A case for in-game VoIP

Hi,

I know in-game VoIP was briefly addressed on a live stream, pointing out that a lot of people just use TeamSpeak/etc anyway.

However, while this is a common observation for many games, it does not address individuals wanting to play with "randoms" (people they don't know, whoever joins the game). Teamwork is pretty crucial in PA, and the Team Armies mode makes team games potentially a lot of fun. Unfortunately, it's near impossible to coordinate without access to a VoIP system, and for obvious reasons it is not realistic to arrange for a set of random people to join a TS server.

I would love to see in-game VoIP be considered for future inclusion.

Yes it is.


Organise the server so you have a public lobby. Screen people in the lobby.

Screen people? Are you speaking from experience? How long does it take you to get a game started?

Especially for bigger team games, it already takes a while to get started. If you're then going to try to wrangle a bunch of random people to join your TS server - that seems highly unlikely to work out well or easily. They might not have TS/whatever your choice of VoIP, or they might not want to tab out and get sorted connecting, or they might not be paying attention to chat, etc.

Hmm, it isn't so difficult to any of what you mentioned. Seems like a lot of work uber would have to do to accommodate a lazy few.

Remember though the Lobby is going to change so I would imagine it will be easier to set this up before your game.

It would be as simple as adding a button to 'send teamspeak to players' on your team. You can automatically open Teamspeak with a username and default channel to join using javascript. Pretty sure you can also do this with mumble. All uber has to do is save your TS details and automatically send the text link to people on your team you choose to share it with. Then you just setup a particular seperate channel in your teamspeak that guests for games like this can join.

Clopse, I think you are underestimating the problem. It's not about me or any other person being lazy. The point is, if I jump into a random game without teaming up with people I know, I can't get any co-op going. I am perfectly fine setting up a dedicated TS server with a public lobby and all that. However, is an average person going to do that? Clearly no. And even if I do, I need to make every single person on the team now go to my TS server. Do you *really* think this works consistently in games of random people? I will admit I have not actually tried, but I will eat my foot if it works consistently. It's not a technical problem, it's a socia/human behavior issue (including little details like "was it possible to cut'n'paste from in-game chat quickly" or "does person X have TeamSpeak installed", etc).

ZaphodX: Yeah, even if true in-game VoIP is not available, some small features to make it easier and more standardized to communicate VoIP information would be nice. But it won't be the same as in-game VoIP (e.g., if everyone did this no one would know which one to join; if everyone doesn't, people are missing out; still requires the particular choice of VoIP software to be installed and for people on the team to all alt-tab out and fiddle with their VoIP).

There are plenty of games where people announce teamspeak servers (e.g. automatically through mods). Generally very few people are actually there when I do end up checking it out. And that's for permanent servers where people have favorites; the hit rate is likely even worse on completely random subsets of people.

If you look at games with in-game VoIP it can work a lot better. Now obviously it depends on the game and the quality of the community; but for example in a game like Red Orchestra it actually works pretty well and fairly commonly. Another example is Planetside 2 where it generally works awesomely well (there is probably more high-level teamwork in that game in public gameplay than I have seen in any other game, and a lot of it orchestrated through the in-game VoIP). I suspect PA could be one of those games where the average participant is serious enough that you'll get a lot more benefit than downside (random dudes playing music/screaming/being annoying).

Anyways, clearly a lot of people don't think it matters. I think that's wrong (and it "seems" clear to me that there are plenty of practical concerns). I'm not sure how to provide a good case for it (I don't care quite enough to go do a proper semi-scientific test just to provide evidence ).

In any case, I'm enjoying PA a alot and will continue to do so. But I think it could be even better by making it more realistic to do proper teamwork with randoms.

game should include link in main menu to a voice speak program like mumble or ts3. Game should have a server in that chat program. Game should include ping and quickchat. That would all be satisfactory.

I'm a big believer, but even I doubt their ability to make VoIP, despite their limited manpower even. Tf2 and cod don't even make ones that work entirely well.

their game is webscript based. Bonus points for literally incorporating a chat program into the UI that just piggybacks off mumble or ts3

In all previous statements they have been heavily against in-game voip. We can just hope that they integrate hooks into Mumble and TeamSpeak APIs so that it can still be used easily.

Crossing my fingers

I wonder how ingame voip would strain server performance. I can't even stream pandora right now while playing PA without lag issues. If it were to be implemented I would imagine it would be very low priority, like after finalized optimizations, or in a patch after release.

That being said I am heavily in favor of ingame voip, right now joining a public 5v5 is absolute HELL because of the lack of coherent team play, and text chat is too slow. My thoughts are that a whiteboard and ping feature with notes would do wonders, but ingame voip would bring it that much further. Nothing like real time voice communication.

**EDIT
Either way once they release I'll be in teamspeak with my clan smashing pubs and having inter/intra clan matches anyway, so most of the benefit would come pre release, which as of now looks doubtful.

