The 'Endless Forest' always makes me think of Deer Club. This was a classic set of comedy sketches which is how I imagine players of the Endless forest being in the real world. Enjoy.
I think the sci-fi MMO market is a rich playground just waiting for some developer to make the leap to an entirely VOIP communication system. The much maligned Star Trek shouldn't even have a place to use a keyboard Scotty didn't like them neither should the player!
I think the tech is still too expensive to implement and scale properly though. I imagine that going from a server set up handling however many lines of code figuring out how far your "voice" will carry from you avatar becomes astronomically more expensive to do and to maintain when you add an entire city's worth of people around you. Can you imagine hearing yourself think in Orgrimarr's Auction House or Iron Forge's with that many people bantering back and forth?
Continuity wise it has to work as well. Do we look at private "whispers" the same way with voice as we do with text? Should there be an item that has to be aquired to allow this first? If we're all allowed to whisper now we have more key commands to switch from local "around me" chatting to target someone specifically, which is something I don't like the idea of and I'll tell you why. An MMO experience is supposed to be an immersive one and immersion requires something called "The suspension of disbelief." If I'm wrapped up in the world I'm thinking about the story and what's happening around me, the second I have to take myself out of it to go through the chain of events to select and "call" if you will another player I'm not in the game world I'm in some kind of psuedo Skype lounge.
Just my two cents.
I play STO and played other MMO and i do not want a voice only game.
First : Like others, i am not alone in the room that mean that if the other person is trying to watch the TV it wil be annoying for them. The same apply if somebody else if always speaking in the room while you are trying to play.
Second : I play most of the time late at night because i work until 9pm. That mean that the noise has to be kept at a minimum. I can play with a headphone so nobody can hear the sound from the game but can not really mute my voice can i?
Third : Not everyone speak english. Like for myself, english is a second language. I learned some of it in school but it was not that much. That mean that some people would not be able to talk to anyone but a few other player because they can not speak, only type.
Comments
The 'Endless Forest' always makes me think of Deer Club. This was a classic set of comedy sketches which is how I imagine players of the Endless forest being in the real world. Enjoy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7peNt8lipWI
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I play STO and played other MMO and i do not want a voice only game.
First : Like others, i am not alone in the room that mean that if the other person is trying to watch the TV it wil be annoying for them. The same apply if somebody else if always speaking in the room while you are trying to play.
Second : I play most of the time late at night because i work until 9pm. That mean that the noise has to be kept at a minimum. I can play with a headphone so nobody can hear the sound from the game but can not really mute my voice can i?
Third : Not everyone speak english. Like for myself, english is a second language. I learned some of it in school but it was not that much. That mean that some people would not be able to talk to anyone but a few other player because they can not speak, only type.