589 replies to this topic

[Diomed]

Again, including VIOP in-game has consequences: people will blare music, offensive rants, offensive content, loud noises and other forms of grief. Players will hold down their mic button, or have their voice activation threshold too low so their mic is always open. VOIP can be used to grief other players. Will there be admins in every MWO server to deal with the buffoons? I doubt it.

And don't give me this, "teams with VOIP will always win." nonsense. There are few absolutes when it comes to online gaming. I have seen entire teams of pre-made platoons, some have admited to voice, in World of Tanks, and that team looses 15-3.

Yes, teamwork is important. Yes, VOIP can aid in coordination and improve teamwork. Yes, you can have good teamwork WITHOUT VOIP. Yes, you can loose a match even with good teamwork and VOIP. The most important element to online, skill-based tactical combat games: DO NOT SUCK.

Edited by Diomed, 07 April 2012 - 07:57 AM.

[Vexgrave Lars]

Diomed, on 07 April 2012 - 07:55 AM, said:

DO NOT SUCK.

I will paint that on the side of my mech

[Giftmacher]

Diomed, on 07 April 2012 - 07:55 AM, said:

Again, including VIOP in-game has consequences: people will blare music, offensive rants, offensive content, loud noises and other forms of grief. Players will hold down their mic button, or have their voice activation threshold too low so their mic is always open. VOIP can be used to grief other players. Will there be admins in every MWO server to deal with the buffoons? I doubt it.

And don't give me this, "teams with VOIP will always win." nonsense. There are few absolutes when it comes to online gaming. I have seen entire teams of pre-made platoons, some have admited to voice, in World of Tanks, and that team looses 15-3.

Yes, teamwork is important. Yes, VOIP can aid in coordination and improve teamwork. Yes, you can have good teamwork WITHOUT VOIP. Yes, you can loose a match even with good teamwork and VOIP. The most important element to online, skill-based tactical combat games: DO NOT SUCK.

The issues you mention are why there would need to be per-player muting, or the ability to boot people. Those exact same issues are also why most would think twice about handing out access to their private servers... after they'll still have to police their own bandwidth, 10-20 minute matches is going to mean a fair turn over, quite a bit of work.

and of course VOIP does not automatically confer a win, it's an aid to teamwork only if you can work as a team in the first place. I suppose the question about how useful VOIP will be is ultimately going to boil down to what kind of game MWO is going to be, a COD lone-wolf (what team work?) game, or a more BF/L4D style game? We'll see when the beta rolls around.

[Thorn Hallis]

As long as they implement the option to disable the ingame VOIP (and not only my microphone, I want to mute any player out there without cklicking on each and everyone), I'm okay with it.

[FinnMcKool]

Kill it all, and let the DEVs sort it out.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Giftmacher, on 07 April 2012 - 08:09 AM, said:

The issues you mention are why there would need to be per-player muting, or the ability to boot people. Those exact same issues are also why most would think twice about handing out access to their private servers... after they'll still have to police their own bandwidth, 10-20 minute matches is going to mean a fair turn over, quite a bit of work.

Now ofc to combat this on private servers is really simple, there called permissions.
Guests cant move channel or even talk without being given a temp permissions mask, that disappears on disconnect.

One time setup.

[Orzorn]

I'm just going to say this one last thing and be done with this thread:
I'm glad some of you understand the importance of communication, even if you don't support in-game VOIP (for whatever reason).

However, it seems some folks really contradict themselves. They claim that they only use third party VOIP, which means they do it all the time with their groups. So you get to have your VOIP, right? You get your communication. Yet some would claim that they don't want in-game VOIP because "people will blare music, offensive rants, offensive content, loud noises and other forms of grief". Yet any good VOIP has a mute.

So what I'm just reading from some people is that they're just fine with THEM having VOIP, but they'd absolutely hate if the unwashed masses got it, because 'they'll probably just abuse it/not use it/blare music/blah blah'.

Honestly, I expected less selfishness out of this community.

Edited by Orzorn, 07 April 2012 - 08:42 AM.

[Silent]

As long as we have the option to mute individual players in-game I am all for voice communication. If the developers eventually do get around to implementing it (probably because of this thread), I would like to urge them to make it nothing fancy and make sure its easy for us to mute people. There are a lot of games that for whatever reason have really horrible interfaces when it comes down to messing with voice options and muting.

[Giftmacher]

DV^McKenna, on 07 April 2012 - 08:38 AM, said:

One time setup.

Yup one time setup, every match every 20mins tops? Possibly for several players. I can well see people not bothering and as I said, once you find a couple of malcontents you're still going to have to boot them which is functionally identical to muting/addignore.

