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Does voice chat ruin immersion?
diabolic
Member UncommonPosts: 28
I haven't been playing MMO's lately due to the lack of quality games, so I haven't experienced an MMO while using voicechat, but I really can't imagine HOW I could.
I'm not a roleplayer, but there is still that level of "immersion" that I need when playing MMO's so I feel that I'm actually in the game. Isn't that ruined when you hear the huffy voice of the fat dude playing the elf on the otherside of the world and the 14 year old kid playing as a tank?
It just doesn't seem right. I'd feel like I'm in first person shooter. I can't imagine it doing anything but ruining the experience. And I keep hearing talk about voice chat all the time now.
Am I the only one who feels this way?
Comments
No, you aren't alone.
Sadly, I don't think it's going to get any better. Once the focus of MMOs moved from character-driven situational roleplay to button mashing "geek football," the suspension of disbelief took a backseat to coordinated efficiency.
There are things the games can do, like setting aside servers for TS users, Vent users, and text-only. The voice-chat lobby and the developers these days don't want to compromise though, since they don't understand why it's a problem. They envision a day when everyone hooks up to voice, or moves on to single player games.
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"Its sad when people use religion to feel superior, its even worse to see people using a video game to do it."
--Arcken
"...when it comes to pimping EVE I have little restraints."
--Hellmar, CEO of CCP.
"It's like they took a gun, put it to their nugget sack and pulled the trigger over and over again, each time telling us how great it was that they were shooting themselves in the balls."
--Exar_Kun on SWG's NGE
I like voice chat in games. I mean its so much easier to strategize while playing and voice chat than typing. The only thing annoying about voice that are the babies who wine and moan and ask for stuff, or the hyper jumping beans that talk about nothing....but you can just block them. I can't wait for an mmo where you go up to an npc and it actually talks to you and tells you the story instead of having to read it. Sure you'd have pick an answer instead of speaking it, but it would still be even more immersive. I say anything that makes the game seem more realistic adds to the immersion.
I
I'm pretty sure Everquest II have voiceovers on their NPC's.
I don't much care for voice either...I find it easier to read what ppl are saying than trying to figure out what they are gabbling on about on voicechat...lets face it some ppl don't have a nice chat voice. Also I would gander that the majority of ppl who love voice are usually kids locked up in mom n dads basement, or live alone. For ppl with family n kids it is a major pain to voicechat n try not to shut yourself off from the rest of your family. It really isn't that hard to read, and I think alot of gamers could use the practice in typing proper english.
Not so much immersion.
But in a game like EQ2 where voice chat is very common, it can make the game seem more like a ghost town than it is. I played EQ2 for a couple months once and i rarely saw anything in chat.
But chat breaks immersion too.
I don't find MMO's in any way immersive in the first place.
I never get sucked into the world. I'm not ever truely living the life of a dwarven warrior. MMO's just don't give me that mind trip.
There isn't that sensory overload I get from an FPS or a flight simulator or a racing car game, there isn't that total concentration required I get froma tactical game, or the believeability of a simulation game.
For myself they selling point to an MMO, is not the immersion, it's the social network. So I find voice comms another useful tool.
I don't however always have it on. I don't want to talk to everyone, and I am often enjoying a "quiet time" when I play or listening to music for example.
Guys, you should have made a search before starting a 2 week old topic.
Voice chat is like MSN.. I always have Ventrilo on.
Grind ruins immersion.
The warriors of the Blood Oath clan gathered around their war chief, "Men, by the blood of our ansestors we will have our revenge today!!!! (loud cheering from many brutal, thug-like barbarians) When the day is done, much blood will be spilled upon the land and some of you may not return but we will triumphant! Fear not for you will live on in your deeds and our memories as true heroes of the clan! (more cheering) Now go forth my warriors of Blood and bring me 10 rat tails (insane laughter)!!!!!!!!!!" (silence) "Seriously?" one ask.
If real immersion you desire, play something like Oblivion or single player game. MMOs are chat rooms in a backdrop of a virtual world. You would have to disable all chat rooms to even try to get immersed in the game. Even then, the designs are based on repeat missions, never ending bosses that never die and storylines that fade into powerlevel agendas.
Throw in spam tells from gold sellers and there you have todays MMO.
Voice chat dosen't ruin immersion. Playing with a Night Elf Hunter named Didurmomhard does.
Lmao I have to totally agree with you there. The one I always see and always laugh about it a mithra in ffxi name shedontusejelly I mean c'mon thats funny but not very final fantasy esc. They are a pretty cool person just gotta laugh at that name though.
Yes voice chat ruins immersion unless all voices are synthesized to emulate the in game character.
Hearing a squeaky teenager's voice coming from a big monstrous orc or an old guy's voice coming from a sexy female elf ruins the game.
Originally posted by k11keeper
Lmao I have to totally agree with you there. The one I always see and always laugh about it a mithra in ffxi name shedontusejelly I mean c'mon thats funny but not very final fantasy esc. They are a pretty cool person just gotta laugh at that name though.
That is the fault of the server staff for not changing those names. Someone who picks a stupid out of character name like that on purpose is not cool, they're an ass for trying to ruin the immersion factor for everyone else.
