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Erloas
2007-03-05, 05:29 PM
I was wondering what peoples opinions here are of voice chat systems in MMOs. There is of course the 3rd party solutions used a lot now, vent and TS, but a few games are also starting to build them into the system.

Voice chat as I'm refering to it is limited to only a guild or group and not open world voice chat with anyone in the zone/area.

atteSmythe
2007-03-05, 05:41 PM
I don't like it because I think it breaks immersion, but there's a gaming advantage to using it, so I know its adoption is inevitable. :(

FunkyJeff
2007-03-05, 05:49 PM
Nothing breaks the immersion like having your orc warrior's voice cracking mid combat, so I don't like it either.

Murongo
2007-03-05, 05:52 PM
Unfortunately its necessary if you want your guild to be worth a damn. And if the game doesn't integrate it it just means that top guilds will use Vent/TS and thus leave the others in the dust. So yeah, its inevitable.

Better the game include it and put everyone on equal ground, than not include it. If they don't include it than top guilds will pay for their own Vent/TS servers and those without mics will be at a disadvantage. Things like racial languages severely limit communication in games like WoW, but if you're like my old server and have your own vent... anyone can talk to anyone.

Basically I don't like it but its inevitable and better it be in the game than a 3rd party.

Emperor Tippy
2007-03-05, 05:53 PM
Vent for me. I love it (in fact me and most of my friends use it instead of the phone).

Timberwolf
2007-03-05, 05:56 PM
I've never used it for MMORPG's but for a league match with Mechwarrior 4, there's nothing like being able to coordinate over Teamspeak to make sure you at least stand a chance.

ShneekeyTheLost
2007-03-06, 01:41 PM
Personally, I think VC is a *BAD* idea for public use. The potential for abuse is just staggering, what with anyone able to say any sort of obscenities that come to their sick twisted minds.

VC is good for guilds, and I think that having it built into the game system would be less cludgy and take less resources than using a 3rd party like Vent and TS.

So, how about this option: VC is an option which is available for Guilds to chat with each other, for Raids, and for Groups. However, you have the option to not 'listen' to VC from anyone, and anyone on your ignore list is automatically blocked.

Setra
2007-03-07, 03:40 PM
I prefer 3rd Party, cause I'm always talking to my friends on Skype.

Or in Guild Wars, we use TS... or was it Vent? Honestly, I haven't actually done a Guild War in a while. I don't actually have either installed at the moment.

Maybe I should ask my Guild Leader which one we use. My guild leader is awesome, maybe a bit too nice though.

The Prince of Cats
2007-03-07, 06:27 PM
Voice-chat was one of the things I liked about D&D Online but I used t play a girl, so I used a voice-changer so as not to break immersion. Only problem was that it was so good that some guildies didn't believe I was a man after talking to me...

blackout
2007-03-07, 07:37 PM
I think that for the upcoming 40K MMO, yes, voice-chat will be important. Vox-Coms, yo.

Setra
2007-03-07, 07:53 PM
Voice-chat was one of the things I liked about D&D Online but I used t play a girl, so I used a voice-changer so as not to break immersion. Only problem was that it was so good that some guildies didn't believe I was a man after talking to me...

!!!! Tell me where to get one of those, I pretend to be a girl online all the time.

The Prince of Cats
2007-03-08, 04:47 AM
I use Screaming Bee, though the free version is not as good as the full version. The full version allows fine tuning of the voice to get it perfect, though it helps if you have a background in sound-engineering because the controls are that precise...

I am actually a developer on an MMO (which is about all I can say on the matter without losing my job) and voice-chat was one of the first features we decided needed to put in the game. The trouble is that not everyone can support voice-chat. Some lack a microphone (c'mon, they are about $2.99 from EB Games), while others do not have the bandwidth to support it (dial-up? What's dial-up?) and some hate the sound of their own voice.

I think the way D&D Online did it was quite good (though I had a few improvements to suggest) because you could opt-out of voice-chat and you could see at a glance who was using it. Quite often, that got misused so that those on voice-chat could bitch and moan about those who were not, but it was a good system overall.

DarkLightDragon
2007-03-08, 05:01 AM
I prefer to use Vent or TS, but only use them when going on large raids in WoW or for quickly coordinating team movements in DotA.

Setra
2007-03-08, 07:15 AM
Oooh thanks, I've downloaded it and am using it to play tricks on all my friends.

Whee my friends are all questioning their sexuality now!

valadil
2007-03-08, 10:49 AM
I play DDO and I really like their implementation of VC. I understand what you're saying about it breaking immersion, but in terms of your ability to communicate while playing, I feel like once you go voice you can't go back to text.

