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General: A World Without Words
Stradden
Managing EditorMember CommonPosts: 6,696
MMORPG.com's Player Perspectives columnist Jaime Skelton explores the idea of alternate forms of communication in MMOs.
There's a small movement in the MMO gaming community that wants to move away from text-based communication in gaming. Text is "antiquated" in modern gaming; yet MMOs are incredibly text-heavy, particularly when it comes to communicating with other people. Multiple chat channels clog the airways with sensory overload as dozens and sometimes hundreds of people take part in conversations at once. There's a lot to read; for an instant mass communication medium, text almost seems ineffectual, requiring more effort than worth its results. But can MMOs evolve to a text-less communication medium?
Being completely deprived of text chat is an interesting thing. In The Endless Forest (TEF), an online world from Tale of Tales, players take the role of a deer. The player's character has no name; their identity is instead represented by a symbol. Stranger, however, is there is no traditional way to talk to players in the world. There is no text chat and no voice chat. Instead, players can only interact with selected emotes, taking actions like bowing, dancing, nuzzling, and showing various emotions to other deer. You can only find other players by exploration and "sniffing" for their scent, the latter of which will direct you to nearby players based on direction and distance.
Read A World Without Words.
Cheers,
Jon Wood
Managing Editor
MMORPG.com
Comments
We've had some discussions on other threads about a pro-human based MMO. For example with Neaderthals, H.Erectus, and H.Sapiens.
This made me think how interesting a game would be if it were made using only derived proto-languages and emotes.
Indo-European and Sino-Tibetan proto-langages, would certainly be unintelligble to most of us, but they might have some ring of familiarity. e.g. vid (sanskrit), videt (russian), videre (Latin), vedea (Romanian), voir (french), viten (Old English) - all mean to see or know.
"Never met a pack of humans that were any different. Look at the idiots that get elected every couple of years. You really consider those guys more mature than us? The only difference between us and them is, when they gank some noobs and take their stuff, the noobs actually die." - Madimorga
Umm easy.
Use in game tools.
No trade channel chat spam, use... the auction house/commodity market for resources/parts/other goods.
Want to sell specific items or find someone to make them? Searchable bulletin boards. Or (novel idea) people wanted to sell gear sell it to NPC vendors for ACTUAL money based on market conditions/rarity/etc. not chump change and then people who want to buy gear buy it from those vendors.
Guild recruitment? Eve has a in game tool, no need to spam channels.
Looking for group? LFG tools for joiners and searchers. Advertise through the tool you need a few more healers etc.
General chat? General chat is never good...
Voice chat only between players in party together.
Or in a large party (raid) leaders of raid can set chat permissions to avoid overlap and confusion/conflicting orders... just like on Ventrillo servers now...
Would actually make MMOs far more peaceful and you'd only interact with people you wanted to interact with in the way you wanted to interact with them when you needed to interact with them.
Amazing eh?
Totally opposed to a system that forces me to listen a bunch of kids who's voice hasn't broken yet. That and it makes me feel like I am a grown man playing alone at a kids playground....creepy!
I will have to get my avatar a van without windows....
Frank 'Spankybus' Mignone
www.spankybus.com
-3d Artist & Compositor
-Writer
-Professional Amature
I just feel that communication with emotes or other non verbal commands doesn´t really bring anything in. It´ll just make it more complicated to communicate.
All statements I make is from my point of view unless stated otherwise.
LMFAO *spits coffee all over keyboard*
The following statement is false
The previous statement is true
Voice chat can't help but take the RP out of MMORPG's. I am a middle aged female, how am I gonna roleplay a badass male warrior if everyone can hear I have a feminine voice? I am somewhat interested in APB, and think the "proximity" voice options are cool, but gonna make it hard to RP.
with dozens people having access to a single channel how do you actually /ignore someone? you won't even know who is the guy yelling "buuuy goooold on www.somechinesegoldseller.com 1$ = 10000gold onlyyyyyy"?
it's easy to click some text and choose "ignore", how do you do that with voice?
it won't work for several already listed reasons, and this is an additional concern. you can have optional voice channels along with standard text channels (see Eve Online, it's always way ahead). but you can't make a voice-chat only mmo if it can exceed a dozen or so people in the same "area" (instance, whatever).
I hear you there. I sound like Barry White and Tom Waits' kid. Made it hard to play female toons in Aion or GW, or male toons in fact with their art styles.
