You know, for all the vaunted capabilities of STO - and it's amazing potential - I have been extremely disappointed in the UI design when it comes to the chat/social features. When you consider that most of the other MMO's have such advanced chat capabilities as opening a new chat WINDOW, and not just a tab.

While an action MMO is all well and good, one of the largest aspects of an MMO is its social features. You'd think that they would have robust chat/social functions that would compliment this!

I would like to have the ability to create a new chat window by dragging a tab away from its current window, or through an interface that would allow you to make it (either way, or both ways preferrably)

It would seem to me that this would be a logical (and practical) thing to implement. I am surprised at this oversight!

You got my vote.

I'm wondering why these new MMOs coming out haven't learned from WoW. People expect to have this basic stuff in an mmo.

I'd like to be able to have my combat log in a small window separate from chat.

definately need new/more chat windows... pretty please with a cherry on top.

i currently disable Zone chat just so im able to read coherent posts from other sections.

yes i know disabling zone is just a sane measure in any event but multiple chats in the one box even with different colours is just a total mess.

give us some decent options for gods sake.

That's a new 'tab' not a window.

We mean a new entire box like every other mmo so you can see and separate information.

They did the same sort of Chat window with Champions, too, which is odd, since Cryptic's first game, City of Heroes, not only has a split chat window (chat on bottom, combat spam and system messages on top), but you can create new windows too... and that was when Cryptic was still working on the game. >_>;;

It's not odd when you consider that STO uses the same game engine as Champions Online.

I'm guessing here, but I *THINK* that this same game engine is just an updated/reworked version of the CoH game engine. Basically, they started working on it with CoH, then once CoH/CoV was out I'm guessing they tore out a lot of its guts and reworked the framework/tools/graphics engine before putting it back together again to build Champions Online/STO. As I said, just a guess...but I relaly don't believe I am too far off the mark where that is concerned.

In either case, they need to provide more social/chat/voicechat options. Period. It's a must-have.

Well, I wouldn't say it doesn't need it. For slow-typists, it'd be easier to voice chat during combat, rather than hunt-and-peck to communicate, since this game doesn't support Macros (well, the icon-based Macros, like they did in City of Heroes). And during Space Combat, even fast typists will find their fingers occupied manuevering and blasting away, so voice chat can be very helpful there too.

However, voice chat would always be another option, use it or not. >_>

People in MMOs use Ventrilo for voice chat. Just look at WoW, they added the feature and no one uses it. It's a waste of development manpower to add the feature when everyone will just use vent anyway.