So really, I fail to see the advantage of running your own servers for keeping out riff raff (if you're going to extend an invite to anyone who asks).

Edited by Giftmacher, 07 April 2012 - 10:47 AM.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Giftmacher, on 07 April 2012 - 10:42 AM, said:

Yup one time setup, every match every 20mins tops? Possibly for several players. I can well see people not bothering and as I said, once you find a couple of malcontents you're still going to have to boot them which is functionally identical to muting/addignore.

So really, I fail to see the advantage of running your own servers for keeping out riff raff (if you're going to extend an invite to anyone who asks).

No permissions are a one time setup, not every match.

[Giftmacher]

DV^McKenna, on 07 April 2012 - 11:09 AM, said:

No permissions are a one time setup, not every match.

They are a one time setup per user, and so far as I'm aware placing won't stick from match to match. Hence my comment.

[Oderint dum Metuant]

Giftmacher, on 07 April 2012 - 11:11 AM, said:

They are a one time setup per user, and so far as I'm aware placing won't stick from match to match. Hence my comment.

Incorrect, basic user joins the server the server automaticaly sets him with no ability to see in channels,or speak, or do anything.
Players with permissions ie the clan can move said player wherever he needs to be and give voice to that one channel, this disappears once the pub player disconnects.

[Volthorne]

Orzorn, on 07 April 2012 - 08:40 AM, said:

I'm just going to say this one last thing and be done with this thread:
I'm glad some of you understand the importance of communication, even if you don't support in-game VOIP (for whatever reason).

However, it seems some folks really contradict themselves. They claim that they only use third party VOIP, which means they do it all the time with their groups. So you get to have your VOIP, right? You get your communication. Yet some would claim that they don't want in-game VOIP because "people will blare music, offensive rants, offensive content, loud noises and other forms of grief". Yet any good VOIP has a mute.

So what I'm just reading from some people is that they're just fine with THEM having VOIP, but they'd absolutely hate if the unwashed masses got it, because 'they'll probably just abuse it/not use it/blare music/blah blah'.

Honestly, I expected less selfishness out of this community.

In-game VOIP can be muted, sure. But once you start a mtch only to find out that the one random pub on your team is a total a**hat, it's too late to do anything about it (mute him? Fine, but to counter he'll probably follow you and shoot lasers into the sir to give away your position). Private servers give the opportunity to see what a player is like BEFORE you go in-game.

If I could get my blasted port forwarding to work, I'd gladly welcome anyone into my TeamSpeak server, provided they follow the basic (read: common sense) rules that I've set. Otherwise I'll toss their a** off my server.

Edited by Volthorne, 07 April 2012 - 11:33 AM.

[Giftmacher]

DV^McKenna, on 07 April 2012 - 11:24 AM, said:

Incorrect, basic user joins the server the server automaticaly sets him with no ability to see in channels,or speak, or do anything.
Players with permissions ie the clan can move said player wherever he needs to be and give voice to that one channel, this disappears once the pub player disconnects.

So I was correct, yes you can let someone connect but someone must intervene to "unmute" an incoming player. This is exactly what I mean about there being very little difference between muting/addignore.

For comparison you have:

in game VOIP (with persistent ignore lists).
Start a game, auto join a team channel, discover the odd *****, add ignore them - problem solved (or at worst switch the whole thing off).

or

Your own server, allow any connections but must first hand over server details, wait for the players to connect (assuming they have your chosen client) then "unmute" whoever has joined, only to boot them when it turns out they're annoying.

In fact it sounds even more of a hassle, one way or another you're going to have to make some sort of intervention, administrative or muting. Unless you know a priori that someone is an ***** just how will a private server better isolate the morons cf. mute? They're functionally equivalent, you'll need to hear someone before making a choice.

[Giftmacher]

Volthorne, on 07 April 2012 - 11:33 AM, said:

In-game VOIP can be muted, sure. But once you start a mtch only to find out that the one random pub on your team is a total a**hat, it's too late to do anything about it (mute him? Fine, but to counter he'll probably follow you and shoot lasers into the sir to give away your position). Private servers give the opportunity to see what a player is like BEFORE you go in-game.

If I could get my blasted port forwarding to work, I'd gladly welcome anyone into my TeamSpeak server, provided they follow the basic (read: common sense) rules that I've set. Otherwise I'll toss their a** off my server.

Do we know we'll have a chance to chat with our team players before hand? And even if we do, they'll know you've got a server if you assess them before a match starts. So unless we get a chance to boot people before a match (not a feature I've seen mentioned, though I'm happy to be corrected), then you'll still get griefed.

In fact there's no reason VOIP couldn't extend to the lobby (as in L4D), allowing team members to assess each other, so if the option to boot the odd ***** was implemented then in game VOIP would work as well as a private server.

