Just pointing something out. Built in voice communication has already been achieved and tested on the xbox live system. With no other method of communications readily available such as a keyboard, voice chat is a great asset to just about every game. The quality of the voice chat is also very very good. Playing with someone that lives in a foreign country and being able to hear their accent proves its effectiveness. True, the requirements for voice chat are a broadband connection but that is hardly an issue in this day and age. Broadband is getting cheaper and cheaper and there are progressivly fewer online gamers who don't have a broadband connection of some type.
About the immersion factor, well thats an issue but probably not as big as everyone seems to think. First of all using voice chat is entirely up to the user. On or off it doesn't really matter either way you will have people speaking out of character. This is what /ignore is for, we do it with people we don't want to receieve text from and we can do it for people we don't want to listen to. For those of us used to reading text spamming and typing in all caps is just another form of chat that annoys us just like yelling or whining. The only big factor limiting voice communcation in games I believe is the lack of good voice masking.
Global chat is not really feasable due to the huge player numbers in mmorpgs. Group chat and even guild chat for that matter are however both excellent ideas, but nobody said you had to use them. If you don't wan't to use them then don't, ask the people in your group to use text to accomidate you most people will be happy to oblige if they don't then you probably dont want to group with them anyway.
Voice makes games just that much more fun to play. Text is great as a tool for communication but for the most part it lacks the emmotion that voice can convey, unless of course your a master of the written word.
Anyway just a few of my thoughts.
If you don't enjoy leisure, are you really living?
If you don't enjoy leisure, are you really living?
Originally posted by Xaldor I feel like there should be voice activated text....I hate having to stop and type what I want to say or do...but I also would hate to hear a 16 year old girl voice as an ORC!!!! Xaldor
I agree voice activated text would be nice cause it's annoying for a monster to be chasing you and having to use one to run and the other to type HEEEEEELLLLPP!!! THERES BIG GIANT FIRE-BREATHING PLATYPUS ON MY TAIL!!!!!!!!! and filtering things that turn out cuss words into a bunch of things that turn out into a bunch of things that happen when you punch number buttons while holding the shift key like ! or $ I would hate to hear an orc with a 16 year old girl voice
NO I play MMORPG for the role playing. I just don't want to hear some little 12 year old yelling about please give him free stuff. I don't mind using a keyboard.
IMO there shouldn't be any in-game support for voice chat.
#1. It's more data for the server to deal with, voice chat at the expense of latency? That should be a choice for the player to make.
#2. Like some people said, some people have very annoying voices, or very annoying personalities ;p
#3. As I'm sure you know there's lots of other outside programs that can help you chat with your friends, Teamspeak, Roger Wilco, etc.
So as far as in-game implementation of voice chat, I'm not in favor of it, but I don't mind it at all if groups or guilds want to run their own Teamspeak server and chat and coordinate.
I really think it is a critical feature, I find it more fun to play with a guild, or even group for that matter, that uses ventrillo or teamspeak, or roger wilco
even in FPS games, it really enhances the experience.
I am for it 100%, even for those 12 year olds!
i don't mind the occasional squeakiness once in a while
Of course one should have voice communication capability in an mmorpg - the potential advantages are numerous and should not have to be listed. With that said, there are potential problems - but most of the problems posters have already mentioned can easily be dealt with by making the voice an option - so just like one can put an obnoxious person on ignore now in text systems, one should be able to do that as well in a voice system. In fact, any option that is given to the voice system (for groups particularly) must be allowable/disallowable by the team leader (allowing or not allowing voice masking for instance).
So, the simple and only proper answer is yes we should have voice - the game developer can in principal most easily maximize bandwidth usage with his game, so HE should put it in as opposed to expecting people to use a third party system. Just realize there WILL be additional problems not inherent to text messaging systems and these must be accounted for in design.
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"The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his."
