Hello, Argent Dawn. I’m the developer of a new addon aimed at RPers:
CurseForge link: https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/kvcd-darken-chat-messages-by-speaker-distance
WoWInterface link: https://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info25882-KVCD-DarkenChatMessagesbySpeakerDistance.html
(Yes, the name needs work)
Downloads available at the links above.
This addon makes messages in the chat frame sent to /s, /y and /e darker the further away the speaker is from you. This makes it easier to focus on players RPing closer to you when in busier areas.
It also provides options to highlight friends/guild-mates/party-members to make them stand out in the walls of text that occur when multiple people are chatting nearby.
The addon disables itself during combat so that it doesn’t interfere with gameplay.
The darkening of the text is configurable in the addon’s options.
Note:
- This addon is in an experimental state right now, but works pretty well so far.
- It should be compatible with other addons for the most part, but that depends on what the other addons are doing with messages added to the chat frame. I use MRP and Prat, myself; and it works fine with those.
- It works far, far better when you have nameplates enabled. Getting the positions/ranges of arbitrary players in WoW is extremely difficult (to prevent cheating), and calculating by nameplates is one method available to this addon.
- If you don’t like having nameplates enabled when RPing due to screen clutter (like me), you can tick a checkbox in the addon’s options (Esc->Interface->addons->‘Darken Chat Messages’) to enable a momentary nameplate scan that enables them for a split second every X seconds so that the addon can grab the range information it needs about nearby players.
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I do thing the idea is very clever, it’d stop people somehow hearing my character speaking on the other side of walls.
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Sadly, nothing shall ever stop metagamers from doing as they please.
That being said, I think this is a pretty great idea for an addon. In conjunction with other addons such as Listener/Snooper, you can get a better idea of who’s next to your character in larger-scale events and gatherings, and thus more clearly recognise who’s talking to you (or in proximity to you) and who’s off in the distance holding their own chat. Good idea!
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I think it’s an excellent idea, I will try it out 
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Bangers idea mate, will absolutely give it a try!
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After testing the addon, the only fault i’ve found so far is that with TRP3’s ‘detect speech’ function for example when doing this; /e smiles as she waves. “Hi friends!”
It doesn’t fade the text, I assume because of the abov function with TRP3
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Thanks for testing it out!
Yeah, TRP3 is probably removing the color sequences from the text for its ‘detect speech’ feature.
Trying to account for this in my addon could get really messy and hard to maintain, but I’ll see if I can figure something out.
I’LL TAKE YOUR ENTIRE S T O C K.
Brilliant idea. Love it. I’m gonna give it a test and let you know how it goes. This is a fantastic addition <3
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I can only suggest getting in touch in with the TRP3 devs to see if they can help work something out with you!
I’ll try this addon tonight, thanks! Right now, the “scan nameplates” checkbox doesn’t seem to visually change anything; perhaps the nameplates are enabled for such a split-second time that it’s unnoticeable?
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That’s the idea!
Ideally, you shouldn’t see the nameplates flickering in/out because they’re only enabled for 0.001s; but the results vary depending on your nameplate settings and whether or not you’re using another addon that modifies nameplates (or applies fade-in/fade-out effects to them).
I personally play with names hidden and nameplates only showing during combat, so there’s no visual disruption for me - but when I did some testing with the default settings of the ThreatPlates addon I found it a little jarring; so I’m continuously working on making the nameplate scan as close to invisible as possible in all scenarios.
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I’ve always wanted an addon like this, and it seems immensely cool. I already play with nameplates on anyway because I use the KUI TRP3 plugin which replaces nameplates with the character’s TRP name above their head, and you can filter it by line of sight for added immersion to gauge who’s realistically in your character’s FOV.
https://www.curseforge.com/wow/addons/total-rp-3-kuinameplates-module
And yes, you can filter out titles and guild names from the nameplate.
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Nice!
That looks like a great addon to use in combination with this one. Thanks for the heads-up.
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Testing the addon right now. It seems that enabling nameplate scan makes it correctly determine distance to same-faction players, but speech of opposite-faction players is always rendered in the darkest color, regardless of distance, unless I target the player.
I’m not using any nameplate addons — in fact, I use the default UI plus RP addons (TRP3, Musician, Listener, StoryTeller, CrossRP).
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Looks very cool! Will give it a try and thanks for working on it!
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This looks great and a sort of less complex listener! I’ll be giving this a go!
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That’s a clever idea. Will have to give this a look!
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I believe it has now been brought up in the TRP3 dev’s discord (not by me) and a dev will try contacting you tonight to get work stuff out!
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It seems that enabling nameplate scan makes it correctly determine distance to same-faction players, but speech of opposite-faction players is always rendered in the darkest color, regardless of distance, unless I target the player.
I was half-expecting this to the case. In my testing so far it’s been inconsistent, and it may not be possible to remedy this situation. Determining range of units in WoW is exceptionally difficult and limited by the API. KvCD already uses LibRangeCheck (which is basically the gold standard of libraries for range checks) and a few other tricks to get around this; but there’s only so much that can be done.
Sadly, I suspect the range-checking of opposite-faction players probably works better in War Mode - Which very few of us RP in.
The real solution in an ideal world to the problems of RPing with opposite-faction players - As with most of WoW’s problems these days - would be for Blizzard to finally ditch the stupid faction divide that makes less sense with each passing day.
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Maybe just hardcode not changing the color of opposite-faction player speech, then? Always render it in default white.
Preach it, brother/sister! 
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