I appreciate that its easier to communicate with people using voice chat. I apprecaite the benefits it presents to player run organizations and for the social aspect. With all that in mind I personally hate it. The rise of VOIP communications as a gaming component has the potential to ruin MMORPG games for me. My PC is in a common area of the house. I'm a father of a 10 year old and a 7 week old and my wife and I share a room with a TV and said computer. There are lots of times where its practical for me to do a quest or run an Eve mission but in those same times it may not necessairly be as practical to have a headset on.
I know im a dieing breed of gamer and that everyone likes chatting but is there anyone else that shares my sentiment? On top of all of these issues sometimes the last thing I want to do at teh end of the day is talk more.
Am I alone? It seems to me that the future of player run orgs in MMO gaming is directly tied with VOIP chat. Although I fully appreciate the benefits this presents in accomplishing tasks as a group I ask myself is there any other way?
Dear Rekindle, I have hardly ever seen a post to which I agree so much as to yours! Yes, I dearly, deeply hate voicechat. I have a situation to care for a member of my family, and that too doesnt go well with loud talking in the late evening. Plus, I have a hearing impairment, so I get a strong headache after some time concentrating, so essentially I must stay away. I also never liked it, cause its SUCH an immersity killer for me. I want to see and feel the roles, not the real people. I dont want to hear some 15 year old male playing this elegant sorceress, or a 60 yo housewife being the Orc Warrior. I dont want to HEAR that!
Usually such chat channals are loud, endless chatter you cant block out and it SO disturbs my impression being in some other world.
However, since the ascend of Teamspeak and Ventrilo, in many, many guild the normal chat has died out. If for whatever reason you cant or dont want to join voicechat, you are in a dead, silent space. I hate voicechat for them bottom of my heart, because its a BIG immersity killer, and stayin out of it leaves you out of most guilds central interactions. If you stay out, you generally dont know whats really going on in your guild anymore. I seriously wish it would be forbidden. Its simply rude, to have a guild where some are in voicechat when others cant. Its as if you went to a party, where everyone speaks English, but suddenly a few started to talk in German or Chinese. Politeness demands that in a group you speak like EVERYONE understands, and voicechat undermines this. So yes, I am very serious about this, that its rude and should either be all or none who does it.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Voice-chat generally makes my game ..way..way..better. That's mainly because I do this with friends I already know and we know what we laugh about and what we don't like. I also absolutely adore it during guild activities, for obvious tactical reasons, but more for those "bursts of laughter" moments when you really play a good game of PvP, or when you die in an absolutely ridiculous way.
There's so many things you can't express through text, emotion being one of them, and voip is simply the thing that "fixes"it
On the other hand, I hate screaming kiddies of 15 years old just as much as you do.
Most everyone is for Voice Comm, and they tell those that prefer not to use it to go find people to play with that don't want to, instead of complaining. Answer: http://www.silentgamers.com
What you've said is just not true. Just because you like using voice chat and are aware of many others that do as well doesn't mean that, 'most everyone is for Voice Comm'. I don't think you realize how many people would prefer to not use voice chat.
Oh, and by the way, thanks for the long awaited solution that we've all been dreaming of. *rolls eyes*
...and as for those that say text kills immersion, how could reading what someone says and letting your mind fill in the blank of how that char sounds be less immersive than hearing the high pitched whinings of some petulant child coming out of a 7ft barbarian warrior? Don't people read books at all anymore? Are we so plugged in we've forgotten what its like to be engrossed in a compelling story in your favorite genre? For those that disagree, read a good book and tell me what your immersion level is like after a few chapters. Its the same principle. Low tech and immersive. Just cuz we can do something doesn't mean we should, or that its an improvement.
"The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion." -Edmund Burke
Who will rise up for me against the evildoers? or who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity?" (Psalm 94:16)
see i dont understand this hatred or dislike for VOIP or anything else involving mics. I find it a great way to talk to RL friends who are playing games or even the same thing just to talk about w/e . I stand by the same idea with guilds, i use vent as a good way to get to know everyone, i like knowing peps in my guild, especially if im the leader. And its nice getting to know people, and im always on vent, hell im on right now.On raids or if you where grouping with me, you better be on,cause in all honesty i dont want to raid with people who dont want to interact with the guild. If your PC is in a high trafic area, possibly consider moving it, every pc i have is in a room or atleast a area not so stuffed. And if your playing a game while people are over................WHY?!?!?!?!?
