589 replies to this topic

[Glory in the Highest]

Technoviking, on 05 April 2012 - 09:38 AM, said:

World of Warcraft, a giant of a game had VOIP, they developed it, polished it and submitted it.

Nobody used it.

Gaming guilds USUALLY do more than just play one game, or they have "Pregame" meetings, Post game meetings... Private meetings...

All of these things usually point to a 3rd Party vendor for Comms.


The only people who would use VOIP are the unaffiliated new people, who would either be:

A. Too Casual to use
B. Too Shy to use
C. Not shy at all and talkative and annoying and make funny sounds or yell or *Click*

Waste of resources.

Exactly right.

[DarkTreader]

We'll have to put together the MWO chat shorthand quickly, methinks.

"Scout, obs?"
"2 Pauls, 4x1. Awesome & Atlas"
"k. 2,4, flank R. 3, w/me"

[Bryan Ekman]

We always weigh what is of the most value to the consumer. While VOIP is a reasonable value, a high quality MWO VOIP solution was not feasible for launch. We have a backlog of features, VOIP being one of them. Post launch, we plan to revisit VOIP and see what we can come up with.

[ScrewCityChris]

The first thing I do with any in game VOIP is mute it like it will give me cancer. I have never had a situation where I was in a PUG and it was more beneficial to have it on rather than typing versus the wave after wave of screaming, swearing, insulting, 13 year olds that use them.

I use TS3 or Vent exclusively with my Corp/Clan/Guilds. I will type the rest quite happily.

[pursang]

Bryan Ekman, on 05 April 2012 - 09:41 AM, said:

We always weigh what is of the most value to the consumer. While VOIP is a reasonable value, a high quality MWO VOIP solution was not feasible for launch. We have a backlog of features, VOIP being one of them. Post launch, we plan to revisit VOIP and see what we can come up with.

Stop being so reasonable Bryan, nobody likes reason here.

[A6PackofToucans]

I wonder if their will be a funcion similar to that seen in Battlefield Bad Company. Say a scout finds some enemy mechs, can he for instance hit the "Q" key and then data on the enemy mechs whereabouts is transmitted to all his teammates radar displays in their mechs. Something like that, or a more complex version where the commander mechs can get and coodinate that info better with lancemates. Let me see a red contact my scout found and idenified and let me circle two of my lancemates on my radar and draw a line to the enemy mech so they know where they should be going.

Something akin to Mechcommander

[Aegis Kleais]

If VOIP is out, I still hope you allow us to:

• Disable/Enable Text Chat
  
• Text "Mute/UnMute" players (and have the game remember between games the last mute state on that player

[Paul Inouye]

pursang, on 05 April 2012 - 09:42 AM, said:

Stop being so reasonable Bryan, nobody likes reason here.

We don't want VOIP cause we all sound like girls!

Better?

[Mr Smiles]

Bryan Ekman, on 05 April 2012 - 09:41 AM, said:

We always weigh what is of the most value to the consumer. While VOIP is a reasonable value, a high quality MWO VOIP solution was not feasible for launch. We have a backlog of features, VOIP being one of them. Post launch, we plan to revisit VOIP and see what we can come up with.

That's fair.

Though I'd like to ask if there will be any systems to augment communication? LoL (and I'm sure other MOBAs, but I haven't played many others) allows you to ping the map, sending a unique attack/retreat noise. Something like that would go a long way toward making VOIP unnecessary, since typing instructions to a lance that they're about to be ambushed and should retreat, no matter how you do it, is either going to be A) so garbled from compressing it to as few characters as possible that only the elite MWO players will understand it (and elitism is bad for attracting new customers) or take so long to type it'll be too late by then.

Edited by Mr. Smiles, 05 April 2012 - 09:48 AM.

[Kudzu]

Mr. Smiles, on 05 April 2012 - 09:27 AM, said:

Well, if it's a three-man of my friends and I, and one random pubbie, and our team NEEDS a commander, either I or one of my other friends IS going to be issuing commands or relaying information.

I find your argument confusing, because this game is designed around someone taking a leadership role, paying attention to the map and relaying information to his teammates.

From the article "As for the voice coms affecting the game; the information found on the BattleGrid is a lot more precise than what a player would be able to communicate via voice.". No VOIP means more time spent making the actual game... It also means that in a pub I don't have to listen to the screaming 12 year old, the cheeto eating vox guy, 6 different people who think that are Alexander the Great reborn, and basement dwelling neckbeard arguing with his mother.

Edited by Kudzu, 05 April 2012 - 09:50 AM.

[pursang]

Paul Inouye, on 05 April 2012 - 09:47 AM, said:

We don't want VOIP cause we all sound like girls!

Better?

Yes.

[Famous]

Didn't the Role Warfare blog cover that Commanders specifically will have a command overlay where they can issue orders? If that's the case you can use text and orders (which give an in game benefit if you follow them) to communicate with the randoms in your squad.

