Salem

I've played quite a bit of MMOs and have to say the chat system in Salem has got to be the worst one I've ever seen. It's understandable, tiny development team, limited resources, and they focus on meat and potatoes of gameplay rather than UI, but chat is a really simple thing that has a lot of impact in a multiplayer game, so for a small investment you can get a lot of return. Just make something that most MMOs use, you press enter, the cursor goes into the chat box, and a movable window showing previous lines of text appears above the chat box. Press esc to quickly get out of chat box and back into the game. After a few seconds, if they are not being used, chat box and chat window become transparent. A dropdown-type deal next to the chatbox lets you cycle through area chat/system chat/buddy chat channel/etc. The key thing is that the player should be able to smoothly transition between typing text and playing the game. With the current system, it's like Cirque du Soleil when you try to type and play at the same time. I've seen people press some random options while typing, which made their avatars look like they are break-dancing, I've accidentally renamed my avatar, while typing in chat, and so on, just because its such a mess. Good for comic relief, bad for gameplay.

MayflowerBlues wrote:I've played quite a bit of MMOs and have to say the chat system in Salem has got to be the worst one I've ever seen.

Yes, everyone has said the Salem chat bar needs to be changed, even jorb I think, it's really awful.