I would enjoy the ability to enable proximity voice chat. I know it was kind of fun to have it on on the PS4 version of ESO since that removed text chat completely in favor of only voice chat. But after using it for a bit, I would also like to still have the option to disable and or also use text chat. There is far too many people who leave their mics open for no reason with animals or babies crying, or people who just scream and yell for no reason. Little kids just running around joking or yelling meme things out. It just gets obnoxious. It's a reason I enjoy being able to mute everyone in shooters on the PS4 now, it seems like every match some dude has a mic auto activating and repeating what everyone else says. In general I use a voice server to talk to friends while playing PC games. So it can work if you know the people. But with how unstable it seems half the internet is, I would like to be able to choose who I communicate with vocally. Or at least have an option to enable that type of thing and disable if I choose.
No. Voice chat ruins the game for me. I understand using it for raids and pvp and the like but if that was the only method of communication I would not play that game.
There have been done experiments with a program that changes your voice to sound more like your characters (so a female toon would sound female even if you are male and a troll would sound nastier and lowered pitched), CCP among others put some work on it but I ain't sure if something good enough exist right now.
If you actually could use specific voices for each of your characters I think it would feel better and I could see voice chat replace party chat and the "say" chat (as long as you have to be rather close for it). Not the map or guildchat though, it would just be too much talking.
Actually speaking with other players do have advantages but in a massive game it is easy that the voices just drown out the entire game and that would give me a headache.
We may see a day in the future where text chatting is no longer needed (especially if virtual reality becomes a common thing with MMOs). Right now the technology to make VOIP crisp, clear and immersive while filtering out background noises isn't quite where it needs to be for that yet.
hearing someone's voice chat with all the static and background noises from the room they are in (like TV's, dogs barking, other people talking, etc.) breaks immersion even if their voice does happen to fit with their character (which usually isn't the case).
Sometimes voice chatting isn't possible when you have time to play. If
you're like me and play whenever you get the free time to do so, you'll
find yourself sometimes up at 2am in your game. Your roommate (or
whoever you may be living with) probably wont appreciate you talking all
night while they try to sleep. Text chatting gives the much quieter
option of putting on headphones and typing.
Also, imagine the annoyance of gold spammers on voice chat.. They would likely use overly loud pre-recorded messages that play over and over like a broken record and have several spammers in every major town or populated area. With text it is easier to just ignore it than when you can actually hear it. That sort of audible annoyance wouldn't be just from gold spammers. There would be idiots who would think it is fun to run around shouting stupid things in a sad attempt to get attention. Look at the current text versions of world and shout chats and try to picture all of that being audible around you. I don't know about you but I have to agree with Loke666 and say it would give me a headache too.
It seems like a good idea to have only voice chat but the technology needs to improve alot before the MMORPG genre is ready for it.
When MMO's were new, text chat was the only method of communication. Now, I prefer to talk to my friends while we play directly. Leave text chat available but would be nice to have the options to speak locally or globally (in limited circumstances) verbally. The nice thing is that some games (or most) have both options and neither option is forced upon players.
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
I'm bummed out by the overwhelming "No" responses, haha.
I hear the people who say they would rather turn to older MMOs to look for solutions on creating more social interactions. The problem I see with that however is that going back to the old features (no LFG, etc) would require developers to completely brainwash MMO players who joined MMOs in the WoW/post-WoW era. The amount of people who can appreciate and handle the old genre has diminished too much over the years to bring a sufficient amount of players to create a thriving game. Lots of people still play EQ, EQ2 and FFXI since these games are all still alive, but the community supporting those games are just too small for most new player to be able to enjoy the experience and social aspect of those games.
As far as voice chat benefiting only raids (and similar encounters), I've been in a few guilds or clans that had a permanent TeamSpeak or now Discord channels up for all of its members. They'd usually have sub-channels players would join for raids, but the bulk of the interactions would happen in the main channel and I found it rather enjoyable to hear people interacting in this way, so I've tried imagining at times an MMO where all interactions happened verbally instead of using a keyboard.
With the slowly increasing presence of VR on the market, eventually an MMO will undeniably appear and it will have to find a solution for players to be able to interact with each others, and using a keyboard in this circumstance would prove far more difficult. I'd imagine a voice chat would be the better means of communication as players would have their hands full with the controller(s) already and would otherwise need to remove their headset every time they needed to type something.
