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Sunday, March 19, 2006
The mark of the hardcore: Voice chat
If you had to find out whether somebody is a hardcore MMORPG player by looking at one single fact, you should look at whether he uses voice chat or not. The correlation between "being hardcore" and "using voice chat" is pretty solid, all the uber guilds use it, and nearly no casual players ever even tried.
Voice chat correlates to hardcore by two ways: dedication and effect. It requires some dedication to set up a voice chat server, and have all the guild members buy the necessary hardware and install the necessary software. But as this investment has a huge payback in terms of MMORPG effectiveness, it is well worth it for the hardcore players, for who effectiveness is important.
I know my guild isn't hardcore, and isn't even a real raiding guild, because we don't use any voice chat at all. So while for example on Friday we did a Molten Core run which wasn't bad, killing Lucifron, Magmadar, and Gehennas, due to lack of voice chat that feat took us over 5 hours. As we killed both Magmadar and Gehennas on the first attempt, I'd say that we didn't use much more time in the actual boss fight than other guilds. But getting people organized between each fight, even on the way through the trash mobs, without voice chat takes forever. Distributing loot can also take quite some time when you discuss by typing. Two of my D&D friends are in a hardcore guild with voice chat, and killing the first 3 bosses of MC takes them less than 2 hours.
A quarter of a century ago (oh my god!), when I was a teenager with his first ZX81 computer and a dislike of writing things with a pen, I took classes in typewriting. I still got a nice diploma stating that at the end of that class I was able to type 170 letters per minute, error-free, on a mechanical typewriter, without looking at my fingers. By now, with years and years of computer practice, I type probably even faster than that. But I'm well aware that very few other people around me ever formally learned how to type. That makes chat by typing in a hectic situation pretty impractical. By the time the priest types "Help! I'm being attacked", he is already dead. The fact that while typing chat you can't use your keyboard to enter game commands doesn't help. Voice chat is much more efficient, because you can use your mouse and keyboard with your hands while speaking. And whatever the group size, 5 to 40, improved communication leads to better results, less delay, and less deaths due to misunderstandings.
One reason I don't do PvP in World of Warcraft is voice chat. If you are in a group, pickup or even guild without voice chat, and you are paired against a guild using voice chat, the difference in efficency is so huge as to make the whole exercise pointless. Some people see that the people that repeatedly beat them wear epic gear and think that they got beat by the better equipment. But in fact the other side has both better gear and a much better PvP success rate because of voice chat.
Unfortunately voice chat isn't for everybody. I personally dislike wearing headphones, I can't stand prolonged pressure on my ears. And speaking in voice chat is quite annoying to whoever is living with you. My wife absolutely hated it when I tried it. And you can just imagine the casual player dad who can only play after bringing his children to bed doesn't want to wake them up by shouting "Heal me, heal me!" into a microphone. If my guild ever introduces voice chat, I would just let it run over the loudspeakers, as pure listener, and not talk. But even that, having one or two guys in a raid give orders, and the rest listening, would increase our efficiency a lot.
- posted by Tobold @ 8:52 AM Permanent Link
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For me, there is one major reason never to use voice chat: destruction of immersion.
I'm new to mmorpg's, and I'll be honest, the rpg part is very important to me. What appeals to me is the ability to roleplay with a large and varied group, and have adventures together.
Mmorpg's have several huge advantages (as well as a number of equally significant disadvantages) in the roleplaying area over pen & paper rpg's. One of these is the audiovisual presentation of the world, something that has only relatively recent become really good however. Another is the fact that since the world, NPC's and up to a point the player characters are more or less adequately (and even gorgeously) presented by the game software, the player can concentrate on actual roleplaying without such disturbances as background noises, speech impediments, a player's individual shyness, making descriptions of your character everybody forgets anyway, or the eternal discussions about rules interpretation...
I've tried out several WoW RP servers. Inexperienced/infantile players aside, RP could sometimes be of an impressively high standard, despite the limitations of the WoW software. One of the things adding to this was actual the fact that people interacted through "written speech", rather than actual speech. People have to think a little about what they say, they formulate it as best as they can, and what rolls out isn't ruined by the fact that, in real life, they stammer, have a funny voice, have a thick (if understandable) accent or have a different sex than the character they are playing...
They ARE their avatars, as far as in-game interaction is concerned.
