E3 VOIP Questions

[Biscuit]

Awesome E3 PS2 Devs and TB and congrats on the awards,

Purrfectstorm lovely as always,


Questions about VOIP if you read this or any of the forum vets have answers feel free to chime in:

1. How many voices can the VOIP pick up at a time?

2. When trying to hear tac chat from your leader and theirs various chatter going on in your squad/platoon, will their be options for us to choose what people we wish to hear or have priority whenever they speak?

3. Their will come a time you dont want to listen to certain individuals at a given day, if VOIP is general public wide, will their be options to turn off voices of people you do not want to listen to?

4. Say a Commander wants to give out orders to his outfit, alliance or lets say the whole empire, people,groups,squads,platoons and outfits that wish to follow his lead can accept/join his channel, any other VOIP orders from other high rank commanders outside said channel/group will be ignored and not picked up. Will VOIP share command attributes in this manner?

-Thanks

[QuantumMechanic]

I also want to know how I can tell who is talking. I've played some games where the speaker has his game name show up in a corner of the screen while he is talking. Will there be something like that? (didn't see anything like that on the E3 live streams)

Without that it can be hard to tell if the guy who is talking is the driver of the Sundy that I'm in, or a squad member or a new guy in my outfit etc. In fact if there's some way to identify that speaker not only by name, but as the driver of the Sundy I'm in, or a member of my squad or a new guy in my outfit... that would be perfect!

* edit * I have high hopes for the in-game VOIP because it potentially offers so much more than your clan's TS server. I know that Higby wants to do this right so let's help with this as much as we can.

[ChargerCarl]

I'm so glad this game will have VOIP.

/disenfranchised BF fan

[Biscuit]

I also want to know how I can tell who is talking. I've played some games where the speaker has his game name show up in a corner of the screen while he is talking. Will there be something like that? (didn't see anything like that on the E3 live streams)

Without that it can be hard to tell if the guy who is talking is the driver of the Sundy that I'm in, or a squad member or a new guy in my outfit etc. In fact if there's some way to identify that speaker not only by name, but as the driver of the Sundy I'm in, or a member of my squad or a new guy in my outfit... that would be perfect!

* edit * I have high hopes for the in-game VOIP because it potentially offers so much more than your clan's TS server. I know that Higby wants to do this right so let's help with this as much as we can.

I have high hopes for VOIP this time around, the first VOIP stuff in planetside just wasnt effective enough in any measure.

the ultimate challenge unfortunately is how will PS2's stack up against the already established 3rd party voice apps like mumble,vent,TS3 and so on?

knowing whos talking is also very very important, though some people may have distinctive voices, often times, voices tend to be overly similar over the mic.

[kaffis]

Here's a bullet list of features that are pretty much must-haves if the integrated VOIP is going to gain traction and displace 3rd party solutions (and I believe it MUST displace those, since the whole point is ease of communication across arbitrary divisions like outfits):

* Ease of setup. PS1 used players as hosts for the squad, but was *terrible* to set up if there was any NAT in use.
* Smart auto-join for channels (squad, vehicle, etc.). From dev chatter, this is already a priority and probably even in.
* Ability for out-of-game players to join in and chat with friends/outfit. We saw this feature revealed in the mobile app at E3.
* Reasonably good quality, minimal bandwidth consumption.
* Ease of multiple-channel management. People should often have vehicle, squad, outfit, and local channels at the least. Many will want a squad-leaders channel for outfit ops. Being able to manage and switch between them while fighting is a huge positive.
* Ability to create custom channels.
* Mute list for players.
* Adjust priority for channels and/or players during speech-collisions.
* Easy identification of mic/feedback problems. This includes identifying problems like having the "What you hear" channel recording in Windows settings, etc. Preferably troubleshooting these in the game client wherever possible.
* On-screen identification of speakers, both by name and by HUD elements if they're on-screen or in-squad.

Some quality of life elements:
* Voice mutators. Some people are uncomfortable using in-game voice due to perceptions of their age or gender, or discomfort at the notion of bringing down some level of anonymity.
* Multiple, channel-specific PTT hotkeys as an option.
* Outfit rank-based permissions for some channels?
* Leadership certs oriented towards broadcasting to squad leaders in a radius?


It's not a trivial list, but from what I've seen and heard, a good deal of this is already in or on the devs' radar. I have good feelings about the future of voice comms. Let's offer good feedback and suggestions throughout the continuing development of the game in order to help the devs set a new gold standard in quality of voice integration and community-building.