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Sitting on chairs and other furniture


SharraShimada

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First of all: Yes i know, there is a "chair" command. But you have to adjust the position manually, which is really annoying, because you never sit on an object like it should be.

 

Would it really that hard for Bioware to hardcode sitting-points for furniture? Not only for simple chairs but also for beds and other stuff, you can normaly use that way.

 

I mean, its housing. You are supposed to "live" there, but you can´t even use the furniture in any way.

 

I really hope there will be a patch to this.

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Sadly, BiowarEA never really cared for the wants and needs of social/roleplayers (the original Bioware devs that worked on the game did it more). They prioritize every other aspect before roleplay and socializing tools. That's why we still don't have things like chat bubbles, chairs that can be properly sat on, they randomly remove emotes in patches and more.

And if they do implement things that we crave for, they only do it half-heartedly and with the aim to milk us for cartel coins (see Appearance Designer kiosk, new clothing, emotes, etc. from the Cartel Market and random cartel packs, Strongholds).

But enough of the rant.

 

Here are some of the problems with the current lazy workaround called /chair emote, and potential solutions:

 

  • It has three different random animations, which means you need to try multiple times to get the one you want.
    Potential Solution A: Add the proper click-sit action to each chair, chouch etc., as they are synchronized with server/client and you sit exactly right for each chair.
    Potential Solution B: Split the emote up into /chair, /chairthink, /chairrecline (or something along the lines). This will give each animation a distinct command and get rid of the randomness.
     
     
  • Due to the dumb way the game handles emotes, the animation is randomly set on each client. This means it isn't synchronized and each player may see you sitting in a different animation on their screen than you do on your screen (same problem has existed with dances that have multiple random animations like /style forever).
    Potential Solution A: Add the proper click-sit action to each chair, chouch etc., as they are synchronized with server/client and you sit exactly right for each chair.
    Potential Solution B: Split the emote up into /chair, /chairthink, /chairrecline (or something along the lines). This will give each animation a distinct command and get rid of the randomness.
    Potential Solution C: Synchronize client animations with the server and all clients, just like other MMORPGs do or did it (Star Wars Galaxies, for example). Make sure to do it with all existing animations as well, as the problem is present with all of them.
     
     
  • Because of the dumb way the game handles emotes, you only see people using the emote (in this case, sitting), if your character was close enough when the emote was executed. If you were further away or logged in later and came there, you just see "sitting" characters standing around like idiots.
    Potential Solution A: Add the proper click-sit action to each chair, chouch etc., as they are synchronized with server/client and you sit exactly right for each chair.
    Potential Solution C: Synchronize client animations with the server and all clients, just like other MMORPGs do or did it (Star Wars Galaxies, for example). Make sure to do it with all existing animations as well, as the problem is present with all of them.
     
     
  • Due to the collision chairs have, it's impossible to sit on a chair properly, especially if it's close to a table, console or other object. You usually end up either "floating" higher in the air or on the edge of the seat without a way to full and properly sit on it.
    Potential Solution A: Add the proper click-sit action to each chair, chouch etc., as they are synchronized with server/client and you sit exactly right for each chair.
    Potential Solution D: Remove collision from chairs, couches, benches and other objects (but that would probably take just as much work as adding the sit-click property, which would be much preferable).

 

In a nutshell, adding the property to click on a chairs, couches and other (stronghold-) seating and sit on it would solve all the problems with stronghold seating mentioned above and would likely be the best solution for our woes. Heck, get an intern to do it (and add the click-sit property to chairs in the world as well, while you're at it).

 

Considering that it's a feature that has been asked for years, yes it probably is hard to do so. Or, more likely, a very time consuming task.
it isn't that hard to do so. They have the tools. If they only put it on priority, it could be done. The only thing they said about the topic was that they got the technology to add it too late for launch and retroactively patching all existing chairs in the game would be too much work for them, thus they only patched the starship chairs and some cantina stools, promising to add the sitting property to more new chairs later (of course, one more broken promise...). There is really no reason to not add it to all stronghold seating at least, unless you count lazyness/priorities/cluelesness of the current devs (Hint for devs: might be a good idea to contact the dev that worked on the starship chairs on how to do it or read her/his documentation on the subject). Edited by Glzmo
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  • 7 months later...
The only way to get this done is to gather enough people and complain enough times to the actual email of these guys to get them to finally succumb. So far all I can imagine is that every post anyone makes a complaint on they just skim over and chuckle as it doesn't really annoy them. Everyone is still playing the game, and everything else is working so they don't give a ****.
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  • 2 weeks later...
They already have this coded in the game for some chairs, such as the captain's chair in your starship. So the coding is there, they just need to expand it to include all furniture. For a game that naturally lends itself to RP, this isn't something that should be considered a low or non-existent priority for Bioware, and it should have been in the game long, long ago.
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They already have this coded in the game for some chairs, such as the captain's chair in your starship. So the coding is there, they just need to expand it to include all furniture. For a game that naturally lends itself to RP, this isn't something that should be considered a low or non-existent priority for Bioware, and it should have been in the game long, long ago.