[EDMW CSN]

Doesn't matter to me. If i am playing alone without the company / battalion in a pub game, i will mute ALL VOIP traffic.
Having played combat arms convinced me it is a bad bad idea

[pesco]

I started a poll on this issue some weeks ago.
http://mwomercs.com/...__fromsearch__1

The OP here raises quite valid points, but the counterarguments are not to be dismissed and equally valid.
I think the consensus that formed was roughly to prefer a great game with no voice to one with bad voice. Note that the latter is not even so much a matter of implementation but behaviour of the players. They might simply have it off, not set up, badly set up, or make farting noises all the time. So it's not at all clear there would be any great net benefit at all.

[Bryan Ekman]

pursang, on 05 April 2012 - 09:42 AM, said:

Stop being so reasonable Bryan, nobody likes reason here.

My personal experience with VOIP has been as follows:

EverQuest - tried, failed, much easier to use chat.
EVE - IPO (initial public offering), horribly executed by CCP, everyone used their own Vent or TS.
BF2 - Private server (clans usually play multiple games, and a single room based Vent/TS server is much easier for them to manage)
COD 1-7 (xbox) - I have to mute it because of people dropping ignorant, racist, and other awful crap.

I've hear people are using Skype for coordinating games in WoT!

In short, my personal assessment of VOIP is those players that actually use it, and use it well, are well organized and prefer to have their own setup. People playing casual matches generally don't use VOIP.

[Zerik]

Paul Inouye, on 05 April 2012 - 09:47 AM, said:

We don't want VOIP cause we all sound like girls!

Better?

Makes perfect sense, that.
Oh, wait.. http://www.screaming...hVOXJunior.aspx

[StompyMcGee]

Bryan Ekman, on 05 April 2012 - 09:51 AM, said:

My personal experience with VOIP has been as follows:

EverQuest - tried, failed, much easier to use chat.
EVE - IPO (initial public offering), horribly executed by CCP, everyone used their own Vent or TS.
BF2 - Private server (clans usually play multiple games, and a single room based Vent/TS server is much easier for them to manage)
COD 1-7 (xbox) - I have to mute it because of people dropping ignorant, racist, and other awful crap.

I've hear people are using Skype for coordinating games in WoT!

In short, my personal assessment of VOIP is those players that actually use it, and use it well, are well organized and prefer to have their own setup. People playing casual matches generally don't use VOIP.

Fair point, though I would contend that in LotRO, most Ettenmoors PUGs on my server used the in-game VOIP.
Still, I can see it why it's not a priority for development.

Maybe I'll just use macro keys to send messages like "help" and "run away".

Edited by StompyMcGee, 05 April 2012 - 09:56 AM.

[pursang]

Zerik, on 05 April 2012 - 09:53 AM, said:

Makes perfect sense, that.
Oh, wait.. http://www.screaming...hVOXJunior.aspx

No! What have you done?! Don't let Paul get his hands on a voice changer! AHHHHHH!

[Bryan Ekman]

We have contextual command/order menus that all players can use. So that should go a long way to solving the OPs needs (I hope).

[Mr Smiles]

Bryan Ekman, on 05 April 2012 - 09:51 AM, said:

My personal experience with VOIP has been as follows:

EverQuest - tried, failed, much easier to use chat.
EVE - IPO (initial public offering), horribly executed by CCP, everyone used their own Vent or TS.
BF2 - Private server (clans usually play multiple games, and a single room based Vent/TS server is much easier for them to manage)
COD 1-7 (xbox) - I have to mute it because of people dropping ignorant, racist, and other awful crap.

I've hear people are using Skype for coordinating games in WoT!

In short, my personal assessment of VOIP is those players that actually use it, and use it well, are well organized and prefer to have their own setup. People playing casual matches generally don't use VOIP.

The two big differences though, which I don't think are to be written off, are a ) as far as I can tell from my big State of the Sphere survey, the average age of a MWO community member is older. Probably because BattleTech is a much older IP. Besides, the XBox is a cesspool of kids screaming into their microphones, that's not fair to bring up here The second difference, b ) is that those games are generally quite big, from 12 people on a team to dozens in the case of MMOs.

MWO is a game where you might have lance-on-lance engagements. Four people on a team is a much different scenario than twelve in terms of VOIP.

I think to my times playing Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2, which included a built in VOIP. It was good times, I almost never had trouble with people on the comms, and when I did it was as easy as pie to mute them. Compare to the TF2 community, which is by and large the same community, and you can't even turn the comms on in a public channel without getting barraged with crap. And that's if alltalk is off, if it's on you might as well unplug your speakers.

My point is, I think during smaller matches, a public VOIP becomes much more viable. If there was VOIP built into LoL, for instance, my group would be able to chat with our random 5th player, decide if he was mute-worthy, and if he wasn't have have good-times with him. With larger games like TF2 or Eve or whatever, it's like swatting at a swarm of flies: you mute one person, and there are still 2 or 3 more, and by the time you mute them someone else has joined.

EDIT: Oh, and the third big difference is that in MWO, you're stuck with the same people for an entire match, right? No 2-hour matches with people constantly dropping and adding or whatever. It becomes easier to manage people with annoying comms when tehy aren't a shifting roster.

Edited by Mr. Smiles, 05 April 2012 - 10:01 AM.