Bubbles showing typing activity and AFK

[Jawir]

Hello, before cluttering flyspray with a feature request I thought it could be better to run a poll and see if you think what I'm going to propose can be useful or not.
In my opinion it could be useful to have bubbles popping out when people are AFK or people are typing, so you don't have to wonder anymore why people aren't answering to your question!
To better understand what I mean give a look at this 2 pictures:
AFK:

While typing:

What do you think?

[LigH]

Before voting, think about that: Does it support immersion, in your opinion?

[bilbous]

Did someone say

Bubbles?

Tried to resist, could not.
What is immersion? are we all wet?
Is it less immersive to see these things than to chat away at someone who isn't there?

Personally I don't use chat bubbles but these things could be useful.

[Illysia]

Knowing someone has gone afk would help you not just sit there feeling awkward while you wait and wait for a response. It would be great if the afk one would start when using /away. As for the typing one it would be more immersive as you wouldn't have the weird overlapping of conversation points that happens when you don't know that the other person wasn't finished speaking. As in:

Player 1: I like pie. We used to have a bakery in my home village and we all got up early to prepare the baked goods for the day.

Player 2: Oh that's great but I can't stand Joopiner as I'm allergic. Speaking of which how's that gold rash doing?

Player 1:  But we used make the pies to order and throughout the day you could smell all the great pies baking in the oven and watch the customers practically dance around the bakery to get one.

The overlap is particularly annoying when you want to clean up logs to make them readable and then you have to decide what lines to condense and sometimes which to break up as the overlap gets pretty tangled after awhile.

[raessol]

Yes, that is my alt

[raessol]

Yes, that is my alt
[/quote]

[Rigwyn]

I would disagree about this breaking immersion. We already have the chat bubbles, so adding this does not break immersion anymore.

I think having the typing feedback is definitely good. I can't tell you how many times I've sat there wondering if the other person was typing or just afk.

Regarding the snoring animation, I have to wonder if some (new) players might assume that its ok to interpret this as IC sleep... It might help to distinguish between ic sleep, an ooc pause, away from keyboard, and icly not here. Just a thought.

[Volki]

My question is, is this possible?

[kiaerulf]

Imagine the area around Harns with lots of people afk. The air would be cluttered with chat bubbles.
As many other I'd like some sort of indication that a person is afk but showing a chat bubble would be too much i think. Maybe just zzZzzZZzzzZz discretely emerging from the character without any sort of background or anything. That wouldn't disturb others too much.

Another thing sorta related: If you are afk, it would be nice if NPCs wouldn't attack you.

- Kia

[Pierre]

No!  No like!  I do not want people to see me typing, then they know that it went something like this:

"I love you!"
[deletedeletedeletedelete]
"Greetings, how farest thou?  It does my heart good to see you again.  Did thou goest to the festival the other evening?"
[deletedeletedeletedelete]
"Who was that fenki you were just talking to?"
[deletedeletedeletedelete]
"Hey."

Can't we just stay inscrutable?

[Taya]

Imagine the area around Harns with lots of people afk. The air would be cluttered with chat bubbles.

I have no idea about how easy it would be, but my initial worry is the same as Kiaerulf's thought here. I can see it being very useful, but if I was going to see something on screen for every player who is not actively typing (and possibly every player who is as well?), I'd just want to turn it off. We might also get some frustrated public speakers when they find their audience has 'fallen asleep'.

Illysia's /away idea which would be a good way to avoid it kicking in when it's not actually wanted. The information could just be shown once that command is used, but if there's no way to make it automatic I'd worry that it wouldn't work as hoped. If someone has to leave the screen there's no guarantee they'll remembered to use that command first, so you still wouldn't know for sure if they are there or not.

Instead of a chat bubble, maybe some kind of indicator in the chat window or information window that just shows for the character you have selected? Then you'd still be able to check the status of the person you're RPing with without needing any clutter on your screen from other characters.

I also think it maybe should be an opt-in thing. That shouldn't make any problems as if you select the person and it shows neither typing nor not typing, you'd know they haven't opted in and could choose if you wanted to wait to find out.

[LigH]

@ Pierre:

^ This kind of issue already exists in the Skype chat (and possibly other messengers too). Jokes about it are usually related to "how my dad uses it" (typing ... typing ... typing ... "OK").

[gonger]

Imagine the area around Harns with lots of people afk. The air would be cluttered with chat bubbles.
As many other I'd like some sort of indication that a person is afk but showing a chat bubble would be too much i think. Maybe just zzZzzZZzzzZz discretely emerging from the character without any sort of background or anything. That wouldn't disturb others too much.

What about making the bubbles only visible when you point your mouse to the character? Thus you will only see it for characters you are actually interested in at this moment.

Another thing sorta related: If you are afk, it would be nice if NPCs wouldn't attack you.

I disagree. It is up to the player to protect their character, so if you plan to go AFK, just move to a safe spot (usually takes about 10 seconds). If your AFK was not planned, and your character is attacked, just live with it. It happened to me, it happens all the time, it will happen again.

Gonger

[Bonifarzia]

In some games, players that are typing have a corresponding status icon on their name labels, which can be very nice to have. For PS, this is probably a bit more complicated, as we have several chat tabs, and players tend to go AFK while having the chat input field selected. Still I think Jawir's idea could be useful. For indicating AFK status, the /away command and the OoC description tab are probably enough.

[Jawir]

First of all, thanks to everyone to have taken some of your time to discuss and vote: I really appreciate it! 
@Bilbous: nice picture! 

I would like to point out one thing I didn't explained at all: I would not like the AFK bubble kicking in automatically after a predefined timeout, but I would like it being activated once the player type /away. I think it should be a good practice to use the /away command because it's a form of respect to other players.

A thing I overlooked is the bubbles could easily fill the screen in crowded areas if people are all talking and some are afk. For sure the AFK don't need to be so eye-catching and as suggested by Kiaerulf the zZZzzzZZZ could be enough. Regarding the "while typing" bubbles I like Gonger's idea: after all a similar concept is applied to object's labels and that is well tested. Like object's labels it could be a good idea having the option to show the "while chatting" bubbles always or only when the mouse cursor hover over the characters (or even never).

@Rigwin: you are right, probably it could be a bit misleading having an AFK player shown as a sleeping character... but actually I can't think to anything else!