Persistent chat windows and (possibly) group chats

[LennyLinux]

I've been playing quite a bit recently with people in a chat group, which has made me realize there's a few problems with the chat.

• Chats shut down whenever you reload or click on a link. This also includes personal 1-1 chats.
• No way to create group chats. Most notably it'd be handy to make one for BGA groups.
• Table chats close down when creating a rematch table, so you can't remind people to join the new game or to click rematch.

The biggest problem by far, in my opinion, is that windows don't persist through page reloads or links to other part of the page.

Proposed solutions:

• Make it at least an option to make a chat persistent, perhaps by "pinning" it in some kind of chat option?
• Make group chats a thing.
• Make it so you can open a chat window with a person/group through the friends list, resuming from the last message. (meaning we can reopen personal chats and group chats if that's ever implemented)

[turtler7]

Group chats do exist. They do not exist as a box you can type in the players you want to include. But if you make a custom group and invite the members you are wanting to chat with to that group you can goto that group page and click the "discuss" button to open a group chat. That chat will send to everyone (I believe) online at that time. It might also pop up on first load for a player who was offline but I am uncertain of that as no log is saved anywhere I can access and I would need another person to help me test that particular part of the feature.

At the end of a match when discussing and wanting to rematch, I either open a tab from the rematch (will load the same final lobby but then I have a copy to use for rematch and the old one to use for chat) or I will click on the players name and open their profile and click message to get a private chat going that will jump up on top of the other table chat. Then I message them there saying I am moving to the new table so communications do not get severed before the game starts.

As to messages persisting through loads and stuff, there isn't much that can be done for mobile devices but on a computer you can do like I do and keep one tab open to games in progress and use it as a chat hub. All of my games, private chats, group chats, and other things will duplicate there while I am playing in other tabs. I use that as my information hub but do not load games or other pages in it. If you play multiple turn based games it also is a nice way to have an instant indicator that a table is ready for you to play if you are focusing on a single game at a time but might want to flip to the next if it stalls out.

It is likely we will someday see a chat overhaul or update to make these things smoother or more coherent between activities as we have already had some updates to the system over the last few months. But for the time being, most of what you are looking for can "sort of" be done as is. I hope this helped and I hope that the developers will continue providing great updates to the user interface occasionally.

[LennyLinux]

Weird! I've been to that group page several times but never noticed the "Discuss"-button! It also seems to persist when you go to another page so that basically fills the function I wanted.

It would be nice however to have this with custom groups. Say if the group were to split up because we're 8 players and want to play two 4-player games instead of one 8-player game. Or if I wanted to talk with several people who are not in a group.

But all that said, it seems I just missed this feature. Also it seems that personal chat windows do persist when you go through links so I'm not sure why I thought they didn't.

[LennyLinux]

Actually I tried the group chat out in action now, and it shuts down whenever I enter a game. Persists through all other links, but not when starting a game.

[turtler7]

Yeah, I always open a new tab for starting a game or leave my communications hub tab for that reason. The way games initialize things and fill the screen with all the objects makes searching for active chats and putting those up too difficult. Besides, what if those boxes were old or you closed out of them one place but they are open in the others so they keep repopulating when you were to load. It could do the opposite pretty easily.

[Liallan]

Weird! I've been to that group page several times but never noticed the "Discuss"-button! It also seems to persist when you go to another page so that basically fills the function I wanted.

Don't worry - I've never noticed it either. I had to go look to see what you meant. (And I am someone who tries to look around at things to see how they work.)

It would be nice however to have this with custom groups. Say if the group were to split up because we're 8 players and want to play two 4-player games instead of one 8-player game. Or if I wanted to talk with several people who are not in a group.

I think that's getting a little complex. If you split, you can still talk to the people in your game, and for those who don't get in the game, you could continue on the group chat. And of course you can always do a private chat. I have never seen a site with chat that allowed a small group of people to just split off on their own; only splitting off with one person for a private chat.

As to messages persisting through loads and stuff, there isn't much that can be done for mobile devices but on a computer you can do like I do and keep one tab open to games in progress and use it as a chat hub. All of my games, private chats, group chats, and other things will duplicate there while I am playing in other tabs. I use that as my information hub but do not load games or other pages in it. If you play multiple turn based games it also is a nice way to have an instant indicator that a table is ready for you to play if you are focusing on a single game at a time but might want to flip to the next if it stalls out.

I too keep my open game page as a sort of "hub." Not really for the chat so much, but just to have a sort of base page for my games. It works pretty well.

That chat will send to everyone (I believe) online at that time. It might also pop up on first load for a player who was offline...

Yes, it should. I've never done group chat, but there are things that pop up when I've been offline. I would assume this does as well.


The thing I don't really like is kind of the opposite in that sometimes I can't get a chat box to go away. I can click the X and close it, but then when I go to a new page it pops right back up again. It's like it doesn't understand the difference between minimizing to get it out of the way until I want it, vs closing it down altogether. If I close it, it shouldn't be popping open again, unless a new comment goes on it.

As to the changes they've made, there was a time when the chat was over to the left and would just stay there, and they pulled out private chatting into a separate box, and it's sort of had issues ever since, like losing it when I'd go to a game page and lose the last comments on it. I know they've messed with it since then, but I still think it has issues.

[LennyLinux]

It would be nice however to have this with custom groups. Say if the group were to split up because we're 8 players and want to play two 4-player games instead of one 8-player game. Or if I wanted to talk with several people who are not in a group.