From vent i can say now i have a group of RL/OL friends that we play together with and have a blast, now thats what i cant understand, i love having a group of peps to play with that i like to play with and i enjoy getting to know them, there like that third party of peps, that maybe one day you may go meet(if you got some big guilds, sometimes they have get togethers , or maybe the person you talk to is only like 30 mins away). Not so much on the meeting part, but its that sence of community why playing that i enjoy.
I think i'd enjoy eve more if I could be in a good 0.0 corp that wont ban me if i'm not logged on Vent the second I sign on. I respect the fact that others don't share my point of view and that much can be accomplished with voice but i still hate it.
Now if you dont have vent or a mic in some of these guilds/corps its like saying you dont own a keyboard ffs
Sorry my freind, I understand what your saying but in EVE online in order to have a good 0.0 allience and be able to win over your enemys you NEED in my opinion voice communication.
EDIT: It also depends on the game. In a game like WoW i wouldent want voip because it takes away from the role play. But in agame like EVE online voip doesnt bother me because everyone in the game is human anyways so it doesnt matter.
I think it takes away from the RP factor of a game. I have to turn everything else down, sound effects, music, to hear voice chat.
I play LOTRO and DDO and both games have good music in my opinion. I am a huge music buff and think it adds to the RP factor of a game.
Plus I love hearing the creepy sounds of the undead, rain, voice of the NPCs in game. In DDO sometimes have to turn off DM voice because someone is talking while he is speaking.
Would rather just prefer not to have it, but it is usually on sadly.
No voice for me, thanks. If that means that I'll never have to suffer a raid, I guess I'll just have to deal with my un-l33tness.
I type rather slowly, but have learned to macro most of what I need to say - mostly "No, I don't want to buy any gold"; "No, I don't want to join your guild [or what ever it is called in that game]"; "No Thanks, I can handle it solo"; "I'm fine, thanks" and "I could use a hand if you're not too busy". Anything else can wait a few seconds for me to type it, including "You need a rez?' and "Can anyone near here rez?".
It's all been said, but I agree 100%. Voice Over IP kills the immursion for me. Part of why I enjoy MMO's is to forget I'm playing videogames, it's a form fo escapsim like an engrossing 2 hour movie.
I guess my analogy is this. Would Lord of the Rings be better to watch if you were in a dark threater with the sound booming over any other noise and the screen filled your vision to where you forgot you were in a theater watching a movie, if only for three hours.
Or is it better with the lights on, people talking, the sound of crackling candy bags, people talking over the movie to constantly remind you you're in a theater with a bunch of other people watching a movie?
Video games can be as engrossing and entertaining as a well done movie if that's what you want it to be. I think some of us want that immursion and engrossment, and others want to approach it like a game of counterstrike, a compeditive bases for a social gathering in order to socialize and banter. I'm with the earlier crowd for sure, but I can appreshiate there are those who take the games alot more lightly.
Why has it come to the point that 1 person out of the however many present has to do all the thinking and call out every detail of the encounter? Are people so inept, lobotomized, or just plain lazy that they can't take the visual cues of what is after all a visual medium you are enjoying and act on it yourself. Use that 10% of your brain! Being led around by the hand through out the rest of the game by Blizzard just isn't enough apparently so people have to step up now and lead everybody else.
I was on a dragon raid in DAoC a few months back and there were plenty of cues given before the dragon lets loose the ice breath it had. It would begin to shout curses, threats, it would take in a huge breath. All of this would soon lead to the inevitable frozen blast. Where is the challenge of having some person, bored out of his mind sitting there calling out things that everybody should know.
No required quests! And if I decide I want to be an assassin-cartographer-dancer-pastry chef who lives only to stalk and kill interior decorators, then that's who I want to be, even if it takes me four years to max all the skills and everyone else thinks I'm freaking nuts. -Madimorga-
Voice chat has been around for some time and it does make things 'easier', in terms of organization and quickness of organization. In the early days of UO and EQ, it wasn't widely used because the programs weren't very good and the majority of people were on 56k. Nowadays, the majority of people are on cable, so bandwidth is no longer an issue, the programs have gotten incredibly better, as have headset quality and microphone quality.