[rollermint]

I don't particularly care about VOIP, due to the abundance of third party softwares.

I rather they focus on the core game play first and adding more content, maps and mechs for the next few months after launch.
Yes, if you are really serious about your win/loss rate, then your usual pug group won't be functioning at their best efficiency but if you are really that serious, you should already have or be looking for a regular crew to be playing the game with.

Besides, nobody has any idea hows the regular matches are going to be like.

PGI isn't exactly a AAA studio (budgetary wise) that they can afford hundreds of personnel to be doing everything and offering all sorts of features you might expect from AAA studios like IW or Dice or Valve. I think alot of folks here are a little bit overkill in their expectations of the game. You'll only end up disappointed.

[Victor Morson]

Diomed, on 07 April 2012 - 07:55 AM, said:

Again, including VIOP in-game has consequences: people will blare music, offensive rants, offensive content, loud noises and other forms of grief. Players will hold down their mic button, or have their voice activation threshold too low so their mic is always open. VOIP can be used to grief other players. Will there be admins in every MWO server to deal with the buffoons? I doubt it.

Most games have a way of muting, or otherwise silencing, players that do this. I should point out anyone that is griefing the VOIP coms will be almost positively be griefing you in game anyway, so a vote kick isn't even out of the option. I would say 95% of the time I've encountered someone who decides to blare loud music either them shooting you in the back or charging suicidally into the enemy on purpose is about 10 seconds behind.

So really, if griefers are your biggest problem with VoIP you need to consider griefers your problem in general. If you think people grief voice chat only to play a serious, skilled game you haven't run into many.

Diomed, on 07 April 2012 - 07:55 AM, said:

And don't give me this, "teams with VOIP will always win." nonsense. There are few absolutes when it comes to online gaming. I have seen entire teams of pre-made platoons, some have admited to voice, in World of Tanks, and that team looses 15-3.

A worse team with VOIP can beat a better team without, in particular in MechWarrior. Again, the biggest difference between MW and something like, say, Call of Duty is this: Your potential to do damage, and take it. That's really the biggest thing. In most modern FPS games you can drop a guy in a couple hits - if you encounter 5 enemies a voice warning can be nice, but all in all, you can probably kill half of them if you're competent. In MechWarrior if you have 5 guys focus-firing your damaged area, you're likely to get off all of one shot before you've been blown to total smithereens. Focus fire called-shots is probably the #1 most important thing to MW, followed by group movement.

Diomed, on 07 April 2012 - 07:55 AM, said:

Yes, teamwork is important. Yes, VOIP can aid in coordination and improve teamwork. Yes, you can have good teamwork WITHOUT VOIP. Yes, you can loose a match even with good teamwork and VOIP. The most important element to online, skill-based tactical combat games: DO NOT SUCK.

Really again, that's the problem: MechWarrior is skill based, sure, but one 'mech firing at another 'mech can take quite a while to resolve. 10 'mechs firing at another 'mech can take all of 2 seconds. If you can coordinate your team to position in a way to get a shot, and fire at the same target, I do not care if you are the best pilot/gunner that ever existed, you won't even get to inflict a tiny bit of damage before you're long gone. At the very, very least (I wouldn't expect a randomized game to have good positioning tactics) being able to call fire alone - just one guy saying stuff like "Target the Catapult, Victor Morson, right torso damaged" (for example) in a brawl alone can literally turn the tide of the entire fight. If you have 12 guys shooting, say, 6 different targets versus 12 guys shooting 1 target a time, the 6 different target team will be lucky if they even inflict a single kill.

rollermint, on 07 April 2012 - 11:53 AM, said:

I don't particularly care about VOIP, due to the abundance of third party softwares.

Seriously, I am 100% convinced nobody reads more than the first two lines of the OP before posting when they say this. Nobody, I mean nobody, is concerned about organized teams having voice chat.

I will be on the Aces team speak server. I also probably won't be disconnecting from the Aces server, so if I want to talk to people in a public game (say we drop with a lance of Aces), I'll be typing and not joining some hypothetical TS server. If the game had VoIP, I could do both, and that would be a very good thing.

rollermint, on 07 April 2012 - 11:53 AM, said:

I rather they focus on the core game play first and adding more content, maps and mechs for the next few months after launch.

Yes, if you are really serious about your win/loss rate, then your usual pug group won't be functioning at their best efficiency but if you are really that serious, you should already have or be looking for a regular crew to be playing the game with.

Besides, nobody has any idea hows the regular matches are going to be like.

