"Personalized range" as a chat option/filter once the map is bigger

Spif

** This is not all that valuable with the current map size, but will become important when there are 10x as many players and nodes. In a game with no fast travel, how far away the talker is can matter relative to how much I want to hear them or be heard by them

I've been reading some global/no-global/discord-will-be-global/etc chat discussions, and thought it would be nice to have a user-selected range for the chat we hear, and the chat we project.

So for every channel that could be distance affected (trade and LFG mostly, but probably others), allow the player to decide how far they want to project their communication, and from how far away they want to hear people talk.

Examples:

• I want to trade a stupidly valuable item that's worth riding an hour to trade. I set the Trade channel to "current continent" and start spamming
• I want to trade some less valuable stuff and don't want to run far. I set trade channel to "current node"
• I'm LFG and by Carphin, because I want a Carphin group. I set my LFG channel to "current node" and look at LFG for groups and spam my LFG message
• I'm LFG and am looking for something kinda close, but don't care what as long as it's level appropriate. So I park myself near HH and Oakenbane and set my LFG to "current and adjacent nodes"
• I love engaging in global chat, and everyone wants to hear what I have to say (they really really do). I set the general chat to "max" and start telling everyone about the fungus my cat has
• I'm sick of all the general chat span, so I set general chat to "current node" to keep up with what's around me.
• Assuming we get a caravan or pvp channel, I could set that to "current and adjacent nodes" to get info about where people are fighting near me, but not hear about PvP on the other continent

LFG channel would probably also benefit from a level range filter, but there are plenty of threads about LFG and it's issues.

The main issue I can see with this is that people might only hear half of a conversation depending on how circles of chat range overlap.

Range-in-kilometers option might be easier to code than the "current and adjacent nodes", but right now I have no idea how large a km is on the map. It shouldn't be that hard to make a lookup table that shows how many "nodes away" someone is. IE, I'm in Halcyon so Winstead and Joeva are one node away, Miraleth is 2 nodes away, etc. Keeping it node based also helps with partial conversations. You will keep talking to the same people until you cross a node boundary.

Laetitian

The main issue I can see with this is that people might only hear half of a conversation depending on how circles of chat range overlap.

This, and its sibling, which is that you won't know when your conversation with someone got force-quit by one of you leaving the other's range.

Honestly, these are probably more disqualifying factors than you might be willing to admit. You can talk as much as you like about how you can use the functionalities for specific purposes, or you can continue the conversation in a private chat, but it still makes things much more unpredictable to control, making the conversation more tedious and unrewarding to uphold. And if the conversation is expected to become tedious, people will, more often than not, opt not to start it in the first place.

So I think everything you've described should just be curated by the devs. Either there should be specifically a Trade channel for your region, or not, so you know who you're reaching with that chat.

I'm sick of all the general chat span, so I set general chat to "current node" to keep up with what's around me.

That would be called Node Chat. I think you can see my point; you're asking in roundabout ways for things that customisation isn't the right instrument for; and some of those things shouldn't exist at all.

This solves the problems of people not knowing who can hear them when they use a certain custom-controlled chat relative to other player's own equivalent.
Furthermore, it ensures dev control over what functionality the game facilitates in terms of trade, PvE partying, and PvP information/coordination balancing. Not everything that's convenient is good for the game's health. Yes, people will make tools anyway, but at least those add a minimum layer of encouraging people to use your preferred information channels. Nodes and merchants that use the right tools will be rewarded for finding the successful path of navigating the community. MMO social gameplay as intended.

Personally, while I generally think UI customisation is great, I think chat rooms in MMOs handle it poorly by allowing you to combine too many unrelated topics in a single tab. The best game chats I've ever been in function by the very reliable principle that all the chatters in the tab you're looking at can also see what you're writing if you type in that tab (unless you actively use a /-command.)
And status windows should generally not be mixed with conversation windows; too many games only have one chat window and dump everything into tabs there, forcing you to click around way too much. The default should be one status (log, etc.) window and one conversation window, it's much more rational to keep them separate so you can always have an eye on one while using the other.