Future Improvements: Chat UI and Trade Policies

Greetings, Saviors!

You may remember from our ‘kTOS User Meetup Summary’ that the dev team is working on a list of goals to improve different aspects of the game. Today, we would like to share a preview of what we have planned for two of those goals: improving the chat UI and standardizing trade policies.

1. Chat UI Improvements

We realize that social functions play a big role in the way many choose to take part in the world of TOS. The basic conversation tool that unites Saviors with friends, party members and guild members is of course the chat function, which is why we wanted to make it a little more convenient and useful.

We added in a few new features to the regular chat window:

- You can open up to 3 separate chat windows.
- You can set a different chat type (Shout, Party, Whisper, etc.) for each of the chat windows open.
- Pressing Shift+Tab lets you switch between open chat windows.
- Chat window size can be adjusted horizontally (width).

1.1 New Group Chat Function

Not all relationships in TOS can be measured in parties and guilds, so we wanted to give players another, more flexible way to organize themselves by developing a group chat function.

Here’s a rundown of how it’s going to work:

- You can create up to 50 group chat rooms, each room with a maximum of 20 users.
- Clicking the top of the chat room UI will expand/minimize it.
- Each chat room will have different settings you can configure to taste.
- Regular whisper chats will be in the new ‘1:1’ tab.
- If you’re whispering with a friend, the chat log will be under ‘Friends’.
- Chat rooms in the ‘Group’ tab will have a few added functions.
   1) Create Invite Tag: Lets you link to a chat room invitation, the same way you do with party invite links.
   2) Invite: Enter the team name of another player to invite them to the chat room.
   3) User List: Shows you a list of all the players in the chat room, and whether they are logged in.

2. Trade Policy Changes

Item circulation was an area we felt was still not running as smoothly as it should be, considering the difficulties posed by trading restrictions and regulations. With this in mind, we wanted to standardize our item trade policies in a way that would make it easier for players to assess the degree of tradability of the game’s different items.

Below are the new policies we have planned, organized according to degree of tradability:

1) Items untradeable by any means (Team Storage NO, Market NO, 1:1 NO)
  - Items obtained under circumstances specific to a character (collections, cubes, Earth Tower rewards, etc.)
  - Transcended equipment items
  - Items that became untradeable after a 1:1 trade with one or more non-Token users
  - Items with time limits (expiration dates)

2) Items which CAN be moved via Team Storage but NOT traded in the Market or on 1:1
  - Exchange medals
  - All other items that don’t fall under the “tradable by all means” category

3) Items which CAN be sold at the Market but NOT moved via Team Storage or traded 1:1
  - Tokens

4) Items tradable by all means (Team Storage YES, Market YES, 1:1 YES)
  - Items obtained through regular gameplay, not dependent on character-specific conditions (gems, recipes, monster cards, etc.)
  - Premium costumes
  - Enchantment scrolls
  - Emoticon packages
  - Items obtained from premium cubes

Note 1: Trading an item 1:1 between Token users with one or more trades left and selling an item at the Market will no longer make the item untradeable. This applies to all items.

Note 2: Personal trades where one or more players are either not using a Token or have no trades left will continue to be considered “non-Token trades”. In these cases, the item traded will become untradeable by any means. This applies to all items.

2.1 Token Benefit Improvements

If you are a Token and Market user, you’ll be familiar with this set of changes, already applied to iTOS, planned under the dev team’s improvement project.

If you’re not, here’s a summary of how Token benefits changed regarding Market sales:

- Tokens sold through the Market no longer become untradeable.
- Token users can now retrieve silver from the Market immediately after the item is sold.
- Token users can now sell items for prices above or under the maximum/minimum price limits on the Market.

And, another change is set to be applied along with these improvements:

- A silver commission fee will be applied to Tokens sold at the Market, similarly to what happens with other items.

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Besides the Token benefit improvements already applied to Steam, the changes mentioned here have already been introduced to our kTOS test server and, after polishing all the corners, we hope to bring them over to iTOS later in the year.

The team is working hard to keep up with the goal list, and we do have other improvements planned which we look forward to introducing here on the dev blog.

Do let us know your opinions on the new chat functions and item trade policies. We’ll be back soon with more previews.