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Suggestion [Plugin] HeroChat colours induce eye cancer.

weynard

Legacy Supporter 8
Joined
Jan 13, 2011
Location
Langenhagen (Hanover)
I suggest radically reworking the current chat, name and title colours.

Let me give you a brief rundown of how many ciolours appear on screen at one time and how many lines are taken up by automated stuff.

A greylisted person speaks.
- 2 Colours

Somebody kills someone else.
- 4 colours

A class master speaks in AO.
- 4 colours

A class master and donor speaks in o.
- 5 colours

I speak.
- 5 colours and everyone in the channel has a seizure.

One duel.
- 6 colours, three lines of chat.

Somebody votes.
- 4 colours and up to 14 lines of chat per person, depending on the length his name.

A count and donor buys lottery tickets.
- 7 colours and up to 5 lines of chat.

A Herald speaks.
- 8 colours

This does not even take into account
a) that some colour combinations look flat-out hideous.
b) that many automated lines serve no other purpose than to announce an event nobody is interested in hearing about.
c) that chat moves FAST at times, especially if you are trying to pay attention to o, g, h, t, tour, your town chat, maybe a guild channel and a private conversation.

I don't see why we need so much freaking stuff on our screen. I understand colours are cool, but do we really have to distinguish things in such a manner? I mean, a simple line such as voting looks like this:

PongPingdePong voted, earning EXP and coins @ PlanetMinecraft.com!

while it could look like this:

Someone voted and received EXP and coins.

or could even be left out completely? Who honestly cares who voted where or who killed whom with what? I see the point of these automated messages, but the voting announcements can easily be dropped for an hourly or so tip encouraging people to vote for cash, right? This would already calm down the chat a lot. Some other examples are lottery announcements (yet again, I feel confident enough to say that nobody really wants to see those), death announcements and especially duel announcements.

Oh boy, duels.

Three lines of text that clutter the chat window. Really? Why don't we drop that? Can we not display people's ratios someplace else? Does everybody constantly have to know who dueled whom at what time, how it ended and how their overall score is? Does everybody want to know? Until somebody can reasonably prove to me that this is the case, I'm going to go ahead and claim that no, we would totally be fine without the constant dueling spam in our faces.

But enough with the rambling, I suppose I've made myself quite clear. What do I suggest? I suggest that the chat colours be revamped as follows. "titles" always includes prefixes and suffixes, also including symbols unless otherwise mentioned.

Tour chat: Does not appear by default once you are whitelisted.
Voting announcements: Either disabled or reduced to one colour and limited to a single line.
Death and kill(streak) announcements: Reduced to one colour and limited to a single line.
Duel/arena/etc announcements: Disabled. Show rankings through ingame or external toplist.
Lottery announcements: Disabled.
Welcome announcements: Reduced to one colour.
Heroes announcements: Disabled? I don't think anyone can read those fast enough and not die.
Donor stars: Stars keep their current colours, brackets are always dark grey.
Class Mastery titles: Reformatted to [Title]
PVP/Event/Store/Misc titles: Reformatted to [Title]
Custom names and titles: Remain custom
Veterancy and Noblesse titles: Reformatted to [Title]
Herald, Architect, Designer, Loremaster and Coder titles: Reformatted to [Title]
Proctor and Guide titles: Reformatted to [Title]
Mod titles: Reformatted to [Title]
Admin/Founder titles: Remain custom

Examples of the current madness, screenshots taken on a European Sunday night:

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archceaser

Legacy Supporter 7
Joined
Jul 30, 2012
I got to agree, I like a busy chat but all the extra messages make it look messly and sometimes hard to read
 

joshtsai

Legacy Supporter 2
Joined
May 23, 2012
If I am not mistaken you can disable lottery messages, not sure on the syntax off it. As for ArenaOutputs and tour, do /ch leave tour/ao and it will all go away.
 

weynard

Legacy Supporter 8
Joined
Jan 13, 2011
Location
Langenhagen (Hanover)
If I am not mistaken you can disable lottery messages, not sure on the syntax off it. As for ArenaOutputs and tour, do /ch leave tour/ao and it will all go away.

The argument was more on the side of whether we need these outputs at all. Are there really people that constantly watch these stats? A matter of opinion, certainly, which is why this is only a suggestion and thus doesn't have to be applied.
 

WitchOnaRampage

Legacy Supporter 9
Joined
Jul 15, 2012
Location
Australia
weynard I wanted to rate your post funny because I laughed with delight, but that might have given the wrong impression :D.

I don't see why we need so much freaking stuff on our screen.

Agree.

Tour chat: Does not appear by default once you are whitelisted.
Voting announcements: Either disabled or reduced to one colour and limited to a single line.
Death and kill(streak) announcements: Reduced to one colour and limited to a single line.
Welcome announcements: Reduced to one colour.

Agree - except how about putting the players' names in bold at least.

Duel/arena/etc announcements: Disabled. Show rankings through ingame or external toplist.
Lottery announcements: Disabled.
Heroes announcements: Disabled? I don't think anyone can read those fast enough and not die.

