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3rd Party VOIP Software in Modern MMOs
Lerxst
Member UncommonPosts: 648
VOIP, meaning Teamspeak and/or Discord these days.
The one common factor I've been able to link back to every "pro" and "con" argument for modern MMO games and the previous generation, including the players, has been this; 3rd party, instantaneous communication software. In the game, this can be controlled by the game, but external software is beyond the game's control.
Think back to UO, for all you vets. What was the major difference outside of graphics, etc., between that and more modern games? Back then, unless you were calling somebody, you couldn't instantly relay information across the server, guild, group, battle. Everything had to by typed and the most effective way of doing that was within the game. Which also meant that your ability to do that, was based on your ability to keep your character safe and still play the game while talking with the other players.
WoW started off similar, but there were already a couple programs creeping into the market that allowed for people to voice chat, they just weren't common and bandwidth was also still precious back then.
Half Life mods allowed for voice chat in their games and it made them more interesting since, FPS games are fast paced anyhow and any "cheating" (relaying info that would not otherwise be known to another player) that it allowed only lasted the length of a game session. This chat was also controlled by the game itself, so could be enabled/disabled at will by the admins.
Personally, I appreciate most MMORPGs not already including voice chat in the games. Even if it is due to resources, etc. not hearing the voice of the 15 year old kid from Nebraska, playing the Orc Paladin, is a blessing in disguise.
In terms of external software, though, I think the situation is more than just a matter of preference...
On the global scale:
How many games, lately, have been destroyed by super-guilds dominating an entire server? Few, if any, MMORPGs I know of, offer a global voice chat channel of any kind. This means that all of their more precise communication needs to take place on Discord or another program. The game worlds were basically never made to accommodate 500+ players all talking and acting in unison and proof can be shown in the way these guilds "break" entire game servers many times.
In a fantasy age, in a game world set where people communicate via pigeons, games already conceded a bit by adding global text chat channels. Of course, those are less than perfect, especially for this long distance, large group communication, as players can get distracted by actually playing their characters instead of spitting some words out through a mic.
Now, most of these guilds make voice chat mandatory, as they see it as their only way of staying competitive and taking advantage of every bit of the game that they can.
So is this the fault of the individuals for taking, what should be "fun", and turning it into a competitive sport, or is is the fault of the games for not allowing for this?
Whether it was by design or accident, EVE is one of the few games that pulls this off, but partly because you can always rationalize that inter-ship communications in space are nearly instantaneous, anyhow - so these large corporations and large scale plans are all viable in the EVE universe by design, and the game universe is also expansive enough to allow for this to exist.
On the local scale:
If a small group of players goes hunting in a PvP zone, they used to need to stick nearby since the twitch-reflexes of PvP don't allow time for chatting to your teammates for help. Nowadays, anyone, anywhere, can have a group of any size any distance away and have that same level of "security" while essentially being solo in that immediate area; help is just a half second "oh crap" into your microphone, away.
This also impacts the solo player who thinks their target is solo... until two minutes later they have an entire guild running them down out of seemingly nowhere.
The side-effects:
This whole era of external communication just seems to water down every game to the same level and feel. The same dynamics this creates exist in every game. The same issues these create, exist in every game. You ever feel that you're playing the same game over and over again lately, regardless of the game? I've narrowed it down, partly, to this.
Take another game I've gained some interest in, that takes me back to my Telent, MUD days - Space Station 13. Albeit a smaller scale game, other than the obvious reasons (simple graphics, complex UI), the game just feels different.
People generally don't voice chat for the game, making text chats more vital. Global chat is controlled through some actual in-game mechanics that can be intentionally sabotaged by players who want to cause havoc - disabling intercom system for traitor, rogue AI, etc.
When someone opens up fire in a room of people, there is legitimate chaos and panic, since no one can casually talk about it and formulate a plan form the comfort of their chairs - too busy moving yourself out of harm's way and look around to see what actually just happened, to start typing anything.
If you get blinded or knocked out, your screen goes darker and darker. if you can't talk for any reason, you just end up "muttering" or "gurgling" when you type anything.
Now... take those types of situations and add a 3rd party, external voice chat to them:
The target you were trying to kidnap, can now tell all of his friends, precisely where he was and where he was going before you caught him. Now, you have a half dozen of his buddies who were nowhere to be found, staring at you in a dark corridor no one would ever have any normal business being in.