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Just pointing something out. Built in voice communication has already been achieved and tested on the xbox live system. With no other method of communications readily available such as a keyboard, voice chat is a great asset to just about every game. The quality of the voice chat is also very very good. Playing with someone that lives in a foreign country and being able to hear their accent proves its effectiveness. True, the requirements for voice chat are a broadband connection but that is hardly an issue in this day and age. Broadband is getting cheaper and cheaper and there are progressivly fewer online gamers who don't have a broadband connection of some type.
About the immersion factor, well thats an issue but probably not as big as everyone seems to think. First of all using voice chat is entirely up to the user. On or off it doesn't really matter either way you will have people speaking out of character. This is what /ignore is for, we do it with people we don't want to receieve text from and we can do it for people we don't want to listen to. For those of us used to reading text spamming and typing in all caps is just another form of chat that annoys us just like yelling or whining. The only big factor limiting voice communcation in games I believe is the lack of good voice masking.
Global chat is not really feasable due to the huge player numbers in mmorpgs. Group chat and even guild chat for that matter are however both excellent ideas, but nobody said you had to use them. If you don't wan't to use them then don't, ask the people in your group to use text to accomidate you most people will be happy to oblige if they don't then you probably dont want to group with them anyway.
Voice makes games just that much more fun to play. Text is great as a tool for communication but for the most part it lacks the emmotion that voice can convey, unless of course your a master of the written word.
Anyway just a few of my thoughts.
If you don't enjoy leisure, are you really living?
If you don't enjoy leisure, are you really living?
LOOK AT THE POST IDIOT!!
It would give me a headache to hear 11 year olds with girl voices talking like they are 1337.
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CoH - Tortimer lvl 21 Blaster fire/dev Triumph
EQOA:F - Tortimer lvl 42 Human Ranger Hodstock
I think voice chat in MMORPG is too much, i'm already totally annoyed by it in XBox Live.
It would be nice to have voice recognition that everything I say would be written as text in the chat window.
Too lazy to type a lot.
Let people choose their OWN voice chat or choose NOT to use voice chat in games.
My online team has used 3 different voice chat programs and still uses voice chat.
We play together in NON-Player versus Player games.
We have a LOT more fun with voice chat than if we tried to find each other without it.
Happy Gaming!
IMO there shouldn't be any in-game support for voice chat.
#1. It's more data for the server to deal with, voice chat at the expense of latency? That should be a choice for the player to make.
#2. Like some people said, some people have very annoying voices, or very annoying personalities ;p
#3. As I'm sure you know there's lots of other outside programs that can help you chat with your friends, Teamspeak, Roger Wilco, etc.
So as far as in-game implementation of voice chat, I'm not in favor of it, but I don't mind it at all if groups or guilds want to run their own Teamspeak server and chat and coordinate.
The next generation of MMORPGs will support voice chat. It it the next step people, get used to it.
I really think it is a critical feature, I find it more fun to play with a guild, or even group for that matter, that uses ventrillo or teamspeak, or roger wilco
even in FPS games, it really enhances the experience.
I am for it 100%, even for those 12 year olds!
i don't mind the occasional squeakiness once in a while
lol
http://www.facebook.com/murtb
Of course one should have voice communication capability in an mmorpg - the potential advantages are numerous and should not have to be listed. With that said, there are potential problems - but most of the problems posters have already mentioned can easily be dealt with by making the voice an option - so just like one can put an obnoxious person on ignore now in text systems, one should be able to do that as well in a voice system. In fact, any option that is given to the voice system (for groups particularly) must be allowable/disallowable by the team leader (allowing or not allowing voice masking for instance).
So, the simple and only proper answer is yes we should have voice - the game developer can in principal most easily maximize bandwidth usage with his game, so HE should put it in as opposed to expecting people to use a third party system. Just realize there WILL be additional problems not inherent to text messaging systems and these must be accounted for in design.
If all else in life fails you, buy a vowel.
If all else in life fails you, buy a vowel.