The citizens of Tamriel call forth the powers of the ZOS Developers to implement an interface more suited toward forming community and deeper immersion within the Elder Scrolls Online.

As it stands, the current use of a vanilla chat box has proven ineffective in helping role players and non role-players alike in forming any semblance of community. There have been many attempts to ask for the features, to be listed, in various outlets on the internet and thus we have decided to gather our pleads into one, collective, summons.

 

 

1. Chat bubbles or Floating text: This is crucial in any MMO to date. It makes it incredibly easy to socialize with players no matter if the role-play or not, it also helps them to keep their eyes on the activity they are doing and act accordingly when an indicator pops up to alert them they have been spoken to or to see whom is speaking around them. This builds community within the game and adds to the immersion for many players. Without this the games are vast and lonely, many players have a hard time paying attention to a chat box when they are on the go.

2. Display character names instead of account handles: It’s very ineffective to have players create player names if currently we are not able to see those names. If any its rather silly to create more than one character for them to all display the same account name in chat. This breaks immersion for role-players first and foremost.

3. Name plates: This is very beneficial for helping players identify who is speaking, be it for role play purposes or just asking for help within the world. Furthermore, it makes it easier to follow group members, guild mates or other groups as well if they are maxed out and needing to run together for pvp reasons or mass role playing. Other players are also able to immediately notice a player when they are behaving offensively within the game since it will be within their line of site for local occurrences as opposed to the current method where you have to have your curser perfectly on the player to notice their name.

4. Roleplayer Phasing or Indications: As it stands, fellow role players are having a very hard time locating and sticking with one another which makes it very hard to form bonds within Tamriel. 

 

 

Nothing but good can come from adding these features since it adds to the richness of the world and vastly improves the sense of immersion for the community of gamers already feeling left out due to the exclusion of these items. 

 

Many non role players will argue that this could ruin their experience in the game by disrupting their immersion, but the very simple fix for that is to make these features ‘toggled’. Meaning if they do not wish to have them on, they can go into their settings and check or uncheck the things they don’t want to see. They could also use the UI hot key to get rid of any tags or bubbles on their screen anytime they like, be it for peace and quiet or to take screen shots within the game. 

 

MMO’s are about the developers listening to their community to see what the players desire. We have seen this response in many interviews with ZOS Developers, ZOS administrators on the forums, along with the ZOS customer support agents. This would be very comforting if there were not so many contradictions around the matter where some Developers have said there are “No plans to support these features.” then going on to mention that players can “create their own add ons.” Which is now impossible due to the changes made to the API required for making such add ons.

 

Ultimately it comes down to Zenimax creating these features and adding them in a patch so it is done correctly to fit into the game and prevent any issues an add on could potentially cause.

 

The following are links that further support this movement:

http://tamrielfoundry.com/topic/chat-bubbles-not-to-be-included-in-game/​

http://tamrielfoundry.com/topic/optional-speech-bubbles/​

http://tamrielfoundry.com/topic/lack-of-social-functionality-and-longevity/​

http://tamrielfoundry.com/topic/chat-bubbles-not-to-be-included-in-game/​

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/61316/floating-text-chat-bubble-addon​

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/comment/537219/#Comment_537219​

http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/66226/problems-that-need-to-be-fixed-fast/p1​

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/409313/page/1​

http://massively.joystiq.com/2013/08/02/tamriel-infinium-the-elder-scrolls-onlines-rationale-for-rolep​

http://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/1zwlhw/chat_bubbles_or_not_lets_have_a_discussion_on_this/​

 http://massively.joystiq.com/2014/02/21/tamriel-infinium-roleplaying-in-spite-of-the-elder-scrolls-onli/