Did you ask about this because you honestly wanted to know what we think? Because your post comes off as trying to tell us why we are wrong about what we like.
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
I think the best thing to do is use a voice program with friends. An ingame program would work if you could make it switch from being local or global and mute certain players as desired. It's getting there but still in it's infant stage.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Did you ask about this because you honestly wanted to know what we think? Because your post comes off as trying to tell us why we are wrong about what we like.
Nevermind the condescending tone, I replied because I wanted to push the discussion further. A lot of the responses were made with solely the present state of voice communication in mind, which does have its fair share of inconveniences, but what about the future? VR is slowly making its way and with it new problems arises and new solutions become necessary. Voice chat is the most logical "evolution" of how players will communicate in VR games, and so it made sense to add this point to the discussion.
As far as my first point on people bringing up older MMORPGs, the idea that older MMOs "did it better" is brought up in almost every single thread on this forum. They are not wrong, older MMOs had much better communities, albeit largely out of necessity, but that's for a different topic. My point was that bringing up this "old MMOs did it better" idea doesn't contribute to a discussion, it's the same as an older individual claiming that the 1970s were the best years, it's a different era that can't properly be compared to our own era because things have changed so much since then.
Did you ask about this because you honestly wanted to know what we think? Because your post comes off as trying to tell us why we are wrong about what we like.
Nevermind the condescending tone, I replied because I wanted to push the discussion further. A lot of the responses were made with solely the present state of voice communication in mind, which does have its fair share of inconveniences, but what about the future? VR is slowly making its way and with it new problems arises and new solutions become necessary. Voice chat is the most logical "evolution" of how players will communicate in VR games, and so it made sense to add this point to the discussion.
As far as my first point on people bringing up older MMORPGs, the idea that older MMOs "did it better" is brought up in almost every single thread on this forum. They are not wrong, older MMOs had much better communities, albeit largely out of necessity, but that's for a different topic. My point was that bringing up this "old MMOs did it better" idea doesn't contribute to a discussion, it's the same as an older individual claiming that the 1970s were the best years, it's a different era that can't properly be compared to our own era because things have changed so much since then.
You can never mind it. I don't apologize for who I am. If you don't like it you can take a hike.
A simple rule: Don't fix something that isn't broken.
Text is quick to read. Audio can be extremely annoying. Some people love to blast loud audio or talk endlessly about whatever their lonely hearts desires. It doesn't work for me.
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what
it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience
because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in
the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you
playing an MMORPG?"
I joined a pvp guild in Tera after it's launched that required you to be in Vent/Mumble at all times. Even if I was just messing around on a low level alt. I would have to be in Vent. I lasted about 2 days before I said goodbye. When doing group events like raids or pvp I understand the need for voice chat. Being forced to use it all the time would make me abandon that game very quickly.
i have a friend who CANNOT speak in real life.......and she is amazing player in Raids
she is way better at her class in game then most people
Never misses a beat in raids ...Complicated raids , Typing is very important for some MMO players
so why would you take away a game from people who cannot speak ?? as they communicate threw typing.
I have been playing MMO's as Main tank for high end raiding guilds since Everquest 1 started
I was the second highest stats Gnome warrior in the world during Planes of Power First on ECI server to kill quarm ect ect
First on Kain server to achieve a A grade weapon in Lineage 2 also
I Very much Enjoy Typing in my MMO's and I hate Talking but I will listen better then most people,and do my job 99 percent of the time, I have never talked on ventrillo but I listen every Night and have been in raid guilds for over 10 + years as there Main tanks
Old School mmo Veteran's will enjoy Typing in games way more then New school Online players
I'd rather see the use of speech recognition so I could issue commands to the user interface.
The problem that brings up though is it's ease of use to create macros.
"I used to think the worst thing in life was to be all alone. It's not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel all alone." Robin Williams
If this ever becomes a thing, trolling and trade chat will be 100x worse than barrens ever could be. There'd be so many people trolling. And any time a PvPer ganks a noob, they'll heavily harass them. And it be far worse than just text that is easily ignorable. And then you have to hear the gankers basement dwelling ultra cheetos fingered covered nerds voice as it happens.