There’s also the problem with players who are deaf, mute (or just have some kind of speech impediment) or can read English reasonably well but have trouble understanding the spoken form (especially when pronounced quickly and with an accent).
Once I got used to “text-based” roleplaying, I have to say that I look more critically at face-to-face roleplaying…
It is slower, of course. That is, in roleplaying terms, a big advantage: time to formulate your sentences, to absorb what other people are saying, and react to them. The quality of face-to-face pen & paper roleplaying is often somewhat diminished by the need to react speedily, not to mention the DM's impatient snorting and other non-verbal signals to hurry up :)
At the same time, I don’t have any trouble using voice chat in a pure team-based combat game with a modern setting: somehow it fits, and in fact I would probably insist on using it and not just because it provides a huge tactical advantage.
I'm new to mmorpg's, and I'll be honest, the rpg part is very important to me. What appeals to me is the ability to roleplay with a large and varied group, and have adventures together.
Mmorpg's have several huge advantages (as well as a number of equally significant disadvantages) in the roleplaying area over pen & paper rpg's. One of these is the audiovisual presentation of the world, something that has only relatively recent become really good however. Another is the fact that since the world, NPC's and up to a point the player characters are more or less adequately (and even gorgeously) presented by the game software, the player can concentrate on actual roleplaying without such disturbances as background noises, speech impediments, a player's individual shyness, making descriptions of your character everybody forgets anyway, or the eternal discussions about rules interpretation...
I've tried out several WoW RP servers. Inexperienced/infantile players aside, RP could sometimes be of an impressively high standard, despite the limitations of the WoW software. One of the things adding to this was actual the fact that people interacted through "written speech", rather than actual speech. People have to think a little about what they say, they formulate it as best as they can, and what rolls out isn't ruined by the fact that, in real life, they stammer, have a funny voice, have a thick (if understandable) accent or have a different sex than the character they are playing...
They ARE their avatars, as far as in-game interaction is concerned.
There’s also the problem with players who are deaf, mute (or just have some kind of speech impediment) or can read English reasonably well but have trouble understanding the spoken form (especially when pronounced quickly and with an accent).
Once I got used to “text-based” roleplaying, I have to say that I look more critically at face-to-face roleplaying…
It is slower, of course. That is, in roleplaying terms, a big advantage: time to formulate your sentences, to absorb what other people are saying, and react to them. The quality of face-to-face pen & paper roleplaying is often somewhat diminished by the need to react speedily, not to mention the DM's impatient snorting and other non-verbal signals to hurry up :)
At the same time, I don’t have any trouble using voice chat in a pure team-based combat game with a modern setting: somehow it fits, and in fact I would probably insist on using it and not just because it provides a huge tactical advantage.
# posted by 
: 19/3/06 12:36
: 19/3/06 12:36
You only need a couple of people who are leading the raid to use it, I put an earpiece in whenever I have it on as it gets on my girlfriends nerves as well. It makes a massive difference though.
Just hope you don't get a guy like this leading your raid
http://student.cmd.hro.nl/0776750/files/Onyxia_wipe.mp3
^^terryfying
Just hope you don't get a guy like this leading your raid
http://student.cmd.hro.nl/0776750/files/Onyxia_wipe.mp3
^^terryfying
# posted by : 19/3/06 16:06
: 19/3/06 16:06
Re RP immersion -
I regularly play in the same room as one or two of the people I group with. We're also hard-core roleplayers, so the work-around we've developed is as follows:
All voice chat is OOC - whether it's "I want that loot", "Aargh! They have set them up the bomb!", or "Anyone want a cuppa"? All roleplaying of characters is still done through text.
This works very well indeed. We can all imagine each others' characters' voices, we retain immersion, but we also retain the ability to warn our colleagues that something nine feet tall and hairy is about to turn our nice simple fight into what the military would term a "rapidly developing situation in a target rich environment".
Without getting the old "Argh! Runwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww" problem.
- Hugh
I regularly play in the same room as one or two of the people I group with. We're also hard-core roleplayers, so the work-around we've developed is as follows:
All voice chat is OOC - whether it's "I want that loot", "Aargh! They have set them up the bomb!", or "Anyone want a cuppa"? All roleplaying of characters is still done through text.
This works very well indeed. We can all imagine each others' characters' voices, we retain immersion, but we also retain the ability to warn our colleagues that something nine feet tall and hairy is about to turn our nice simple fight into what the military would term a "rapidly developing situation in a target rich environment".