Midnight Son
2007-03-08, 01:45 PM
*Switches on his Screaming Bee for his female DDO characters*
Thank you for the idea PoC? I googled voice changers after reading that. it always bugged me to be playing a woman with a man's voice.

blackout
2007-03-08, 04:18 PM
Personally, I just find the whole idea of playing a female when I'm a guy in real life disturbing at best, and completely warped at worst.

Midnight Son
2007-03-08, 09:05 PM
Personally, I just find the whole idea of playing a female when I'm a guy in real life disturbing at best, and completely warped at worst.
I play both, but I gotta say, if I'm going to spend several hours looking at someone's butt, even if it's a toon, I'd prefer it to be female.

The Evil Thing
2007-03-09, 01:35 AM
That excuse never washes with me. You've got a whole world to explore and, inevitably, things attacking at you from all sides, not to mention some form of technical GUI. When would you have the concentration to look at your character's behind? :smalltongue:

The Prince of Cats
2007-03-09, 06:34 AM
I tend to find male avatars a little ugly in most MMOs. EQ was not so bad, EQ2 was a little better. I don't want to play an elf with the proportions of Conan.

Personally, I find the idea of someone who will only ever play their own gender "disturbing at best, and completely warped at worst". I mean, come on, expand your horizons... It is no worse than playing Tomb Raider or Perfect Dark.

Midnight Son
2007-03-09, 01:00 PM
That excuse never washes with me. You've got a whole world to explore and, inevitably, things attacking at you from all sides, not to mention some form of technical GUI. When would you have the concentration to look at your character's behind? :smalltongue:
In the case of DDO, any time you're running around selling various items, talking to quest givers, sitting in the tavern, not in group, or waiting at a dungeon entrance for the rest of your party to show up. Now, during those times, I will often be role playing with other party members or checking out the other toons that are in the area, but I also have to look at the screen and a fairly prominent feature on that screen is the backside of my own toon. Being a hetero male, I much prefer to look at female backside to male backside. That isn't to say I don't have male toons. I have two of the five I own.

Quincunx
2007-03-11, 01:35 PM
Ye gods, no. It saves my sanity some nights to be able to cuss a fluid stream at the offtank while not having said offtank hear any of it. (Not that it would make an impression even if said offtank could hear the criticism.)

Sailacela
2007-03-11, 02:48 PM
I'm a regular user of vent and TS. There's no way around it, if you raid you simply have to be on voice and most raiding guilds I'm familiar with require it.

That isn't why I like it though. I've gotten to know people as people, not just their characters. Many of us have travelled across country and/or overseas to meet. I don't roleplay much, but many of my friends do and when they are in roleplay mode they are typically not in voice. It's no different than sitting around a table playing in character but then reverting back to your real self once the game or round is over for the night.

Erloas
2007-03-11, 09:19 PM
I'm a regular user of vent and TS. There's no way around it, if you raid you simply have to be on voice and most raiding guilds I'm familiar with require it.

That isn't why I like it though. I've gotten to know people as people, not just their characters. Many of us have travelled across country and/or overseas to meet. I don't roleplay much, but many of my friends do and when they are in roleplay mode they are typically not in voice. It's no different than sitting around a table playing in character but then reverting back to your real self once the game or round is over for the night.

It really just comes down to how often you play with someone. If you play with someone a couple times you aren't really going to know more about them by using VC compared to text. If you are in a guild with someone and do things will them all the time you are more likely to get to know them no matter which system you use. I've meet several people IRL that I knew from an MMO and we never used any form of VC. Of course we (several people in the guild knew eachother outside the game already and lived in the same town) did talk to them sometimes on the phone to set up the meetings, but not at all in-game. VC has little to do with it, just trying to get to know people is all it takes and that can happen either way.

Personally I find VC converstations tend to be much more selective in who participates. Its generally just a couple more assertive people that do the majority of the talking and other people are left out. Its much easier to "get a word in" in text then it is in VC. What I've found the most is that in guilds and allainces that require VC it is usually just a couple people that the main proponents for it, they also happen to be the people that do 90% of the talking, and they believe that everyone else thinks its as great as they do and make everyone else use it because they think that is what everyone else wants. It is fine for some personality types but its a bigger problem for others. And before anyone says "they should learn to adapt," or "its easy" or any of the other BS outgoing people try to claim when other people aren't like them, its just like everything else some people are simply different then others and nothings going to chance that. While VC "fosters" community better in some cases I feel it does just as much harm in other cases.

Also having played MMOs for a while I know it is 100% possible to run a very well run raid without using VC at all. It really doesn't change a whole lot from what I've seen, you have a couple people relaying information and directing people and everyone else listening/reading that information. The only difference I've seen is that people with bad typing skills are able to run the raid with VC that they wouldn't have been able to if they were slow at typing, which is generally a moot point. If people know what they are doing it goes well and if people don't then it goes poorly, its just as true with VC as it is with text. If you have to explain things then you have to explain things and that takes pretty much the same amount of time either way. And I know its not the same for everyone, but I can type and read just about as fast as I can understand spoken language, or so it seems, I haven't actually tried to measure it. It is of course different in games such as FPSs but in the case of MMORPGs it doesn't change that much.

