589 replies to this topic

[StandingCow]

People/clans buy their own teamspeak/ventrillo/mumble servers.

[Victor Morson]

Titus Pullo XIII, on 06 April 2012 - 12:54 AM, said:

I do not think Teamspeak means what you think it means.

He was replying to a guy that was seriously suggesting that everyone dog pile onto the single community server run for MWLL. So he understands perfectly.

[Titus Pullo XIII]

I recline corrected.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

In game VoIP is not required, and would be a mistake to include, we've managed in previous Mechwarrior games without it.
Most of the community will belong to already formed clans/teams/units spanning multiple games and already have their own VOIP servers so its a waste of development time.

Smaller groups of players can host their VOIP off their own machine for a small group of players its not that bandwidth intensive.

Heck its not even that expensive to pay for a mumble server, you can get yourself a website and 10 person mumble server over at www.enjin.com for $7 a month.....stupidly cheap.

Edited by DV^McKenna, 06 April 2012 - 01:17 AM.

[Slepnir]

I play with an online gaming clan(mostly for the battlefield series) and we will be using our ventrilo channel to do our communitcations.

[Nik Van Rhijn]

DV^McKenna, on 06 April 2012 - 01:15 AM, said:

In game VoIP is not required, and would be a mistake to include, we've managed in previous Mechwarrior games without it.
Most of the community will belong to already formed clans/teams/units spanning multiple games and already have their own VOIP servers so its a waste of development time.

Smaller groups of players can host their VOIP off their own machine for a small group of players its not that bandwidth intensive.

Heck its not even that expensive to pay for a mumble server, you can get yourself a website and 10 person mumble server over at www.enjin.com for $7 a month.....stupidly cheap.

So your expecting the majority of people to already be in clans and there will be very few people playing who are not?

[Archtus]

For all the people saying sign up with a group and use their server/don't PUG/ what have you...

I. ALWAYS. PUG.

I'm up at odd hours. I'm up at all hours. My guild/team/clan? Not so much. I can't tell you how many times I've had to PUG for the sake of a single game/pvp/quest. Seriously, even without all the awesomeness of EW, downing comms, hacking comms, VoIP is almost necessary.

This is what I would love to see:
PUG joins game.
"Hey guys, what's the voice info"
"**** you noob"
"no noobs in voice"
"get your own server"
"Use text noob"
---
PUG has disconnected.

Or, maybe this:

PUG joins game.
"Hey guys, what's the voice info"
"TS2 <Server info>"
"Ok, I'mma tab out and put it in." (Not knowing this game will suffer the potential crash error for alt tabbing out. Seriously, this issue alone is something that needs to be tested. Extensively.)
"NO!"
"NO!"
"NO!"
"Don't do it!"
PUG has been disconnected

[Victor Morson]

DV^McKenna, on 06 April 2012 - 01:15 AM, said:

In game VoIP is not required, and would be a mistake to include, we've managed in previous Mechwarrior games without it.

Previous games existed before the era of easily available voice communications. Hell, Roger Wilco was the best option for us for years. That's a really bad line of reasoning. "Back in my day we didn't have any of these fancy shader whatchyamacallits, get your directX off my lawn!"

Previous games existed before the era of easily available voice communications. Hell, Roger Wilco was the best option for us for years. That's a really bad line of reasoning. "Back in my day we didn't have any of these fancy shader whatchyamacallits, get your directX off my lawn!"

DV^McKenna, on 06 April 2012 - 01:15 AM, said:

Most of the community will belong to already formed clans/teams/units spanning multiple games and already have their own VOIP servers so its a waste of development time.

Smaller groups of players can host their VOIP off their own machine for a small group of players its not that bandwidth intensive.

This is not at all true. This line of reasoning is basically tunnel vision; unorganized casual pubbies will always outnumber organized players like most of us on the forums are by a huge margin, in particular in a F2P AAA title like this. You will be facing masses who don't know BattleTech from Robotech and they will always outnumber you 10:1. Those that convert to organized teams will do so through getting to know people, but it won't change this.