 

When you sit on the captains chair it appears in the buff bar like a vehicle mount etc...

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  • 11 months later...

Yet, in a land far, far away, in a hut, behind a shrub, next to some random cactus, 100 miles from the nearest beating heart, in The Barrens, a land torn asunder, there is a chair I can just walk right up to, and plop my arse right down.

 

 

Yep, pretty sad.

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I don't understand why people want to sit on stronghold furniture by clicking so much. I would much rather be able to decide where I sit--on one end of a bench, on the side of a bed, the edge of a hot tub, the rim of a flower pot, whatever--than have to abide by the whims of an animator who thinks that you should only be able to sit in the very center of a bench, regardless of the fact that your buddy is already sitting in the center of the same bench. The currently clickable furniture (e.g., on starships) that people point to as examples of "See, they already have it!" all put you in the same position no matter where you click them from; if you are 4 steps behind the chair when you click on it, you are suddenly teleported to the front of the chair as you proceed to sit. So this is the type of animation (teleportation) and lack of flexibility that we could expect if stronghold furniture were made similarly clickable. It doesn't seem to add anything desirable compared to what we have already. There's also the small matter that the clickable furniture would all shine blue as you mouse over it, which I think could be a nuisance, but I guess some people wouldn't mind.

 

I do think it would be nice if we could distinguish between which /chair emote we wanted (straight sitting, leaning back, or legs crossed with chin on hand), since it's annoying to cycle through those and other players may see a different version of the /chair emote (or not see any emote if they weren't in range). They should have handled that differently, but that's a separate issue that clickable furniture would only partly address by forcing you into one non-customizable position. Ultimately, in real life one sits on an object by walking up to the object, turning around so one's backside is facing the object, then performing a sitting motion until one is seated on the object. Doing something similar in a video game (where "performing the sitting motion" is typing "/chair") doesn't seem that unreasonable. If people are putting furniture in places so that you can't stand in front of them in order to sit on them, then that is pretty easily fixed by people not doing that. So really, what are people envisioning about clickable furniture that is so great?

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Star Trek Online had people who whinged for ages about sitting in chairs. They finally added it. Guess what the same people did? Whinged about not being able to adjust their pose whilst sat. You're a wally if you think it'll get added when they already have numerous suitable emotes.
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There are two big problems with /chair --

 

1) You can't sit back into the chair, you're always positioned forward. If you randomly get the emote where you lean back, you're sort of leaning back into the air. If /chair pushed us back a little as we sat, that would be a big improvement.

 

2) Not all of the chair decorations are the same height. Some of the chairs are too high, so you end up sitting halfway through the chair. I believe the Zakuulan chairs have this problem, among others. If there's going to be one /chair command, the deco height needs to be consistent.

Edited by Xina_LA
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  • 7 months later...
  • 2 weeks later...
This feature would of course be ideal for all players and I appreciate that it's a lot to sift through, but could they not perhaps consider it for cantina stools and then with each patch just add a few more? I always thought that while sat on an interactive chair, you ought to be able to cycle through emotes for posture adjustments, eating or drinking via a command bar, similar to your heroic moment. It can take a lot of fiddling to get yourself close enough to a stool, only to be just barely perched on it. No-one can sit down in the Slippery Slopes at the bar with the provided stools!
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  • 2 weeks later...
Considering that it's a feature that has been asked for years, yes it probably is hard to do so. Or, more likely, a very time consuming task.

 

Honestly, unlikely -- since you can already click on chairs in your personal starship cockpit and automatically get put in the correct place to sit.

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It's worth adding a click-to-sit on at least some of the chair decorations.

 

Someone suggested that clicking to sit on a bench is problematic because you sit in the middle and then no one can join you on the bench. I've seen this and you're right, it's a pain in the butt. I wouldn't mind if benches didn't have this feature. Even if they did, you could still use your own /chair command to sit off to one side.

 

Some chairs are harder to position in than others. Narrow chairs, high chairs, and chairs with arms would really benefit from click-to-sit. The Zakuulan chairs that have a /chair height problem could certainly use it.

 

Another poster said that it's pointless to add because people still complain. Every new feature always has complaints but that doesn't mean they aren't worthwhile. Those who want to sit fancy can still use /chair.

 

As a big fan of stronghold decorating, I've taken to leaving at least one table in my stronghold with no chairs. This is a good place to stand around, but also invites people to use their own /chair# emote. Sometimes I put a single chair nearby, one of the same type available to a /chair# emote, to give people a suggestion on which one to use. Visitors seem to like to pull up their own chair.

 

Honestly, if the /chair emote simply pushed our bodies back a little bit, it would look so much better. I have to imagine they're more likely to upgrade an animation than add a new system to decorations. After all, they just re-designed several of the attack animations for 5.0.

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