[Denied]Set chats to 'Friends Only'

[DaftKitteh]

This is a fairly simple suggestion, and there are a few different ways I can think of to go about it.  The main idea is to have a setting that makes only messages from people on your friends list appear in the chat box. 

Some things I think this system should have:

- Obviously the ability to set all your chats to Public, Friends Only or Off(not really neccessary)
- The ability to set your Whipsers to 'Friends Only'.  /dnd mode is a good system for not recieving whispers, however having a 'Friends Only' mode would be convenient since /dnd blocks all incoming whispers, even the people you have on your friends list.
- The ability to set different chats to block all messages that aren't by your friends.  So I should be able to set my Global/Channel chats to 'Friends Only', but keep my Whispers and Team chat's 'Public' and allow all messages to be seen.
- DND mode accessible through the menu.  Most new users don't know what the chat commands are, and simply having a 'Private = Off' button somewhere would be a whole lot easier to figure out for new players than typing '/dnd'.

 

This is the system I considered the best solution:

• Options for different types of chats:
  The best option imo would be to have a menu below, beside, above or inside the chat box with settings for the chats.  In this menu there would be a 'Public Chats' option for Global/Channel/Normal/Trade/Shout, 'Team  Chat' for the team chat, and 'Whispers' for the private messages.  Each chat type would have it's own option, so I could have my 'Public Chat' set to Friends Only, but my 'Team Chat' and 'Whispers' chats set to public.  Having an 'Off' option for the 'Public' and 'Team' chats similar to our DND mode would be great too, but somewhat uneccassary since you can do just that via the already existing 'Chat Tab' settings.
  Pros: Handles everything well and allows for you to have your Whispers chat completely friends, public or off.  It's also very simple, and doesn't require any fiddling or searching to figure out where the settings are located.  They would be shown right on the menu(which could be displayed straight on the screen, or opened via a button) and easy to access.
  Cons: It lacks the ability to completely control what's on or off.  For instance you can't have your Global on Friends Only and your Channel on Public at the same time.  It also contributes to menu clutter, having to put this interface somewhere.  This system probably shouldn't be per tab, but rather affect all chat tabs.

Regardless of how it's implemented, I think this system would be incredibly beneficial to the players.  I'll be honest and say I only like 5% of the people I've met in public chats on PokeMMO.  It's no secret that our chat suffers from people spamming it trying to sell their shit-tier Pokemon, among other things.  This doesn't really solve that, very few things can, however it puts the user in control of what they see. 
I find myself blocking 20-30 people a day in game just for trading alone, and I got to thinking "Why can't I just block everyone except the people on my friends list?", which is essentially what this system does.  Runescape's system is very similar to the system I proposed above, and it works really well.  Runescape also suffers from spam in the popluated areas, however having my chat only showing messages from friends allows me to carry on a conversation with my friends, regardless of how many other people are also trying to have conversations. 

 

Just some other options I was thinking about but did not consider a good solution so I decided to leave them out.
[spoiler]

• 'Friends Only.' option when creating/editing a chat tab:
  When making a new tab have a check box for 'Friends Only', and make the option independent to each tab.
• Pros: Allows the user to have public and private tabs of the same chat, which means being able to easily switch between public and private. 
  Cons: Needing a private and public version of each tab(Main ones being Channel, Global and Normal.) takes up space on the chat box.  Can't really 'Block' whispers as the player might have a public and private whispers chat channel.
   
• 'Friends Only.' option via right clicking a tab:
  At any point you can right click a tab and a menu with "Public/Friends Only" options will appear, allowing you to turn your chat to private. 
  Note: This would preferably work per tab, so that I can set my Channel chats to private but not my whispers.
  Pros: Same as above but switching the 'Public/Private' option on and off is easier and less tedious than having to go into the tab menu, find the tab and toggle it off.  Also has the benefit of not really needing a tab of each type because it's only 2 clicks to change the option on or off.
  Cons: Similar to the first, it might be difficult to make it able to have whispers set to 'Friends Only' because one might have a public and private whisper tab.  This would also be annoying for team chat where you may want to see messages from everyone, but because the system works per tab it'd block team messages in that tab as well.

 

[/spoiler]
 

Edited September 17, 2015 by DaftKitteh