This is a message for the development team.
I would like to start by saying that I’m a HUGE fan of this game, and have been extremely pleased with the remaster. I’d like to extend my sincere gratitude to Blizzard and the development team for all the work and care that’s gone into maintaining and updating this amazing classic game for the current day. D2R has been a great success in my opinion, and has brought me many hours of enjoyment and great memories. With that in mind, I would like to share some feedback and ideas for some improvements that I think could be made regarding the chat system of D2R. Those are the ability to designate and undesignate default channels, making channel selection in the lobby persist between games, and allowing the Tab function to cycle through whisper channels. If these features or something like them already exist I would love to know!
Chat has long been an integral part of the Diablo II experience in the game and in the lobby. The lobby chat especially has provided a rich forum for discussion as well as for organization of parties, runs, and clans. In the original client, there were many chat channels, public and private, that the community knew how to navigate, and added a lot of connectivity and enjoyment for many players.
The D2R community in general has not yet fully discovered and utilized the chat system in the new client yet as far as I am aware. The overall perception seems to be that many of these options simply do not exist. Over the past few months, I have been exploring the system and have found this perception to not be true at all. Almost all of these features are available if the user knows how to navigate them, and I have been trying to spread this knowledge in an attempt to rekindle the rich lobby chat experience of the classic game.
One feature that I found very useful in the classic client, and have been unable to find in the new system, is the ability to set a home channel.
In the classic client, I would have a home channel that many of my other friends would join and had set as their home channel. It was a great place for us all to congregate, and to organize without having to message our whole friends list to see who’s available for what. It was also a good way to avoid the default Lobby chat, which many found not to their liking, being more reclusive players.
As things are currently, the player upon leaving a game, is automatically returned to the Lobby channel, regardless of which channels are in use, and which the player was in last. The inability to set a home channel adds an extra barrier to use for these chat channels. Instead of remaining in the previous channel, the player now has to reselect the desired channel after every game. Navigating back to the desired channel may seem trivial, being only a matter of two actions (select the chat bar and pressing Tab, or clicking the arrow for the dropdown menu of channels and then clicking the desired channel), but is still enough of a barrier to prevent players from using the channel. It’s also frustrating to do when time between runs is kept to an absolute minimum, as it often is.
Here’s an example to illustrate my point:
I frequently host Baal runs, and set up a public channel for players who aren’t on my friends list who wish to follow my run. I tell players how to join the channel “To join my channel, type /c j Irk”, and some do join the channel. Sometimes I will need an extra minute or two between runs for a break, or someone will need a break and want to rejoin later. Before making my next game, I post in the channel that I’m making the next game and what the name will be so they know to join. Since the players that are waiting to join are in the Lobby channel by default instead of the chat channel that they had joined, they miss my message. Many are unaware that they’re still in my chat channel in the first place, and some don’t know how to navigate to it. Now instead of a full game with my previous party I have an empty run, and several disappointed players frantically searching the game list for my run, or spam joining the next numbered run for several tedious minutes.
One way to mitigate this would be to have the previously selected channel persist between games.
Another solution that I would like to propose is the addition of a chat command that allows a user to designate a channel as their default channel, as well as a command to undesignate a channel as a default.
It could look something like this:
/channel default NAME OF CHANNEL
/channel undefault NAME OF CHANNEL
It would be great if this could be done for private channels as well, maybe like this:
/channel default private NAME OF CHANNEL
/channel undefault private NAME OF CHANNEL
Another example of how this would be useful is the Trade chat. Since this is a default channel, many players accidentally end up sending messages intended for the Game channel (likely because they pressed Tab after opening the chat window). As a result, a whole realm of players are now being spammed with messages that don’t apply to them. When I realize this, I use the /c l command to leave the Trade channel, but many players aren’t aware of this and become frustrated. They perceive this to be a bug of the chat system, not the feature it’s intended to be. If players could undefault this channel, much of this frustration could be avoided.
One other feature that I would like to see implemented is the ability to use Tab to cycle through whisper channels. Often I’ll be chatting in the Game channel, and also messaging a friend who is not in my game by whispering them. Being able to navigate to the whisper channel with Tab would save me a lot of time (and frustration) when doing this. Instead of having to switch hands between mouse and keyboard to open chat, click the dropdown menu, then click the whisper channel, type my whisper message, then repeat all that to go back to the Game channel, I would be able to just Tab to the desired channels quickly and easily.
I’ve played Diablo 2 since its launch, and it has been, and remains, one of my favourite games by far. I consider D2 to be one of the best games of all time, and am very grateful for all the work that has gone into making this remaster as successful and enjoyable as it has been. I am aware that adding features like this is not a trivial amount of work, as many might assume. If these quality of life improvements could be implemented, I would be very grateful, and I think the D2R community would appreciate these changes, and become even more friendly and connected than it already is.
Thanks for reading my post and considering these changes!
P.S. If any users would like advice on navigating the chat system of D2R I would be more than glad to help. I’m considering writing an in-depth guide already.