I'm not meaning this as insulting, but just that it's the case. If we want the game to be successful and last beyond a niche audience, it has to be the case. These people will scatter to the four winds without the ability for people that know what they're doing to talk to them and try to put some semblance of order into matches, I'm sure of it. Voice chat is incredibly important in games like these and is considered a common feature in modern gaming. I was actually shocked to hear it wasn't going to be in.

I do understand PGI's first thought of making coms part of the game and second thought of "organized teams will just cheat then" because that's true. I'm not looking for fancy - just the ability to talk to my team.

DV^McKenna, on 06 April 2012 - 01:15 AM, said:

Heck its not even that expensive to pay for a mumble server, you can get yourself a website and 10 person mumble server over at www.enjin.com for $7 a month.....stupidly cheap.

Yes, organized units will setup their own voice chat methods. Yes it doesn't cost much. No, that does not apply again to the 90% of casual players we're likely to run up against.

You have to understand another key difference between MWO and MW4 is the lack of single player. You won't have the "got this for the campaign" crowd here- every single pubbie will be playing online, entirely uncoordinated and probably feeling "Why should I have to get a secondary program and try to convince other unaffiliated people to join my server and pay a monthly fee to just talk to people?" You have to think outside of us ex-NBT league veterans.

Personally, I want to drop with a lance of Aces into games and get to know people, add them to my friends list if there is one and maybe even recruit some folks. Built in voice chat would make this a massive amount easier.

[pursang]

The devs have said that they've been coordinating themselves well enough with the chat system alone. Do you people REALLY want them to put in precious resources into designing a built-in VOIP system that only a fraction of the player base will use? How many things can you live without? Your favourite 'Mech? Customization options? Balanced gameplay?

TANSTAAFR.

Edited by pursang, 06 April 2012 - 03:31 AM.

[Archtus]

pursang, on 06 April 2012 - 03:30 AM, said:

The devs have said that they've been coordinating themselves well enough with the chat system alone.

The DEVS, You know, the guys making the game? That's like saying an engineer has no problem fixing the engine he invented.

I'm pretty sure this 'fraction' of the player base that will use a built in VoIP is larger than some think. I'm not thinking 1/10th will use it, I'm almost certain at least half of the player base would use it if it's there.

Also...

pursang, on 06 April 2012 - 03:30 AM, said:

TANSTAAFR.

What?

Edited by Archtus, 06 April 2012 - 04:33 AM.

[Hartsblade]

Victor Morson, on 06 April 2012 - 12:52 AM, said:

That works fine.. for a game the scale of MWLL. MWO will have a magnitude more players just by it's nature and no single Team Speak server is even remotely going to cut it.

To put it in perspective for you, MWLL has about 200 or so active players and MWO has passed the 60,000 sign up mark. This is not going to work.



Looks like I was beaten to this point, but it is a damned good one. Also remember, we're dealing with a large population of casual fans, far more than MWLL - we're not going to have people file onto TS servers (or even necessarily HAVE TS), then join their team appropriate channel. This stuff needs to be locked and integrated for it to work outside of per-established, organized teams.

Victor Morson, on 06 April 2012 - 01:02 AM, said:

He was replying to a guy that was seriously suggesting that everyone dog pile onto the single community server run for MWLL. So he understands perfectly.

I think you both misinterpreted my post. I was not suggesting that we" dog pile" on 1 TS server. I was just supplying information about an already exiting Community Server, and that a number of MWO Units have already adopted it as "home"...no more no less.

But you are correct, there is noway the entire MWO community can use a single TS server, but that's okay because it won't have to. As pointed out in a number of posts most of the large House and Merc Units will have there own VOIP server (most large Houses/Mercs are coming from pre-excisting clans from other games and have had their own VOIP solution foe sometime). Organized teams will have organized communications outside of the game.

As for the casual player, if they are dropping with a Unit, hopefully they will join that Units VOIP of choice. If they are dropping solo then they hopefully will have a chance to organize the team onto a public/private VOIP server in the gmae Lobby (asuming that there is a form of pre-drop setup).

