How Sony Can Drastically Improve Their New Text Chat Feature
[Gaming] blog post
By OfflineMike Hartnett at 2009-04-01 23:41:24, updated 2009-04-02 00:10:37
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OK, listen, I applaud Sony for getting this Firmware update out the door and providing us with new features for our PS3s, but why oh why did they put out such a broken text chat system? Here are some issues that need to be addressed ASAP.


First off, text chat has censors... yeah, you heard me right, CENSORS FOR A PRIVATE CHAT. This in and of itself makes absolutely no sense to me. Now, I'm no fan of swearing/cussing at all, but when you censor out the word "crap"? Now that's just taking things too far. Also, didn't we learn this after the filter in PS Home had to be modified because it would block out the "Hell-" in "Hello"? Oh yeah, right, it does that too...

Second, it can be difficult to tell when someone is actually in the room due to the ability to have the room running at all times. Now, having it running in the background is cool, but at least give us some sort of signal that shows when a person has exited out to the XMB or back out to their game.

Thirdly, you are very limited in the amount of text you can actually type per message with the system only allowing around 33 characters per message. This is pretty much unacceptable and needs to be fixed. Why on earth does every message have to be a short blip? It's not like we're typing on a computer, we've got a whole TV screen to look at, so length doesn't really matter.

It's fantastic that the PSN and all these features are free, but what's the point if we're not going to use them due to these frustrating issues that seem to arise time after time. I'll do my best to overlook these nuisances because this is an excellent feature that I'm already using pretty heavily, so just think of this as constructive criticism for the future, maybe for a 2.71 update? I believe that if Sony can manage to fix these issues, we'll have one heck of a better text chat system.


5 comments:

Offline Dana Olson
platinum1 gold24 silver123 bronze646     11
2009-04-01 23:45:53
If I'm playing Oblivion, and I'm in a chat room, I get the messages on my screen. There's no real need to have everyone know "hey, Dana's playing Oblivion again - no, wait, he isn't anymore, he is looking at his private messages - er, scratch that, he's back to the game, er, he WAS, but now he's gone back to the chat to reply to your last message that popped up." It's more important to know when someone actually LEAVES the chat room - either by the option or by shutting off their PS3, since you're technically still IN the chat room, even if you're playing a game.

Another problem, however, is that invites don't pop up if you've got the chat room in your list, but aren't logged in - only if you've deleted the chat from your list.
Offline Speedracer1955
platinum0 gold2 silver25 bronze126     5
2009-04-01 23:53:54
This is an improvement over having to dump the game to chat so let them work on it for a while and get it better ... if you don't like it then don't use it I don't see an ISA sniper targeting your head... And if you don't like it fix it yourself if you think you can...
Offline Jason LaFave
platinum3 gold24 silver117 bronze458     10
2009-04-02 00:36:28
@Speedracer1955: Whoa! Easy there, fella...Mike's just venting a bit. Anybody who's known him for any amount of time, knows he's a pretty level-headed guy. No need to get all up in arms over it.
Offline Dana Olson
platinum1 gold24 silver123 bronze646     11
2009-04-02 00:54:18
Oh, I'd also like to see an auto-join option for at least one chat room in a future firmware update. That would be great.
Offline Mike Hartnett
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2009-04-02 00:56:39
@Jason LaFave: Yeah, I don't usually get all up in arms about this stuff, it just ticked me off when I said "Crap" to Dana and it starred it out! LOL

And BTW, I know Speed, so all is well. Thanks though
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