Not A Bug Chat Filters

Discussion in 'Resolved' started by Angahran, Aug 20, 2021.

  1. Angahran Augur

    Yes, the entire filter system now classes as a bug due to the messed up changes from the last few patches.

    Please revert these recent updates' until someone can take the time to look at the whole chat/filter system and figure out how to actually improve it.

    e.g.
    1. Scrap the 'other' category which seems to be just a random collection of unrelated messages.
    2. Remove the messages that are currently hardcoded to go to the main chat window.
    3. Allow each and every individual message to be colored and filtered to any window/tab.
    4. Add filter options of 'Screen', 'logfile', 'both', 'off'.
    5. and for the love of all the norathian gods please fixe the bug where people see NPC responses BEFORE a players trigger text!
    Grove, Forcallen, scaethach and 5 others like this.
  2. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    This got so bad that the main chat window is now my spam window. :rolleyes: But some NPC chat is coded to always be in the main chat window not where say is filtered to!
    Elyssanda likes this.
  3. Elyssanda Bardbrain

    turn off the mob incoming message.. if I pull 3-5 mobs, or more, I don't need them all to say You ruined your lands!!!
    Moege, Yinla and Velisaris_MS like this.
  4. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    I'd be happy if these could be filtered away from the normal say messages.
    Tweakfour17 and Skuz like this.
  5. Skuz I am become Wrath, the Destroyer of Worlds.

    "Quest NPC" Chat "should" ideally be separate from all the flavour-text of other NPC's for sure.
    Elyssanda and Tweakfour17 like this.
  6. niente Developer

    We are going to investigate how much space is left in the current chat filter system and see what can be done with the Critical/Flurry/Rampage filters.

    A few years ago, critical hits looked something like this:
    Soandso delivers a critical blast! (1000)
    Soandso hit NPC for 1000 points of non-melee damage.

    Soandso lands a Crippling Blow!(2239)
    Soandso slashes NPC for 2241 points of damage.

    They were consolidated into the 2nd line with only the hit, target, damage, and (Critical) tag.
    When this was changed, they no longer used the Critical/Rampage/Flurry chat filters - the first line did.

    This was reported as a bug many times:
    https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/critical-hits.261072/
    https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/spell-critical-hits-cannot-be-filtered.254186/
    https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq/index.php?threads/crit-filter.257706/

    At the time, I wrote a bug ticket to fix this at a later time.

    That bug was recently completed. However, it's clear the changes are not liked. I do not want to revert someone else's hard work on this system. Instead it would be best to move forward and figure out how to make these particular chat filters acceptable to all.

    The note associated with that ticket is this:
    "Enabled the melee and spell critical, flurry, and rampage filters to show those attacks."
    It was marked as an internal only note, but probably should have been a public note (it happens, and I'm sorry).

    There is not much space left in the chat filter system. Adding something like this:
    Spells > Heals >
    - Yours
    - Yours (Critical)
    - Others
    - Others (Critical)
    - All

    This would actually use 5 filter slots. We're at 192/199 filters. We may be able to just move some of the higher value data (200+ are taken by special filters) even higher to make room, but it may have bad results (i.e. players who log in after the change have odd / broken chat behavior). I don't know what the solution is yet, but that is why chat filters are currently the way they are.
  7. niente Developer

    The Other filter is a default case for the chat filter system. Any chat filter with only a color set, and no filter, will go to the Other filter. It's been a slow change to at least stop new chat messages from being sent to this filter.
    Would like more info about these.
    This would be a fairly large project that needs to get approved / scheduled time for it.
    This is a pretty good idea and would likely fit well in the previously mentioned project.
    This is a separate, different project that would also be a significant amount of work.
  8. Wulfhere Augur

    Would it be possible to develop UI to make a user-defined chat filter and then if so, allow for a few such filters?
  9. Angahran Augur

    If you could at least reverse the recent change that dumped everyone's pets and swarm pets messages into the same filter as NPC messages (criticals?) I think that would make a whole lot of people very happy.

    Basically, if we can get anything 'pet' related able to be moved to it's own window/tab that would be great.

    I currently have an alt sitting in PoK with every filter set to a new window and 'nothing' filtered to the original chat window so I will see if anything shows in that window. It may be combat type messages so I wouldn't get those.

    If that doesn't work I'll try switching my chat windows next time we raid.
  10. Tweakfour17 Augur

    Personally I'd like to see
    Yours
    Others
    I'm less concerned about splitting my (and others) criticals into 3rd and 4th windows. But seeing critical heals from others dropping into my ciritcal nukes and vice versa is super annoying. I'd like to see pets be a single filter. Maybe again it could be Yours / Others. And /say, vs NPC say would be great if they could be separate filters.
    Yinla likes this.
  11. Sunriver Journeyman

    With all due respect, this is exactly what many people experienced the last time filters were changed.

    In particular, as a tank, I could no longer separate flurries/rampages against me vs everyone else. So, I went from being able to filter all the damage being done to me into one window, to a choice of either

    a) Not being able to see if I'm taking rampage or flurry damage or

    b) turn off combat damage messages for other people

    A is very bad for helping me understand what is happening to me in game and B cuts off my knowledge of what is happening to other players. Having them all in one filter is simply too spammy to gain any knowledge from.