The NGNG server is just example of an available public server, one that just happens to be Mechwarrior friendly. The TS folks also have servers that you can set up channels for matches (and I beleive they can be password protected to keep out trolls). Another option is to have a member of your team host a TS server on a laptop, extra "old" pc, or even on the same pc that they are running the game. It is free to host your own small private server...just download, setup and go. So TS can be a no cost solution for the casual player as well. Sure it may take an extra step to organize a group of casual player, and you can't make anyone join the TS server if they don't want to, but you can't make them use in game VOIP either.

I don't have a ton of experience with Vent, but it is pretty much the same thing.

All that being said, I understand the desire for in game VOIP, but it is not a must have for me. There are other options available that can easily fill the role.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Nik Van Rhijn, on 06 April 2012 - 01:57 AM, said:

So your expecting the majority of people to already be in clans and there will be very few people playing who are not?

So your looking to play a Multiplayer Team based combat game on your own? People with sense will find teams, even if they are just casual hang out and play teams.
Lone Wolf should never have been included IMO it really serves very little purpose.

Victor Morson, on 06 April 2012 - 03:07 AM, said:

Previous games existed before the era of easily available voice communications. Hell, Roger Wilco was the best option for us for years. That's a really bad line of reasoning. "Back in my day we didn't have any of these fancy shader whatchyamacallits, get your directX off my lawn!"



This is not at all true. This line of reasoning is basically tunnel vision; unorganized casual pubbies will always outnumber organized players like most of us on the forums are by a huge margin, in particular in a F2P AAA title like this. You will be facing masses who don't know BattleTech from Robotech and they will always outnumber you 10:1. Those that convert to organized teams will do so through getting to know people, but it won't change this.

I'm not meaning this as insulting, but just that it's the case. If we want the game to be successful and last beyond a niche audience, it has to be the case. These people will scatter to the four winds without the ability for people that know what they're doing to talk to them and try to put some semblance of order into matches, I'm sure of it. Voice chat is incredibly important in games like these and is considered a common feature in modern gaming. I was actually shocked to hear it wasn't going to be in.

I do understand PGI's first thought of making coms part of the game and second thought of "organized teams will just cheat then" because that's true. I'm not looking for fancy - just the ability to talk to my team.



Yes, organized units will setup their own voice chat methods. Yes it doesn't cost much. No, that does not apply again to the 90% of casual players we're likely to run up against.

You have to understand another key difference between MWO and MW4 is the lack of single player. You won't have the "got this for the campaign" crowd here- every single pubbie will be playing online, entirely uncoordinated and probably feeling "Why should I have to get a secondary program and try to convince other unaffiliated people to join my server and pay a monthly fee to just talk to people?" You have to think outside of us ex-NBT league veterans.

Personally, I want to drop with a lance of Aces into games and get to know people, add them to my friends list if there is one and maybe even recruit some folks. Built in voice chat would make this a massive amount easier.

Why? if you already have a unit do yourself a favor and get private voice comms, NBT has nothing to do with it, NBT had pub servers you know , and they did not have in game VoIP and still were not a problem to co-ordinate, map awareness and typing is handy.

Like i keep saying you do not have to pay for anything 3rd party, its is really simple to setup a Teamspeak/Mumble server of your own and host it.

[Aegis Kleais]

Archtus, on 06 April 2012 - 02:02 AM, said:

For all the people saying sign up with a group and use their server/don't PUG/ what have you...

I. ALWAYS. PUG.

I'm up at odd hours. I'm up at all hours. My guild/team/clan? Not so much. I can't tell you how many times I've had to PUG for the sake of a single game/pvp/quest. Seriously, even without all the awesomeness of EW, downing comms, hacking comms, VoIP is almost necessary.

This is what I would love to see:
PUG joins game.
"Hey guys, what's the voice info"
"**** you noob"
"no noobs in voice"
"get your own server"
"Use text noob"
---
PUG has disconnected.

Or, maybe this:

PUG joins game.
"Hey guys, what's the voice info"
"TS2 <Server info>"
"Ok, I'mma tab out and put it in." (Not knowing this game will suffer the potential crash error for alt tabbing out. Seriously, this issue alone is something that needs to be tested. Extensively.)
"NO!"
"NO!"
"NO!"
"Don't do it!"
PUG has been disconnected

Devices can register pseudo protocols which can be rigged to be handled by the application. For example, Steam uses a "steam" protocol that can be sent variables which indicate which game to run, which server IP to join, etc in 1 fell swoop.

