28 replies to this topic

[Mudhutwarrior]

Boris The Spider, on 14 May 2014 - 10:23 PM, said:

Zag, when they say they are adding in-game VOIP, the time frame is more than likely going to be well over 6 month to a year away, if it even happens at all. So yes, your going to have to deal with the possibility of the 'pre-made' on your team being a PUG from a public team-speak server for the foreseeable future.

Its not about if the solution that we have now is sufficient, its that it is the only solution we have. The OP expressed an interest in playing with VOIP, I pointed him to a means to have VOIP in 5 minutes, not next year. Which was, as it always is, rebuked by people who have clearly never used the existing system. So hows about the OP decides if what is offered is sufficient for him, now?

Are you guessing on that timeline or do you have references? When I spoke to an Dev in game before Christmas he said it was coming with the clans. Only thing I have heard past its coming. In my opinion if they really want to grow the base it should be ASAP. Out of now 11 people I got to join I am the only one left standing. All left in a month or less,

My argument is based on the fact so many share this experience,. The learning curve is very steep and unless you willing to invest countless hours reading everything you can you will continue to founder. The only true option left is to join a team but as its been posted time and time again many do not have the time or inclination to do these things. For me I will not join a team until we have a level playing field here. It's like organized gangs beating the homeless out there now and I will not groupthink to cover what I consider a moral issue of fair gameplay., Sure everyone comes here and says my premade doesn't do it but not an hour of gameplay goes by where pugs are openly mocked either before ,during or after a fight. We know these truths exist on the field yet we try hard to deny it. Then whenever noobs or casuals come here to express frustration they find dozens of brickwall defenders of the indefensible to get on them the instant they post and the mocking and insincere helpful hints start flying all over again.. You not really helping anyone but yourself and your teamates with your multiple posts here. It's not about you and your teamates wants for the clans or whatever first its about bringing in fresh faces and retaining them. I can't help a soul ingame with just a keyboard but I could help many with voip every match with 9000 pug matches under my belt.

[Zaggeron]

Boris The Spider, on 14 May 2014 - 10:23 PM, said:

Zag, when they say they are adding in-game VOIP, the time frame is more than likely going to be well over 6 month to a year away, if it even happens at all. So yes, your going to have to deal with the possibility of the 'pre-made' on your team being a PUG from a public team-speak server for the foreseeable future.

Its not about if the solution that we have now is sufficient, its that it is the only solution we have. The OP expressed an interest in playing with VOIP, I pointed him to a means to have VOIP in 5 minutes, not next year. Which was, as it always is, rebuked by people who have clearly never used the existing system. So hows about the OP decides if what is offered is sufficient for him, now?

I still don't know what you mean by "deal with it"? I don't have a problem with pre-mades of either the pickup or organized team variety. I just don't want to play on a pre-made unless I know the people. This is somewhat of a vicious circle for me. I don't want to group with folks unless I know them. But I can't get to know them unless I group up. This is exactly the opposite of how I usually make friends in a game.

But really my main point is that if we just point people to the existing workaround but don't discuss why this is not an optimal solution, the devs will have less incentive to add this feature to the game. The more we express our opinion about how an in-game solution is needed, the better PGI will be able to gauge the relative priority of this feature.

[Dago Red]

Ok I pretty much drop in chat with groups exclusively these days but I also pugged for a good 4 months and I feel that build in VOIP would help immensely.

Taking out the tactical element even and you still have the added community building aspect of people being able to talk to each other properly in match. Doubly so if you could link it up so you could quickly pop on one with anyone on your friends list.

[TLBFestus]

Nikolai Lubkiewicz, on 14 May 2014 - 07:40 AM, said:

The original implementation of C3 did not turn out to be as popular as other third-party VOIP options.

We are currently investigating alternate solutions we can build into the game.

what he meant to say was "The Original implementation of C3 turned out to be a total piece of feces making all other VOIP options superior by default. Working as intended".

Edited by TLBFestus, 15 May 2014 - 08:16 AM.

[Boris The Spider]

Zag, I don't think the workaround is perfect, I have been asking for in-game VOIP since closed beta, its just has not been forthcoming. And my point is not that we should just point people to workaround and forget about pressuring PGI to implement a good complementary VOIP system that is useful to all parties, I'm all for that! But that people should stop saying things about the workaround that are patently untrue, either through ignorance of never having tried or it out of some misguided agenda.

We have had a system in place for unaffiliated casual players to drop in and form quick pick-up groups with as little as 3 mouse clicks, that is practically identical in form and function to the Battlefield squad interface, but as you can see from the responses I'm getting on this thread, you have people who insist that you have a binary choice of join a house/guild/corp or play solo, while completely ignoring the public pick-up option. That's all I'm getting at. How many players are we happy to lose because they do not know this option exists?