As has been noted, voice chat is hardly a necessity. It can be highly useful for incidents where a high level of organization is needed or wanted. But is it necessary? Not at all. But, it hardly needs someone bitching about it how it ruins immersiveness and such. The simple thing is, if you don't like it, don't use it. But realize that with that choice, you may not be invited to some events, such as raids, organized groups, etc. MMORPG's are getting competitive, and they are designed that way, where people want the best gear. Voice communication is simply another tool to help get to that end and if people have a choice between player A., who may play his character well, but doesn't have voice comm, to player B who is merely average, guess who they're going to choose, simply because it's more convenient and you don't have to have an excellent player to achieve the goal.
If you play the games for immersiveness, fun of roleplay, etc, then this whole argument is moot, as you are not playing for the best gear or the best guild. Why you are even here chiming in on this topic is confusing, as it has no bearing on anything you do, as voice chat is not a necessity in any fashion for that method of play.
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see i dont understand this hatred or dislike for VOIP or anything else involving mics. I find it a great way to talk to RL friends who are playing games or even the same thing just to talk about w/e . I stand by the same idea with guilds, i use vent as a good way to get to know everyone, i like knowing peps in my guild, especially if im the leader. And its nice getting to know people, and im always on vent, hell im on right now.On raids or if you where grouping with me, you better be on,cause in all honesty i dont want to raid with people who dont want to interact with the guild. If your PC is in a high trafic area, possibly consider moving it, every pc i have is in a room or atleast a area not so stuffed. And if your playing a game while people are over................WHY?!?!?!?!? From vent i can say now i have a group of RL/OL friends that we play together with and have a blast, now thats what i cant understand, i love having a group of peps to play with that i like to play with and i enjoy getting to know them, there like that third party of peps, that maybe one day you may go meet(if you got some big guilds, sometimes they have get togethers , or maybe the person you talk to is only like 30 mins away). Not so much on the meeting part, but its that sence of community why playing that i enjoy.
See this is based on a differing view of what a mmo is for. For those that seek to escape the daily stresses of life, being reminded of the world in which those stresses reside breaks the immersion and therefore the allure. For those that seek to "meet" people its essentially an attempt to enhance their social lives, or is some unfortunate cases, an attempt to create one, or a combination.
As for communicationg with rl life friends in game, ventrilo is not necessary, speakerphone, or an open skype channel will do just as well all while not boring strangers with the endless inside jokes and tedium rl friends tend to chat about. I personally don't believe in my online mmo relationships unless we talk about rl things, so its understandable that you see you rl buds and your interaction as real and valuable, because basically it is, but to complete strangers, its a glimpse into a life we weren't looking for and have no interest in. No one paid $15 to hear some guys talk about people you know nothing about doing things that you find boring/offensive/stupid/annoying (pick one) while your trying to lop some mob's head off. I mean if I ever joined a guild that "got together" ever, I'd be like wtfrig? Its just a game, we can't play for x hours a day AND then get together too. My gosh, we have lives. No one's looking to replace our real lives, with our real wives/girlfriends, our real children (Yes, the people that might be over while your playing), our real friends & family and our real goals and aspirations with a game. My gosh, I wanna rock when I'm playin as much as the next guy, but man, as one of my rl bud's says who loves games,"when the game is on its on, when its off, its off." Period. Community I leave in-game. Trust me, there will never be a day when a guildie is sleeping on my couch.
The sad part is that those that see the game as part of their real social life then amazingly look down on those of us that actually use it as a game. I mean if someone's grouping with you "they better be on it" cuz you don't wanna raid with people that don't wanna interact with the guild? What does not wanting to talk out loud, for various reasons, have to do with game interaction with the guild? U can still type. Y'know that thing that EVERYONE did up until the day teamspeak and ventrilo went online. Hey if you wanna live your life online, no problem, but when you start acting superior because what is essentially an inability to accept not everyone plays the game to include or make rl friends in a virtual experience, THAT I have a problem with.
"The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion." -Edmund Burke
Who will rise up for me against the evildoers? or who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity?" (Psalm 94:16)
Why has it come to the point that 1 person out of the however many present has to do all the thinking and call out every detail of the encounter? Are people so inept, lobotomized, or just plain lazy that they can't take the visual cues of what is after all a visual medium you are enjoying and act on it yourself. Use that 10% of your brain! Being led around by the hand through out the rest of the game by Blizzard just isn't enough apparently so people have to step up now and lead everybody else. I was on a dragon raid in DAoC a few months back and there were plenty of cues given before the dragon lets loose the ice breath it had. It would begin to shout curses, threats, it would take in a huge breath. All of this would soon lead to the inevitable frozen blast. Where is the challenge of having some person, bored out of his mind sitting there calling out things that everybody should know.
