Discussion: NCsoft and Vivox Voice Chat

Over reacting?
no, not really.
I will never turn mine on.
Why?
I dont like to listen to people cuss.
I already have my profanity filter turned on, on all my alts and that just makes people type like this

O M G I G O T B E Y O N D T H E P R O F A N I T Y F I L T E R

I always respond to people like this

hey dummy if i wanted to read that jazz i would turn my profanity filter off.

do i want to actually hear some dimwit say, your alt is hot lets ****.

no. but i have read that exact line befor on more than 3 characters.

do i see why people would want this, no.
buts thats just me.
do i see it being abused alot?
yes, every minute of everyday, unless someone can moniter what is said.

i dont play the game to be offended, and with voice chat, there will be alotta people being offended.

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Over reacting?
no, not really.
I will never turn mine on.
Why?
I dont like to listen to people cuss.
I already have my profanity filter turned on, on all my alts and that just makes people type like this

O M G I G O T B E Y O N D T H E P R O F A N I T Y F I L T E R

I always respond to people like this

hey dummy if i wanted to read that jazz i would turn my profanity filter off.

do i want to actually hear some dimwit say, your alt is hot lets ****.

no. but i have read that exact line befor on more than 3 characters.

do i see why people would want this, no.
buts thats just me.
do i see it being abused alot?
yes, every minute of everyday, unless someone can moniter what is said.

i dont play the game to be offended, and with voice chat, there will be alotta people being offended.

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...What?

Yes. You're going to turn yours off. Good for you. So will I.

What's your point? I never said YOU specifically were overreacting, I'm just saying a lot of people are screaming like NCSoft has just shot their dog and lit them on fire, whereas if you think about, if NCSoft has even one braincell among them, they will make this purely optional, and that furthermore, in my experience, the presence of voice chat has not had a notable impact on those who cannot or chose not to use it. There is definitely some over reaction going on here.


In no game that I have ever played have I felt it obligatory or necessary to use voice chat, with the exception of end-game raiding in World of Warcraft. City of Heroes is definitely not going down that route.

So, how is anything I said relevant specifically to you? I wasn't addressing people like you who are just saying "meh, I don't like it, I'll turn it off", which is perfectly reasonable and is my reaction to.

You are, however, over reacting to my previous post. It was not directed at you, I don't know why you're acting like it was.

Unless you were generally responding to people saying that others are over reacting, but even then, no one was specifically directing them at you, from what I saw. You aren't over reacting.

I forsee that it'll work just like Voice Chat in WoW; no one will use it. Those who want to use voice chat are already using TS or Vent or something similar. Those who are not using them probably do not want voice chat, so they will not use it.

However, if NCSoft is branching out into the console market, it makes sense. You pretty much have to use voice chat with consoles, and by implementing it in all their games, it makes it easier. But I would be willing to bet money this will have almost no impact on City of Heroes/Villains.

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Virtue 50s:
Ice/Ice Blaster, Fire/Fire Dominator, Mind/Emp Controller, Shield/Axe Tanker, Spines/Regen Scrapper, Rad/Pain Corruptor, Petless Thugs/Traps MM(WHY!?), Widow
A zillion alts on Virtue and elsewhere.

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Yep, everytime I've seen threads in the past brought up about voice there was a good portion that were against the idea. Not sure what you were reading that makes you think the word "fickle" applies.

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Well, fandom includes people who love the idea and people who hate it. If we don't look fickle to the devs, we must at least look conflicted.

Returning to TerraDraconis' point, it's not surprising that a "solid group" who dislike the idea of voice turns up on message boards. This is, after all, a text medium which plays to their biases.

I'd never quit the game over the lack of built-in voice support, but it actually does annoy me to have to turn to external solutions to get the functionality. (It also annoys me to team with people who fail to respond in text chat, attack the enemy before the group is ready, etc. Gameplay with text chat is far from perfect.) If voice is someday added to the game, your future annoyance will be the cost of ending my present annoyance.


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Once again they've announced something with sketchy details.

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Yep. From a "City of" viewpoint, they actually haven't announced much of anything. Based on Lighthouse's info, all we're really looking at so far is the equivalent of an official Ventrilo/Teamspeak server that has to be logged into from outside the game. GeneralChaos has nothing to fear.

I will continue to sincerely hope that NCNC will look into what Vivox has coming and will take this much further, but that's just wishful thinking at this stage.

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As in lots of control, different voice modulators, text to voice and vs. versa (although the voice to text would be extra hard I'd say so I wouldn't hold them to that). Will take a lot to get me on board, but maybe they'll surprise me.

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Yeah! Fingers crossed.

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Once again they've announced something with sketchy details.

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That's because there aren't any actual details to announce. This is just like NC announcing they are going to start developing online games for consoles. It is nothing more than an informative press release of sorts. NC has decided to give us players advanced notice that they have teamed up with Vivox and will be providing voice chat services in the semi-near future as well as potentially bringing some other features. It is in the planning stages right now, quite possibly with nothing at all determined in terms of details. If they don't have details, how can they provide them for you? It is just an announcement of a new partnership, that is all.