As for the 'deal with it' what I'm responding to you saying that a VPUG deprives your team of an organised pre-made, that is how it's going to be when they put one per side, that is how it is at the minute. Most of the time when people are complaining that they don't have a pre-made on their team and they got stomped because if it, is because the pre-made house unit that is easily identifiable has been matched against a 4 man VOIP pick-up group that is invisible to most players. It is a balance issue that is only going to be made more apparent with the one per side change.

[Zaggeron]

Boris The Spider, on 15 May 2014 - 10:09 AM, said:

Zag, I don't think the workaround is perfect, I have been asking for in-game VOIP since closed beta, its just has not been forthcoming. And my point is not that we should just point people to workaround and forget about pressuring PGI to implement a good complementary VOIP system that is useful to all parties, I'm all for that! But that people should stop saying things about the workaround that are patently untrue, either through ignorance of never having tried or it out of some misguided agenda.

Fair enough. In my original response to you I may have lost the original context of your reply and interpreted your attitude as similar to other folks who question why we need it when when have TS.

Boris The Spider, on 15 May 2014 - 10:09 AM, said:

As for the 'deal with it' what I'm responding to you saying that a VPUG deprives your team of an organised pre-made, that is how it's going to be when they put one per side, that is how it is at the minute. Most of the time when people are complaining that they don't have a pre-made on their team and they got stomped because if it, is because the pre-made house unit that is easily identifiable has been matched against a 4 man VOIP pick-up group that is invisible to most players. It is a balance issue that is only going to be made more apparent with the one per side change.

OK. I guess I underestimated the percentage of premades that are ad hoc pick-up premades. It certainly isn't clear from the pinned post in New Player Help that the public server instructions are still valid since the post is from two years ago and references many things that have changed. And most of the subsequent posts are unit adverts or requests for groups. It would certainly help if there was a read only post regularly updated with public grouping details for TS or Mumble or whatever.

I certainly want to group (but not unit up necessarily), but as I've mentioned, the lack of in-game social features makes that really hard for me. If most of the premades are simply pickup premades, that points more than ever to the need to make that an in-game function because in that case the only difference between the PUGs and most of the premades would be voice coms and then, perhaps, PGI could relax some of the silly group limitations.

Edited by Zaggeron, 15 May 2014 - 10:45 AM.

[Boris The Spider]

Sadly, the number of pick-up-groups on public VOIP has dwindled over time. Some blame for this has to be taken by the forum communities attitude on both sides, behaviour in game and the developers. I don't think, at least any more, they are the majority of groups. But I don't think they are a small enough group to allow to be squeezed out of the game by catering too much to organised units or lone wolves.

A lot of people do not seem to appreciate that this is a demographic that contains: New players, players who invite friends from other games, family units, husband/wife, father/son, workmates who perhaps only play a handful of games a week as well as all the unaffiliated pick-up-groups.

That is why I am also not a proponent of increasing the group size cap from four right now, even with in-game VOIP, these casual groups do not scale up in power as they increase in size the same way as organised units do. Personal I think the best way separate the competitive players from the casual players will be to offer high risk/high reward game modes as part of community warfare at a later date.

Edited by Boris The Spider, 15 May 2014 - 12:11 PM.

[Zaggeron]

Boris The Spider, on 15 May 2014 - 12:09 PM, said:

That is why I am also not a proponent of increasing the group size cap from four right now, even with in-game VOIP, these casual groups do not scale up in power as they increase in size the same way as organised units do. Personal I think the best way separate the competitive players from the casual players will be to offer high risk/high reward game modes as part of community warfare at a later date.

Okay, assuming we had a matchmaker that more closely matched skill levels (perhaps all we need is a larger pool of players for the current matchmaker to work with) wouldn't the organized vs. pickup group skill/power sort of work itself out. If Bob and his three pals practice together and end up being a great team, their Elo should rise accordingly and hence they would be less likely to be matched against groups with lower skills. It matchmaking worked as intended, there should be no reason to limit the size or number of groups on a team. But perhaps there simply isn't a large enough user base this to work well

[Monarch Black]

All this "use 3rd party external chats for public random battles" talk is silly in my opinion. Over 10 years ago, I could jump in a Counter-strike match and talk to everyone on my team. Strategies were made, the team could work together and adapt to changing conditions, and you got to know people. Still have many of those friends online today. Also, from this point forward, I almost never read chat during a match. Typing in video games is something that should have never made it past the 90s or very early 2000s. If a game doesn't have some way to talk built into it today, I don't consider it a legitimate online game. End of story as far as I'm concerned.