Couldn't agree more.
"The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion." -Edmund Burke
Who will rise up for me against the evildoers? or who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity?" (Psalm 94:16)
Why has it come to the point that 1 person out of the however many present has to do all the thinking and call out every detail of the encounter? Are people so inept, lobotomized, or just plain lazy that they can't take the visual cues of what is after all a visual medium you are enjoying and act on it yourself. Use that 10% of your brain! Being led around by the hand through out the rest of the game by Blizzard just isn't enough apparently so people have to step up now and lead everybody else. I was on a dragon raid in DAoC a few months back and there were plenty of cues given before the dragon lets loose the ice breath it had. It would begin to shout curses, threats, it would take in a huge breath. All of this would soon lead to the inevitable frozen blast. Where is the challenge of having some person, bored out of his mind sitting there calling out things that everybody should know.
Er...its called coordination of effort, and generally most things go a little smoother when everyone's efforts are well coordinated.
No use trying to belittle other players who prefer to make the road to success a little easier by using modern tools of technology. If you prefer not to use these tools, feel free to avoid them..but don't ask the other folks to accept you into their raids, that isn't being fair to them.
I don't know about you...but I'm not in these games for a "challenge"...I'm here to accomplish certain goals...be it take down a boss, crush my enemies fleet, or get that treasured piece of loot. Tools like TS/Vent help me do it more quickly and efficiently, so I support their use.
I'm as old school as they come, and about as anti-social as a gamer can be. Like many folks, I'm not looking for online friends, and when I'm not in a raid situation you'll frequently find me either not logged into comms or sitting in the 'AFK' queue.
But you better believe, when it comes down to business, I'll be there with my "ears on" (along with my voice) and if using voice gives my team an advantage over yours.... great.....not a problem for me at all.
To all of you in this thread bemoaning the use of voice coms remember this key point.....
You are free to form your own guilds, clans, corporations etc and you can even make the rules say "no voice coms"....
Just don't ask others to share in your phobia......
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Back when I played Panzer Elite, I sometimes used it, but only when we had a fight against real good oponents... Needed to instruct my meatshields how to drive and bait the enemy.
But as for MMORG's..... Naaaaah. Breaks immersion, since a MMORPG for me is about the immersion and break from RL. VOIP always end up with RL being forced down my throat by some high pitch voice or someones story about what they did at the mall that day.
Also, voip increases the language barrier, as it's easier for a non english speaker to type than to torture the english language with their non american tongue.
But hey, if you don't want to learn to type fast, don't want to learn to read, and the game is all about teh raid.. I guess VOIP is manna from heaven.
I don't know about you...but I'm not in these games for a "challenge"...I'm here to accomplish certain goals...be it take down a boss, crush my enemies fleet, or get that treasured piece of loot. Tools like TS/Vent help me do it more quickly and efficiently, so I support their use.
I might have come off a bit too strong on my previous post. I just find it somewhat lame when gamers have to use timers or some sort of counters between the breaths of a dragon, or the various abilities the boss in question might use. I think there should be visual cues to various events, or things that happen to lead up to these events such as a chain reaction. I also believe that if you're going to a raid you should have the presence of mind to pay attention to everything and not just wait on the commands of your raid leader. Since we're talking about a fantasy setting I'm gonna use a Dragon for an example again. In many of the books I've read that were based on the fantasy world off of wich some of the games we've played are based on the dragons before they let loose their breaths of varying kinds would inhale in such a great way that enormous gusts of wind would be produced and some of the characters would almost be knocked from their feet. This was usually enough to let everybody know that shit has officially hit the fan and that they should look for some cover or face the consequences.
Regarding the quote above:
That is where you and I differ. You may be in the game to accomplish certain goals, while I am not. I preffer to point my toon in a certain direction and just go and keep going till nothing looks familliar and I can then start to see what's around and enjoy. If there happens to be a friend or 2 along with me we usually got by with typing just fine. But I suppose for your purposes and your style of game VOIP works for you. I personally never took a liking to WoW's raiding gameplay and mentality. It just didn't seem all that fun for me to have to deal with 39 other people who have high hopes and great expectations to only have them crushed wich leads to frustration because they did not get the said loot, or the uber treasure. Cramming 40 people in an instance IMO takes away from the whole "massive" aspect of the game that I tend to play for. If I'm gonna join a guild and continually raid with the same people I might as well play a multiplayer game like Neverwinter Nights with some of the persistant world modules.
