How to deal with vent/skype players

How do you deal with a player who prefers to use skype or vent?
I was leading a strikeforce the other day and was trying to get all the players in the zone to start the strikeforce. One player, whom I shall call ToonX, wouldn't zone in even after 5 mins of me repeatedly asking to do so. In fact, he was doing some lowbie mission in Mercy even though he was lvl 40. Irritated, I kicked ToonX and told him to send me tell when he got out. I was about to start without him, but he finished his mission and asked for an invite. I figure it was a fluke and invited him.
During the SF, I tell folks what to expect and where the next mission is so they can ouro out of the mish to save time. Even with my instructions, ToonX was getting into the missions 5 mins after everyone else got there, attacking the wrong things, etc.
Later on, I found out that ToonX was on vent and his chat window was closed.
Now, how am I supposed to be able to give instructions?
Do these vent users think that vent is the way to go and communicating with the team any other way is old skool?

I've teamed with people who prefer voice chat, and even joined once or twice (though just so I could listen. I don't speak often for reasons I won't get into). But I've never encountered anyone who completely closes their chat tabs. That's just... bizarre. And I would guess exceedingly rare.

Just note the character so if you run into him again you'll know what to except, and move in. It's not a common enough occurrence to worry about, imo.

He goes beyond someone who does Skype or other voice chat while playing, or preferring those communication methods over chat. I've never met anyone that closes their chat tab completely.

I run TFs almost nightly with the same group of people and we use TS when we play. But i know we also pick up some other people to fill spots. Most of the time we say the direction of whats going on on TS and in chat. Don't think any of us close the window. I think you just ran into the wrong player is all.

Was this guy(gal) skyping with other people on the team?

The only game I ever really used voice chat in was WAR, because I was literally the only person in the guild who didn't use it and if I hadn't started I'd never have had any idea WTH was going on. (A friend convinced me to play/join and this was his guild, so I was going to be grouping with these people no matter what.)

I stopped using voice chat again shortly after that because we moved and the computer I used got put into a hallway alcove upstairs by the bedrooms, and I didn't want to disturb people who were trying to sleep, since we generally played late at night.

Now I don't even have a mic to use for TS/Vent/Skype/whatever anyhow. So at most I could listen, and try to type my replies.


My friend always closes his chat tab. Always. And it ANNOYS THE HELL OUT OF ME!

He KNOWS I don't have/use VC and I always end up saying something then having to wait for potentially several minutes for him to think to check his tabs. He'll also go AFK without bothering to say so (in type) so we'll just be going along and all the sudden I'm all alone doing all the fighting.


It's come to the point where I actually HATE playing with him.


EDIT:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Satanic_Hamster This isn't a voice chat issue. This is a problem with any person who finds something more interesting then the game they're currently playing. Doesn't matter if it's webbrowsing, vent chatting, sg chat, global chat, phone call, etc. As others have suggested, just make a note in their player notes and kick them from the team.

UGH! GOD yes. He does this too. Sooooo annoying. He'll sit there in the living room playing one game on his computer, with another on his laptop while watching TV and chatting with people over instant messenger. Randomly tabbing to browse the internet, all without notice that he's not in-game paying attention.

Sometimes I want to bludgeon him to death with his own fancy-pants, overpriced keyboard.

@Oathbound & @Oathbound Too

Reminds me of the first person I met in CoX. We hung with different groups and didn't team all the time, but we stayed in touch for my first year and a half in the game. She would frequently just go AFK in the middle of conversations (almost every time), or fly off and join one of her SG's teams. She was always glad to see me and introduce me to her friends, so it's not like she was giving me the cold shoulder. I just couldn't keep her attention for more than about two or three minutes. Eventually I gave up even trying to interact with her. Later on, she admitted (rather casually) she was usually in Vent or randomly web-browsing, and didn't consider in-game chat a priority over those things.

She is no longer on my friends list.

This thread has got me thinking. MMO's draw a pretty diverse crowd (It's that first "M"), and I am now wondering how many people could not care less about leveling and actually playing the game, but instead use it as a way to just chat with folks? Just something that made me go hmmmm.

I tried using voice chat (largely because I don't like being left out of the loop) but I quickly changed my mind on the matter. I don't like what people turn into when you give them an audience, plus I'm not a native speaker living with other people in a non-English-speaking country. That, and I don't like speaking into my computer unless strictly necessary.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

In another game @Anasthesia and I played, she and her friends used Vent, even though there was a built in voice server for the game.

Then they all went to That Other Game, and they got so bad at using Vent, they wouldn't even bother to read chat tabs, even if they knew there were people online in the guild who didn't have mics, couldn't speak because they didn't want to wake up their families, etc.

If you weren't on Vent, they didn't pay any attention to you. It got so bad that the guild for That Other Game broke up, because the leader refused to even look at chat.

We had a discussion about this one time, and I was told that voice-chatters made better players. I told him that was funny, because I could carry on two conversations in text, listen to music, carry on a conversation here at the house, and still fight groups of +4s and AVs without breaking a sweat, yet they can't coordinate 5 people on one MOb using Voice.

Sometimes use TS (as opposed to vent, but really....) but only in specific situations, and never to the point of closing the chat window. TBH, the only other game I ran *with* built in voice chat (APB,) I ended up turning it off in less than an hour.

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As others said, the problem wasn't vent, the problem was the player not paying attention.

Similarly, if someone was running a group or whatever and they were using voice-chat to set it up and arrange it, it'd be really annoying if someone refused to get on voice-chat.

Sure, voice-chat isn't necessary, but that's how they want to communicate (and I imagine it'd be better on both sides if you don't try to force people to communicate in a means they don't want . And can make a good argument that even text chat isn't really necessary for a lot of content either.