"Never met a pack of humans that were any different. Look at the idiots that get elected every couple of years. You really consider those guys more mature than us? The only difference between us and them is, when they gank some noobs and take their stuff, the noobs actually die." - Madimorga
Simple volume meters could show you who is who. On TS the flickering on their name shows you who it is.
"Never met a pack of humans that were any different. Look at the idiots that get elected every couple of years. You really consider those guys more mature than us? The only difference between us and them is, when they gank some noobs and take their stuff, the noobs actually die." - Madimorga
I am one of those people who doesn't use the voice chat, and even had a guild issue back in my WoW days because of it (although they finally were okay with me sitting the in the vent but not chatting just so they wouldn't have to type during questing, but they would read my text).
It isn't because I want to hide who I am or anything like that. I just don't like to deal with the voice chat and listening to people chat about random crap that doesn't deal with the game (I've found voice chat tends to lead to much more random conversation since they don't have to type it out). There's also that feeling of annoyance when you hear the 12 year old kids voice and you just sigh once you hear it, I have to ignore people all the time on Modern Warfare 2 on the x-box just because they're a kid and it is irritating to listen to.
I like text chat. I can type fast so it isn't an issue of getting information across (I can read it fast too). I can ignore it much easier if I don't want to deal with it, and it blocks a lot of the random crap (like hearing a kid yelling at his mom to let him play just 10 minutes longer).
A game that didn't have text chat, or where the majority of players didn't use the text chat, would be a no go for me and wouldn't be worth playing.
I actually don't even want all the NPCs to go voice over only, simply because I generally watch tv when playing an MMO. If I had to keep focusing in on the voice over instead of reading it at some point, I would miss too much and not be able to watch TV at the same time.
I get that people think it's cool for everything to be done by voice, but it makes a lot of the game much more of a hassle.
I get what you are saying, but imagine those poor PnP players. Man, their RP must have really sucked eh? j/k
To answer the (perhaps rhetorical) question, EvE implemented "voice fonts" a few patches ago (http://www.eveonline.com/updates/patchnotes.asp?patchlogID=202). I imagine there would be additional software that could do this as well for other games. The point though, while EvE might not be your game, the technology is implemented and, as a result, might find its way into other games.
-mklinic
"Do something right, no one remembers.
Do something wrong, no one forgets"
-from No One Remembers by In Strict Confidence
I prefer text to voice for several reasons. One being immersion. Another being the fact that, as others have mentioned, there are a lot of younger players playing games now and there are times when young boys hear a female voice over vent and things get..er...a little uncomfortable for the female, who simply wants to play the game. (Yes, this has happened numerous times) So, generally speaking, I simply prefer to either not use voice, or to "not have a mic" when I do unless I know the people in the voice channel reasonably well.
As a side note...Jamie, is there seriously a game where people play deer? Why in the name of all that is pure and good would I want to do that? I'm all for finding new and interesting ways to communicate, but limiting my communication to dancing and nuzzling isn't quite what I have in mind...
Firebrand Art
"You are obviously confusing a mature rating with actual maturity." -Asherman
Maybe MMO is not your genre, go play Modern Warfare...or something you can be all twitchy...and rank up all night. This is seriously getting tired. -Ranyr
Yup yup. ALL of that ^^^^^.
President of The Marvelously Meowhead Fan Club
I definately prefer text. For one I can read a lot faster than someone could talk (I can skim through text very quickly). Seecond, I tend to turn sound off most of the time as to not bother other members of the family. Thirdly, I am in complete agreement with Nifa. I have seen to many real women get verbally abused by little punk boys.
I use both, by voice chat only in my guild or with a certain puc for pvp instances, you have also the language barrier, I can understand english pretty well but to talk don't go that smooth, and like people said in text chat you can just block stupid people in voice chat you have to leave the room and its not funny you heard the kids and his mom or parents yelling to each other about random things I don't need to know.
also if any game don't let me type then why I would wnat to play it?
On topic of moving away from text chat; this is a small microcosm that will never make it close to mainstream.
OP said it' "Obviously, that isn't an approach that's going to work for an MMO."
Everyone else knows the other communication options, of which in-guild Vent or TS types are widely used, and APB's voice functionality which is adjustable.
So again, "Obviously, that isn't an approach that's going to work for an MMO." /thread
Voice chat? Are you kidding? Have you heard these effing nerds? It gives me the douche-chills something aweful.
I listened over my speakers once... once.
I am a nerd too, don't get me wrong, but seriously, it's like being stuck in one of those "look how painfully embarrassing this guy is" videos on Youtube.