You get killed by a traitor in the game, and now you can tell everyone still living, who that person is, where they are and what they're doing, via Discord.
A rogue AI subtly kills you when you are alone, to maintain their cover... but you blow that the second you die, tell everyone, and now the game round boils down into a wide-spread, all-out war vs. the AI.
The problem is, I feel, that 90% of the players, especially the newer players, have absolutely no clue what they're missing. And if they don't know what they're missing, then they don't know they are missing it. And if they don't know they're missing it, they won't intentionally seek it out.
I did get lucky, in that my first foray into he MMO world was with MUDs, that created this by default. ut now, new players have first experience MMO gaming via a lot of the older FPS games and other games that have always had some form of VOIP as the standard.
So, the key point here is - How can larger scale, commercial MMORPG's diminish the external and game diluting advantages that Discord and other software, allow players to take advantage of?
The smaller games can do it by having dedicated game admins that keep track of anyone/people acting suspicious like this. They can also exclusively attract players that want that type of game intentionally.
The one common factor I've been able to link back to every "pro" and "con" argument for modern MMO games and the previous generation, including the players, has been this; 3rd party, instantaneous communication software. In the game, this can be controlled by the game, but external software is beyond the game's control.
Think back to UO, for all you vets. What was the major difference outside of graphics, etc., between that and more modern games? Back then, unless you were calling somebody, you couldn't instantly relay information across the server, guild, group, battle. Everything had to by typed and the most effective way of doing that was within the game. Which also meant that your ability to do that, was based on your ability to keep your character safe and still play the game while talking with the other players.
WoW started off similar, but there were already a couple programs creeping into the market that allowed for people to voice chat, they just weren't common and bandwidth was also still precious back then.
Half Life mods allowed for voice chat in their games and it made them more interesting since, FPS games are fast paced anyhow and any "cheating" (relaying info that would not otherwise be known to another player) that it allowed only lasted the length of a game session. This chat was also controlled by the game itself, so could be enabled/disabled at will by the admins.
Personally, I appreciate most MMORPGs not already including voice chat in the games. Even if it is due to resources, etc. not hearing the voice of the 15 year old kid from Nebraska, playing the Orc Paladin, is a blessing in disguise.
In terms of external software, though, I think the situation is more than just a matter of preference...
On the global scale:
How many games, lately, have been destroyed by super-guilds dominating an entire server? Few, if any, MMORPGs I know of, offer a global voice chat channel of any kind. This means that all of their more precise communication needs to take place on Discord or another program. The game worlds were basically never made to accommodate 500+ players all talking and acting in unison and proof can be shown in the way these guilds "break" entire game servers many times.
In a fantasy age, in a game world set where people communicate via pigeons, games already conceded a bit by adding global text chat channels. Of course, those are less than perfect, especially for this long distance, large group communication, as players can get distracted by actually playing their characters instead of spitting some words out through a mic.
Now, most of these guilds make voice chat mandatory, as they see it as their only way of staying competitive and taking advantage of every bit of the game that they can.
So is this the fault of the individuals for taking, what should be "fun", and turning it into a competitive sport, or is is the fault of the games for not allowing for this?
Whether it was by design or accident, EVE is one of the few games that pulls this off, but partly because you can always rationalize that inter-ship communications in space are nearly instantaneous, anyhow - so these large corporations and large scale plans are all viable in the EVE universe by design, and the game universe is also expansive enough to allow for this to exist.
On the local scale:
If a small group of players goes hunting in a PvP zone, they used to need to stick nearby since the twitch-reflexes of PvP don't allow time for chatting to your teammates for help. Nowadays, anyone, anywhere, can have a group of any size any distance away and have that same level of "security" while essentially being solo in that immediate area; help is just a half second "oh crap" into your microphone, away.
This also impacts the solo player who thinks their target is solo... until two minutes later they have an entire guild running them down out of seemingly nowhere.
The side-effects:
This whole era of external communication just seems to water down every game to the same level and feel. The same dynamics this creates exist in every game. The same issues these create, exist in every game. You ever feel that you're playing the same game over and over again lately, regardless of the game? I've narrowed it down, partly, to this.
Take another game I've gained some interest in, that takes me back to my Telent, MUD days - Space Station 13. Albeit a smaller scale game, other than the obvious reasons (simple graphics, complex UI), the game just feels different.
People generally don't voice chat for the game, making text chats more vital. Global chat is controlled through some actual in-game mechanics that can be intentionally sabotaged by players who want to cause havoc - disabling intercom system for traitor, rogue AI, etc.
