Filter Global Chat

[stormlord]

I've been thinking about this. My thinking is to filter global chat.

First of all, the idea is not classic, but neither is global /ooc and global /auction. So that argument can't be used to oppose this idea since lots of things present in p1999 aren't classic either.

The idea I have, and that i've seen others suggest in different posts (it's not my idea alone), is to allow us to filter /ooc and /auction by city. For example, if you're leveling up near qeynos and only want to trade with people nearby, you could turn on Halas and Qeynos and Erudin. This way you can reduce the amount of chat on your screen and also not see trades that're too far away.

I'm giving two options I can think of for implementing this...

Option 1

(this is displayed in the filter tab on the options window)

Show ... /ooc & /auction - Qeynos
Show ... /ooc & /auction - Erudin
Hide ... /ooc & /auction - Rivervale
Hide ... /ooc & /auction - Freeport
Hide ... /ooc & /auction - Ak'anon
Hide ... /ooc & /auction - Felwithe
Hide ... /ooc & /auction - Kelethin
Hide ... /ooc & /auction - Oggok
Hide ... /ooc & /auction - Neriak
Show ... /ooc & /auction - Halas
Hide ... /ooc & /auction - Kaladim
Hide ... /ooc & /auction - Paineel

I don't know whether this method would work or not because the client hardcode might not allow it.

Option 2

Make it a command. Like:
/globalchat filter:qeynos,erudin,halas
Global chat filter is set to: qeynos,erudin,halas.-or-/globalchat filter:kaladim,kelethin,akanon
Global chat filter is set to: kaladim,kelethin,akanon.-or-/globalchat filter:none
Global chat filter is disabled.-or-/globalchat
Global chat filter is set to: freeport.I'm guessing that command strings like "/globalchat ..." are sent to the server without explicit client checks. For example, if you enter "/mcdonalds" it will tell you that the command is not available. My guess is that the server is receiving it and giving a negative response and the client is informing you.

This method, I think, has hte advantage of being able to be set on a per character basis, automatically on character creation. So when a new character is created, the filter is disabled by default. You might later enter "/globalchat filter:erudin,paineel,qeynos,halas" to enable it for a character in Erudin, for example.

.....

The developers and players would determine which zones would be near to these cities. For example, permafrost and blackburrow and Qeynos Hills would be attached to Halas. Blackburrow, Qeynos Hills, Qeynos Catacombs, Erud's Crossing, Surefall Glade, West Karana, North Karana and maybe some others would be attached to Qeynos. Etc. Some redundancy is good because people might not know if a zone is attached to their city or not even though it's not far away. For example, is surefall glade attached to halas AND qeynos? Should it be? I think that in this case, you should always liberally add zones, but not too many. For example, surefall glades and qeynos and west karana should probably be added to Halas, but i wouldn't add north karana to halas.

If we're going to have global /ooc and global /auction, which are not classic, we need to update how it works to reflect the fact that this isn't classic so it needs different answers. I don't like to see /ooc and /auction from people all across the world - that's 600+ people at peak hour. I can't run across the world and I don't like to see so much chat fill my screen. I'd like to be able to filter it. This wasn't available in classic, but then again, classic didn't have a global chat like this so it didn't have 300 or 400+ people constantly chatting.

[Otto]

Anything that starts to remove global chat would be great IMO. This could be a good mid ground for people determined to keep global chat around.

[Yinikren]

This is a good idea, but honestly I don't know if they have any way of actually coding something like this.
And prepare for wow flames btw, I'm pretty sure something like this has been mentioned before.

[stormlord]

This is a good idea, but honestly I don't know if they have any way of actually coding something like this.
And prepare for wow flames btw, I'm pretty sure something like this has been mentioned before.

It has. I saw it in the poll thread about disabling global /ooc (and /auction). Except the idea I saw was for continent-scale chat. I'm going for city-scale chat. The idea posted here in this poll is also self-imposed, not forced on the player. Those are the differences I can think but i bet someone somewhere has posted something exactly like this. If so, would love to hear from you.

