In game chat options and how it will work????

[kertins]

Hi everyone I'm new here but like you all I can't wait for PS2 its gonna be so cool...

Anyway I want this game to be amazing and one thing MMOs all ways fall down on is the communication system.

How is PS2 going to deal with everyone's chatter its gonna be messy and is there going to be in game voice coms? and how will it work?

Personally I how here is some sort of in game voice chat because with this type of game its very important to communicate and it has to be done well...

I'm sorry if this has already be talked about... but I think it will be helpful for people ideas on how people can communicate through the PS2 world...

[Sirisian]

When the game was announced Higby came here and said they'll be using Vivox's voice stuff in the game so you can communicate with your squad or with gunners in your vehicle. So yeah they have the whole voice system integrated this time around and working it sounds like. They haven't said anything regarding local chat or outfit stuff exactly I don't think.

[Whalenator]

Outfit chat was confirmed awhile ago.
they also mentioned voice broadcasting over a limited range between factions :D

[Sco]

I think cross faction communication will be available also - like in PS1

[kertins]

oh that is gonna be so cool. I can't wait to play the beta :D

[texico]

I hope they make sure the chat system is as functional or more functional that PS1's. Chat is massively important in a game like PS. You need to be able to change the size of your chat box manually, disable and activate certain types of chat, etc. It'd also be nice if you could opt to have your chat log saved in a file in the PS2 directory.


Also, wonder if the kill spam is going to be there?

[WiteBeam]

So will the vivox voice chat allow me to communicate with other friendlys near me automatically? Or will it be just a built in TS/vent just for squad and outfit chat?

[RadarX]

So will the vivox voice chat allow me to communicate with other friendlys near me automatically? Or will it be just a built in TS/vent just for squad and outfit chat?

What Vivox pioneered in DCUO was called Proximity chat. What it does is allow everyone within a designated radius hear you. The positives is it really makes coordination easy by a localized group. A negative however is you are going to keep hearing that kids mom tell him to clean up his room until he does it.

[FastAndFree]

I hope we will be able to copy paste names this time. Will make /tells easier.

Not to mention reporting griefers with "barcode" names like IlllIIIllIIIlIIlIllIl O0O0O0O0O0O0OO0O0

[ThGlump]

What Vivox pioneered in DCUO was called Proximity chat. What it does is allow everyone within a designated radius hear you. The positives is it really makes coordination easy by a localized group. A negative however is you are going to keep hearing that kids mom tell him to clean up his room until he does it.

This will be totally waste of resources and development time. Proximity voice will be first thing most players will turn off (once they get close to 10+ random ppl), and then it will be useless even for those who left it on.

[WiteBeam]

This will be totally waste of resources and development time. Proximity voice will be first thing most players will turn off (once they get close to 10+ random ppl), and then it will be useless even for those who left it on.

I have seen it work just fine in console games. And not everyone will have a mic.
It would be handy to automatically be able to communicate with people in the same vehicle.

[Beagle]

I think proximity voice will be awesome. I play a similar genre game that makes extensive use of it and it adds to the experience and gameplay immensely.

Saying that people will turn it off is like saying that everybody turns off voice in any multi player game, which is blatantly untrue, barely anybody does that unless they're muting someone who's being annoying. As long as we can selectively mute people who are being dicks on purpose I think it'll be a fantastic addition to the game.

[WiteBeam]

As long as we can selectively mute people who are being dicks on purpose I think it'll be a fantastic addition to the game.

Definitely need to be able to mute with this. It would only take one person screaming into it to ruin it. Would the voice chat be monitored like the regular chat will be? That would be difficult.

[exoteror]

Myself I can pretty much guarantee I will turn the thing off. I intend on joining an outfit that uses ventrillo or teamspeak etc but just have no intention to listen to kids crying about getting shot.

But that is just my personal oppinion other than that the game is looking great.

[ThGlump]

Muting individuals could work in games with few ppl that you meet repeatedly. If there will be 500+ ppl and you can be next to any of them anytime you would spend half playing time just muting them.

And its not just anyone who is annoying on purpose. There would be tons of noise. Several ppl trying to speak at once, or even if its organized and in each area speak only one you can be in the middle of them and hear all 3 at once.

Its just too much unnecessary noise. You cant hear squad or outfit voice if there is always someone in your proximity speaking.

[DayOne]

I suppose being able to turn off just proximity chat from/to you would solve this.

I think proximity chat will be a big deal in a game like planetside as it allows you to communicate instantly and vocally with a random person if you need them to do something instead of pointlessly yelling at the screen till they spot you.

Edit: Also a mic activation button. This is 100% necessary.

