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Removing text chat in favor of voice chat in MMOs?
Annwyn
Member UncommonPosts: 2,854
I recently decided to re-watch the .Hack// series and it brought the question to mind. Would any of you play an MMO that removed the text chat entirely (with some exceptions like sending private messages/emails), and instead require player to interact with voice chat? Using voice chat would force players to be in a relatively close vicinity in order to be able to talk to each other. As with everything else in life, there are pros and cons to this system, but is this something that could potentially interest you as an MMO player?
I feel that MMOs today are very anti-social and the ability to talk to anyone anywhere cuts the need to actually get together and interact. I recently transferred in FFXIV from Gilgamesh, a highly populated server, to Balmung, another highly populated server but also the unofficial RP server. On Gilgamesh I always saw the cities and taverns fairly empty. Sure there are players in the cities, but they're only there because there's no where else to go. On Balmung however, the cities and taverns are buzzing with players, especially RPers because their playstyle is very social-oriented, and I am quite jealous of that. It'd be impossible to ask non-RPers to suddenly become RPers however (and RP has never interested me anyway), but I feel that MMOs definitely need an incentive for players to get together, even if it means forcing it a little by removing some convenient feature (like world-wide chat).
I feel that MMOs today are very anti-social and the ability to talk to anyone anywhere cuts the need to actually get together and interact. I recently transferred in FFXIV from Gilgamesh, a highly populated server, to Balmung, another highly populated server but also the unofficial RP server. On Gilgamesh I always saw the cities and taverns fairly empty. Sure there are players in the cities, but they're only there because there's no where else to go. On Balmung however, the cities and taverns are buzzing with players, especially RPers because their playstyle is very social-oriented, and I am quite jealous of that. It'd be impossible to ask non-RPers to suddenly become RPers however (and RP has never interested me anyway), but I feel that MMOs definitely need an incentive for players to get together, even if it means forcing it a little by removing some convenient feature (like world-wide chat).
Comments
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
If you want a social community, you have to create a game that promotes socialization through gameplay. You need a game where you are required to work with/against others to progress, and some way to bring back the sense of server specific community i.e. no LFG or other features to promote server cohesiveness. In FFXI, having a large pool of reliable friends was as important, if not more important, as having good gear. Reliance on others fosters a strong community, IMO.
However, I would never play an MMORPG that forced me to rely on others as heavily as games like FFXI did. I simply do not have the time or energy to do that again, and frankly, I don't care about being social in MMORPGs anymore outside of the group of friends I already have.
Edit: PS- I think Mmo's have gotten so anti social because the mechanics of the games today all favor solo play and do not really require any interaction (whether text chat or not). And I'm not just speaking about leveling; even trade. For example, I fondly remember logging into Everquest every Sunday just to trade in the East Commonlands tunnel. Even if you were not buying/selling, it was very social.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Pros
Good for fast and easy communication in the heat of an intense battle.
Doesn't require typing while doing other things.
Can hear and better relate to a person instead of an avatar.
Con
To many voices disrupts all communication. Proximity doesn't solve it. Result: needing multiple voice channels than can be turned on/off.
Most people are going to disable it.
Something is said once, if you don't hear it, it's gone. Abuse/Harassment/Other offenses can't be monitored so everyone has to deal with it or turn it off.
Most players aren't going to be role playing so all chat will break immersion even more than text would.
In the games that do have voice, there is no evidence that they make the game more social. It's really just another form of communication for people that want fast communication in an organized group setting.
I find myself turning voice chat off on the games that have it. I really don't care what you did last night, how many drugs you do or why you are mad at the world.
I find more griefers and flamers in voice channels.
Games, or at least, MMO's have to have text based chat, because that is what most players are comfortable with, and it works.
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.
For the time being, text chat is the most 'evolved' form of in game communication for MMO's, a few games have dabbled with voice chat, but i've yet to see one where it actually became a thing, sure some guilds have their own teamspeak or discord etc. but its often used for multi game communication, and not related to the game they are playing at all, its a social tool entirely seperate to the games themselves.
I'd like to counter some of @mmoguy43's list of cons.
- Immersion. Can't really do much about that. But you can't really keep that out of text chat, either. It's a convention that we follow when we play, much like in-character and ooc speech, or talking in church. Peer pressure works to keep people in line with the social conventions. If it the simple sound of a voice that breaks immersion, that goes on the pile with background music and voice acting.
Some other things a developer would probably want to consider.- Automatic channels. Go into a building, automatically change the 'auditory area', much like a zone.
I don't think that Voice over IP is a bad idea. It hasn't been done before, and the typical MMORPG simply uses the text chat channels. There hasn't been any advancement in the basic text chat technology, and the interfaces. There will need to be some new technology to fully support integrated VoIP into games. Right now, that is seen as an extra development cost, which may be the reason that there isn't a more substantial push for features like this.Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
I self identify as a monkey.
*sigh*
You know some developer is going to read this....
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
You want to speak with me, type it in the fcking chat channel dammit!
(and stay off my lawn)
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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¯\_(ツ)_/¯