[Test] Platform Text Chat is coming to Experiences

The first image is from an uber old version of the top bar.

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To be honest, if I was new to roblox I would be thinking the second chat icon had to do with playing some kind of video based on how the icon looks. Also I do seriously think two chat icons next to each other will be very confusing, especially for younger players. Hopefully roblox allows a way to disable it.
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At that point it should be in the Escape Menu, since that’s where a lot of features are.

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-- No I know that much, I’ve been around since the chat was just a huge black text field at the bottom of the screen, I just don’t remember ever seeing the separate eye icon for chat.

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Will there be an Enum value allowing us to disable this? I believe you have taken enough space on the screen already.

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This should be in the hamburger menu

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-- The plan is to literally let users pin menu items to their experience controls so if your game isn’t suited to handle the controls being one icon bigger that’s a problem you gotta deal with anyway.

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Most of the time in my experiences all the unrelated CoreUI elements will be disabled, that’s not going to be a problem. I don’t want unneeded or unrelated UI on the screen. It’s my experience.

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Inconsistency with creativity and art design has always been an issue with the TopBar, it’s fair to ask for it being disabled completely in some regard.

For some time we had that a few years back, hoping someday that’s alleviated back to the creator.

These extra options are nice, but forceful placement should never coexist over the creator for a platform made for creators.

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I’m not sure what the answer is entirely, but this test should be done on a smaller scale internally I think. The planned way of testing is possibly disruptive in the short-term.

Roblox does have team chats if I’m not mistaken. I guess having two buttons is a good idea here for communicating the two different chat systems. Maybe though the two should just remain separate unless in a party at that moment.

In short, this is nice for the party system, but otherwise it’d be annoying and confusing. Disable the 2nd chat button if not in a party.

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I have a strong mental model of play buttons = video format. The experience chat icon suggests an experience that one might assume (and it’s likely that others would agree) involves playing videos rather than opening a chatbox. In my opinion, the platform chat’s icon should feature a silhouette of multiple people (indicative of a party) or an actual party hat with a chat bubble coming from it. The experience chat icon should be the platform chat’s icon. Those are my two cents.

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-- There’s already one item present that isn’t tied to CoreGUI, and there could be other quick controls in the future that also can’t be removed. It’s your experience but it’s the user’s control bar, they can customize it however they want.

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-- I second this, no matter how hard I squint at that icon I can only see it as something video related. 100% some newer players are going to confuse this for something ad related, and the universal chat icon doesn’t really indicate that it’s a universal chat well either.

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These past updates have felt like Roblox wants to shove this down our throats so bad, I made 2 replies that got very popular and known, and yet it felt like engineers were avoiding my feedback on purpose.

The screen belongs to the developer to customize, the user is in my experience. You have no idea how limiting this is to us developers, when the user joins my experience, they must expect me to have full control over it. The only place I shouldn’t be able to touch is the CoreUI Menu. And that is to provide a place for the user to configure settings and leave the experience. If you oppose this, then you do not have the necessary experience to understand us.

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-- It really is not that limiting, at all. You’re missing a 56x56 pixel square. You are on a cloud-based platform like Roblox, you need to be willing to swallow your pride and let the 56 pixels at the top of the screen have room for stuff the user wants to have there. Especially since if you are using 100% of the topbar in any scenario you probably need to invest in submenus.

-- There definitely needs to be some UX considerations with this update but universal chat is not something you should be able to just ban from your game if it is added to Roblox.

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If you consider wanting freedom over your experiences and allowing customization from developers on a platform that advertises itself as a place where you can create anything as willing to swallow your pride, then, your view is extremely faulty. You are looking at this subject from the eyes of a mere player. I don’t want the experience controls to be removed, I want to be able to disable and enable it whenever and however I wish. If my experience is an FPS game, the user has no way of chatting or interacting with the menu on many devices.

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To echo the others’ thoughts, this UI can’t use a chat bubble for both in experience chat and party chat. The existing chat should keep a familiar icon, while party chat needs to look distinct. Changing the existing icon is not an option.

Since the point of party chat is to hang out with a group of friends, has an icon design centred around a group of people been considered instead? This would perhaps better establish the key difference between the two.

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I completely agree. I would suggest that they use a new icon, maybe the friends icon that already exists on the roblox website.
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Best treatment for who exactly? Devs or the chat team?

If the metric is “maximize usage” then of course the most intrusive option will prevail.

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From what I’ve seen so far, most likely the latter.

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