Global Chat Beta on Live Official Thread

What's even more disturbing is that my two accounts are used by multiple family members. Since some are minors this makes this system a game breaker. Mature language can be sent innocently to the minors by other users thinking that the mature user in ingame. Have the developers thought about this aspect of the game? How does this bridging of account charachters benefit the game?

Technically, you aren't allowed to share an account with other people, hence the lack of user controls to address this situation.

Good luck figuring out a workaround.

Hate to be a Grinch, but the game is also blatantly listed as suggested for Teen +. Hence anyone 12 and under was never really intended to be playing this anyways. I know I wouldn't let MY kid play, knowing what dips I meet online.

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And now! HTML version under documentation off the main CoH site!

Click Here!

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Somebody should point out that you can keybind the Global Chat Channel menu thingy.

/bind <key> "menu$$contextmenu 2"

will allow you to open and close the window.

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What's even more disturbing is that my two accounts are used by multiple family members. Since some are minors this makes this system a game breaker. Mature language can be sent innocently to the minors by other users thinking that the mature user in ingame. Have the developers thought about this aspect of the game?

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Given that the EULA that you click "agree" to every time you enter the game says clearly that only one person may use each account (and also says that players should be at least 18, or else have their parents' permission to play), I wouldn't expect them to take into account behavior that is explicitly prohibited. You can always use /ghide when you aren't playing and forbid your kids to take it off, I suppose.

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How does this bridging of account charachters benefit the game?

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It allows folks who are abiding by the terms NCSoft sets down, and have multiple characters of their own, to be accessible to their friends (and vice versa) no matter which character or server they're playing on. If I'm on Pinnacle and a member of my SG on Victory needs help, now they'll be able to give me a buzz instead of having no way to get in touch with me.

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What's even more disturbing is that my two accounts are used by multiple family members. Since some are minors this makes this system a game breaker. Mature language can be sent innocently to the minors by other users thinking that the mature user in ingame. Have the developers thought about this aspect of the game? How does this bridging of account charachters benefit the game?

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How minor are we talking, here? If they're under 13, they shouldn't be playing. If they're over 13, they can likely teach you some choice language, including explicit sexual stuff. I rather doubt there are a lot of sexual predators playing CoH... and anyway, it's your job as a parent to monitor what your kids do. If nothing else, you can record all of the text and peruse it later.

My My, how strange this conversation has turned from

I wish to hide on my alts to:
I want to prevent my child from seeing someone say objectionable language...

hmmm EULA:
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(k) In City of Heroes , high level characters have the privilege of sending server wide messages called 'Global Chat.' With this privilege comes a high level of responsibility on the part of the user. Due to the fact that this communication channel has the ability to impact every player on the server, NC Interactive will not tolerate any inappropriate behavior of any sort in this chat channel. This includes but is not limited to: inappropriate language of any sort or any attempt to escape the profanity filter, inappropriate or vulgar content of any sort, repeated 'spamming,' or 'flooding' of the global chat channel, or any other conduct determined to be inappropriate by NC Interactive Support, in its sole discretion. Any violation of this term or rules of conduct may, in the sole discretion of NC Interactive, lead to the temporary removal of the character's ability to communicate, the account being suspended for a set period of time, or lead to permanent account closure.

My question is it SAYS high level toons...

It ALSO says NO foul language...

Hmm... Will this be enforced?

Yes while it DOES say that you can only have ONE person using the account it ALSO says that you MUSt be 18 to have an account or parental permission, and by doing so you would also take FULL RESPONSIBILITY for your child's actions and what they can and cannot view in other words TURN ON THE FILTER FOR LANGUAGE YOU DUMMY...

If you wanna shelter the kid that much and they are under 12 yeah, do us all a favor and stop letting them on the game...

I still think GC is total BS and I wish I could turn it off on my alts... cause it doesn't lend itself towards RPing very much...

But then again that's why I DO play on Virtue...

Also, I don't think kids SHOULD play this game if they can't handle the possible language... or if they lack the maturity of a dead gerbil, as is alot of the kiddies on here sadly...

-Me who thinks some people need to stand up and be parents and stop blaming the system for their kids being foul mouthed or for being dips...