This would also cause GMs to have to work harder, making it more expensive to maintain.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
Not to mention as the ganker ganks, he'll do a really creepy nerdy laugh as he is doing it...
but imagine if its a whole group of Goon Squad or 4channers going around ganking people, doing stuff to the body, laughing and harassing...through voice...to hear their terrible horrible voices.
At least with text its an easy /ignore, or just ignore the text to begin with. Its much easier to ignore text than a bunch of 4channers harrassing you and ganking people non-stop and verbally abusing their victims.
With people like that, voice chat will never work if that is the only thing available.
With one exception, if its a 100% PvE game that (like EQ2) fosters a more mature, friendly community. It could work then, since the community in EQ2 overall is far better. And 100% PvE focused MMOs tend to be a lot more friendlier than PvP ones.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
Not to mention as the ganker ganks, he'll do a really creepy nerdy laugh as he is doing it...
but imagine if its a whole group of Goon Squad or 4channers going around ganking people, doing stuff to the body, laughing and harassing...through voice...to hear their terrible horrible voices.
At least with text its an easy /ignore, or just ignore the text to begin with. Its much easier to ignore text than a bunch of 4channers harrassing you and ganking people non-stop and verbally abusing their victims.
With people like that, voice chat will never work if that is the only thing available.
With one exception, if its a 100% PvE game that (like EQ2) fosters a more mature, friendly community. It could work then, since the community in EQ2 overall is far better. And 100% PvE focused MMOs tend to be a lot more friendlier than PvP ones.
The ignore thing is not that hard to add though... But as I said above, voice chat mainly works when you are grouping. Then you can just kick the offender.
Imagine Barrens chat, but instead of typing 1000 people are all talking at the same time
Horrible Horrible idea hahah
rofl, I didn't even think of that. 100s even 1000s in the same place all talking at once...I'd just log off, quit and ask for a refund (if there was no other way to talk to people and it wasn't possible to turn voice off) rofl.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
Hell no, it's a nice thought, but this is the internet we are talking about... Also, as Destiny (at launch at least) shows, having limited ways to interact socially equals limited social interaction (i.e the more options the better).
Not to mention as the ganker ganks, he'll do a really creepy nerdy laugh as he is doing it...
but imagine if its a whole group of Goon Squad or 4channers going around ganking people, doing stuff to the body, laughing and harassing...through voice...to hear their terrible horrible voices.
At least with text its an easy /ignore, or just ignore the text to begin with. Its much easier to ignore text than a bunch of 4channers harrassing you and ganking people non-stop and verbally abusing their victims.
With people like that, voice chat will never work if that is the only thing available.
With one exception, if its a 100% PvE game that (like EQ2) fosters a more mature, friendly community. It could work then, since the community in EQ2 overall is far better. And 100% PvE focused MMOs tend to be a lot more friendlier than PvP ones.
The ignore thing is not that hard to add though... But as I said above, voice chat mainly works when you are grouping. Then you can just kick the offender.
optional voice comms for groups is one thing, but public proximity voice comms, are problematic, same situation with the goons 4channers etc. except, not from the victims pov, but anyone unlucky enough to be close enough to have to listen to all the trash talking going on, its not good, its far easier to just avoid that kind of thing by disabling it entirely, voice comms, do not build communities, they are a limited group communications tool, and even then, not all games benefit from them, in the case of ESO, honestly, i think the proximity chat detracts from the game, and using ESO as an example of what voice comms can be like, is a cautionary tale.
I despise voice chat in a MMO...It completely destroys immersion and I dont want to hear your babies crying, wives screaming, and every other distraction on the planet.
Comments
If you actually could use specific voices for each of your characters I think it would feel better and I could see voice chat replace party chat and the "say" chat (as long as you have to be rather close for it). Not the map or guildchat though, it would just be too much talking.
Actually speaking with other players do have advantages but in a massive game it is easy that the voices just drown out the entire game and that would give me a headache.
hearing someone's voice chat with all the static and background noises from the room they are in (like TV's, dogs barking, other people talking, etc.) breaks immersion even if their voice does happen to fit with their character (which usually isn't the case).
Sometimes voice chatting isn't possible when you have time to play. If you're like me and play whenever you get the free time to do so, you'll find yourself sometimes up at 2am in your game. Your roommate (or whoever you may be living with) probably wont appreciate you talking all night while they try to sleep. Text chatting gives the much quieter option of putting on headphones and typing.
