Monday Night Combat is a game that promotes coordinated team play. Voice chat is key I believe for this to happen. I suggest that if someone is speaking through the voice chat, a little rectangular box with the persons name and their class icon (sort of like how counterstrike does it) should appear on the side of the screen. This way, you can identify who is asking for help and who exactly is doing the talking. Also, some sort of talk icon above a persons head (only visible to the teammates, unless all talk is on) would make the speaker easy to spot by his/her fellow team members. Also, (this is probably less needed but I think it could come in handy for some), showing the health of your teammates on some small part of the screen. I know it sounds very mmorpg-like, but I could definitely see it being used by support classes and by the rest of the team as well to see where people are getting attacked at, etc. I'm just trying to think of ways to promote better team play, and I think those are two things (off the top of my head) that could be implemented to get random strangers to play better together, even if it's their first game with one another.
that's why we created "team bacon". having teamspeak is probably a lot better than in-voice chat. No offense the new players in this game, but us talking in mid-game our strategy would probably confuse a lot of players and annoy them. Hearing "gunner left flank, take him out" would probably annoy anyone. What you suggest would probably be best for trying to coordinate these random pubs, but I still think teamspeak/ventrilo/whatever is the way to go.
I always figured that the voice-chat didn't work at all in the game since I never hear anyone talking and there is no way to confirm that my mic is transmitting; no pop-up indication on the HUD and generally no one responding to "can you hear me" even in the text chat. Since we are talking about information communication in general, the kill reports should have the names color-coded. Soandso killed What'shisface, but what do I care if I don't know which team they are on? If a bunch of my teammates are dying, then I would really want to know so I can respond appropriately.
I suppose I could agree with that. I never really thought of it much... I tend to know who's on my team more. I play with the game people quite a bit on some servers and I just remember names easily I suppose. So I'd know who is on what team. But it's a small, yet, noticeable improvement that could be nice if implemented into the game. As for the pop-up voice thing in the HUD, that would be nice. In fact, I've had lots of testing with "can you hear me?" with no response from anyone. One person did eventually say something... so I know it works. It's just frustrating that most people don't talk in-game though. I prefer talking with people on my team through TeamSpeak anyway.
I just kind of ignore in game voice chat because it doesn't really feel efficient. It's relatively low quality sounding to me and the voices kind of fade in and out while people are talking, or they just end up lagging. I also am highly used to pressing F as the button for voice chat, but I don't want to rebind my use key. I typically only talk if some other guy is being a gigantic ******* and needs to be told off or people are doing something REALLY stupid :/. Sounds bad, but that's the way it is...
I would see that not as annoying to new players, but as a useful way for us to learn and participate to the best of our abilities. Several threads on here are complaining that new players don't know what to do, the game should have extended tutorials etc. I think if the vets are hiding their teamwork in a secret channel we don't even know exists, that's a lost opportunity to help show us how it's done. But maybe you get griefed by rude randoms if you talk a lot in game? I could see that happening, unfortunately. "Gunner left flank" would probably be the most useful and least annoying thing I've ever heard on the mic. Oh wait, one time a guy said all the turrets were down, that was pretty good. But the rest was garbage. I would love it if people would call out enemy positions, lane conditions, turret status, omggettheannihilator, etc.
