I would like to see players have the ability to copy the text from the chat window, such as text from other players and NPCs, so that it can be copy and pasted into a text editor like Word or Notepad. It would be helpful to writers in particular to be able to copy text from the chat window and paste it into a program for the sake of recording character interactions from collaborative stories to be cleaned up and shared or rewritten into a more traditional story format.

 

This along with the current ability to set up chat tabs for specific uses would be great. It would greatly improve on the current method of taking a great deal of screenshots to capture the story bits in the chat window. One of the best parts for me, in playing the game, is being able to create my own content, but it’s a little disheartening to go through the effort of working on an interesting and complex story only to have all record of it lost or to worry about how many stories I can store because I am losing storage space to multiple screenshots.

 

While I enjoy playing the game, it’s also nice to break up the grind with creating these stories, and it’s especially helpful to have this option while other content is not available, bugged, or the game is too laggy to play in other ways.

Yup. This issue is related to the chatlog request, which has had several threads (e.g., this one in this forum over the past years. I continue to be shocked that the chat system isn't a priority. Please give us some way to record conversations, whether manual (copy lines from chat window) or automatic (chat logging). Not having recording pushes RP events outside of the game, away from the lovely world that Bioware has created.

I'm reviving this thread for 2015 because I'm finally encountering this issue that everyone else is.

 

Chatlogging! There are a variety of other MMO's that employ chatlogging as a basic function, (Let us look at Wildstar for an example.) As it helps for players to log any actions or writing that might violate EULA agreements or policy violation. It's not strictly to benefit roleplayers, as chatlogging itself is a benefit to the developers. It is also quite useful for fishing out abuse of players for there is solid, written evidence of another player taking action against another in a way that violates privacy or otherwise. There are so many benefits to having a chatlogging system, as to not having one.

 

However, this brings to light the use of it for us in roleplay communities such as Begeren Colony (US). While this doesn't affect the game itself, it is a MASSIVE benefit to us who use this game as a tool to write, to explore character development. We presently have to take screenshots of our RP with the limited size of the text boxes, then manually transcribe. Which isn't difficult if it were only three screenshots long, say - but more often than not, RP can be as long as 10 screenshots of solid writing mass. To have chatlogging reduces the effort required to transcribe writing resource.

 

My knowledge on programming is limited, but I know that others have tried to outsource other methods to chatlog. There are people who have tried to get OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to work, though with varying degrees of success. This however is a third party solution and can often be misinterpreted as a violation of EULA terms; using third party software to interact with the game itself.

 

 

I know our voices are quiet and developers may not read this actively, but I cry out on behalf of Begeren Colony, Ebon Hawk and Jung Ma. Please, Bioware. Do not let this opportunity to improve the game go unnoticed.

 

Reviving my quote on Semah (Khalhazar)'s last thread for this one. Link to said post as found here.

Throwing my support in for this request. Seems to me a copy and paste ability would be an easy way to address the issue of logging chat, but I'm open to any other solution. BW, please give us a way other than screenshots. I had a four hour roleplay a few nights ago after which I spent an hour taking the over 100 screen shots of the text from the rp. I would really, really appreciate a better option!

As a Subscriber who is extremely active in an RP Server (begeren colony), I would also strongly support this measure a essential to so many of the folks I play with (and whose dedication in saving stories the hard way I've seen firsthand). The mailbox already has a copy feature, would really like something that could serve some of our most committed players who are primarily drawn to the games' storytelling features. Edited January 25, 2015 by Enneth_Korr

I would love to see this feature added as well. Of other MMOs can have it, swtor can have it too.

But this is definitely a necessity will dove war craft as this and how old is thinking now it's older than a lot of other games may still have that ability this is needed for the game that we love for star wars the only other way to record a chat is by taking screenshots you have to screw up and down with the arrow keys filtering out what you don't want and making very sure you get everything which is a very hard I wanted to get each at but I lost the opportunity because the game like me out as I was trying to record the chat so yet this is definitely a major necessity and

/signed

Still waiting on this.

This really is needed for people that create stories in game.

I am curios. If they do not allow for actual chat capture. This does of course hamper the re-reading of the rp and the stories. At what point would the Dev folks be held liable if they new that allowing the uses to capture Time stamped chat would help eliminate say cyber stalking or bullying. Every game i have ever played i have been able to pull my logs and either check the server(if i was an admin) or send them to the admin for quick verification to assist in harassment claims. This truly seems that they are leaving a very large part of themselves exposed. Please give us an actual way ti capture the chat in a log file.

I believe the devs have recently said that they are looking into allowing us to copy and past from the chatbox as a stop gap measure for this issue, but I still kinda wanted to bump this to bring attention back to it. I really hope they can provide us with a means to make logs very soon.

 

Also, that is a really good point about the time stamp. The logs themselves can be tampered with so they are not so useful for reporting bullying and whatnot, but that timestamp could be used to help whoever deals with those kinds of things quickly sort through whatever is available internally to verify incidents. I did not think of that before.

Bumping this! Has this been fixed and/or resolved yet? I would really like to be able to do this.

Not yet, but I was just thinking I needed to bump this thread yesterday. This is still an issue.

Ahhhh Okay! Thank you for the quick response!

I'd like and support this - it would be very handy in the case of giving a guild member the TS details, giving a friend my referral link, or linking websites when people are asking for help.

 

Also rather than start a separate topic, I'd like a notification when some chat happens on another tab. I've missed so many messages on my "IM's" tab because I don't switch through them all every 30 seconds. I've played several other games and they all had some way of letting you know if there had been some chat action on the tab - a star in the corner of the tab, or even an increasing number that let you know how many lines of chat had been added.

 

And possibly a way to toggle it, so that my "Other" tab doesn't constantly have it - if this second thing is too much, I'll cope, but please give us chat notification.

but please give us chat notification.

 

They could make the tab flash. Lots of other games have gone that route. And everyone likes flashy things.

Yeah. flashing would work or maybe a highlight like you get on skills when some effect has been activated in connection with it.

Bump. A solution to the chat saving issue would still be greatly appreciated.

I would love this for RP. I first ran into chatlogging in Myst Online: Uru Live. If a 2003 multiplayer game could have /log commands to allow chat logging I am surprised that SWTOR does not.

I know this is low on the priority list but out of sight out of mind so.... bump.