Also, imagine the annoyance of gold spammers on voice chat.. They would likely use overly loud pre-recorded messages that play over and over like a broken record and have several spammers in every major town or populated area. With text it is easier to just ignore it than when you can actually hear it.
That sort of audible annoyance wouldn't be just from gold spammers. There would be idiots who would think it is fun to run around shouting stupid things in a sad attempt to get attention. Look at the current text versions of world and shout chats and try to picture all of that being audible around you. I don't know about you but I have to agree with Loke666 and say it would give me a headache too.
It seems like a good idea to have only voice chat but the technology needs to improve alot before the MMORPG genre is ready for it.
Public voice chat is horrible. The voices don't match characters and the content is just bad.
Let's party like it is 1863!
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
Did you ask about this because you honestly wanted to know what we think? Because your post comes off as trying to tell us why we are wrong about what we like.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
As far as my first point on people bringing up older MMORPGs, the idea that older MMOs "did it better" is brought up in almost every single thread on this forum. They are not wrong, older MMOs had much better communities, albeit largely out of necessity, but that's for a different topic. My point was that bringing up this "old MMOs did it better" idea doesn't contribute to a discussion, it's the same as an older individual claiming that the 1970s were the best years, it's a different era that can't properly be compared to our own era because things have changed so much since then.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
You can never mind it. I don't apologize for who I am. If you don't like it you can take a hike.
A simple rule: Don't fix something that isn't broken.
Text is quick to read. Audio can be extremely annoying. Some people love to blast loud audio or talk endlessly about whatever their lonely hearts desires. It doesn't work for me.
Epic Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAigCvelkhQ&list=PLo9FRw1AkDuQLEz7Gvvaz3ideB2NpFtT1
https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_msdos?&sort=-downloads&page=1
Kyleran: "Now there's the real trick, learning to accept and enjoy a game for what it offers rather than pass on what might be a great playing experience because it lacks a few features you prefer."
John Henry Newman: "A man would do nothing if he waited until he could do it so well that no one could find fault."
FreddyNoNose: "A good game needs no defense; a bad game has no defense." "Easily digested content is just as easily forgotten."
LacedOpium: "So the question that begs to be asked is, if you are not interested in the game mechanics that define the MMORPG genre, then why are you playing an MMORPG?"
i have a friend who CANNOT speak in real life.......and she is amazing player in Raids
she is way better at her class in game then most people
Never misses a beat in raids ...Complicated raids , Typing is very important for some MMO players
so why would you take away a game from people who cannot speak ?? as they communicate threw typing.
I have been playing MMO's as Main tank for high end raiding guilds since Everquest 1 started
I was the second highest stats Gnome warrior in the world during Planes of Power
First on ECI server to kill quarm ect ect
First on Kain server to achieve a A grade weapon in Lineage 2 also
I Very much Enjoy Typing in my MMO's and I hate Talking but I will listen better then most people,and do my job 99 percent of the time, I have never talked on ventrillo but I listen every Night and have been in raid guilds for over 10 + years as there Main tanks
Old School mmo Veteran's will enjoy Typing in games way more then New school Online players
The problem that brings up though is it's ease of use to create macros.
This would also cause GMs to have to work harder, making it more expensive to maintain.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
but imagine if its a whole group of Goon Squad or 4channers going around ganking people, doing stuff to the body, laughing and harassing...through voice...to hear their terrible horrible voices.
At least with text its an easy /ignore, or just ignore the text to begin with. Its much easier to ignore text than a bunch of 4channers harrassing you and ganking people non-stop and verbally abusing their victims.
With people like that, voice chat will never work if that is the only thing available.
With one exception, if its a 100% PvE game that (like EQ2) fosters a more mature, friendly community. It could work then, since the community in EQ2 overall is far better. And 100% PvE focused MMOs tend to be a lot more friendlier than PvP ones.
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
Imagine Barrens chat, but instead of typing 1000 people are all talking at the same time
Horrible Horrible idea hahah
My Skyrim, Fallout 4, Starbound and WoW + other game mods at MODDB:
https://www.moddb.com/mods/skyrim-anime-overhaul
"Be water my friend" - Bruce Lee
When you don't want the truth, you will make up your own truth.