[ManCannon]

Taken from ere http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/1253375398

Lets be honest here, the Chat "Channels" in this PTR is very underwhelming, to say the least.

To make a long story short, they've missed the concept behind Chat Channels.
They are supposed to serve as a main hub for players to gather and join games at their leisure. This is why the entire Battle.net 1 was built around Chat Channels. A player joins the battle.net, goes to a public/private channel and finds his friends or other players. They chat about what game they want to play, and they join together.

The fact that the Chat "Channels" are treated the same way as Chat "Boxes" with party members and friends does not fill its role very well.

First problem is that chat channels should be put on the top where all the achievements and match history are because it belongs there. It should act as a main hub for players to join in and play at their leisure, as I've said before.

Second of all, it should take the entire screen in the middle that Tychus' face so proudly cover every time you join Battle.net 2. This goes back to the mentality that you have chat channels as the main hub for players to go to. Not only is it aesthetically more pleasing, it is much better designed to allow the text to be bigger. Also, more text and players can show up on the screen without the need of scrolling.

The way that the channels are set up are merely public chat "boxes", not chat "channels", hardly serve its purpose because of all the stuff that's going on in the background. Honestly, why would anyone care about looking at their achievements and other things when they're chatting? This is another reason why the chat channel button should be put on top under your profile picture.

Here is a perfect example of what the chat channels should look like (thanks to the guys at teamliquid [original thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/view...pic_id=174450])
Image of Chat Channel Example: http://imgur.com/4vgMH

Last, and the biggest problem, is that a player can only type in three messages in a small window of time. So, maybe if you said something wrong on your third message and want to correct it, like maybe Join game//pass but typed the password wrong, then you're going to be stuck for ~5 seconds, with your friends going nuts trying to figure out your elusive password.

The control is too stringent. The previous system still fits the bill much better, as the act of repeating text or messaging alone are more likely to flag you as flooding, while actual chatting with other players will not.
Even if that system is not implemented, being allowed to only say "3, 2, 1" for a moment is hardly enough... I was simply talking with my friends, the message that the chat has limited supply of text constantly pops up and erases my text. I guess I'm just a fast typer, but you really shouldn't hold that against me.. Also, why would it erase my text? Why not just keep the text I was typing and just not send it, so I can wait until the flood timer has stopped and press enter without having the retype the message.
It also doesn't make sense how spamming three paragraphs of 'M's is thought to be just as much spam as saying '3', '2', '1', in quick succession.

Also, note that this limit is now applied to party chat and friend chat.
Horrible idea. These are private chats, so the players in these chat boxes will not worry about spam, since they must've agreed to chat with you. Why would there be limitations at all? Honestly, this tells me how haphazardly this three message limitation was implemented. Please fix.

Thanks.

whhyyyyy D:

****** 2D games had this shit down perfectly.

also ngen clan have hijacked the word stringent D:

[GFree]

For starters they're not copy pasting it down from the old battlenet due to difference in programming. On the other hand... There was some speculation the underestimated the importance of chat channels to the community.

You can try it out on the PTR really. Right now the chat channel looks like a chat box but it can be resized to a pretty decent size. Here's what I think, limiting how much a person can say within a certain time frame really sucks, think it's 3 types in 20 seconds, but the thing is, the current battlenet doesn't support much user management because they put too much faith in facebook organizing out friends lists for us. That goes to the next point the really sucks is that there's no admin management of rooms. People can't be kicked out. If they know your room's name, they can get in.

However the current system allows us to continue chatting with the chat channel while in game or spectating a game and allows us to open multiple chat channels at once. These two features are pretty decent to me.

Yes, the chat channels unveiled in the PTR don't LOOK like much, but they're definitely quite functional. It's not easy to incorporate chat channels with the interface simply because there was no place for it in the original programming. If you wanted to do that you'd need to write a new interface with the new button for the chat channels, link up all the programming (where you go when each button is clicked), do this for every interface page AND write the coding for how the chat channel system that piggy backs on the chat system would NOT go through the usual display method of chat boxes instead of appearing in that desired fullscreen interface. The last one might require them to rewrite the entire chat system programming because it might be inbuilt for chat windows to open up at the bottom of the screen. What you're looking at is a lot of program rewriting that would not only have a huge patch size probably, but it extremely likely to crash servers and take months because you'd need to rewrite some aspects of battlenet.