When someone opens up fire in a room of people, there is legitimate chaos and panic, since no one can casually talk about it and formulate a plan form the comfort of their chairs - too busy moving yourself out of harm's way and look around to see what actually just happened, to start typing anything.
If you get blinded or knocked out, your screen goes darker and darker. if you can't talk for any reason, you just end up "muttering" or "gurgling" when you type anything.
Now... take those types of situations and add a 3rd party, external voice chat to them:
The target you were trying to kidnap, can now tell all of his friends, precisely where he was and where he was going before you caught him. Now, you have a half dozen of his buddies who were nowhere to be found, staring at you in a dark corridor no one would ever have any normal business being in.
You get killed by a traitor in the game, and now you can tell everyone still living, who that person is, where they are and what they're doing, via Discord.
A rogue AI subtly kills you when you are alone, to maintain their cover... but you blow that the second you die, tell everyone, and now the game round boils down into a wide-spread, all-out war vs. the AI.
The problem is, I feel, that 90% of the players, especially the newer players, have absolutely no clue what they're missing. And if they don't know what they're missing, then they don't know they are missing it. And if they don't know they're missing it, they won't intentionally seek it out.
I did get lucky, in that my first foray into he MMO world was with MUDs, that created this by default. ut now, new players have first experience MMO gaming via a lot of the older FPS games and other games that have always had some form of VOIP as the standard.
So, the key point here is - How can larger scale, commercial MMORPG's diminish the external and game diluting advantages that Discord and other software, allow players to take advantage of?
The smaller games can do it by having dedicated game admins that keep track of anyone/people acting suspicious like this. They can also exclusively attract players that want that type of game intentionally.
Comments
Voice chat brings people closer than text unless you are straight up roleplaying which in general doesn't happen very much anymore. I think it's just because I tend to join smaller guilds and use voice chat with them that it ends up being a very enjoyable experience almost 100% of the time. You make friends and have people to talk to while doing things in game.
I can't see how it would make every game feel the same at all. If I'm playing Darkfall and ganking people, while talking on voice chat, I don't feel like I'm playing the same game as if I were playing Atlantica while using voice chat. Even in the same sub genre, if I'm playing WoW and using voice chat it doesn't give me any feelings similar to when I'm playing Rift and using voice chat. That isn't a correlation at all, rather just random grabbing at straws as to why you feel games are the same.
I don't think the idea of having in game voice chat is a good idea, because I've seen in ESO with proximity chat on console you have people cooking food and kids yelling, but external voice chat you basically get to pick and choose who you are talking to. If you don't want to talk to that 15 year old kid playing an orc than don't associate yourself with 15 year old kids playing orcs. Find a guild that better suits your needs.
I didn't get my first sound card until 1991, that's when I added VoIP to my IM program. Again we hadn't even coined that term back then.
When parents complain about their kids and cellphones, I say this reminds me of the day when parents complained about the horse and bugs, rather than walking. Or letter writing, rather than horse and buggy. Followed by telephone over mail. Now texting rather than speaking openly over telephone.
Back in 2001 guilds made voice chat mandatory. But not everyone chose to speak over voice chat. They would only listen. I wondered then, if they had anterior motives for not speaking. Possibly hiding their age, race, nationality, or sex?
When I was playing Guild Wars (GW1), I joined a guild lead by a Hawaiian Native Great Grand Mother. When she eventually admitted to having a Team-speak server, and invited me on she explained how dismissive other players were of her age and race. I have suspect many other of being careful in revealing to much by voice.
But this thread seem to be about the antagonist roll and antagonism in games. All I can say is agree to play by the same rules. If a game has an antagonist roll as a game mechanic then all players should or must play by the same rules. The game server should or must publish or identify what rules all players should be following. For a game like Space Station 13, it should be possible to add a column to the list of servers identifying rules. Maybe under options players can check tags of rules they are will to play by, where no VoIP / IRL chat is one of them.
"EVE is one of the few games that pulls this off," what about SWTOR, or Star Trek Online. In my opinion there is never a valid reason to mention EVE as an example of good gaming, unless the topic is specifically EVE.
Boy: Why can't I talk to Him?
Mom: We don't talk to Priests.
As if it could exist, without being payed for.
F2P means you get what you paid for. Pay nothing, get nothing.
Even telemarketers wouldn't think that.
It costs money to play. Therefore P2W.