As a new player trying to read things in the Rookie Help chat, it moves way too fast. Someone posts something, and then it’s off the screen in a few moments. So I try to scroll up to see it, and it keeps bouncing up with every new message, making it more difficult to use than it has to be.
My suggested solution is as follows:
If a user has their chat with the most recent message at the bottom, chat scrolls as normal.
If the user scrolls away from the most recent message, then chat doesn’t scroll without further user input.
If the user returns to the now most recent message, resume autoscroll with new messages to keep current chat visible.
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I understand that Eve is about complexity and players learning and exploring and not being handheld, but… fighting the UI should not be considered gameplay, and I sincerely hope that it isn’t considered as such by veterans.
That’s odd. In fleet chat and iirc local as well, when I scroll up, I tend to miss the new messages exactly because it doesn’t automatically scroll to the bottom. I’m actually pretty sure it’s always like this. I don’t understand why your chatbox is doing it differently.
Just reloaded the game to get a video of the effect, and it turns out it doesn’t seem to happen when chat is new/all the time?
It doesn’t always correlate with messages being added, and it’s not about the message buffer overfilling, like I first considered when I thought it might be a bug.
Anyway, I could share repro video but I’m not sure how or if I even can, given that I’m too new.
The chat log has a limited length. If you hit that limit, the log will appear to scroll when the oldest line is deleted. Like watching a person decend in an elevator, you are on the same floor (scroll position), but what you are observing is moving. Clearing the log now and again will mitigate the issue, though I would still admit it is bothersome when what you want to read has already been said.
Then it should lock the user’s scroll position to whatever is on the screen until you’re at the oldest it can display, rather than causing needless visual jitter?
Okay, it does that when there isn’t a lot of chatting going on. However, if there is a bunch (i.e. jita chat or rookie chat), then the oldest messages start disappearing and the chat starts auto-scrolling. Like, you’ll stay in the same spot (i.e. on the 217th post), but the 217th post will change as newer messages cause the older messages to get removed. Hmm. That sounds kind of confusing, but I don’t know how to word it better.
I get it. Chat windows have a limited amount of lines and when that’s being reached, older ones are being kicked out. Could have thought of that myself. Thanks!