Chat System - Too limited?

Well, I've searched the forums for "chat" and wasn't able to find anything to answer my question.. so my apologies in advance if this is the wrong forum, or not worth a thread even.

I've just recently attended my first BWE on the 18th, and I had a blast. Invited my significant other along and her and I quested for endless hours.

But anyway, onto the issue - her and I found the text character limit way too low. We like to take breaks and chat about the previous near-death battle.. admire the amazing scenery.. etc. But it got very frustrating when you can have only.. if I remember right, only 2 lines of writing before it cuts off. We also enjoy to roleplay quite a bit, and be very descriptive, which makes it even more difficult.

Also.. just a side-point - we noticed it was very hard to run/battle and type quick things to each other at the same time, without it staying in the chat box instead, and scrolling up to our previous typings.. causing us to run off uncontrollably into a mob. You may suggest Teamspeak or something similar to solve these problems, but.. we prefer text, and always have.

While I'm at it.. another thing that was frustrating was the mouse-wheel zooming in speed.. it would take 3 rolls before zooming in completely.. which is way too fast IMO, I like it to smooth.. and when it did, it would turn your character around.. very annoying in RP situations.

That's about it.. not really sure if those are questions, or if this will make any difference whatsover.. but a guy can have hope.

Any replies will be much appreciated!

The only solution as you lightly suggested is a chat program, i recommend Skype ( www.skype.com ) it runs in the background and you can voice chat while running around and in between missions you can alt+tab out to it and type on it like an instant messenger!

Hope this helps.

Lord Kin

There are some other tools in the game to help you communicate better. If you do not have the fast-typing talen, like me, try out some features like pinging or drawing on the mini-map. In addition, there is an auto-run button, so you can pretty much tap-and-forget and type while your character run forward. Lastly, you can follow someone by highlight their name on the group health tab, and press space (default action key). On top of everything, I am certain that you will soon become very familiar with the mob placements on this game. Again, the mini-map is your friend, use it as much as possible to get the best out of what GW has to offer.

for the ingame typing problem, youll have to just wait GW to come up with something.... if your sig other is the only one youre really talking to and a couple others that are your friends, you can use xfire... www.xfire.com

In this same forum i have a post about it, how it works and what not, but basically you can bring up a chat window in game w/out minimizing out of the game and you can chat

Yep, thats the beauty of it. I cant wait for april 15th.

It sounds like you and your significant other need headsets. I have not tried them, but the idea is wonderful. I am personally waiting for the delux edition to release, so I can get the headset that comes with it and I won't have to type nearly as much. I also think I might be able to get to know more about my random teammembers.

Someone chime in here if I am wrong since I have no experiance with this technology, but this about the drift of what the rest of us are missing, right?

I'm dreading the prospect of trying to get my guild to use headsets. For some reason, a lot of people think voice chat is the Tool of Satan.

Team chat certainly helps any group play that you are engaged in immensely. If you are heading into a tough spot, many times you don't have any time to type. That is what makes the TS or Ventrillo or whatever more valuable. As long as people can stand a strange accent then it should be fine...

lol Tool of Satan? (maybe?)

Wow what guild is that. I really want to get away from the typing.

That way when my Warrior is getting pummeled I can yell help instead of trying to type a emote.

Same for my monk. When my PvE team splits into two groups I can scold them for making my life hard to impossible.

So is trying to communicate with those that aren't from the Midwest only as hard as learning to adjust to accents? Really? I like the idea of Headsets, but I tried internet phone calls back in 98 on a 56k connection, that s_u_fuzz_c_what was that?_k_e_d. I have cable modem now and I bet that is a requirement.

My friends and I used Skype which works really nice. In another game we use teamspeak but you have to push a button to talk and when you are busy fighting or running, I ended up talking to my self. Also have used Ventrillo.

Skype is nice cause it is like they are right next to you.

You dont have to press a button for teamspeak, change the settings and you can talk freely

The Real Problem with Teamspeak:

I was thinking about taking off to play on the 27th and 28th of April. It sounds like I am going to have to dedicate the time to set up the account since this system seems to work.

Maybe I can set up a server, to have ready for when I get home with my box and map. I guess I'm off to do some research on the teamspeak site................

I think you have to pay to hold a server, i hosted a server and no one could join it, so now i just join other peoples servers.

What would be really great is if the chat was integrated into the game so that I could have a conversation with someone on wisper while I was in between battles with my group. The key to that would be to connect those with the headsets that are in groupd automatically. Or does this happen already?

(wishing some one would say that is the way it works already)
(wishing some one would say that is the way it works already)

long public messages are pretty much out since people could use to spam public areas, but I think team guild and whisper should be allowed to have like 3-4 lines at least.

Yea, or when in the mission it should be unlimited.

Does anyone think that chatgroups would be useful? (they've been in other mmos)

for example,

/join xaanix1 secretphrase

Since xaanix1 doesnt exist, this creates the channel with password = secretphrase, since i'm the first to join, i can boot/invite people

when you want to leave the chat group you can simply type /leave xaanix1

other users can type the same command, and they will show up in the channel, the chat group will vanish when all users leave it, and anything said in the channel is sent to all players. Currently the only way to communicate with multiple people is through group or guildchat, and there are lots of cases where you want to communicate with multiple people that these current meathods are just not suitable for. For instance, I want to coordinate a tombs group, I have 4 friends online, one is in tombs, and the others are pveing. None are in my guild. So, i form a chat group, msg each of them to join (with the name and pw), and we take it from there.

I'd imagine you can add a new tab for it (similar to the !, #, @, " tabs that exist)

I used to use these all the time in daoc, and unfortunately i miss them in guildwars :/

Yea thats a good idea, in the BWE i found myself whispering to 5 people which wasn't fun, so chat groups would make it easier.

I hate whsipers in this game.

In FFXI they completely fixed that by pressing ctrl+r and it shifted through all the people you had /tell'ed(like whisper) that play session. So I didn't have to type Gurank Brokenheart or Jinki Googoo.

Those are random names.