I personally would rather not use it, for many reasons, most of which have been listed by previous posters. If it works for you, awesome!
No required quests! And if I decide I want to be an assassin-cartographer-dancer-pastry chef who lives only to stalk and kill interior decorators, then that's who I want to be, even if it takes me four years to max all the skills and everyone else thinks I'm freaking nuts. -Madimorga-
For me the reasons why i hate voice chat is because english is not my first english. Altough i don't have much problems writinng, talking is another thing.
I like multiculturalism. It enhances my game. If I liked using voice I wouldn't mind having people with accents. I don't think they'd impead my gameplay, I think I'd quite enjoy it
No required quests! And if I decide I want to be an assassin-cartographer-dancer-pastry chef who lives only to stalk and kill interior decorators, then that's who I want to be, even if it takes me four years to max all the skills and everyone else thinks I'm freaking nuts. -Madimorga-
No your not alone. I'm an old school gamer (old skool is an oxymoron.) Talking on a headset while I play my MMOG of choice completely and utterly ruins the immersion for me. Especially when some snot nosed 14 year old is on the other end calling his enemies 'noobs' that he is 'pwning.' How 'ub3r' he is or how 'wack' some situation is. Completely brings me back into reality.
Thankfully the only MMOG I ever was asked to start doing this in was WoW for high lvl raids. I don't play WoW anymore so I don't use any of that crap. My next MMOG is most likely Age of Conan and in a guild that is an old original AO guild, 3305 Local, that mostly consists of old gamers in their 30's. So if we do use voice chat, I won't have to deal with any brain-dead kids. I don't mind kids, I have kids. But when I'm trying to immerse myself into a virtual environment. I don't want to have to deal with kids at that particular moment lol.
I guess for these kids it's faster to talk then to peck out something on a keyboard. Not for me, I type about as fast as most people talk, or near bouts. Accept for my wife's sister.
Old gamers in their 30's? Get real.. I would hardly consider 30 as being old, considering over half of gamers are around age 30!
You guys are all anti social, MMO is about meeting new people, VOIP is great for that. if you don't like the people you're chatting to, you should join a different guild.
Comments
Usually such chat channals are loud, endless chatter you cant block out and it SO disturbs my impression being in some other world.
However, since the ascend of Teamspeak and Ventrilo, in many, many guild the normal chat has died out. If for whatever reason you cant or dont want to join voicechat, you are in a dead, silent space. I hate voicechat for them bottom of my heart, because its a BIG immersity killer, and stayin out of it leaves you out of most guilds central interactions. If you stay out, you generally dont know whats really going on in your guild anymore. I seriously wish it would be forbidden. Its simply rude, to have a guild where some are in voicechat when others cant. Its as if you went to a party, where everyone speaks English, but suddenly a few started to talk in German or Chinese. Politeness demands that in a group you speak like EVERYONE understands, and voicechat undermines this. So yes, I am very serious about this, that its rude and should either be all or none who does it.
People don't ask questions to get answers - they ask questions to show how smart they are. - Dogbert
Voice-chat generally makes my game ..way..way..better. That's mainly because I do this with friends I already know and we know what we laugh about and what we don't like. I also absolutely adore it during guild activities, for obvious tactical reasons, but more for those "bursts of laughter" moments when you really play a good game of PvP, or when you die in an absolutely ridiculous way.
There's so many things you can't express through text, emotion being one of them, and voip is simply the thing that "fixes"it
On the other hand, I hate screaming kiddies of 15 years old just as much as you do.
Oh, and by the way, thanks for the long awaited solution that we've all been dreaming of. *rolls eyes*
...and as for those that say text kills immersion, how could reading what someone says and letting your mind fill in the blank of how that char sounds be less immersive than hearing the high pitched whinings of some petulant child coming out of a 7ft barbarian warrior? Don't people read books at all anymore? Are we so plugged in we've forgotten what its like to be engrossed in a compelling story in your favorite genre? For those that disagree, read a good book and tell me what your immersion level is like after a few chapters. Its the same principle. Low tech and immersive. Just cuz we can do something doesn't mean we should, or that its an improvement.
