Has this been mentioned yet? I always thought it was pretty silly in this day and age when a game like Battlefield 3 doesn't launch with VOIP. Am I asking for too much?
To be honest, I will use Mumble anyway. I have seen games with decent VOIP integration but still hardly anybody uses it. I'd rather have a Mumble server for all PA players. Why? Because you can talk to people even if you are not playing, good voice quality and neutrino doesn't have to spend time and resources on something only a small number of players will use. Now what would be really nice would be a huge opt-out chat as we had in GPGnet. I'd totally support that!
well there are Skype, TS 3, Mumble allready... .. so it think we dont need that. Only if you can give me the audio quality of Skype with loudness adjustment of TS i would change.
Yeah, please no. This is why SMNC's viop doesn't work a single bit. Out of all the bugs this one gets a free pass simply because of Mumble.
If we do have VOIP, I would actually like the idea of integrating it with an existing protocol so people could run their own servers without having to have the game up. I like the idea of a universal Mumble server, for instance.
Hooking up all users to a basic Mumble or other VOIP server automatically would probably be best of both worlds. Takes little time to set up, lets players communicate through voice or dedicated server and might motivate new players to get involved in the chat.
We already discussed VOIP a while back, and I'm all in favor of Mumble. It's cross platform, stable, and audio quality is quite good. The best aspect is there's a lot of potential to integrate it with PA by using a UI mod to pass it a command line argument to open up a specific server.
My current thinking is not to build it into the game but allow integration with other stuff as suggested here. That could change.
I like this thinking as well, and honestly once the alpha comes out I'm sure some of us will get started on implementing a bunch of handy mods. Heck, you could probably release the game with a couple of helper mods included, with a link to Uber's mod website...
I have a questions to those who have used Mumble; can it be configured so that it works the same way as Steam's VOIP (automatically connects to game channel when you join a game and automatically sets itself so that you can only speak to your teammates)?
I think you still need VOIP for random encounters. Imagine those 40 player games, there has to be lot of talking between teammembers, but not all of them are friends sitting on the same voice server. Even if it's integrated into the game and you have to connect to different mumble lobbies manually, very few players will actually do this, because many don't think about that in advance. But ingame there's maybe just that one crucial moment where you have to talk to those strangers in your team because using chat takes to long, and then it's necessary every player on your team is able to understand you. Happens in MOBA games alot btw, VOIP is frequently used there (you can mute single persons ingame if someone abuses it) So while playing with friends external voice servers are cool, but to play with strangers VOIP is still needed (if you don't find a way to integrated mumble in a way that automatically connects players to the server and switches them to the correct lobbies). Featuring ingame voice talk is just standard.
Will there be text chat? Voip does not seem like the Standard RTS feature... and with a game like this it may be worth investing into Channels so to speak for communication clarity. 40 Player at max in a RTS and them typing out where they are attacking/Defending/Building? etc.
@xfreezy: I agree with those reasons to have ingame voice chat. But I don't feel it's quite as trivial as just having mumble support. In my experience, when you are in larger ad-hoc tactics/strategy games, people will keep on talking about game-unrelated things with their friends, have unresolvable (though sometimes game-related) arguments with strangers, troll, et cetera. Usually, it is disruptive and bothersome. Simple muting / unmuting often won't do in larger games, either. Maybe 1/5 of the players in a typical game tends to be sucked into such disruptions. Making proper decisions on who to mute without loosing all the information people expect / need you to hear is hard, then. In my experience, to make ingame voice work in larger games, you need someone with actual ingame authority (commanders/"generals", admins, ...) on both teams that can mute or kick players in the name everyone else, or a vote system. Preferrably you'll also have a separation of at least chat with friends/clan members and all chat, if not an actual system of voice chat rooms with multiple of them being joinable at the same time and good indicators who's talking where. It also *still* tends to be more workable to graphically communicate strategy / tactics, especially for public games. If you can indicate all things necessary like who holds or attacks what segment of what frontline, who's playing special roles (econ, support, rush, ...), it will realistically account for almost any communication that might be important to winning a public game anyways, and it's not nearly as likely to be abused / distracting / prone to people missing important information as voice chat is...
I think, a built-in VOIP isn't really worth the required effort. The main reason is the following observation: there are in general 3 groups: 1) Those who regularly and preferable chat via VOIP are using most of the time already existing software/server and are still willing to switch to a different software/server if need be 2) Those who can't/won't use VOIP in most cases because of whatever technical/social/personal reasons 3) Those who would use it from time to time without regularity and probably would prefer not to install another VOIP software. for groups 1,2 a built-in system is redundant. Group 3 would be the target audience. Depends a bit on how the players are distributed, but with mixed groups the advantage of voice tends to degrade. A side comment, I think in a RTS game the voice part isn't that crucial in general, since most of the time you can still spare a bit of time to type a line. (compared to other game types) A good chat system with advanced methods to mark/highlight things to your teammates would go a long way towards that.
VOIP is hardly ever used by random teams in the games I have played. Even in games where teamwork is absolutely essential (SMNC, Planetside2) I hardly ever hear anybody talking to his teammates unless they are a premade team. I can remember 3 matches in over a thousand in SMNC where a random teammate communicated. Actually 2, the third was just one guy complaining that we didn't win the match the way he wanted. It's a bit better in Planetside 2 but discussions mostly revolve around balance and not game related stuff. And it's usually only the squad leader talking to a mate while the other 10 people stay silent. VOIP is great and I love using it but I don't expect a response in pub matches like... ever.
@asgo: you are missing a point aswell. What about the people who would like to talk, but can't, because they are not on the same voice server as the other team members? You don't always have premade teams with all persons on the same voice server. Yes we don't need VOIP for friends or premade teams at all because they tend to use their own voice software, but we need VOIP for teamgames with strangers. @Jessep: I play Heroes of Newerth and VOIP is used quite often there (though americans tend to use it more often than europeans). And since I don't play in the low-end troll-bracket people are usually comprehensive and want to have teamwork/play as a team. From what I heart in dota2 and LoL it's similar. VOIP is not used here when you have friends in your team, because those friends indeed use external voice software. But as soon as you have a mixed team with people who don't know eachother, VOIP comes into play. So I disagree that VOIP is only used by premade teams, because those premade teams use external voice software anyway. VOIP is necessary for random teammates, because you don't have them on your voice server. And I don't expect them to break their silence and answer in VOIP aswell, it's just necessary that they are able to understand and comply to commands (just like the squadleader in Planetside 2 does ). In moba games its much easier to say "miss top" or "care bot" then to write it in chat, I often had situations where I died cos i was typing in chat...
I think Voice Communication helps. I think any team game in this day and age should have it included by default. Just think about a game like Battlefield, where it's a team-based game. It's a lot more "relative" than an RTS, meaning map locations, points of attack, it's not like each player has a command view. It's a lot more go-it-alone. If you have ever played it with team speak, it's already much better. It would be much better still in an RTS. Thought I don't think we should be encouraging trash talking, I do think that it is an important part of PC gaming that is missing right now.
Personally, that's one reason why my Xbox is gathering dust. Too many trash talkers or tweens flexing their new vocabulary. I like the maturity and the sportsmanship on PC, so I think that we can do just fine without trash talking. While it still does exist in some games, for the most part it's easily avoidable.