It would be nice if TS or your chat app of choice would do likewise, and the game could have a link that you click on which will boot TS in the BG and connect to the server/channel. Maybe even see what team/lance you're on and move you to specific rooms. Integration would be nice cause it is sad, like you state, how many games still get wonky when you alt tab out of them.

[empath]

Archtus, on 06 April 2012 - 04:33 AM, said:

The DEVS, You know, the guys making the game? That's like saying an engineer has no problem fixing the engine he invented.

I'm pretty sure this 'fraction' of the player base that will use a built in VoIP is larger than some think. I'm not thinking 1/10th will use it, I'm almost certain at least half of the player base would use it if it's there.

And I'm pretty sure you're guessing about an unknown factor in the 'silent majority' of 70,000 registered people here - the vast number of people who have signed up and never made a single post. We know NOTHING about these people other than they're willing to go through a forum registration process. Well, one other thing - we know that they have chosen to never post here. WHY they made that choice is NOT one of the things we know, and in all probablity there are a host of different reason, but political pollsters have TONS more information to judge aggregate responses than what we have to go on.

Your opinion is just that, yours. I'm not saying you don't have a right to opine that 35,000 people will use an internal vox comms feature of this yet-to-be-released-game. I *am* saying that my opinion doesn't match yours.

Quote

Also...


{prev poster said "TANSTAAFR"}


What?

"There's No Such Thing As A Free Ride" - I think the person was noting that every feature included comes with price tags attached (also based on the REST of the person's post).

• PGI has already said they are NOT going to work on including internal vox comms for launch.
  
• open beta is supposed to be only a few months away.
  
• reversing this decision, reworking the client to include the feature WILL require time, effort, will introduce another element of complexity (and subsequent source of bugs) as well as increase size and processing & hardware demand the resultant client will put on players' computers and WILL DELAY DEVELOPMENT AND LAUNCH.

Are you sure you want this that badly?

[Warwulf]

my two cents

The arguments I've mainly heard AGAINST voice comms are one of two things.

1. The kiddies will just spam the voice chat.
Well, we're the die hard community on here and how much random spamming have we heard? The simple fact that this isn't just another FPS with a more detailed control system somewhere between fps and flight sim means that a more mature minded player is the audience for it. Combine this with the ability to mute individuals and I don't see this being a problem.

2. I use a 3rd party application so I don't need it.
Fair enough, you're all sorted. The problem here lies with the more casual player, the new guys who're just turning up or will want to try it in the future. And what about the guys who want a game at a time when the majority of their guild is online. All of us have joined guilds on here and want to play competitively but there's games I play and play to win without wanting to devote my life to them, I can only assume you guys do the same.

Voice comms aren't just a nice to have, They're a must have.
I've been playing tribes ascend since the closed beta came out, I played tribes 2 before that. the shortcut voice commands are amazingly useful, but there's times when you need to convey something quickly that just isn't on there. VWE shouts incoming hostiles but won't let me tell the rest of the team there are cloaked hostiles in the base and btw what a lovely target I make while I type this. Defend The Generator will either be ignored by people concentrating on the flag, bring in people who won't know what to expect or bring a large number of people in and leave us exposed. I've been desperate for voice comms in that game but at the same time known a lot of people would just spam it or use it for chat because they already do that with text chat in some games.

I know that TeamSpeak can be integrated into games and would suggest this as a way to get VOIP into the game. It could be set up with a couple of channels so you could have Team Voice and a separate channel for your personal Guild Chat. This would be in the options tab in the menu you hit by pressing escape and details could be sent by text chat if you want to invite people to your server and in competitive play would allow for an overall broadcast system to report team wide and if you have the server allow each lance to have their own channel for things that don't need to be broadcast higher up.

