Teamspeak and similar services

Once, when a friend tried to make me play Guild Wars, I actually used a headset and spoke to him and the guild while playing. I have never tried it in City of Heroes, mainly because my RL friend I usually play with thought it was a real stupid idea. However, lately I have seen some of my SGs advocating it and I have also seen it on a lot of WoW videos on Youtube :-)

What are your experiences with live voice chat during gameplay? In what way does it help? In what way does it hinder?

I run with people who use Ventrilo on occasion, mostly during MoSTFs or Hamidon raids. Initially I was hesitant to try it out, but it is pretty helpful in those situations. Thankfully those people are pretty level-headed and aren't prone to freakouts like this guy.

The group that I regularly play with uses Ventrillo quite a bit. We prefer it when we're running TFs and such.. I'd rather people talk than stop unexpectedly and type, because they can keep doing what they need to do, and I don't have to read while I'm trying to keep up with my targets that they're KBing

Seriously though, it's just easier, so long as the people you play with don't mind doing it and can do it. Thing is, if you have some people on vent/TS and some who aren't.. well, make sure that when you need to give instruction, it's done for both groups

On the personal side of things, I like the camaraderie it brings. Joking around on vent is a lot more fun than in text! ...usually lol

I've used vent when playing WoW and it makes things so much easier in terms of communication. It's awkward at first because in most cases you might be talking to someone you've never met and they're referring to you out loud by your toon name lol but once you get passed that it's pretty awesome.

Sounds like I should try it out. The only downside I see myself is that I usually play loud music while I play, which probably does not work very well with Ventrilo :-)

We have used Teamspeak, Ventrilo and Skype. I think Ventrilo was the best.

I have never experienced voice comm quality better than Skype. I've used all the "outboard" products over the years. The only downside to Skype is that it's essentially peer-to-peer. This means that the originator of the call needs to have a nice, stable network quality with good upload bandwidth. Since I and all the people I play with regularly have that, it's a lot easier to deal with since it needs no dedicated server for you to connect to.

In competitive play, here or elsewhere, being on voice is a huge advantage over any team that's not. In regular PvE play here, I only use it socially, but I use if for that a lot. Most of the time that means what I'm talking about has nothing to do with what's happening in game, but game-relevant information does get thrown in ("incoming," "I'm held", etc.)

Used to use teamspeak with my original SG crew. Just like we were all in the same room, so long as it was a good server. Plenty of free ones out there for us to squat on for a night.

Oh one thing i really do like about skype is it has a nice chat fuction which also makes it easy to drag and drop files to share. The abilty to use a webcam for the call is also nice. Makes talking with long distance friends more like you are there in the same room.

I'm with the Skype camp, excellent sound quality and chances are there are several people in your SG/group of friends who have good enough machines to host the call. Our SG is small but we all use Skype, usually around 4-6 of us on together and it works great despite the open mic. I used Ventrilo with my WAR guild and while I'm sure part of it was that there were 30-40 people on a city raid instead of the 4-6 people on a CoX team, I didn't like the sound quality at all.

Some people were extremely loud while some were very quiet and I for one experienced significant lag (being in Sweden was probably part of that) but I imagine that all depends on the server itself. Either way I approve of Voice chat!

My old guild and alliance over in GW had a pair of vent channels we used on a regular basis. It was always a ton of fun and made the long long underworld runs more epic. Given that I am prone to impersonations and general re-interpretation of characters, giving me a mic and a captive audience was usually a recipe for fun.

In CoH, I only play with my son, so we use Skype and chat as we dispense justice. It is fine for one on one stuff, but doesn't compare to vent for large groups. With more than 2 people, button to talk is really important.

Wasn't there a deal struck, last year, with a voice chat company and NCsoft? I could have sworn that there was an article that implied that NCsoft products would be getting their own VoIP communication built into the games?

I use TS for most of the time I played CoH, I am in the process of upgrading the Voip server and will fade out TS in that process.

The server side doesnt take much and cane run under a VMware workstation.

I like the Push to talk, it better than having to liston to Darthvader (Heavy Breathing into the mic), Bad porn in the back ground, or the snacker muching on chips all night.
Down side is my blaster may pew pew someone in another mob as I set that power to auto fire last time I said something.

I also had some nights where 5 or more were on Vent and no one was talking but all were playing together.

Used Teamspeak, Vent, Skype, and I like Skype the best.

Interface takes some getting used to, but it works. Having 6-8 people is stable, and manageable. It's usually with RL friends only, so we gab about other stuff as well.

My favorite global channel uses a Ventrilo server paid by one of our members. It's ridiculously good quality (everyone I've met IRL sounds exactly like they do on Vent). It's one of the higher codex thingies, though, so that does have something to do with it.

It completely changes the way we play the game. Teams without Vent are more cautious (even though we've been playing together for years) than teams with Vent (which we blast through dudes without even looking at our health bars or which direction we're going).

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