Don't agree. Would be good to have the option of leaving these chats (already can with AO, good to have the option for lottery.) Some people don't agree with gambling so they shouldn't be forced to see the notices. But for those who do like participating, I can see value in the notices because they advertise and increase interest in the current lottery. However it would be handy if a player's name and title in these notices comes back to a single colour for the whole line rather than showing their customized version.

And Heroes announcements - messages from the server ownership and admin - I reckon we should continue to receive these as long as they don't constitute spam, lol.

Proctor and Guide titles: Reformatted to [Title]
I reckon the Guide title at least should be a very eye-catching colour, such as yellow.
 

Dwarfers

Legacy Supporter 6
Joined
Dec 31, 2011
Location
Arizona
You can leave channels and I believe you can also disable chat colors.

I understand what you are aiming for though which I support.
 

mikehk

Legacy Supporter 6
Joined
Aug 17, 2012
Location
Idaho
I was in a couple of those pictures :D i feel special!

aight on topic, i agree with some of this, cept titles... titles can show personality and acheivements, i believe people earned those titles.

also i disagree with death messages. I like them, and they add purpose to named items (sometimes)
 

Delfofthebla

Legacy Supporter 4
Retired Staff
Joined
Nov 25, 2012
Location
United States
I agree with a lot of your points, but I don't see many changes to names and titles ever happening due to the fact that many players have purchased these "eye cancer" colors. Kainzo is unlikely to go around refunding everyone's money and removing all of the colors from players' names.

However, there are a few things that can be implemented, and should be implemented.

1. Allow us to disable voting messages.
* They should also change the coloring for the messages to make them less absurd, but ultimately I just want to turn this shit off.

2. Allow us to disable server "tip" messages.
* Again, they should change the coloring for these messages to make them less distracting, but I, once again, just want to turn this shit off.

3. Allow us to disable "Welcome" messages.
* I don't really think the colors need changing here, but you tell me.

4. Arena Output chat needs a complete makeover.
* It's very obvious from your screenshots that AO chat and voting are the two largest offenders.

I personally don't think voting notifications even need to exist, but that's just me. However, I do want to be in AO chat. I like to know who is dueling who, and when they are doing it. However, a single line from AO contains several different segments of color changes and unnecessary clutter. I think this should be changed.

AO messages do not need to be completely color coded, they do not need to say [Duel] in brackets, and honestly I don't even think we need to see their ELO either. The elo system for skirmishes / arenas / world pvp is a complete joke that nobody in their right mind actually takes seriously. It is not accurate, it is easily abused, and most relevantly, nobody cares about seeing it in chat.

The one thing I disagree with is death messages. These are important for PVPers on the server, and I think the color coding for the message itself and the names of the players involved is necessary. Allowing non-pvpers to turn these messages off however is completely OK with me.


Coloring could definitely be improved--no denying that. But for me, I would honestly just like to be able to disable any and all garbage that gets pumped out by the server. If a message isn't relevant to me, why am I forced to see it?
 

weynard

Legacy Supporter 8
Joined
Jan 13, 2011
Location
Langenhagen (Hanover)
On the subject of purchased titles-

The store does not show the colour scheme for the titles. Players buy the title itself only. Whether or not they have seen these titles in game before is irrelevant since a certain colour scheme was never "promised" prior to purchase and can therefore be changed at the admins' leisure.

Donor name colours stay, of course. I believe I mentioned that in my OP. That is an incentive for donating (whether we want it to be or not) and should therefore not be changed without a more serious reason.

I reckon the Guide title at least should be a very eye-catching colour, such as yellow.

I always found blue to be a lot more eminent of a colour than yellow, but I can see where you're coming from.
 

Kainzo

The Disposable Hero
Staff member
Founder
Adventure Team
Joined
Jan 7, 2011
Location
The 7th Circle of Heaven
Coloring is set on purpose - while I agree in some areas we can uniform these colors - there is an easy option to do this in the MP settings of the client.

1) Voting colorization - they are to let others know that they can vote at X site (its a friendly reminder)
2) Tip colors / messages - I'd like a way to disable, but its not worked that way unfortunately.
3) Lottery messages - already a method to disable /lottery messages (or /lot message) i think.
4) ArenaOutput - can easily leave, though I'm all for changing up its current colors.

0PyawjB.png
 

weynard

Legacy Supporter 8
Joined
Jan 13, 2011
Location
Langenhagen (Hanover)
I know you can turn off the colours, but they themselves aren't the problem. Of course the chat channels need to be distinguishable from one another, but the automated messages and titles like they currently are make chat as a whole hard to read at times.
 

Delfofthebla

Legacy Supporter 4
Retired Staff
Joined
Nov 25, 2012
Location
United States
Coloring is set on purpose - while I agree in some areas we can uniform these colors - there is an easy option to do this in the MP settings of the client.

1) Voting colorization - they are to let others know that they can vote at X site (its a friendly reminder)
2) Tip colors / messages - I'd like a way to disable, but its not worked that way unfortunately.
3) Lottery messages - already a method to disable /lottery messages (or /lot message) i think.
4) ArenaOutput - can easily leave, though I'm all for changing up its current colors.

0PyawjB.png

What about disabling voting messages? Is it possible to allow us to disable those?
 
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