I don't even believe in Jeebus.
I think text will be with us for a long time. Too many people feel voice chat is an invasion of privacy. The same reason that while we have the technology, we still don't have video phones in our home.
"Gypsies, tramps, and thieves, we were called by the Admin of the site . . . "
I might be a bit weird, but I think emote-communication can be kinda entertaining, given enough different emotes it works pretty well to get the point across.
Voice-chat is, in my opinion of course, efficient but godawfully horrible to listen to in most cases.
Voice chat is the immersion anti-viagra
I don't see chat being replaced as ingame communication for a loooooong time, it just isn't feasible and there aren't any good options. Server side voice chat just won't work, it would most likely end up being worse than most global chat in many MMO's, which is often filled with asshats and jerkoffs and really immature people who don't know when to shut up. I find it very easy to ignore glogal chat without turning it off, usually because I am more into playing the actual game; I rarely engage in any global chat but while crafting it is sometimes good to read for a laugh at all the stupidity. Now image a global voice chat, you would basically have to either shut it off or put up with it and any kind of server voice chat would end up being messy, chaotic and confusing at best. The emote only communication might work in a extreme nich game like The Endless Forest, but that is about it. Other types of communication may supplement text chat, but I doubt they will replace it for a very long time.
And no one has suggested musical communication
"Doe a deer...."
extending my middle finger is an effective means of communication. Nothing like the american eagle to express your views
I have seen people (not dependent on canned emotes) 'act out' a scene or communicate something in a game with as much clarity as a good author can put into a similar scene in a book, or as can be filmed without dialogue.
There was that guy in EQ who played his character as a mute from start to finish. Worked for him.
I have seen people who were forced to depend on canned emotes nevertheless act out a simple message or intention.
But all of the above took place in games where there was full textual communication as the norm, and that sometimes supplemented by voice comms as well. Emotes won't replace text for all purposes for everyone.
I have been present while in-character interviews were performed in voice comms, not painfully at all-- but the genders and vocal tone of the participants matched that of their characters, and they were polished improvisors. People not that fortunate turned down the opportunity to do the same in favour of other ways to audition, and no-one blamed them.
I've known at least one player who gave some commands (normally unheard by any other person, you understand) and occasionally some dialogue to his computer by voice. I see a bigger rôle for that in the future, but not one that replaces more somatic forms of control.
But voice comms are not going to replace text anytime soon.
(A side note: I can't see why any group with veto power over the choice would let anyone use voice-activated Vent, etc., if that meant that any great deal of background noise, third party voices, or input not actually directed at the group. Push-to-talk is and should be the rule, to which exceptions may of course be made. I don't want every word, and at this time of year, every sneeze that comes out of me going out live to my guild-brothers.)
(VOIP or as we usually call it "Vent discipline" is an art and a topic to itself, but relates to this one.)
Something that no-one's mentioned is that if you don't hear or don't understand a voice comm the first time, it's gone until you can get someone to repeat it. With text, it's still there, in the scroll, somewhere. (Timestamped. And, reportable, if necessary, even if "no-one else saw / heard it".) You can spot it; with the game UI's cooperation, you can make it easy to spot, if it's in a predictably important and suitably delimited channel.
Aside from strict Vent discipline, which has to be a true part of the culture of the group and even then enforced by someone (/slight groan) in order to work at all, there's no way to even begin to separate all strategic / tactical, action-related and in-character communication (if there is any under the circumstances, and that's a big if) from the off-topic, the mundane and the /ooc, in voice alone. (There's that one guild who tried making anyone not talking about the game use a Donald Duck voice, but we haven't heard from them, lately.)
If the message is not of immediate importance, but is from someone significant and should be saved until it can be accessed and dealt with, text is the way to go. Voice comms without text features are lousy at letting one person say *now* what a second person (who may be afk) will want to know later. Remember what you wanted to say and somehow get time to say it and have it heard when you both are there, that's the only solution if you have no recourse to text. (And that's assuming that you are in a common voice chat or have the ability to 'whisper', and have the right speaking privileges.)
Virtual non-verbal communication could be fun, but I'd hate to be stuck in a world with nothing else going, or only that and voice comms.
«Si oblitus fuero usque ad finem omnia opera eorum»
This is kind of a lame idea.
I mean come on, no text, no cybering. And when it comes down to it thats all MMOs are.
Just kidding. But really this is the stupidest idea ever.
World of Warcraft is the original creation of God. Real Life is in fact a WoW clone.