I think that's getting a little complex. If you split, you can still talk to the people in your game, and for those who don't get in the game, you could continue on the group chat. And of course you can always do a private chat. I have never seen a site with chat that allowed a small group of people to just split off on their own; only splitting off with one person for a private chat.

Sorry, my phrasing was a bit off. I wasn't thinking so much of splitting the chat as splitting the group of people playing. Going by how other chats solve this problem I think one option would be to open a chat with one of the participants in your group and press a button to invite more people (or some kind of "create group chat" button where you add everyone you want to add), thus creating a group chat with all of those people you've invited without creating a BGA group everytime you play with a certain set of people.

But yes, if group chats worked stayed open when you opened a game that would work too. In-game chat could be used for in-game stuff and the group chat for coordinating the next games.

It's slightly inconvenient between games however, here's a case I've often run into with short games such as Hanabi and Love Letter.

• The group (or subgroup) play the game for a few matches at a time before deciding to switch.
• There's some discussion of the game after finishing, but after a while people press rematch. When pressing rematch connection to the previous tables chat is cut, so people in that chat won't be able to communicate with people at the new table.
• Sometimes a person will suggest switching games, at which time some people may or may not have rematched.

One way of solving this would be through the invite-to-chat system suggested above, another would be to perhaps send messages from a table to everyone invited (at least for rematch tables) but the problem with that is that people who are invited to games might not always wish to join and thus don't want to receive messages from that chat. It's a feature that could easily be abused and thus it seems to me that group chats through invitation would be the best solution, and these chats would have to persist when starting a new game.

The thing I don't really like is kind of the opposite in that sometimes I can't get a chat box to go away. I can click the X and close it, but then when I go to a new page it pops right back up again. It's like it doesn't understand the difference between minimizing to get it out of the way until I want it, vs closing it down altogether. If I close it, it shouldn't be popping open again, unless a new comment goes on it.

I can sort of relate to this as well, I've never seen a window open once I've closed it and left the table - but there are a lot of chats opening all the time when playing. Everytime a player joins a table you're waiting at for example there's a new window opening. I'm not sure why these persist and not other chats because after a few games I always find myself having to tidy up by closing a lot of windows.

[Liallan]

It would be nice however to have this with custom groups. Say if the group were to split up because we're 8 players and want to play two 4-player games instead of one 8-player game. Or if I wanted to talk with several people who are not in a group.

I think that's getting a little complex. If you split, you can still talk to the people in your game, and for those who don't get in the game, you could continue on the group chat. And of course you can always do a private chat. I have never seen a site with chat that allowed a small group of people to just split off on their own; only splitting off with one person for a private chat.

Sorry, my phrasing was a bit off. I wasn't thinking so much of splitting the chat as splitting the group of people playing. Going by how other chats solve this problem I think one option would be to open a chat with one of the participants in your group and press a button to invite more people (or some kind of "create group chat" button where you add everyone you want to add), thus creating a group chat with all of those people you've invited without creating a BGA group everytime you play with a certain set of people.

I may be still misunderstanding you, but if you're starting a game, the game is going to have its own chat that the people can then use. It won't be a continuation of the group you were on, no. It starts fresh.

But yes, if group chats worked stayed open when you opened a game that would work too. In-game chat could be used for in-game stuff and the group chat for coordinating the next games.

Yeah.... if you go to a game table, no other chats will show there except the one for the game. If you did like turtler7 suggested and open the game in another tab, your group chat should remain on the first tab, even though it won't be on the game page. So you can't talk on both at once without switching tabs. I'm not sure why other chats won't show up in the game (I don't think it's so unusual to want to continue chatting to someone else), unless it was fear of that page getting all cluttered. In fact, maybe it used to be that way and there were complaints of clutter.

[*] There's some discussion of the game after finishing, but after a while people press rematch. When pressing rematch connection to the previous tables chat is cut, so people in that chat won't be able to communicate with people at the new table.[/list]

Yes. Once the game is over you can't get back to that chat. I think it stays open as long as you're still there, but if you leave you don't see the chat. There have been requests to keep that chat for some period of time so that people can see any comments they missed. Seems that would solve that problem. And if these were members of a group, they can certainly come back to the group chat after the game.

The thing I don't really like is kind of the opposite in that sometimes I can't get a chat box to go away. I can click the X and close it, but then when I go to a new page it pops right back up again. It's like it doesn't understand the difference between minimizing to get it out of the way until I want it, vs closing it down altogether. If I close it, it shouldn't be popping open again, unless a new comment goes on it.

I can sort of relate to this as well, I've never seen a window open once I've closed it and left the table - but there are a lot of chats opening all the time when playing. Everytime a player joins a table you're waiting at for example there's a new window opening. I'm not sure why these persist and not other chats because after a few games I always find myself having to tidy up by closing a lot of windows.

The new player joining is because something new happened. That may be very useful to the admin. I think there may be some difference in that I play turn-based. Because I leave a table where I've written something on chat, go back to my game list page, and that chat is there. I closed it and I left the table, so I don't need it again. It may be that for turn-based it's considered "always live" until the game is over. Or, like a few weeks ago when sourisdudesert put up a message about some problem going on, they knew about it, were working on it... that was there when I came on. OK, read it, closed it. I go to a new page and it pops up again, and not with a new comment. It's like, I closed you, go away.