Change TEAM/ALL shift hotkey in lobby chat

[partyvan]

The Background:
A recent patch added the ability to send lobby chat messages to either TEAM chat or ALL chat depending on if you hold the SHIFT key down while pressing enter to send your message.

The Problem:
Almost every game I join, someone in the game sends a chat message to a destination they didn't mean to, because they were typing something that ended with a letter/symbol that requires shift to be held. E.g.:

• you can carry :)<enter>
• i call scout!<enter>
• i'm going HB<enter>

(underlined text indicates user was holding shift, green indicates shift was held intentionally, red shows where it was held accidentally)

The Suggested Improvement:
Change the hotkey from SHIFT to a key that people don't press and use all the darn time during normal typing.
(Suggest CTRL)

Alternatively move the shift-enter key sequence to be a pre-message operation. I consider this a less likely solution, as the implementation would require potentially non-trivial changes to the way lobby chat works in general.

The Reasoning:
Yes, the key sequence is the same as in-game (shift enter). So why is shift enter a problem in-lobby but not in-game?

The difference lies in when you use the key sequence: in-game, you press shift-enter and then start typing your message. In-lobby, you type your message and then press shift-enter.

This is a subtle difference, but it does result in a lot more errors in-lobby than in-game. Why? Well, let's take a brief look at it:

1. In-game, you press shift-enter before you start typing, and then you get the whole time you're typing in your message to see the [ALL] or [TEAM] prefix. It gives you a nice amount of time to eyeball your chat message while you're typing, which gives you all sorts of opportunity to correct a mistaken destination before you commit your message to be sent. In-lobby, you press shift-enter at the end of typing. The amount of time where the destination toggle button displays the actual destination is very brief; for a fast typist, they may not even see the button flicker. The nice big window of opportunity to double-check the destination has been lost.

2. In-game, if you happen to hold down shift a little too long after pressing shift-enter, shift may happen to modify the first letter or two of your message. However, almost always have plenty of opportunity to view and correct those typos before sending the message text. No problem. In-lobby, if you happen to hold down shift a little too long after typing the last characters of your message and shift is accidentally down when you press enter: too bad! Your message is going to the wrong destination. No chance to correct this very human error of chording the keys slightly incorrectly.

To get the error-rate of in-lobby chat down to the error-rate of in-game chat (which is a nice goal), the lobby keyboard shortcut must either be changed to be an up-front operation (like in-game), or if the existing behavior is maintained, the hotkey must be changed to a key which is not used during normal typing.

Further Ideas:
Instead of adding a user preference to simply turn the lobby shift feature off, I think it'd be better to revisit the feature's implementation. I think almost everyone is unanimously in favor of some kind of lobby chat TEAM/ALL keyboard shortcut. Don't make people who want the feature, turn the feature off. The problem lies in the ergonomics of the current implementation, not the concept of the feature.

It might be nice to make the modifier key customizable, but even if this is done, the default should still be changed away from SHIFT because many people will never customize the key, and they will continue to accidentally send messages to the wrong destination. Also, is it really necessary to make the key customizable? It's such a simple and universally useful feature, we should probably just pick a better implementation or hotkey and call it a day. Ideas for alternative hotkeys: CTRL, ALT, ALT+SHIFT, CTRL+SHIFT

Other Threads Reporting the Issue

1. Shift-enter Annoyance
2. Shift key is really annoying
3. Lobby Chat - shift is absurd
4. about the recent chat changes
5. Lobby Chat

[[SRSE]ScatterSpasm]

Holy mother of jesus, yes!

[Spiriax]

No kiddin'? I yes'd

[FragoliTE]

YES! NOW!

[awowa]

does tab do anything in lobby? I can't remember. tab might be a good bind for it.

[Amajed]

I use the Shift+Enter and its cool. but I saw too many ppl accidentally send messages to the wrong destination.

So I'm with you

[partyvan]

does tab do anything in lobby? I can't remember. tab might be a good bind for it.

Tab would be a nice ergonomic hotkey, but I think they might be reserving it for when they implement nickname autocompletion, ala IRC and other chat clients.

[[HH]Ashur]

Good lord yes, the enemy doesn't need to know what I say just because I use ?! () etc.

[partyvan]

Bump for great support : )

[Zka_]

Absolutely!

[Varp]

Holy hell, this happens to me at least twice a day.
YES!

[Stokkolm]

I still don't understand why shift changing the chat was introduced

[[GVN]okthxbai]

Yes and Yes and... YES.

Or just give it a key-bind.

[partyvan]

9 more votes for popular!!

[[sSi]Ignorance]

Problem resolved with mod
Shift+Enter is maintained, yet now it wont inhibit you.

[partyvan]

Problem resolved with mod
Shift+Enter is maintained, yet now it wont inhibit you.

Great! I hope they incorporate it into a patch for the game.