Since the chats at the bottom of our screens have been implemented, I find that they have been useful. Well, at least the Crew Chat since that is the chat it defaults to stay visible. I think we need to do something to revamp the City Chat since I believe it gets forgotten about since it is not immediately opened to view. I have written plenty of stuff there only to get no responses. This might not be for all cities but I know it is like this for at least a few cities.


Now what can we do? I suggest that our beloved Izzy/Enkindle put something in the code so that when someone sends a message through the City Chat/Crew Chat that the words change to a color, maybe red or from white to black. Something to catch the eye of the player to click on it and check what is there. For now, I believe this City Chat feature is falling by the way side and needs something to spruce it up. I think if somehow we can make the specified chat light up or change color then it would make the feature a lot more useful.

Not wanting to be a pain in the ass but I gotta ask how much will the chat problem be mentioned before Admins actually take care of it?

I agree that something needs to be done. I know for a fact that when I am online, I am clicking around and concentrating on a million different things, and since the chats are still a relatively new feature (in terms of how long the game has been around and how long I've been playing) I don't tend to check them a lot. The only reason I even am active in the crew chat is because I can see it. The city chat? Out of sight, out of mind.

One of our city members actually tried to take the initiative and do some creative contests and give aways within our city chat last week, and though we got some response, it was underwhelming. We wanted more. I think the simple change of making the city chat highlight or change color would be immensely helpful in getting all the cities on the same page in using the chat. We can mass mail and tell them to use it until we're blue in the face, but the simple fact remains that if it's not apart of the average player's daily routine, it's hard to force it to become that way.

The chat is an underutilized feature, I see nothing wrong with this suggestion, and I bet it would make the coders and admins happy to see it get used.

(I understand that a new chat system was being tested a month or so back, but as we haven't seen it yet I figure this is a small, simple change that can be added in during the meantime?)

The reason we haven't seen the new chat features kick off yet was due to the lack of hardware being in place (namely, four new servers which are currently hooked up in the office with the guys). This is currently being tested/QA'd atm, so once the guys have finished that and got the hardware in place at the data centre I'm sure we'll see the new chat follow on shortly (relatively speaking... given the aspirational goals this could still take some time, so don't get your expectations too high) after.

Squishy or enkindle would need to comment on how much work would be required to come up with a 'stop gap' solution to the issue to make city chat more usable, but the fact that we haven't seen a wedge be pushed in there to date would suggest that they've decided the (potentially significant) work required for what would be a very temporary solution is better invested into the long term solution and to try and roll that out to us sooner rather than later.

As I said, that's just my understanding on it. I could be wrong. If that is the case however, I would agree fully with the decision not to end up wasting time on a temp fix when the full solution would just be hindered and delayed by doing so.

Multiple times crew chat repairs have been asked for, and multiple times Enkindle or Izzy has addressed it. It will be repaired eventually, as it needs to be recoded. Being a smartass about it doesnt help any situation.