"The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion." -Edmund Burke
Who will rise up for me against the evildoers? or who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity?"
(Psalm 94:16)
see i dont understand this hatred or dislike for VOIP or anything else involving mics. I find it a great way to talk to RL friends who are playing games or even the same thing just to talk about w/e . I stand by the same idea with guilds, i use vent as a good way to get to know everyone, i like knowing peps in my guild, especially if im the leader. And its nice getting to know people, and im always on vent, hell im on right now.On raids or if you where grouping with me, you better be on,cause in all honesty i dont want to raid with people who dont want to interact with the guild. If your PC is in a high trafic area, possibly consider moving it, every pc i have is in a room or atleast a area not so stuffed. And if your playing a game while people are over................WHY?!?!?!?!?
From vent i can say now i have a group of RL/OL friends that we play together with and have a blast, now thats what i cant understand, i love having a group of peps to play with that i like to play with and i enjoy getting to know them, there like that third party of peps, that maybe one day you may go meet(if you got some big guilds, sometimes they have get togethers , or maybe the person you talk to is only like 30 mins away). Not so much on the meeting part, but its that sence of community why playing that i enjoy.
Sorry my freind, I understand what your saying but in EVE online in order to have a good 0.0 allience and be able to win over your enemys you NEED in my opinion voice communication.
EDIT: It also depends on the game. In a game like WoW i wouldent want voip because it takes away from the role play. But in agame like EVE online voip doesnt bother me because everyone in the game is human anyways so it doesnt matter.
I love voice chat. I wouldn't play any game without it. Even if I was only online for five minutes.
I think it takes away from the RP factor of a game. I have to turn everything else down, sound effects, music, to hear voice chat.
I play LOTRO and DDO and both games have good music in my opinion. I am a huge music buff and think it adds to the RP factor of a game.
Plus I love hearing the creepy sounds of the undead, rain, voice of the NPCs in game. In DDO sometimes have to turn off DM voice because someone is talking while he is speaking.
Would rather just prefer not to have it, but it is usually on sadly.
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Promote what you love instead of bashing what you hate.
No voice for me, thanks. If that means that I'll never have to suffer a raid, I guess I'll just have to deal with my un-l33tness.
I type rather slowly, but have learned to macro most of what I need to say - mostly "No, I don't want to buy any gold"; "No, I don't want to join your guild [or what ever it is called in that game]"; "No Thanks, I can handle it solo"; "I'm fine, thanks" and "I could use a hand if you're not too busy". Anything else can wait a few seconds for me to type it, including "You need a rez?' and "Can anyone near here rez?".
<p align=center><a target=_blank href=http://www.nodiatis.com/personality.htm><img border=0 src=http://www.nodiatis.com/pub/20.jpg></a></p>;
So many people afraid of talking to strangers...
Fear? no. Hate of being annoyed? Yes
"The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion." -Edmund Burke
Who will rise up for me against the evildoers? or who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity?"
(Psalm 94:16)
It's all been said, but I agree 100%. Voice Over IP kills the immursion for me. Part of why I enjoy MMO's is to forget I'm playing videogames, it's a form fo escapsim like an engrossing 2 hour movie.
I guess my analogy is this. Would Lord of the Rings be better to watch if you were in a dark threater with the sound booming over any other noise and the screen filled your vision to where you forgot you were in a theater watching a movie, if only for three hours.
Or is it better with the lights on, people talking, the sound of crackling candy bags, people talking over the movie to constantly remind you you're in a theater with a bunch of other people watching a movie?
Video games can be as engrossing and entertaining as a well done movie if that's what you want it to be. I think some of us want that immursion and engrossment, and others want to approach it like a game of counterstrike, a compeditive bases for a social gathering in order to socialize and banter. I'm with the earlier crowd for sure, but I can appreshiate there are those who take the games alot more lightly.
Arioc Murkwood
Environment Artist
Sad but true.
Full of bull imho, hate of being annoyed ? there's plenty of mute buttons my friend, it's no excuse.
Why has it come to the point that 1 person out of the however many present has to do all the thinking and call out every detail of the encounter? Are people so inept, lobotomized, or just plain lazy that they can't take the visual cues of what is after all a visual medium you are enjoying and act on it yourself. Use that 10% of your brain! Being led around by the hand through out the rest of the game by Blizzard just isn't enough apparently so people have to step up now and lead everybody else.