    Having all my damage taken in one window was probably my most important use of the filter system outside of chat channels and for me it is broken. I have to resort to a GINA trigger and overlay to get that same information now, which is hardly ideal.

    I think you could combine Rampage/Flurry/Enrage together and then just have Yours/Others. I don't believe very many tanks are likely to filter these abilities differently. Also, maybe remove the enrage filter because I don't ever see any mobs doing this anymore?

    I understand there is a filter limit, but I do think some filters could be condensed.

    My Death and Other PC Death can be combined -- deaths are not that frequent an occurrence and you generally know when you die. Is there really anyone who needs to have their death message be separate from others?

    Are languages part of the filter limit? If so, you could save a lot by making all languages go into the same filter. How often is anyone caring about seeing different languages in different windows? In the rare circumstances someone might want that, I would say the needs of the constant use case trump that rare use case.
    Skuz, Moege and Tweakfour17 like this.
  12. Nennius Curmudgeon

    Is this limit so absolute that it can't be increased? My knowledge of these sorts of things is very limited and it is perhaps a silly question. But, I do well remember that bag sizes were very limited at one time and now they are not so limited and so I wonder if this limit is more a factor of time/resource availability as opposed to some hard limit in the overall system that is so fixed that changing it would cause a complete meltdown of everything.

    I am one that would very much like the opportunity to more closely tailor my filters to my own needs/wants.
  13. Wulfhere Augur

    Yeah, it's a problem within the game. I know I did, and I expect that many tanks, made GINA triggers to help provide this information. For example:

    name: Rampage (Self)
    search: ^{S1} +(\w+) YOU for {N} points of damage\. \((?!Wild).*(Rampage).*\)$
    display: {C}: RAMPAGE for {N}
    timer: 1s
    timer ended, say: Heal the Rampage

    note: Some mobs have a trailing space in their name
  14. Forcallen Augur

    With all respect to their hard work for some the changes are beyond not liked. They have drastically impacted raid play for some. Since these most recent changes no matter what some players do on their end as far as logs, filters, spell effects they simply lock up or lag to the point of unplayable in a raid setting for large chunks of time if not entire events.

    I would highly reconsider undoing anything you guys have done to the filtering the past 4 months and then move forward internally before rolling whatever solution you guys come up with. Rather then leaving lots in the lurch until a fix comes if ever just because of "their hard work".
    Moege likes this.
  15. Dre. Altoholic

    I would like you to.

    Another missing function of the old system is you could see at a glance when your critical calculation differed from applied damage. This was the easiest way to know when melee damage types are being mitigated or given a bonus.
    Moege and Yinla like this.
  16. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    Talk to some of the NPCs at the entrance to Toskirakk, some of their responses are hard coded to go in the main chat window, which are easily missed when you have chat filtered.

    I got annoyed with the filter changes back in 2019 and not being able to figure out how to move them so my main chat window is now my spam window, filtering all chat to my another window to make it chat only. Say is extremely annoying when you get spammed by NPCs every pull so when AEing grey cons I filter say else to the same window as system & emote messages.

    All I'm interested in is my spells, my melee, my pet +NPC everything else I would like to be filtered to off.

    I also think these are hard coded and unfilterable
    These used to be in the same filter as the spell/melee they were related to, now there is no way to turn them off and they are all done by others which I have no interest in seeing.

    In my opinion filters for heals and damage should be
    Mine
    Group
    Others
    All

    I have no desire to split out criticals or flurries or anything things else and for the love or all things fluffy don't make anything other than damage to me be shown in red! Red is me being hit not me landing something on an NPC.
  17. Yinla Ye Ol' Dragon

    How mine looked before the change
    It now looks like

    The bit in red is still there but is no longer attached to the spell and is not filterable, so that is the spam text from Uiliak that we now get from everyone elses spells and discs. Hope this makes some sence. I don't mind how the other spell information is, either case works for me it still goes in my spell spam, but the emote from the spell needs to go there too and not show me everyone elses. Having everyone elses spell emotes going to my log just makes it huge. :mad:

    In the same way the some of the buffs & pet buffs emotes have been seperated from their spells and are not filterable either.
  18. Velisaris_MS Augur

    Not doing what's best for the game and the players because you're worried about hurting someone's feelings is the excuse you're using for not fixing this mess? Seriously?

    You want to know why people get frustrated with you people? It's because of things like that.

    You know you need to revert these changes because that's what's best for the game right now. Just do it...and start over using the knowledge of how this screw up happened to make sure it doesn't again.
    Dre. likes this.
  19. Angahran Augur

    So, because someone 'worked hard' on a change pretty much noone likes, wants, or asked for, we're stuck with it ?
    Dre. likes this.
  20. zleski Augur


    No one is devaluing the hard work or their effort, but all features that go before a customer (or all of them) need to be subjected to user acceptance testing. In this case the vocal posters on the forum want to send the feature back for iteration so it's better for everybody.

    We all have a vision about how we want to interact with the information the game is capable of displaying to us, but given how complex the problem space is -- there seem to be hundreds of filters to consider -- we all need to have some compassion here and avoid making value judgments on the work being done to engage with the community, with the developers and how the developers go about choosing from an endless grab bag of possible improvements.
    Tweakfour17 and Dre. like this.