[ThGlump]

And if they have proximity chat turned off you will yell to your microphone wondering why they dont react :)

[DayOne]

And if they have proximity chat turned off you will yell to your microphone wondering why they dont react :)

Well if they give us a quick hotkey toggle then they hit that and you can yell at them properly :D

[WiteBeam]

And if they have proximity chat turned off you will yell to your microphone wondering why they dont react :)

Hahaha well I would hope there would an icon next to the players name so you can tell if they can hear you or speak back. A simple little mic/speaker icon.

[RedKnights]

What i'm wondering is if the in game voice chat is going to be robust enough to replace clients like mumble, TS and Vent, or larger clans will find those clients easier to use.

I'm always going to use my outfit as an example because it's huge..

But say that within an outfit management window you can designate "Divisions" (Which you should do ;) )

So in my outfit we have:

Infantry
Spec Ops
Air
Tanks
Support


It would be nice to be able to create channels for each of these subdivisions, if that's the dev's aim, at replacing external clients. That way during Raids you can easily divvy everyone up into a channel easily.

The ability to create sub-channels within an "outfit only" voice chat would be awesome.

As for proximity chat.... that's what voice macros are for... please god it's so aggravating in DCUO XD

[RadarX]

This will be totally waste of resources and development time. Proximity voice will be first thing most players will turn off (once they get close to 10+ random ppl), and then it will be useless even for those who left it on.

I can't necessarily argue with you that a number of people may not find the feature to their liking but I'll disagree on the waste of resources. The tech is already working in another product and part of the voice chat functionality. They may also choose not to use it. We'll let you know more as we get closer to launch.

[Vash02]

Just make sure its push to talk default. I played Space Marine early on where they had mikes on all the time and there was always someones heavy breathing being blasted into my ears.

[BigBossMonkey]

Just make sure its push to talk default. I played Space Marine early on where they had mikes on all the time and there was always someones heavy breathing being blasted into my ears.

A thousand times this.

Make it have only two options: PTT or OFF.

DO NOT MAKE IT VOICE ACTIVATED.

[basti]

A thousand times this.

Make it have only two options: PTT or OFF.

DO NOT MAKE IT VOICE ACTIVATED.

Exactly.
While Voice activation is nice if its set up right, it usually is crap. Most people fail at setting it up correctly, and often they just fill you with random chat that wasnt even ment for your ears.

So keep the voice activation out, completly. That will make a lot more people use ingame voice (and thats a good thing!)

As for proximity voice: its brilliant, and i hope people use it. Most, if not all, VS players have seen me infront of a door, spamming a macro to follow me and rush in. It was always just a macro that requires you to pay attention and read. Now, if i could directly talk, tell those guys at the door HOW to push, when, and what to watch out for (boomers anyone?), it would really help me.

But, it needs some heavy policing. If someone just spams music or other crap, ban him from voice, permanently. Those asshats need to be silent, or everyone just disables voice alltogether.

[ThGlump]

You can spam "rush" all you want, i listen to my squad leader not you :)
That why organized squads wont have proximity chat on, so it dont interfere in squad chat.

There can be both on but it must support this:
Priority of channels: If someone talking on squad channel, mute proximity chat
Independent chat volumes: So you can set squad chat louder than proximity, so it wont distract that much.

[ringring]

I can see me saying ...

"everyone in the courtyard and get in the Gal" and some random greenie shouts "go to the BD" and then I'll wonder why some of my squad has gone in completely the opposite direction that I told them to.

Seriously it may work if it's a cr6 function that Oste set up one time but otherwise I think it may be more trouble than it's worth for Outfits.

Time will tell.

[DayOne]

If morons arguing with their mum about dinner weren't an issue then I'd like to see proximity chat on at all times with a push to talk button that activates your radio. Each time you activate/deactivate the radio you get the static crunch noise then the actual voice has a static-y sound to it while prox chat remains crystal clear.

Only in a perfect world :(

[SniperSteve]

A thousand times this.

Make it have only two options: PTT or OFF.

DO NOT MAKE IT VOICE ACTIVATED.

Agree. That way we at least don't hear the "Clean your room right now!" unless the guy is actually cueing his microphone.

[BigBossMonkey]

Agree. That way we at least don't hear the "Clean your room right now!" unless the guy is actually cueing his microphone.

Exactly. Plus people play with speakers and everything, and it will cause FUN feedback through everyones mics... Plus you have people who may still be using Vent/TS/Mumble as well as whats in game and so there'd be cross conversations that don't make any sense going on...

It is just not a good situation.


But, it needs some heavy policing. If someone just spams music or other crap, ban him from voice, permanently. Those asshats need to be silent, or everyone just disables voice alltogether.

This is a very good point.