This issue has been brought up before and I do think that voice chat does hurt the experience of immersion. Especially when this happens:
http://www.wired.com/gaming/virtualworlds/commentary/games/2007/06/games_frontiers_0617
Now as someone said, there isn't very much out there that is immersive to begin with, so I guess you're not losing much by using it. But, boy, if another game ever does bring back that immersive feeling, I doubt if I would use voice chat to spoil the mood.
Yet voice chat was used in FPS (PvP) before MMO's...
It has its use, certainly. It helps with coordination, provided people can listen. It helps cut down on slowly typing out the same instructions time after time. Just as some people don't communicate well over voice, some people have difficulty communicating over text as well. 6 of one, half-dozen of the other.
Getting down to it though, MMO's are 3D avatar chat with repetitive whack-a-mole gameplay attached. Nothing really immersive about it. Want an "immersive" MMO experience? Completely turn off your UI so there's no chat window (Chuck Norris, LFG and pretty much... any chat is not immersive) or hotbars and play solo all the time. But then what's the point of an MMO? The 3D avatar chat, ie. the social interaction, is the most compelling feature of this genre, not the gameplay.
I'm kind of on the fence about the whole issue. I refuse to voice-chat with people I don't know, you just run into waaaaay too many annoying/dumb people. Especially the 10 year old without adult supervision who is screaming at the top of his lungs in the channel all day.
I also can't ever seem to understand anyone in voice chat, so that ruins it for me too. I'll do it with a group of friends if its necessary, but I used to just 3-way a few friends on the phone back in the UO days and just talk that way.
Don't really mind, doesn't break my immersion since mmos provide none to begin with. I prefer using voice chat from when I am leading a raid for instance, it is a lot easier then typing the instructions mostly in the case of having to say quick instructions.
For chatting, I prefer text. Since generally if I spend a long time in a game I do not want to be talking the whole time makes my voice sore. I can touch type anyway, so I have the luxary of chosing what is best for the situation.
Typing ruins immersion. Reading a chat window ruins immersion. Dealing with people in a party who refuse to go into the 21st century by using voice ruins immersion.
I can see two possible solutions:
1. Games could include RP-voice servers, where one of the rules is that you're character and race have to be consistent with your voice.
Are you a 13-year old with a squeaky voice? Then you are required to play a gnome.
Are you a truck driver who smokes 4 packs of unfiltered Turkish cigarettes a day and eats broken glass for breakfast? You're an Orc.
2. Future voice modulation technology:
It could very well be that in the future, processing power and voice processing tech will be such that you can make your voice sound like anything you want.
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im to lazy too use grammar or punctuation good
Some one above made a very valid point.
What exactly is so immersive about typing?
Did Conan type?
Did Conan type? Well the answer is no...obviously. But he didn't use a computer either...
. I'm sure if he used a computer...he woulda typed.
Back-slash, forward-slash?
Maybe some hacking?
To respond to the previous poster who said that typing ruins immersion, I would argue that it doesn't ruin it as much as voice chat because it's less intrusive. Hearing one or more voices ringing in my ears is more likely to pull me out of a make believe world more than reading text. But I also understand the problem with typing. It's a lot more tedious. As someone else said, I would be a lot more likely to use voice chat with a groups of buddys who I have gotten to know well. For one thing, if you game with them enough, you should be able to anticipate each others moves to the point where you don't need to do a lot of talking.
Someday they may invent a way to integrate voice chat into the spirit of the game. If so, it might be a lot better. But then you also run the risk of playing with a bunch of nerds who don't know how to get out of character and drive you crazy with their role playing talk.
Zind
Voice chat is added as a convenience for those users who like to communicate with comrades during battle without the use of a third party program. As long as you can shut it off, then is there really any reason to worry about it?
This is very true. When I was raiding in wow, we tended to have much more conversation during downtime and the first few trial runs of new encounters. Once we figured out the basics, and especially when we started taking down bosses, then the chatter tended to die away. Of course, it was really annoying to hear people make a mistake and feel like they actually needed to press their talk button to broadcast their "sh*t", "damn", "f*ck", etc. I do hate it when people feel like they must broadcast their frustration to the group.
This is an interesting thread. The advent of voicechat -- and the pressure on players to use it -- is one of the reasons I left WoW. It's less a question of immersion than one of game enjoyment. Listening to players "rant" or ramble is bad enough in text; in voice chat it is intolerable, at least in my opinion.
More and more I am finding that I want more options to play the way I want and with players of like mind.
For example, a game such as WoW ought to offer, say, "text-only servers" -- if only as an experiment to determine how many players would want or choose to play on a server with no incorporated voicechat if given the option.
A simpler solution, of course, is to just play MMOs either solo or with like-minded friends.
Smart MMOs of the future are going to offer MORE playstyle options and then match players to a wider variety of servers in much the same way a dating service might match people up. Key questions would involve such things as...
--RP/non-RP
--Voice chat/No voice chat
--PvP/PvE
--Soloable instancing/player group-only instancing
and so on, questions a player would answer prior to character creation.