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I know this is just a head's up, but it does bring up the issue, and it's actually one I've been wondering about since I first heard WoW was integrating voice chat.

I realize there are many people who will be helped by this; I'm a fast typist, but I understand that not all are or can be.

I can't use voice chat myself because I can't concentrate on what I'm doing. I may be one of 3 people in America who won't use a cell phone in a car unless it's a dire emergency for that very reason. For me, as with others, it also interferes with RP.

But again, that's all me, and I don't expect everyone to have the same experience I do.

I also second the concerns of how the integration of voice chat may negatively affect some aspects of the game.

I have a few friends I have stopped teaming with because they all use Vent. I've been invited to the channel, but I don't care to use it for the reasons stated above. However, because *they* are using Vent, they forget not everyone is *on* it...and it makes for some extremely boring teams because they forget to read the chat line or forget I can't hear them if they respond in the Vent channel. I love them dearly but I nearly fall asleep of boredom from the dead silence or scream in frustration because they implement something which I, of course, could not hear them plan.

If it were all as simple as just turning it off, that would be fine. How the turn-offs and the turn-ons manage to team successfully together is something different.

More than all of that, however, is the safety factor if there is no screen or voice alteration.

I'm female and I've RPed online for years. I learned quickly to be careful whom I talked to OOC, as there *are* such things as cyberstalkers. Heck, another reason I don't like Vent is that I used to work in radio and I have an appealing voice. I can deal with having friends tease me about it on a Vent channel, but I am absolutely not up to dealing with the typical teenage boy making prurient comments. I *know* my husband won't be. I doubt we'll be the only couple in that kind of position.

~Elizabeth

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Leave the saving of the world to the men? I don't think so! -Elastigirl

The SOLUS Foundation - http://www.solusfoundation.com
A Liberty-based bastion, seven years strong.

Another thought that just occurred to me, if the general responses in this thread are anything to go by, then I don't think people will have much trouble at all finding teams that aren't using voice-chat; if most people don't like it, than most people won't use it.

Of course, using the forums as a general indicator of a game's population's opinion of something is not necessarily going to give you an accurate feel; if you believe the WoW forums, that game is dead an no one plays and it's bleeding subscribers left and right, because everyone has quit, and every class is overpowered in PvP, except that every class needs buffs in PvP to beat the overpowered classes (which is every other class) and it has been this way since the game came out, and everything the devs do is killing the game and the Matrix Online/the new EQ2 expansion/Vanguard/DDO/Age of Conan and Warhammer/Puzzle Pirates will kill it.

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Virtue 50s:
Ice/Ice Blaster, Fire/Fire Dominator, Mind/Emp Controller, Shield/Axe Tanker, Spines/Regen Scrapper, Rad/Pain Corruptor, Petless Thugs/Traps MM(WHY!?), Widow
A zillion alts on Virtue and elsewhere.

Speaking from some experience since LOTRO has a built in chat system in place...

This is a very good thing for CoX and long overdue. TF's would be easier to run because of increased communication. Hamidon raiding could still use a vent server for communication. (HEY NCNC - how bout a raid UI now?)

My only gripe is it took them long enough.

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i dont play the game to be offended, and with voice chat, there will be alotta people being offended.

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You would be quite surprised how civil most convo's are in voice. Yes there are times of wildness and joking and carrying on....but most people who team together regularly rarely gets too far out of line.

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I don't use voice chat currently. More options always sounds good. I just wonder what effect this might have on game performance/lag.

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This game is a huge resource hog, so I'm curious as well.

I've had limited, albeit horrendous, experiences with Chatties. I can't stand to be on a team that *ignores* each other or gets uppity about people who don't have chat. I have been on Chattie teams where we are almost done with the mish and I've been kicked because no one *heard* me. I typed out in chat, but they weren't paying attention. Afterwards I get a tell saying "<Expletive Blah Blah for ignoring us and not following what we said on Vent <expletive> <racial slur> etc.... lrn2play..blah blah."

I am not a fast typer, but have improved my speed to an acceptable level through playing this game. I am perfectly content with the current typing. Have I thought about VoiceChat? Oh Gawds Yes! It would make things a little easier/faster as I'm not only slower while typing, but very dislexic. I still have the same issue as I've always had, preventing me from voice. My computer simply cannot handle running Chat and the Game because of the, imo, extremely high resource hogging, memory leak, and strain.

Am I Neo-Nazi about Anti-Chat...no. I'm just skeptical. If it turns out that we can all get along and run this with the game, I may give it a shot here and there with close friends, but still type in the old chatbox when we have a voiceless teammate.