Wehrkind
2007-03-12, 01:37 AM
!!!! Tell me where to get one of those, I pretend to be a girl online all the time.
Yea... that was abhorently frightening...
I suppose I am not used to the roleplaying aspect (Argent Dawn RP Server on WoW, no one RPs.) Still, that sentance creeped the hell out of me, though I am familier with, and a proponant of, the "Female is my trade skill" line. :-P

I think VC should be included because it is handy, and like many 3rd party mods out there serves a good purpose. One thing I like about Blizzard is that they have been reasonably good about implementing 3rd party functionality into World of Warcraft. At least for as much as my casual butt would want.
My guild uses TS or Vent for every major raid, and generally we can use it for just groups or small instances if we want. My pet healer sits 3 feet from me, so I often don't bother with TS since I can tell people plans easily enough by text. It is really handy for boss fights where timing is important, or even just to say "Ok, I have the sunders in. DPS your heart out." or "HOLY CRAP STOP PULLING AGGRO RIGHT NOW!"
Still, I think it is best used for raids where a few people need to talk to give orders, and the other random chatter can be left to text. In that regard, 90% of the people don't need mics, just speakers. The comment about getting in edgewise is quite correct though. My fiance can't be heard on TS (Vent works for her mouse voice though.) I usually don't bother to talk much, but it can be annoying with TS to have more than one person talking at a time. Vent seems to deal really well with multiple people, however. The fidelity seems to be very clear.

Totally Guy
2007-03-15, 06:14 PM
Until I read this thread I'd never even heard team speak, not in the MMO I play.

I got a microphone today and tried it out on another player's server, people that I hadn't met before. Wow, talking to people sure is a fast way to form an alliance. I shared a couple of secrets and we exchanged banter. It was good. It didn't really break the immersion, they could tell I had the music on at one point. Then this guild started a project to make Water Essences using the info I'd given them and it was good to hear cooperation like that.

Too bad my own guild was not really interested. And it was funny to hear all the place names mangled (at least from what I'd been saying), and cool to talk to people with exotic accents.

Thanks Thread.

Sailacela
2007-03-15, 06:52 PM
It really just comes down to how often you play with someone. If you play with someone a couple times you aren't really going to know more about them by using VC compared to text. If you are in a guild with someone and do things will them all the time you are more likely to get to know them no matter which system you use. I've meet several people IRL that I knew from an MMO and we never used any form of VC. Of course we (several people in the guild knew eachother outside the game already and lived in the same town) did talk to them sometimes on the phone to set up the meetings, but not at all in-game. VC has little to do with it, just trying to get to know people is all it takes and that can happen either way.


I don't typically join vent or TS with pick up groups or random people. My post was more in reference to my guildmates. It's not uncommon for me to be chatting with guildies while grouped with other people, too. I should have specified.

Setra
2007-03-18, 09:15 AM
Yea... that was abhorently frightening...
I suppose I am not used to the roleplaying aspect (Argent Dawn RP Server on WoW, no one RPs.) Still, that sentance creeped the hell out of me, though I am familier with, and a proponant of, the "Female is my trade skill" line. :-P
Muahaha, that's just one of the many reasons I do it.

Other reasons include:
Wishing I were born a girl
Being bisexual
People underestimating me
People giving me more stuff
The fact people whom I meet online thinking I am female when I'm acting normally.
The fact it's more fun to do in general.

The Prince of Cats
2007-03-18, 12:49 PM
People giving me more stuff
Tell me about it... My character in D&D Online has more weapons than she knows what to do with, just from the kindness of random pick-up groups and guildies.

The funniest thing was playing WoW with my wife (both with female characters) and seeing me get all the best gear from passing men. It is great fun until you get a player who thinks they are Leisure Suit Larry. My wife loves the fact that I get all the crazies...

TheOtherMC
2007-03-18, 01:16 PM
Tell me about it... My character in D&D Online has more weapons than she knows what to do with, just from the kindness of random pick-up groups and guildies.

The funniest thing was playing WoW with my wife (both with female characters) and seeing me get all the best gear from passing men. It is great fun until you get a player who thinks they are Leisure Suit Larry. My wife loves the fact that I get all the crazies...

Bow Chika Bow Wow!

Neo
2007-03-18, 02:57 PM
I'd prefer VC seperate as you won't always need/want it and adding it will no doubt add extra overhead on MMOGs so they lag more.

yeah, playing a female character gets wierd with all the 'well it could be a real chick' players.