OK, I think we've established that sharing accounts is against the T&Cs and that protecting the fragile little minds of your children is your own responsibility.

So, the devs probably aren't going to be worried too much about these issues with regard to Global Chat. BUT the issue of 'I like to hide my alt' is still valid in my mind.

Please, all we need is for the Hide functionality (/ghide) to be done on a per-character basis.

Statesman has said in the past that when the game launched, he was surprised at how many different characters people created. Some people just do it for the variety of playstyle and powers, but others do it to play different characters, which exist seperate from their other alts and may well have a different circle of friends. Bringing every alt under one global Handle is convenient in some ways, but can also detracts from the sense of presence in the game. In an RPG, just like in any other virtual environment, presence is important. Being able to 'opt-out' of global chat by Hiding is useful, and the meachnism to do so just needs to be made a bit more user-friendly for it to work really well.

Oops, wrong thread.

Yeah I am seeing that. Twice that happened to me. One time I posted already other friend got disconnected and never turn back on the global chat so it is showing him online still. Once it goes active I am sure the problem will be fixed since I would think it would be always on and will not need the slash command to turn it on.

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What's even more disturbing is that my two accounts are used by multiple family members. Since some are minors this makes this system a game breaker. Mature language can be sent innocently to the minors by other users thinking that the mature user in ingame. Have the developers thought about this aspect of the game? How does this bridging of account charachters benefit the game?

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I have this same issue. A solution might be to keep the function that allows you to turn global chat on and off.

Also (and I'm sure this has been brought up already but I'm not scrolling through 17 pages of posts to look for it) there is definately something funky going on with the underscores. Anyone who has an underscore in their name I can't add to my global friends list because I can't type the underscore.

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Somebody should point out that you can keybind the Global Chat Channel menu thingy.

/bind <key> "menu$$contextmenu 2"

will allow you to open and close the window.

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You can also just use \ and then W to open/close the window.

One thing I discovered is that global chat is currently limited to five channels. This is seriously not a lot of channels; if someone plays 2 or 3 characters on 2 or 3 servers and is in multiple supergroups, the chat channels could be used up very quickly.

We have the ability to put up to 10 tabs in a particular text window...why only five channels?

okay, i've read the documentation and used the chat for a few days. One thing continues to frustrate me.
I can change my current channel to a global chat channel with the /chat_set slash command. I cannot however change back to a standard channel (team,supergroup,local,etc.)

What i would love to do is bind keys to some of the different channels.

can the /chat_set command be updated to allow using standard pre-chatbeta channels?
also, the bind fails when you try a channel with a space in the name "fusion force" for example breaks the bind format.

example:
/bind lcontrol+numpad1 "chat_set <channel name>"

Is there away to send a message to all your friends that are online via global chat at once?
With the friends list you can go
/f HeyAll
and everyone online will get the message.

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One thing I discovered is that global chat is currently limited to five channels. This is seriously not a lot of channels; if someone plays 2 or 3 characters on 2 or 3 servers and is in multiple supergroups, the chat channels could be used up very quickly.

We have the ability to put up to 10 tabs in a particular text window...why only five channels?

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Yes, I agree RM, 5 channels is extremely limiting. I'm already having issues as I've got 1 channel to cover my SGs multiple groups, and there are 3 channels for Justice one of which I started that I belong to. I'd like to belong to the Tanker and Blaster channels, but I can't be on both because that'd be 6.

Last night I decided to test out the global chat system. I added two friends to the list, and it showed both of them as online. It showed which character they were using, and what server they were on. But when I logged my character on the champion server and logged in on the guardian server, they could not see me as online. I tried sending one of them a message, and it would not go through. Then I tried the toher, but go the same result. Then I logged back onto champion and they could see me as online again. But then after both of them had logged out for the night, it still showed them as online on the global chat. On my regular friends list, it showed them as offline. But on the global, it showed them as still online. I shut global down, then turned it back on and it worked. Shouldn't it work like ur regular friends list without having to do all that?

I would prefer keeping some form of turning Global chat on and off when I log in rather than the /ghide function. Why have it automatically enabled? How would switching it on and off when you wanted to use it harm anyone?