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thats going to be the rub...unless there is a master recording of all channels....how do you prove the 12 year old with the microphone is dropping every F-bomb word combo he can think of over voice chat?

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Why would someone want to "police" voice chat? Treat it the same way you do text - if you don't like what someone's saying, slap them on Ignore.

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will there be an ignore_voice command?, i sure hope so.

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I already use voice chat with my friends who have a Steam ID. It seems to be quite low on resource requirement. Before that I was using YIM Chat. That was worse. I dont even have YIM on this machine anymore.

WRT to offensive chat, that is probably what I will use player rating for. If they offend me personally I will rate them low so I'll know not to team with them anymore.

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-Largo

Founder of A.G.O.N.Y. Supergroup on Victory
Member of Thought Sanctum VG on Victory
Member of St0rm Batallion SG on Guardian

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How much? $$$ Thats all I need to know.

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FREEEEEEEEEEEEEE~~~!!!!!!!

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Now that we have it how do i set it up and use it?

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Now that we have it how do i set it up and use it?

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I don't think we have it yet. It is still a coming feature.

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Uber Talgrim - level 50 emp/dark defender
Uber Rod - level 50 dark melee/regen scrapper
Rod Valdr - level 50 invuln/SS tanker
Talgrim - level 50 ninja/dark mastermind

OMG!! Please add these costume designs now!

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Now that we have it how do i set it up and use it?

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I don't think we have it yet. It is still a coming feature.

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darn thought i was missing something

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So what I am to understand here is that a lot of people wish to opt out of this (not me personally, I'm really excited); however, they are upset that other people will use this. Thus excluding them. This seems to be more a problem with the players than the feature. If you don't want to hear other players then don't use this, but don't cry and complain when other people say things that you don't hear. In short many of you seem to want to prevent those of us who are interested from using this simply because you don't want to use it and also don't want to be left behind. For those of you who have complained about issues from deafness to speaking foreign languages, I say oh well. Disabilities are just that the lack of an ability; if you are unable to use this system because of a disability, then don't. Do you get mad at all your regularly abled friends because they talk to each other near you. On the other hand if you do speak a foreign language, kudos to you, but you seem to do well enough in English to put together a well written post. If you are from France we have the European servers for you; if you are not then consider this the incentive you need to master a second language that you already seem fairly proficient in.

As far as role playing goes I think this will add a whole new dimension to it; especially after reading the warcry review on vivox. I fully look forward to people speaking as their characters would (voice font's should help a lot) instead of constantly using internet acronyms for convenience sake.

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They tried Vivox in EvE and it flopped. People opted out of it en-mass.

How does it affect me if they bring this in and I don't want to use it?

- Additional UI clutter that I can't get rid of which does nothing in game for me. In EvE, every window has vivox controls on it even if you have opted out of it.

- Developers trying to pump it by holding their live chats using vivox. If you want to listen to the chat, you have to opt in.

- Lag. it's part of the client (or is in EvE) and thus generates additional lag.

- Integration: If your client crashes you lose your voice coms. This isn't as bit a deal in a game like CoH but it was a major problem in EvE.

- People who want to chat with their friends without being in game can't.

Oh, and don't forget the attempt to increase subscriptions by $5 a month to cover the cost of Vivox. That caused so much hue-and-cry that they eventually relented and the "10 day free trial" never expired.

Adding Vivox to the client is a bad idea. Hopefully CoX learns from everybody else's bad mistakes.

Y.

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They tried Vivox in EvE and it flopped. People opted out of it en-mass.

- Additional UI clutter that I can't get rid of which does nothing in game for me. In EvE, every window has vivox controls on it even if you have opted out of it.

- Developers trying to pump it by holding their live chats using vivox. If you want to listen to the chat, you have to opt in.

- Lag. it's part of the client (or is in EvE) and thus generates additional lag.

- Integration: If your client crashes you lose your voice coms. This isn't as bit a deal in a game like CoH but it was a major problem in EvE.

- People who want to chat with their friends without being in game can't.

Oh, and don't forget the attempt to increase subscriptions by $5 a month to cover the cost of Vivox. That caused so much hue-and-cry that they eventually relented and the "10 day free trial" never expired.

Adding Vivox to the client is a bad idea. Hopefully CoX learns from everybody else's bad mistakes.

Y.

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1. Actually it didn't particularly flop.
2. The user interface "clutter" is virtually unnoticeable unless your looking for it.
3. After one of the major updates it wasn't opt-in/opt-out it was simply activated for everyone for free.(The original plan was going to be something like 7-8 dollars per *year* not five dollars a month. )

4. You do loose coms in game if the client goes. Big deal in EvE. Not that big a deal in CoX. The result in eve is that small corps tend to use eve voice quite a bit. Large corps or alliances with greater resources tend to get their own server.

5. General voice quality for EvE Voice is pretty good. Most people don't have an issue with that and the single biggest request be that it have its own standalone client.

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Is there any word on when this is being implemented yet?

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