These are just my thoughts, I strongly believe in a role-specific, tactical and above all team-based game like this effective communications will be the key to victory and no one will enjoy a game they try out where they start with a clear and massive disadvantage.

constructive criticism always welcome, especially seeing as this is just off the cuff.

[pursang]

Archtus, on 06 April 2012 - 04:33 AM, said:

The DEVS, You know, the guys making the game? That's like saying an engineer has no problem fixing the engine he invented.

I'm pretty sure this 'fraction' of the player base that will use a built in VoIP is larger than some think. I'm not thinking 1/10th will use it, I'm almost certain at least half of the player base would use it if it's there.

That is a very... odd analogy. Why would the developers have trouble fixing thier own game? Who are you to say what needs to be fixed and what doesn't? Have you played the game yet? Can you actually say with authority that this game doesn't play just fine without VOIP?

And can you name the last AAA F2P game that you can think of in which half or more of the player base uses its built-in VOIP?

No?

Archtus, on 06 April 2012 - 04:33 AM, said:

Also...





What?

There Ain't No Such Thang As A Free Ride. It's a bit of an old acronym - it basically means that theres no such thing as "free things". If you want something, then it's going to cost something. Any time and resources put into implementing VOIP into this game means that it will cost the game in some other way. Believe it or not, but PGI is working with budget and time constraints. And unfortunately those things don't exactly grow on trees.

Edited by pursang, 06 April 2012 - 05:54 AM.

[Dread Render]

It would be best for MWO to have its own VOIP.
I have skype for family and a few gamer friends but I do not know any other mechwarrior fans. I moved from my home town a long time ago so now i will just be joining whoever needs another player. Will they have skype or even want to take the time to set me up with them?

MWO must get its own voice thing because it just gets to hectic to try and type information in the heat of battle.

[Archtus]

I've already stated before that I would gladly wait longer for this game to have a built in VoIP included at launch.I've used Vent, I've used TS. I don't like having to tab out, input new server info, then tab back into a game, just to be able to reliably speak with my party. Having a built in VoIP will increase DEV time. Yes. It will also reduce the headache and lost playerbase for not having a built in VoIP.

I want to see ten people, as part of a preset group/guild/lance, who would honestly, willingly share their TS or Vent server info with PUGs.

It's something that just doesn't happen, and saying that if you want VoIP, download a half dozen programs just to be accepted as a PUG, albeit grudgingly, still smacks of rampant elitism.

I have already said this is a major deal for me, and is honestly a deal breaker. I have no problem waiting a bit longer for a game that does not yet have a release date.

What's another month or two to us?

[pursang]

Archtus, on 06 April 2012 - 06:09 AM, said:

I've already stated before that I would gladly wait longer for this game to have a built in VoIP included at launch.I've used Vent, I've used TS. I don't like having to tab out, input new server info, then tab back into a game, just to be able to reliably speak with my party. Having a built in VoIP will increase DEV time. Yes. It will also reduce the headache and lost playerbase for not having a built in VoIP.

I want to see ten people, as part of a preset group/guild/lance, who would honestly, willingly share their TS or Vent server info with PUGs.

It's something that just doesn't happen, and saying that if you want VoIP, download a half dozen programs just to be accepted as a PUG, albeit grudgingly, still smacks of rampant elitism.

I have already said this is a major deal for me, and is honestly a deal breaker. I have no problem waiting a bit longer for a game that does not yet have a release date.

What's another month or two to us?

Rampant elitism? Who exactly is holding a gun to your head forcing you to use third-party programs? Or VOIP of any kind? Especially for a PUG of random people? What kind of games have you been playing that has been like this? I'd like to think that you can take responsibility for your own actions.

"A month or two" is quite a long time for a sub-par feature that I and most others will never even use.

You people do not make any sense whatsoever!

Edited by pursang, 06 April 2012 - 06:16 AM.

[Dread Render]

Archtus, on 06 April 2012 - 06:09 AM, said:

I've already stated before that I would gladly wait longer for this game to have a built in VoIP included at launch.I've used Vent, I've used

No! not me... Bring out the game ASAP... We can work the bugs out with the Dev team together :-)
...and we will together come to the decision that yeas, MWO Must have its own VoIP.