I'm not against disabling global /ooc and /auction. In fact, I'd like to try it out to see how it works, but I think that this idea would be safer in the meantime. There might be technical limitations restricting something like this from working, but I'm not aware of them. I imagine they could add some code to the server for these options and could change the ui files to make them available to the client, but that is just a guess. It might not be possible - the client might not allow you to change it that way. For example, if the client hard code doesn't recognize the extra options, the changes to the ui file would be useless.

Only other choice is to make it a command. Like:
/globalchat filter:qeynos,erudin,halas
Global chat filter is set to: qeynos,erudin,halas.-or-/globalchat filter:kaladim,kelethin,akanon
Global chat filter is set to: kaladim,kelethin,akanon.-or-/globalchat filter:none
Global chat filter is disabled.-or-/globalchat
Global chat filter is set to: freeport.I'm guessing that command strings like "/globalchat ..." are sent to the server without explicit client checks. For example, if you enter "/mcdonalds" it will tell you that the command is not available. My guess is that the server is receiving it and giving a negative response and the client is informing you.

[lumin]

I voted no because I think this would be a hassle to code and would rather have the devs focused on other things. I'd rather have ooc (and auc) removed altogether for the time being.

[mr.miketastic]

Kunark would be oh so much cooler than the devs coding a filter for global chat. Just move it to a different windows and ignore it.

[SpartanEQ]

I voted yes because I think it's a good idea and that's what the poll was asking. I'll let someone else decide whether or not it's possible or how hard it is to code.

[L2Phantom]

Yes, anything that slowly removes global /spamooc is good by me.

[toddfx]

I voted "mostly a good idea" because I think "city" level is slightly too concentrated. I'd divide it into 4 channels:

Odus, West Antonica, East Antonica, and Faydwer.

While it is essentially continent wide, the E/W Antonica division takes care of the Qeynos-Freeport dilemma. Faydwer and Odus are so small that I don't think it's problematic to run 5 - 10 minutes to make a sale. If you place yourself in an obscure location, you should be expecting at least some amount of travel to make it to the logical point of trade.

[Kennebec]

I voted no because I think this would be a hassle to code and would rather have the devs focused on other things. I'd rather have ooc (and auc) removed altogether for the time being.

I agree and we can all just ignore OOC and Auc if it is annoying us. I will turn it off when the drug/sex/political ramblings occur and then turn the channel back on later. I am just a guest on this server so I feel it is my responsibility to control what I can and not make demands on the dev's.

[Pyrocat]

if ( player.location == "commons" || player.location == "ecommons" ) player.area = antonicaMiddle

doesn't seem like it would be that hard, but I have no clue what the clusterfuck of code running this server looks like.

[stormlord]

Someone else in this forum said it perfectly: we have too much population for global chat, and too little population for zone-wide only chat. We need a middle ground. I think filtering global chat by city would work. This is a convenience filter. It's not forcing anything. You could still select all cities and thus have global chat. But for those who want to reduce spam and/or filter out traders that're too far away, it would be helpful!

In the present system, you get messages from everyone on the server. And even if everyone posted their location in auction, it would still be everyone on the server, thus filling up the chat window w/ spam.

I don't think filtering by continent offers enough resolution, as some have suggested. For example, if I live in qeynos and won't run to freeport for sales, antonica is too big of a filtering mechanism for it to be useful to me.

Doing this as a command should not take too long, I wouldn't think. Not a waste. Once the server reaches 1000-1500 max the whole global chat system could be removed, depending on what polls say. Sometimes you have to waste things to transition from one stage to the next. For example, the space shuttle has to jettison huge fuel tanks once in orbit to get around, but without them, the shuttle could not reach orbit. I'm not saying that this filtering system is as important as fuel tanks for the success of the server, only that they would help.

Determining which zones would attach to each city could be determined in a thread and with various polls. It wouldn't have to be done by developer(s). If a coder knows enough about how to make a server and/or player command, and how to work with the chat system, then that's most of the work needed by a coder.