I could be completely wrong, but this is what I would understand about having to do such a thing. It's not optimal. They had a perfect one before, they screwed up now. It's not feasible to expect them to do it so easily now. At least they're trying. I'd already be more than satisfied if they continually tried to improve it with patches but I think we shouldn't expect them to just pull out chat channels perfectly when they already had a system in place. It's like having a card house and trying to replace a card in the middle. Should've had it before, screwed up, making amends, be grateful. My point of view at least. : /

[ManCannon]

I guess just gotta wait and see how they turn out. I am really surprised they didn't build SC2 from the ground up with their old channel system. When i first got SC2 i was like wtf? I expected to join a channel full of people cheering and talking shit. I don't have facebook so i wouldn't know but i don't think people use it as a substitute for SC2 chat.

One thing that bothers me is the anti spam measure will affect private chat too. At least tournaments etc. should be easier to organize, hopefully they don't **** it up further D:

[nirvAnA]

im agreeing 100% with that eu poster. the new chat channels could be sooooo much better. right now they are more like a group chat, which we already have!

chat channels should also clearly show the ladder icons / portratis / points like how bnet1 and tft did. i remember going to the singapore channel and always on the look out for high ranked ladder players (thats how i met sheepy!) or admiring the icons players got from team games. also i loved how u could fill out ur own profile description.

it will encourage people to play more too, since the icons are more recognised.

if only chat channels looked liked ths

[x5_Potter]

LOL at the jinro comment.

[GFree]

Originally Posted by nirvAnA

im agreeing 100% with that eu poster. the new chat channels could be sooooo much better. right now they are more like a group chat, which we already have!

chat channels should also clearly show the ladder icons / portratis / points like how bnet1 and tft did. i remember going to the singapore channel and always on the look out for high ranked ladder players (thats how i met sheepy!) or admiring the icons players got from team games. also i loved how u could fill out ur own profile description.

it will encourage people to play more too, since the icons are more recognised.

if only chat channels looked liked ths

I think we all agree that would've been awesome but sadly Blizzard didn't incorporate chat channels into the original programming. I think it might be possible for them to have this sort of interface with the expansions but I'm honestly not even going to hold my breath for them to implement THIS in the current expansion due to the difficulties in rewriting the programming stated above. I'm guessing if they really wanted to implement this now then they'd end up having to patch a large portion of the game's programming and your next patch would be about the size of the game itself so I just don't see Blizzard doing it anytime soon. Reason why it would be easier to do in an expansion is because an expansion requires the interface to be rewritten to incorporate new features, new campaign, etc. To be fair, even if the game developers wanted to implement now, the higher ups (read: finance) aren't really approve cos of the costs incurred.

[SkyBreaker]

Originally Posted by nirvAnA

im agreeing 100% with that eu poster. the new chat channels could be sooooo much better. right now they are more like a group chat, which we already have!

chat channels should also clearly show the ladder icons / portratis / points like how bnet1 and tft did. i remember going to the singapore channel and always on the look out for high ranked ladder players (thats how i met sheepy!) or admiring the icons players got from team games. also i loved how u could fill out ur own profile description.

it will encourage people to play more too, since the icons are more recognised.

if only chat channels looked liked ths

I'd love if chat channels were like this! Personally, social interactivity is missing from SCII; the only interaction you have is a "GLHF"/"GG" if you're lucky.

It'd be awesome, to say the least.

[MirandaKerr]

Its funny how much blizzard has gone in reverse with sc2. Im just hoping that if they continue to push the community around another independent game will take over eg. HoN for dota that will just blow sc2 out of the water and give blizzard a wake up call. They will only be able to afford 6 private jets for their next meeting instead of 7.

[ManCannon]

Yeah in some way Battle net 2.0 is a bit 0.2 but overall they have done a good job. It's just strange that they deliberately chose to exclude something that was always a part of their games.

Removing LAN was gay but they had at least some kind of bullshit reason ( anti piracy D: ), but i can't see any reason to removing chat features other than being tossers for the lulz.

[SayfT]

So SEA is back up but chat isnt working yet, says unable to connect to chat channels at this time :<

[PhilipScrewdriver]

Yup, ******* SEA

[GFree]

Originally Posted by ManCannon

Yeah in some way Battle net 2.0 is a bit 0.2 but overall they have done a good job. It's just strange that they deliberately chose to exclude something that was always a part of their games.

Removing LAN was gay but they had at least some kind of bullshit reason ( anti piracy D: ), but i can't see any reason to removing chat features other than being tossers for the lulz.

I suppose excluding it had to do with bandwidth and server concerns. Like I said, they honestly thought the friends system would make up for it and they were wrong.

[ManCannon]

Their actually not bad now that their working, i can troll people and use the word ****

[GFree]

Glorious.... o_o