Large Game: Analysis and Discussion

I don't think that chat spamming did cause the crash. At least not in isolation.

I do hope that Uber consider adding in-game voice chat - at least in the Armies game mode where unit control is shared. Otherwise, it gives organised teams an incredibly unfair advantage against others.

Unfair advantage like someone who studies before a test vs someone who doesn't?

Or unfair advantage like 4 people who have been playing with each other for months compared to a group of people who are playing together for the first time?

Either way it's going to be a FAIR advantage to the non-pug. And giving them an internal communication system isn't gonna help. Look at all the AAA titles that have voice support, it's never used for its original design, most of the time pugs don't even put on their mic, the rest of the time it's the 11yo tween screaming in your ear, or the racist/bigot that's feels so comfortable behind his screen. (You can also experience this with the mmo's that support voice chat and if you group with them puts you into their channel automatically, I think eq2 wow and rift have it.)

No thanks, I have my fill of people screaming racial slurs in my FPS games.

I'd rather leave voice support to vent/ts3/mumble then have über waste any resources to it.

I appreciate the drawbacks to in-game voice support. Hence my carefully chosen placement of the word 'consider'

I agree that if implemented there might need to be a lot more controls than most games have over voice chat to make it more palatable.

The game didn't crash at all, did it? Uber stated they killed it.

Preslicely

Then what was the point of the second sentence? Chat didn't cause the crash at all.

That was to cover my arse in case I was wrong so I didn't look stupid

Nice job undoing all my hard work

They will probably not.
Neutrino mentioned this in a live stream : ingame chat as a lot of drawback (noisy people, problematic people...), while using an external soft is more flexible and easly set-up.

Regarding the lagre games, i think it is low priority.
People had fun with the few tries, but will rather get bored of that quickly. Temporary hype phenomenon.
Unless it's technically vital to have this work very smoothly from now for the future of the game, keep it for later.

I think you maybe be wrong on people getting bored of large scale quickly, even just watching the cast there's a lot more going on and feasible with large scale, multi battle fronts are common and action is generated at a much high pitch then even the 10 FFA games I've watched. I do see it possible to have a 5v(x8) take no more then 30-40 mins with the right map.

Is it important to get stable and working correctly before rolling it out, yes. So we agree on that, should it be a priority above unit selection or orbital fixes? No I don't believe so.

Also have to remember the up/down mbits requirement good voice chat requires, add that to pa's already high(?) up/down mbits pull, I just think its a bad idea to even dabble in it...

Also when dealing with in game voice chat, besides the vent/Ts/mumble ones, the codecs I've seen AAA titles use are just complete and utter garbage.

Third party apps already take care of voice chat problems. So let them. There's no need to recreate something that already exists.

I agree, I think this game may end up being more about large scale games than other RTSs. In part I think this is due to the joint economy model, where everybody is benefiting so no one is screwed by being the guy sent to the moon. There's also the fact that with multiple planets you can cut a large battlefield down to a mentally manageable size while still feeling you're part of something epic.

Watching one of Zaphod's replays where reports were coming in from the different planets/moons as to current status was pretty awesome.

When I read the word report, I instantly thought of a news report, where they go to a different person for updates on different things... "now over to Fred with a chilling report coming in on the metal planet!" "That's right Ted, shocking developments here on the metal planet as black launches several nukes at purple." etc etc.

There's so much going on in large multi-team games, you almost need one caster per planet at some points. At the very least, it would be hilarious to watch multiple people cast a game as a news team.

8 mins in to the with a lull in combat primary caster says:

Now over to Tim to see what's going on on the moon.

Tim: not **** over here, they're still on the main planet, back to you Steve.

Don't have a link but Neutrino was heavily against voice comms for the implementation of voip integration and the social problems/spam potential. But please, don't compare what the voice comms in this community would be like with what you get in call of duty.

FAForever integrates the mumble API which automatically allows you to speak to your teammates via Mumble. That would be cool, but I don't hold out much hope for it.

Perhaps you have not experienced the wonder of Eve Online's built in voice chat. It is seamlessly integrated and scalable.