With zero coordination, I have a good idea how they'll be, and it won't be pretty. I'm not worried about my win/loss rate, but rather the fact I full well expect un-voiced pubs to come marching across the field while my company is calling target after target and dropping them all, only to take totally scattered unfocused fire that lets our battered units just step out of the fight.

In other words, I expect a slaughter. I don't want that, because that will frustrate the hell out of pubbies. That means they stop playing. That means it hurts the game for all of us.

I'm not saying they'll be able to win consistently if they're able to talk, but I do think it will help them at least coordinating enough to return fire and maybe even score kills sometime. It's just the nature of the game.

rollermint, on 07 April 2012 - 11:53 AM, said:

PGI isn't exactly a AAA studio (budgetary wise) that they can afford hundreds of personnel to be doing everything and offering all sorts of features you might expect from AAA studios like IW or Dice or Valve. I think alot of folks here are a little bit overkill in their expectations of the game. You'll only end up disappointed.

They are, however, using a AAA engine that I believe even has built in VoIP. It's not optimized - the VoIP in the original Crysis engine was awful - but it's something they can tweak, not develop from scratch. It's not like this game is running on Unity or something.

Also, they are a very, very experienced studio even though they haven't had a chance to really make a title on their own in a while and it's obvious from what we've seen so far that every facet of this game has been handled by a group that not only knows MechWarrior well, but also how to make a great looking title. I think you are vastly underselling them based on their past experience.

Edited by Victor Morson, 07 April 2012 - 12:24 PM.

[ArchSight]

I disable in game VOIP because they are usually trolls screaming on it instead of barking orders. Most legit gamers don't use it because ventrillo and teamspeak is better at enforcing rules to keep trolls in there place. The players that don't get on teamspeak or ventrillo are 90% more likely that they don't have a microphone to speak back to you with VOIP. You don't need to pay for a server with teamspeak just deal with hosting it. A hosted Teamspeak server holds 16 players; only 12 will be on your team.

Not supporting VOIP in MWO was a good call; not a bad mistake that will ruin everything. If the player doesn't listen to the chat messages from the commander they will also not listen to someone barking orders over VOIP. If they are not willing to work with you they are already dead.

You need 12 players that know what to do before you enter the match. Other wise, who ever just jumps in is going to be lost; even when you are barking orders at them with a VOIP program. Just make more friends to get to the max number of 12 and train there ***** tell they spew lead and bubblegum on the enemy team.

Edited by ArchSight, 07 April 2012 - 12:29 PM.

[Victor Morson]

ArchSight, on 07 April 2012 - 12:25 PM, said:

I disable in game VOIP because they are usually trolls screaming on it instead of barking orders. Most legit gamers don't use it because ventrillo and teamspeak is better at enforcing rules to keep trolls in there place. The players that don't get on teamspeak or ventrillo are 90% more likely that they don't have a microphone to speak back to you with VOIP. You don't need to pay for a server with teamspeak just deal with hosting it. A hosted Teamspeak server holds 16 players; only 12 will be on your team.

I'm still wondering how all you people are having such a radically different experience with trolls. I've clocked a LOT (way, way too many) hours into games with VoIP and I'd say trolls account for less than 5% of the player base, and are kicked or muted promptly without fail.

My suspicion is that many of you must be coming from the Xbox 360. I tried playing GTA4's multiplayer on there and it was a cascade of maddening idiocy that was a maelstrom of racism, rapping, rambling and people trying to convince you how "hard" they were because of their city. Then again, they also all insisted on using autoaim on the smallest possible maps "'cause we make more money that way!" Even my best experiences with non-friend VoIP on 360 have been somebody blaring their TV or talking on the phone into the mic.

If that's your experience, I'm sorry but.. I understand. I really do. I completely get why you hate VoIP. That also doesn't match my experience on PC, at all. In particular in teamwork centric games; the more hardcore and team oriented they are, the less this is a problem. You cannot judge a PC sim's voice chat by this standard.

Edited by Victor Morson, 07 April 2012 - 01:17 PM.

[Giftmacher]

ArchSight, on 07 April 2012 - 12:25 PM, said:

Not supporting VOIP in MWO was a good call; not a bad mistake that will ruin everything.

Just to be clear, I'm not saying it will ruin everything.

Victor Morson, on 07 April 2012 - 12:53 PM, said:

I'm still wondering how all you people are having such a radically different experience with trolls. I've clocked a LOT (way, way too many) hours into games with VoIP and I'd say trolls account for less than 5% of the player base, and are kicked or muted promptly without fail.

My suspicion is that many of you must be coming from the Xbox 360.

I suspect that as well, but even in xbox land not all games are equal, my mates play BF on xbox and tell me the VOIP has way fewer trolls than COD. I think demographics are game and platform dependent; in that regard here's hoping MWO attracts an awesome demographic.