantina for instance, let's say there are 20 players RP'ing. The chat window is spammed so fast that you can't read it all, let alone reply without missing out and having to scroll up. Incredibly frustrating. With chat bubbles you can see visibly who's talking to you, and you can ignore the rest of the chat.

On that note, the /say range is 40 meters today - it is way too long and adds to the confusion when you're trying to RP with the current chat system.

 

Something needs to be done, BioWare, and quickly!

 

Love,

GreenMox

This is my feeling too. Its so much easier when I had chat bubbles (back in SWG) to RP.

I hate chat bubbles too. It's just another form of spam.

 

So as long as they introduce it with an option to disable. I'll be happy

I agree. Can't even explain how much I dislike chat bubbles.

I don't know if it's been discussed, but I had a thought:

What if chat bubbles were only enabled within your party?

It would limit the stress on the game engine, as there wouldn't be as much on-screen activity. I think most RPers would vastly prefer it to watching the chat window.