You know what else gets ignored with the massive amounts of text the /say distance can "gift" us all? Our friends typing.

 

I can ignore features I don't approve of, like mini pets and Jedi in Slave outfits (looks good, doesn't make sense) but if I want to pay attention to a roleplay situation how can I then ignore the very text being used to roleplay?

 

They need to put a sliding bar in chat options to fix this.

 

I understand what you are saying and agree, /say can be toned down a bit. Sure, it works for open world RP where you probably aren't going to be right next to your friend 24/7, but it can get annoying. But as I have said, it can be worked around, maybe we could use a system that it colors a specific person's text, so that it's easier to catch someone's chat during a conversation-storm, at least until they fix the /say range.

I understand what you are saying and agree, /say can be toned down a bit. Sure, it works for open world RP where you probably aren't going to be right next to your friend 24/7, but it can get annoying. But as I have said, it can be worked around, maybe we could use a system that it colors a specific person's text, so that it's easier to catch someone's chat during a conversation-storm, at least until they fix the /say range.

 

We do not have the ability to configure chat by speaker - only by channel.

 

Changing the say range would be MUCH easier for them to implement than something that sophisticated.

 

Chat bubbles would probably be easier too, since it's mostly done, but they had to remove it until they can fix some performance issues.

 

Edit: Adding a few more thoughts on the same post.

 

You say "it can be worked around" - but the problem is, it can't. That's why it's such a priority.

 

- We can change the color of /say text (which I and many others have done) so that it's easier to distinguish from the other white text (such as General).

 

- We can create a separate RP tab for just /say, and whisper - and emotes if necessary but I can't remember offhand if it's a separate channel or not. Again, something some of us have already done

 

Those things are not the problem, they are useful to separate say from other channels, but the root of the problem is still that there is too much text - from all around, in just the say channel, in a single small chat window.

 

Funny but back in Age of Conan we complained that the say range was too small. It could have been a little bigger for sure, but one thing the small size allowed was to move about 20' (honestly not sure what the actual ranges were) away from others and be out of range so their say no longer showed up in your window. You could actually focus on the text of the people in your immediate group as well as anyone who was nearby.

Edited April 2, 2012 by Sendra

To those saying patience and imagination in the meantime, I fully agree. Then again, I also come from a text-based RP background. It is great to give feedback, don't get me wrong, but I think we have to remember that Rome wasn't built in a day. I also think I am hopeful for the future of SWTOR RP because, in my opinion, they did a great job of addressing and acknowledging the concerns of the RP community at the guild summit. Many of the OPs concerns are already being addressed and, in some cases, resolved. Stay optimistic, RPers!

I agree with most, if not all, points here, especially the urging of patience. I think a large issue is that there are alot of us that come from WoW and the immortal SWG. Both games are liked by the masses, including rpers and in SWG's case it allowed the players to make their own content and what not (but had it's flaws as well). The transition from those fully evolved MMO's to this one can be a bit staggering, but not impossible to adapt to . Basically find a way to cope, explore other places to rp, heck I love exploring in MMO's and although there isn't much for me to explore in TOR (compared to SWG's open world maps) I like it, alot of the scenery is breath taking. Although I was a bit saddend when I found there were no underground caverns on Hoth, but at least we got a few caves, want more to explore though .

 

P.S. Good to see you're still lurking on the forums Jen'doon , it's me the Az man :3. I'm looking forward to 1.2 and the possible expansion pack with a few new races .

For the time being, the system is functional, if not inelegant.

 

Personally, I think this summed the situation up the best. The system, as is, still allows us to RP. It's clunky, it's inelegant, and it definitely can use some work, but it's not preventing us from RPing with anyone at any time in any place. For now, it requires us to do more work than we're used to from other games. Give it some time, and if in a few more months there's not only no improvement to the situation, but no signs of any improvement coming, then we can start to raise our voices in complaint.