I was on a dragon raid in DAoC a few months back and there were plenty of cues given before the dragon lets loose the ice breath it had. It would begin to shout curses, threats, it would take in a huge breath. All of this would soon lead to the inevitable frozen blast. Where is the challenge of having some person, bored out of his mind sitting there calling out things that everybody should know.
No required quests! And if I decide I want to be an assassin-cartographer-dancer-pastry chef who lives only to stalk and kill interior decorators, then that's who I want to be, even if it takes me four years to max all the skills and everyone else thinks I'm freaking nuts. -Madimorga-
Voice chat has been around for some time and it does make things 'easier', in terms of organization and quickness of organization. In the early days of UO and EQ, it wasn't widely used because the programs weren't very good and the majority of people were on 56k. Nowadays, the majority of people are on cable, so bandwidth is no longer an issue, the programs have gotten incredibly better, as have headset quality and microphone quality.
As has been noted, voice chat is hardly a necessity. It can be highly useful for incidents where a high level of organization is needed or wanted. But is it necessary? Not at all. But, it hardly needs someone bitching about it how it ruins immersiveness and such. The simple thing is, if you don't like it, don't use it. But realize that with that choice, you may not be invited to some events, such as raids, organized groups, etc. MMORPG's are getting competitive, and they are designed that way, where people want the best gear. Voice communication is simply another tool to help get to that end and if people have a choice between player A., who may play his character well, but doesn't have voice comm, to player B who is merely average, guess who they're going to choose, simply because it's more convenient and you don't have to have an excellent player to achieve the goal.
If you play the games for immersiveness, fun of roleplay, etc, then this whole argument is moot, as you are not playing for the best gear or the best guild. Why you are even here chiming in on this topic is confusing, as it has no bearing on anything you do, as voice chat is not a necessity in any fashion for that method of play.
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How long is this thread going to keep going on... Its almost 5 months old..
As for communicationg with rl life friends in game, ventrilo is not necessary, speakerphone, or an open skype channel will do just as well all while not boring strangers with the endless inside jokes and tedium rl friends tend to chat about. I personally don't believe in my online mmo relationships unless we talk about rl things, so its understandable that you see you rl buds and your interaction as real and valuable, because basically it is, but to complete strangers, its a glimpse into a life we weren't looking for and have no interest in. No one paid $15 to hear some guys talk about people you know nothing about doing things that you find boring/offensive/stupid/annoying (pick one) while your trying to lop some mob's head off. I mean if I ever joined a guild that "got together" ever, I'd be like wtfrig? Its just a game, we can't play for x hours a day AND then get together too. My gosh, we have lives. No one's looking to replace our real lives, with our real wives/girlfriends, our real children (Yes, the people that might be over while your playing), our real friends & family and our real goals and aspirations with a game. My gosh, I wanna rock when I'm playin as much as the next guy, but man, as one of my rl bud's says who loves games,"when the game is on its on, when its off, its off." Period. Community I leave in-game. Trust me, there will never be a day when a guildie is sleeping on my couch.
The sad part is that those that see the game as part of their real social life then amazingly look down on those of us that actually use it as a game. I mean if someone's grouping with you "they better be on it" cuz you don't wanna raid with people that don't wanna interact with the guild? What does not wanting to talk out loud, for various reasons, have to do with game interaction with the guild? U can still type. Y'know that thing that EVERYONE did up until the day teamspeak and ventrilo went online. Hey if you wanna live your life online, no problem, but when you start acting superior because what is essentially an inability to accept not everyone plays the game to include or make rl friends in a virtual experience, THAT I have a problem with.
"The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion." -Edmund Burke
Who will rise up for me against the evildoers? or who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity?"
(Psalm 94:16)
Couldn't agree more.
"The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion." -Edmund Burke
Who will rise up for me against the evildoers? or who will stand up for me against the workers of iniquity?"
(Psalm 94:16)
Er...its called coordination of effort, and generally most things go a little smoother when everyone's efforts are well coordinated.
No use trying to belittle other players who prefer to make the road to success a little easier by using modern tools of technology. If you prefer not to use these tools, feel free to avoid them..but don't ask the other folks to accept you into their raids, that isn't being fair to them.