Did you retype /chatbeta 1 everytime you switched servers night? It looks like you didnt

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From the testing I've done, it seems that:

1. /ghide is persistent across sessions. When I log out and log back in, I'm still hidden. That's just fine with me.

2. /ghide applies to ALL characters. If I log out and log in to a different character, that character is hidden as well. This is NOT fine with me.

Why don't I like this? Well, I have a character that when I play them, I don't want my other Friends from knowing I'm online. Call it my 'escape' character. I always want to be hidden from GC whenever I play this character. ALWAYS. Right now this is easy, because we can turn the Global Chat system on and off entirely, but that won't be the case when the system is no longer in beta.

With /ghide working the way it does now, I will have to remember to toggle myself to and from hidden every time I switch character. I can see this becoming a severe irritation, especially when I forget. What I would prefer is for /ghide to be a per-character setting, like the normal /hide command. Is there any chance this might change before the full launch?

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How about making /ghide be a persistent global hide, and extending /hide to a) be persistent (if it isn't already) and b) hide that specific character from Global Chat as well. That way, if you want to hide an alt, you can, and if you want a way to globally hide all of your alts, you can do that as well.

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How about making /ghide be a persistent global hide, and extending /hide to a) be persistent (if it isn't already) and b) hide that specific character from Global Chat as well.

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I thought about that, but I'd like to be hidden from Global Chat but still be findable for teams. /hide takes you off of EVERYTHING, so you don't show up on the Find Team dialog, even if you have LFT set.

I seem to be having to switch it on on every character... sorry dont have time to read all the posts to see if its already reported.

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How about making /ghide be a persistent global hide, and extending /hide to a) be persistent (if it isn't already) and b) hide that specific character from Global Chat as well.

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I thought about that, but I'd like to be hidden from Global Chat but still be findable for teams. /hide takes you off of EVERYTHING, so you don't show up on the Find Team dialog, even if you have LFT set.

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Ah, I didn't realize that about /hide. Maybe /ghide could take a parameter? like /ghide all, /ghide <character name>, /ghide <server name> (hides all of your characters on that server), etc.

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Somebody should point out that you can keybind the Global Chat Channel menu thingy.

/bind <key> "menu$$contextmenu 2"

will allow you to open and close the window.

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The bind is not working properly. The main context window stays open after the Channel Members window pops up. Then, you have to close the main menu. Any way to do this automaticially?

My first global chat experience was exciting. It is a really great tool that adds a deeper level to the game. But it was also a little frustrating as it is new and will take some getting used to.

So far, I have two main problem issues with global chat. They are it's position on the screen and the ease of switching channels.

As described in the Global Chat Player Guide "The Chat window, by default, contains three panes: a 'top,' a 'bottom,' and an input pane."

A fourth pane is definitely needed in order to be able to view the team chats, the zone chats, and the global chat chats all at the same time.

I feel the current way a fourth pane is created is insufficient for global chat use. If it is left attached to the chat window, then the team member list disappears when it is open. If it is unattached, then it floats akwardly on the screen.

I think with the addition of global chat there should be an option of opening another chat pane BELOW the "Team, Friends, Super, Email and Tabs" menu bar. This pane would be optional by use of an expand/collapse arrow and the default position for it would be collapsed. It could even be labeled "Global." The default tab currently named "Global" could be renamed as "Zone."

My second issue, switching between channels, requires quite a lot of typing or a knowledge of binds or macros. Even using binds still takes up 5 keys or key combinations if a user has joined the max number of channels. Easily reachable keys are a hot commodity in this game.

I feel there needs to be a way to switch between global chat channels by use of a short slash command like what can be used for the Super Group (/SG) and Broadcast (/B) channels. I am not a whiz at this sort of thing, but I would rather offer a solution than just a complaint so here goes.

Say a person has joined three Global Chat (GC) channels. I will call them A, B, and C. He joined A first, B, second, and C third. The order in which he joined them would designate a number ranking for each channel which could be used in the slash command. So, the slash command for starting a chat in A would become /GC0, for B /GC1, and for C /GC2.

I realize I am writing this at 5:00 AM, so if this is incomprehensible, I apologize. I just really wanted to write about it before I lost the drive.