 

Bioware has heard us, and they're aware of our wants and needs. Now, we wait to see if they'll follow through for us.

Personally, I think this summed the situation up the best. The system, as is, still allows us to RP. It's clunky, it's inelegant, and it definitely can use some work, but it's not preventing us from RPing with anyone at any time in any place. For now, it requires us to do more work than we're used to from other games. Give it some time, and if in a few more months there's not only no improvement to the situation, but no signs of any improvement coming, then we can start to raise our voices in complaint.

 

Bioware has heard us, and they're aware of our wants and needs. Now, we wait to see if they'll follow through for us.

 

I agree that it works and they are due some patience.

 

It's the /say range that annoys me. I know very little about programming but with what I do know, the odds are that /say range is a single value in a single line of code, or perhaps once per zone.

 

- It shouldn't take long to change.

- My guess is if they halved the range, 50% of the players would love it, 45% wouldn't notice, and 5% would demand their money back because you nerfed their Bionic Ears.

Bioware has heard us, and they're aware of our wants and needs. Now, we wait to see if they'll follow through for us.

 

A huge amount of the stuff people are complaining about are simply game mechanic bug issues that are on the table and being worked out. For instance, the emote loop thing is mostly fixed in the Public Test Servers for patch 1.2, but it's still a tiny bit buggy. If you want more specific questions, I can answer them. I spent 15 minutes testing emotes last night for friends for the heck of it.

 

The stuff is coming, just give it time. Just like Kharnis said, they are aware of the issues, and were in fact aware of them before the game even launched. However, let's be realistic: sitting in a chair is not nearly as important as some major end game issues. We have a seriously imbalanced game credit economy, bugs where major named spawns disappear or insta-heal themselves, or a myriad other game mechanic issues that really are game breaking.

 

Let us not lose sight of some realities. MMORPG's do not exist exclusively for RPers. We are a minority of the gaming base, and the game mechanics have to have a higher priority. They certainly do for me. I love RP, but that's not really the main course of a video game, it's an enjoyable desert or side dish.

 

The real question here is not "will they address our issues".

The real question is "will they address our issues in a timely manner."

 

Personally, I'm not willing to continue to invest $15 a month into something for longer than 6-12 months for features that were promised at launch or are standard in other MMO's. I was pretty scared for a while that RP issues would be delayed or ignored for indefinate time, but I've playing extensively the last 2 weeks on the new patch, and patch 1.2 is going to be like how the game should have been at launch. Not all our RP concerns will be addressed, but it improved the game so drastically for me, that I actually stopped playing the live servers til it comes out.

 

It's that amazing, folks.

Not all our RP concerns will be addressed, but it improved the game so drastically for me, that I actually stopped playing the live servers til it comes out.

 

It's that amazing, folks.

 

Wow, that's a big statement. I haven't played anything on the test servers, so I'm glad to hear this. I can't wait to see what is coming out. Obviously the Legacy system itself, while it does have benefits to the non-RP community, is a huge boon for RPers. I am very enticed by it, I look forward to seeing how it will change my game. But, as you said, I'm also looking forward to seeing some of these bug fixes and must-haves that should have been the standard at launch.

Can you give us some more examples of how things are improved for roleplayers rebelweasel?

Can you give us some more examples of how things are improved for roleplayers rebelweasel?

 

He doesn't want to spoil it for us...

As I said, 1.2 does seem to be focused mostly toward actual game mechanic issues. I will start with the biggest one for me personally that literally makes me feel like I'm playing a completely different game.

 

The UI customization issue is a huge deal in both my game play and my RP. Much of the RP I do involves rather large groups of people, and I hate how the UI system kills your screen territory so that you can barely see the people around you, unless you want to zoom maxed out and zooming maxed out really takes away the immersion feeling in RP for me.

 

Original UI: Here's a standard pic of my UI in the live game

Changed UI: Here's a pic of a size-reduced and slightly cleaned up UI to get more viewable space on my monitor.

