With the 1.03 patch came changes to the way the chat is handled. Most of these seem great and all, you can send whispers to people in a game/from a game, you can see if your friends are on without clicking on them, you can turn on/off the "xxx has joined the channel" messages. You can also type /a in a game to talk to allies. Now, the problem is that the in game message system has been made considerably worse than it was before.

1) There is no longer any color difference between messages. When an ally talks in allied speak, you have no way of knowing if that message was to you or to everyone. You also have no way of knowing if someone is whispering you or not. In FFA/Unlocked games where diplomacy is present, a lot of whispering can often go on while people make deals and what not. Currently, there is no way to tell if the current offer is being whispered to you, or broadcast to everyone.

2) You have to either type /a or hit tab every time that you want to talk to your allies. Under the old system when you set the chat to allied speak using tab, it would stay on allied speak. In the game I just played this lead to several instances of the other team seeing messages not meant for them. I suppose eventually people will learn to hit tab before every message, but this seems to be an unessessary step.

I guess those are the two big issues, the lack of any color diferences or even [Allied]/[Whispered] before messages, and having to hit tab before sending every message. I think something should be changed to at least make the defualt chat either a choice players can make in the options somewhere, or always allied. The other changes can be tossed into the next patch or something, but annoyance of just communicating with your own team is something that should be dealt with sooner I think. I doubt it is just me, but in team games I like to communicate with the team a lot to discuss attack plans, what they are building/teching up for, what plaents they are colonizing, whether to bid on the pirates or not, and all sorts of various things. It just seems so... unessessary to have to remember to hit tab before every message, with the fear constantly lingering that you forget and send your attack plan to the enemy. The worst part being, if you did, unless they say something, there is no way to know, because the different chats are no longer distinquished by any sort of markings.