Away System - (PM message system)

I don't know if anyone else does the same thing and apparently i can't say "alot of people" for fear of severe scrutinization; but sometimes (actually alot of times) I will advertise something for sale or whatnot that i know may take a while to find a buyer, or maybe i load up on booze or sweets and minimize the game while coming to wiki, or GWguru. Once you return to the game, you get a beep that you received a PM, but with the tarde chat up, it is long gone or even with trade chat off, the chat window regularly clears itself.

So...

What if (maybe when you put your status as away, or just on all the time) you had a seperate window for your PM's that will not disappear-this window should have a checkbox along with the [Trade, Alliance, Emote....etc.] options, so you can turn it on or off as you are in the game or minimized or like I said, when you set your "away" status.

Just an idea, not to say should be implimented into GW1, but maybe a thought for GW2 - I think it would be a nice idea, but what do you guys think..?

Firstly I think this really should go in the GW2 section as i doubt a change this big will be implemented in GW1. I doubt anyone here is truly that familiar with the coding of the game to say whether it is possible (please dont speculate future posters). Sounds cool if it could be implemented i cant see why not.

Use Flashmod,it will flash your GW when you have it minimized,i use it and its great.

OOo will try. TY.

Aside from outside programs (like textmod and now, flashmod) i'm hoping its easy enough to impliment and would be a very useful addition to all players. I have never really been a big fan of having to use outside programs to alter or monitor your game.

Um.... you do know that you can scroll back through the messages to read what you missed, right? If there is a lot of Local/Trade in the way, disable them, scroll up to see the missed PM(s), then go back to normal. I can pretty much guarantee Anet will never do this as they will see exactly what I see. Just use what we already have available.

I scroll up many times and it's still gone. It doesn't stay there for long.

/signed

Guild Wars and/or Guild Wars 2 should have a PM system if not Twitter integration or a way to collect messages.

The chat system seems to 'clean' the chat window after a certain amount of time (or something even random). You can scroll back all you want, but it won't be there.

/Signed, because I hate missing out on whispers.

Agreed with the PM system. The Twitter integration however... No thanks. It will be the most useless addition ever.

When a certain amount of text is in the window, the top will start vanishing as new messages come in. This happens even if trade chat is off, since it still technically records the trade chat.

I've scrolled back FAR before, and never realized it cleared the chat within a reasonable time frame. If you are away THAT long, you don't really need to see the PM again, you need to have marked yourself away, and the person who PMed you would need to send it again when you get back.

But thats just me, not everyone has to agree with me.

the chat log is actually cleared based on how many chat lines have appeared in the window, i believe. try it out. stand in your guild hall and have a conversation with guildies, 20-30 minutes later you'll probably to find the first line of the conversation because relatively few things have hit the chat log.

now go to kamadan, type anything you want, 5 minutes later it's gone because so many things have been logged.

there also may be a time limit as to how long something is saved but it seems to be so long that it's a non-issue. usually when the time limit hits, so many other things have been logged that they've been erased anyway.

The chat is cleared depending on the lines RECEIVED. It doesn't matte if they appear or not in your chat panel.
Even if you hid lines, they are still downloaded, and you will still have them on the client's chat text buffer.
There is no time limit at all. When the buffer is full, the new line replaces the oldest.
If a line looks like disappearing when no new lines are appearing, it's because you are actually receiving lines that are automatically hidden when you receive them.
For example, Local text lines in Kamadan, when you hid the Trade channel. You will be still receiving the trade lines, and they will use the chat text buffer, but you don't see them because they are hidden. But since all chat lines - ALL of them, including whispers - use the same buffer, when the trade channel increases, the local lines in the buffer will go "bye, bye".

Since it doesn't consider each channel separately, even if there is only one local line, it will soon disappear if the trade channel is constantly flooded with messages.

There are multiple ways to go around this.
The simplest one is increasing the buffer. That would only affect the player's computer memory, so if anyone has bigger memory, and/or hard disk, they should have less problem with a bigger chat text buffer. There could even an option to change the size:

They could also separate the buffer into one for each channel, so you won't lose Local lines doe to trade channel being flooded. This would either use more memory, or reduce the size of each buffer.

They could simply send the text lines into log text files, so you could check them later anytime you want. The only downsides o this is constant disk writing and hard disk being used up. Not much of a big deal.

Or they could change the client to ignore the lines from hidden channels, so you won't be receiving trade lines at all if you hide the trade channel.
That would mean that if you see a message dialog box over someone that is sending a message to the trade channel, if you reveal the trade channel you won't see that message, because it was sent while you had the trade channel hidden.


This suggestion is only for whispers, but any of those methods would work in this case too.

/signed

It would be nice since, as already mentioned, the text disappears after a while. I know I miss stuff sometimes. lol. But it probably won't get changed.

Why? It would do the same thing plus more.

Okay, here's the solution: Make sure the option to mute GW while in the background is OFF. Then, minimize GW. When someone PM's you, you'll hear a 'ding' sound. Switch back to GW and happily discuss with your whisperer. It's not really that hard. And if you really want to preserve your chat box, go to a deserted outpost and just /afk. Mithran explains it well enough.

You could do all that...

or just have a pm window that never empties unless you empty it. - that way you don't go messing with system settings. My way: simple. Your way: tons of recoding.

/signed for seperate msg system for pms so that they dont get scrolled off by all/trade chat.

This! If you're going to be AFK, and are buying / selling stuff, it's common courtesy to respond to PMs in a timely manner, not 10 minutes later. Besides, you may lose out to someone else. There are a few lockpick sellers that I won't do business with because they're habitually AFK.

or if ure going AFK close all tabs except pm so when u return all you see is blue writing then when u read them open the other tabs and catch up on chatter ...thats what i do if im selling anyway.

Temporary solution: go to district 2 or a later one so the chat doesn't scroll your PMs off as fast.

Long-term solution: wait for gw2

I like the idea of a separate window for PMs. And I don't mind waiting until GW2.

Erm, there are tabs like Local - Guild - Alliance - Trade - Team etc. Make one for "Whispers" also?