 

But here's the coolest thing ever, you can save and load multiple UI setups. So for instance, I can have my combat UI but with about three button clicks, I can clean it out entirely to a saved RP preferred UI setup.

Original UI RPing: Here I am pretending to RP with an NPC crowd.

Loading RP UI Setup: Here I am in the interface editor, loading up my RP UI with almost nothing on the screen so I can focus pretty much only on the chat windows I set up for RP.

RP UI: And now, a clean RP UI with less garbage all over my screen:

 

As you can see, I decided to get rid of my targeting window, and instead use the mouse-over pop-up window to view the 'person' I am talking to if needed. Also I usually separate out two chat tabs for RP, one that keeps me up to date in general chat/guild chat/party chat etc, and a RP only chat window for say, emote, and whispers only. If I really want to streamline it, I could toss that RP tab up with the rest of them and either move back and forth in the tabs, or just ignore everything else but the RP if I want to. This of course, has nothing to do with 1.2.

 

 

Emote animations no longer loop

I actually don't know all the animations that loop endlessly in live game. I'll have to go in live, test them all, then write down the ones that endlessly loop and then test them in the PTS system when I get time. I think it might be fun to do a quick Fraps YouTube video showing original loops, and new cut-off versions of the emotes. So far I've tested Wave, Bow, and Laugh.

 

Color Matching

I'm a slow leveler. My characters don't have the pretty pre-matched high level sets of armor. So for me, my characters always look like a totally mismatched clown that got high on rainbow dust then rolled around in melted Skittles. So here's a few test examples of the colour-matching thing.

 

This is my first test of it while power-leveling on Ord Mantell. I looted some trousers that have better stats, but they are a medium gray colour that doesn't really match stuff. So I did the "match to chestpiece" option and they turned into an olive green which goes best with the leather jacket.

Grey Trousers

Colour-Matched

 

Here's a second example I just did, most noticeable are the nasty clown-red gloves *shudder*. This time I matched every single item to the chest.

Unmatched Clothes

Character Colour Match UI

Fully Matched Outfit

 

In my second example, you won't see a huge noticeable change because that particular set of clothes actually is a "smuggler" set. The bracers are a nasty brown changed to the slate blue but they're hidden by the gloves. The most noticeable changes in this one is the gloves and boots. I've had only two helms so far to test and neither of them changed at all for the colour matching option, and not sure if that's intended, something they're still working on, or they really do think that nasty burgundy matches the chest? Not sure.

 

These are small things, tiny details really. However they do make RP more enjoyable. Are they specific big huge issues? No. I don't think we can expect to see the biggest RP issues handled for quite a while, but these simple things really do give me the hopeful optimistic feeling that improvements will come, are being worked on and that RP concerns are not totally being ignored.

Thank you for that post, especially the screenshots. I'm looking forward to 1.2 as well, but I never had a chance to check the Test server.

Yeah, great post. Thanks for taking the time to show it to us.

Lots of stuff.

 

I had actually forgotten about most of that stuff in my RAEG over the PvP changes.

 

Fantastic post, thank you for taking the time to share.

Excellent post rebelweasal, really appreciate you taking the time to explain things.

 

I still believe we have a long way to go before SWTOR is a fully supported roleplaying game, but we are getting there.

 

Chat distance is the number one thing that needs altering.

It's the /say range that annoys me. I know very little about programming but with what I do know, the odds are that /say range is a single value in a single line of code, or perhaps once per zone.

 

Id imagine one reason why /say range is rather large is that its basically the only way to talk cross-faction..

I have less of a problem with the range of /say than I do with the fact that emotes have a longer range than /say.

 

Still, 1.2 addressed a number of my concerns, otherwise.

i want /meditation animation, it just stands there ***. why have an emote that does nothing?

I have too much to do in the game to roleplay. It's horrible. I still have to finish 7 character storylines before I am out of content and will start RPing.