I don't see a reason why VoIP would have to run in-server. Aside from a tiny bit of integration to control presence etc, a VoIP room could be entirely separate. Overall bandwidth and server costs would be affected, but I don't believe there's a compelling reason to believe the main game server would be affected (speaking from a generic software development perspective).

I'm not sure what level of integration is possible with the API:s offered by the clients. If true integration is possible (e.g., on-demand creation of a room with limited set of users to be authenticated by a game provided token, etc) the integration could be pretty awesome. I have no idea if TeamSpeak et el offer something as flexible as that though.

Business idea for someone: Make a VoIP-as-a-service with simple integration features for games...

Yes, I am speaking from "experience". Screen people in the lobby of the teamspeak server. You can give the lobby address out to everyone, but actually only speak to people you deem appropriate in the private area. Play a couple of games in a row with the same person, they seem cool, get them on teamspeak, add them on Steam, whatever.

I play in NZ, the time difference is GST+13, and I've seen Mattrmunson online quite a bit, played a game with him. You play enough consistently, you notice that the same subset of people are online as well. I've noticed brianpurkiss, and others from these forums online in PA, dropped into the lobby to say hi and bye.

I've played 3 games with this dude called Moses.

Even in larger online multiplayer games, like BF3, you notice the same "randoms" online at the same time as you consistently. Work out how to coordinate teamspeaking with them. Whether it's through Skype, whatever.

Honestly, it's actually not hard, and if they also want to talk to you in-game they will.


Speaking from experience, even when I had decent interwebs, the VOIP that Dice integrated into BF4 is rubbish, I can't actually hear anything anyone says. I would much prefer that Uber integrated a 3rd party application than wrote their own.

A strong argument Kiwi.

At the end of the day, adding this to Ubers plate would sacrifice attention to other areas, which is bad escpecially when there are viable 3rd party options.

Create a mod for 3rd party voip provider x. People who want to voip can install the mod. Uber doesn't have to be involved.

I think a lot of you are vastly underestimating how hard it is to get random people to join servers on programmes they may not even have installed.

Kiwi, I'm sorry but to say there will always be people you recognise online and can get to join is simply not true, especially when we're considering games getting larger as optimisations come in (can you get all 10 people on your team to join?)

I'm fully aware that in game VOIP is not going to be do-able by uber in the time they have with the size of workforce they have, and that's fine, but I don't think you should all just assume that everyone who wants to use in game VOIP will just have a TS3/mumble server or will even have heard of those services. A system as suggested by zaphod would definitely be preferable to nothing though, hope that will make it in game.

Forum goers are not an accurate sample of the gaming population and we shouldn't assume that everyone knows about these things just because we all do as gaming enthusiasts.

This is true. For comparision, I'm comparing myself before I became a forum-goer.

There is VOIP in fps games. But in my experience it's mostly just for annoying other players, so other people just mute you.

Personally I've never head of mumble, I only started using teamspeak last month. I was thinking of other, more accessible services like Skype or Google Voice Chat.

If you want a coordinated team, you have to play with non-randoms. I don't think PA will be like LOL and Dota where there are established roles to play, you can assume everyone will do their job, and you can give critical information over text chat.

My point was that over a long period of time, the road to victory will be to coordinate with randoms so they are random no more.

I mean seriously, who is MattrMunson? Or Ravinggg? (Can't find him on the forums, we had an awesome afternoon in PA together)

It is easier to get people to join chat, if the game suggests install of it upon installing the game, if the game has an install link on the main page as well as the official teamspeak server, and clicking the teamspeak server automatically connects to it for you. That is as automated as possible.

Compared to any other PC game, that does not have functioning VOIP. Do any other games have entirely working ones?

I bet if they integrated TS3 or Mumble into the game and had links to load it from the mainpage and options menu, you would hear more people in-game than you would with voip, which would leave you with an ingame chat so yay you can hear the raging 13 year old but the other 2 guys on your team are dead quiet and yes they even have mics imagine that. That is how it is on other games, it was on SMNC and I heard its similar in BF4 and TF2 and like I said I can't remember seeing a single game it has worked entirely as well as XBox for.

It doesn't work entirely on consoles sometimes - sometimes the people on comms are just the angry 13 year olds, or older people trolling and flaming everyone.

Well, in xbox it is working as intended. I didn't say you wanted the intended effect. Usually, you want to mute everyone and opt to unmute certain players if you resonate with them.

Which is all the more reason to just have a very obviously displayed chat server for a program, and just make it more difficult not to get and join it than to do so.

As was mentioned earlier, planetside 2 has a superb VOIP system, which is lucky as it is a game where teamwork is absolutely essential.

This includes channels at the squad, platoon and outfit level, proximity chat and full individual volume controls and muting/ignoring services. However, it is probably the only game I've ever played with such a well integrated in game VOIP, and even in planetside it has some issues.

I've never played a game with that sort of integrated TS3 service, so it could indeed be a perfect solution I don't know.