If someone gets reported enough for harassment (loud music blaring, vulgarity, that stuff) ban them from proximity voice chat. If someone is doing that stuff in squad/vehicle/outfit/platoon voice chat just kick him out, no reason to ban the guy there.

[Figment]

I think something like an alliance chat between outfits was mentioned somewhere.

[DayOne]

I think something like an alliance chat between outfits was mentioned somewhere.

If this is the case I think they should include a way to separate voice channels by outfit rank.

This would allow the higher levels to communicate tactically or with another outfit they are allied too but the grunts at the bottom only need to hear what is going on in their squad.

[Ragefighter]

looks like it could be cool.

here is a link to the voice integration company;
http://www.vivox.com/customers/customer-list.html
http://www.vivox.com/technology/features.html

bunch of possible features and the other companies that use this, i guess.

probably wont get all those features but some of them seem good for this kinda game;

Voice
Person-to-Person Multi-Party
Dynamic and Persistent Channel Access
Control Lists
Password Protected Channels
Moderator Controls
Manage Participants: Invite/Kick/Ban/Mute
Open Mic/Push to Talk
Spatial Audio (3D Voice, Positional Voice)

wonder if Spatial audio is in ps2. would add alot to immersion, like if you have a 7.1 headset you would hear a squad member more from the left if he was on the left side. or back if hes behind you.

And this also looks nice;

Presence and Status
Roster Lists (assume this lists whos in your squad and will light up if person is talking)
Speaking Indicators
Presence Indicators
Alerts

[Beagle]

There is no need to ban people for playing music over their microphones as long as you can selectively mute people to your tastes. When you\'re riding in the back of the Galaxy with some random players and one of them decides to start blasting Ride of the Valkyries over the proximity mic, does he really deserve to be punished? Lighten up!

Speaking of being a little more optimistic - where are all the critics on this getting their pessimism from? Have you played team FPS games with proximity voice and had a bad experience? People are citing cliches like a teenager getting yelled at by his mom while holding his push-to-talk, or some asshat screaming on the mic to be a dick. Even if these kinds of people weren\'t an incredibly small minority of mic-enabled players (seriously - how often does that kind of shit actually happen to you?), I don\'t see these as reasons to totally shitcan an awesome feature, especially if you can just mute those people selectively. Personally, it\'s been a looooooong time since I\'ve heard people like that, and it was never hard to mute them in the games I had them in.

On the flipside, the positives of this kind of system are real and immense in their potential.

You\'ve got much faster and easier communication, which opens up a CRAPLOAD of teamwork capability in the moment, on the fly. Plus, you\'ve got a much more immersive environment - one where instead of having an intense battle with and against a bunch of mutes, you can hear the people around you working together, spotting enemies, calling for backup, or just freaking out when that Liberator starts lighting them up. Hell, it might just bring you a bit closer together with the random players you fight with when you\'re talking to them all the time instead of typing. Considering all the drama we\'ve had about our right to be a big happy family of a community this week, that\'s got to be worth something to you, right?

[Vash02]

You shouldnt make people have to stop their play and sift through the options to find and mute the dick playing music through his mike Beagle. If he is a constant offender he should be perma banned. Yes if he starts playing ride of the valkyries through his mike then yes he should be banned for ruining that peice of classical music by running it through his speakers and then through his mike. And then a zombie Wagner should be dispatched to eat his brain.

I played Space Marine where they stupidly had voice activation on as default and no option to make it push to talk. It was horrific, either it was someones heavy breathing or some crappy TV show they had on in the background. I had to stop playing and find the offender and mute him, it was just irritating process that should of been flagged after 5 minutes of beta testing.

[Magpie]

I think it\'s a great ideal it\'s like real life, voice chat to small people around you it\'s gonna Be a mad but great feeling hearing like 20 around you trying to all get in a doorway and then using a radio to talk to outfit members.

Or it could just give you a head mess

[Beagle]

You shouldnt make people have to stop their play and sift through the options to find and mute the dick playing music through his mike Beagle. If he is a constant offender he should be perma banned. Yes if he starts playing ride of the valkyries through his mike then yes he should be banned for ruining that peice of classical music by running it through his speakers and then through his mike. And then a zombie Wagner should be dispatched to eat his brain.

I played Space Marine where they stupidly had voice activation on as default and no option to make it push to talk. It was horrific, either it was someones heavy breathing or some crappy TV show they had on in the background. I had to stop playing and find the offender and mute him, it was just irritating process that should of been flagged after 5 minutes of beta testing.

Except like I said, having to stop and mute someone is pretty rare, at least thats my personal experiences with a wide range of genres/communities/voip types. As for the second paragraph, PS2 should have PTT, not voice activate.

[Vash02]

It\'s pretty common in my experience, even with PTT.