I don't know about you...but I'm not in these games for a "challenge"...I'm here to accomplish certain goals...be it take down a boss, crush my enemies fleet, or get that treasured piece of loot. Tools like TS/Vent help me do it more quickly and efficiently, so I support their use.
I'm as old school as they come, and about as anti-social as a gamer can be. Like many folks, I'm not looking for online friends, and when I'm not in a raid situation you'll frequently find me either not logged into comms or sitting in the 'AFK' queue.
But you better believe, when it comes down to business, I'll be there with my "ears on" (along with my voice) and if using voice gives my team an advantage over yours.... great.....not a problem for me at all.
To all of you in this thread bemoaning the use of voice coms remember this key point.....
You are free to form your own guilds, clans, corporations etc and you can even make the rules say "no voice coms"....
Just don't ask others to share in your phobia......
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Back when I played Panzer Elite, I sometimes used it, but only when we had a fight against real good oponents... Needed to instruct my meatshields how to drive and bait the enemy.
But as for MMORG's..... Naaaaah. Breaks immersion, since a MMORPG for me is about the immersion and break from RL. VOIP always end up with RL being forced down my throat by some high pitch voice or someones story about what they did at the mall that day.
Also, voip increases the language barrier, as it's easier for a non english speaker to type than to torture the english language with their non american tongue.
But hey, if you don't want to learn to type fast, don't want to learn to read, and the game is all about teh raid.. I guess VOIP is manna from heaven.
I might have come off a bit too strong on my previous post. I just find it somewhat lame when gamers have to use timers or some sort of counters between the breaths of a dragon, or the various abilities the boss in question might use. I think there should be visual cues to various events, or things that happen to lead up to these events such as a chain reaction. I also believe that if you're going to a raid you should have the presence of mind to pay attention to everything and not just wait on the commands of your raid leader. Since we're talking about a fantasy setting I'm gonna use a Dragon for an example again. In many of the books I've read that were based on the fantasy world off of wich some of the games we've played are based on the dragons before they let loose their breaths of varying kinds would inhale in such a great way that enormous gusts of wind would be produced and some of the characters would almost be knocked from their feet. This was usually enough to let everybody know that shit has officially hit the fan and that they should look for some cover or face the consequences.
Regarding the quote above:
That is where you and I differ. You may be in the game to accomplish certain goals, while I am not. I preffer to point my toon in a certain direction and just go and keep going till nothing looks familliar and I can then start to see what's around and enjoy. If there happens to be a friend or 2 along with me we usually got by with typing just fine. But I suppose for your purposes and your style of game VOIP works for you. I personally never took a liking to WoW's raiding gameplay and mentality. It just didn't seem all that fun for me to have to deal with 39 other people who have high hopes and great expectations to only have them crushed wich leads to frustration because they did not get the said loot, or the uber treasure. Cramming 40 people in an instance IMO takes away from the whole "massive" aspect of the game that I tend to play for. If I'm gonna join a guild and continually raid with the same people I might as well play a multiplayer game like Neverwinter Nights with some of the persistant world modules.
I personally would rather not use it, for many reasons, most of which have been listed by previous posters. If it works for you, awesome!
No required quests! And if I decide I want to be an assassin-cartographer-dancer-pastry chef who lives only to stalk and kill interior decorators, then that's who I want to be, even if it takes me four years to max all the skills and everyone else thinks I'm freaking nuts. -Madimorga-
For me the reasons why i hate voice chat is because english is not my first english. Altough i don't have much problems writinng, talking is another thing.
I LOATHE voice chat because it is embarrassing for me to use in my semi-public environment.
Plus I dont want to talk to a bunch of ppl during the game verbally, itll ruin immersion for sure.
Extremism in the defense of Liberty is no vice.
I like multiculturalism. It enhances my game. If I liked using voice I wouldn't mind having people with accents. I don't think they'd impead my gameplay, I think I'd quite enjoy it
No required quests! And if I decide I want to be an assassin-cartographer-dancer-pastry chef who lives only to stalk and kill interior decorators, then that's who I want to be, even if it takes me four years to max all the skills and everyone else thinks I'm freaking nuts. -Madimorga-
Old gamers in their 30's? Get real.. I would hardly consider 30 as being old, considering over half of gamers are around age 30!
You guys are all anti social, MMO is about meeting new people, VOIP is great for that. if you don't like the people you're chatting to, you should join a different guild.