Without getting the old "Argh! Runwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww" problem.
- Hugh
# posted by : 20/3/06 00:06
: 20/3/06 00:06
With voice comms its all or none. Everyone needs to be able to hear the leaders and looters voice. Having just one person not able to hear means everything needs to be echoed in normal typed chat and the voice comms advantage is lessened.
I've used voice comms alot. I play in a world war 2 online squad with our own (ropey and unreliable) server. Not all the squad can use it, and they miss out alot. In ww2ol there is no immersion issue, its alot more immersive to hear someone scream "SIX SIX SIX" to you when you have an enemy fighter on your tail, than to read it typed to you (by which time your usually dead anyway).
I am thinking about maybe experimenting with getting a Teamspeak for the guild. Id start small and only put the officers, Main Tank, Raid leader and master looter on it. That would speed some of the decision making processes that usually bounce around person to person in typed format. Wether we then upgrade to full 40 man voice comms is something we would look at in the future. From a guild growth point of view, not having voice comms could be seen as a negative for potential recruits!!
Does it break immersion? Only if its used to talk about last weeks soccer game...discipline is required and all chat should be on topic and focused on being effective raiders. Chit chat would be discouraged, and I would mute anyone that abused the channel (at admin level).
I've used voice comms alot. I play in a world war 2 online squad with our own (ropey and unreliable) server. Not all the squad can use it, and they miss out alot. In ww2ol there is no immersion issue, its alot more immersive to hear someone scream "SIX SIX SIX" to you when you have an enemy fighter on your tail, than to read it typed to you (by which time your usually dead anyway).
I am thinking about maybe experimenting with getting a Teamspeak for the guild. Id start small and only put the officers, Main Tank, Raid leader and master looter on it. That would speed some of the decision making processes that usually bounce around person to person in typed format. Wether we then upgrade to full 40 man voice comms is something we would look at in the future. From a guild growth point of view, not having voice comms could be seen as a negative for potential recruits!!
Does it break immersion? Only if its used to talk about last weeks soccer game...discipline is required and all chat should be on topic and focused on being effective raiders. Chit chat would be discouraged, and I would mute anyone that abused the channel (at admin level).
My guild requires that raiding guild members be on Vent (Ventrilo, the other big one next to TeamSpeak). You're right, though - voice communication increases overall effectiveness by leaps and bounds. All instructions are given over Vent. Realtime/mid-fight info likewise. It's to the point where a lot of us/them recognize each other's voices over Vent so most of the time we don't even need to say who is speaking. Plus, it's fine if people don't want to talk over Vent - they really just need to be there to listen and hear the instructions from the raid leader(s).
As an example, in MC, while taking out a lava pack, our raid got jumped by a Surger, an Annhilator and a Core Hound in short order. Vent was a life saver as everyone could communicate to deal with the extra threats. When I was knocked back into Golemagg and died, I was able to tell the raid that I was dead & wouldn't be able to rebanish my then-currently-banished Surger. Big help.
As an example, in MC, while taking out a lava pack, our raid got jumped by a Surger, an Annhilator and a Core Hound in short order. Vent was a life saver as everyone could communicate to deal with the extra threats. When I was knocked back into Golemagg and died, I was able to tell the raid that I was dead & wouldn't be able to rebanish my then-currently-banished Surger. Big help.
# posted by : 20/3/06 14:33
: 20/3/06 14:33
Also, I first tried using a purchased headset with a mic. It was touted as a "gaming" headset and the cross piece didn't go over my head but around my neck instead, with the ear pieces appropriately angled.
It hurt my ears after about 5-10 min of wearing it.
So I purchased a desktop table mic. I now use that with my speakers. Works just fine.
It hurt my ears after about 5-10 min of wearing it.
So I purchased a desktop table mic. I now use that with my speakers. Works just fine.
# posted by : 20/3/06 14:36
: 20/3/06 14:36
My old guild used vent as a social thing, long before there were enough 60's to raid.
I could swear you've blogged about uncomfortable headsets before? Because I remember commenting about how I wear mine around my neck, earpieces dangling in front of my shoulders, just to use the mic. I keep the regular computer loudspeakers on for listening.
I could swear you've blogged about uncomfortable headsets before? Because I remember commenting about how I wear mine around my neck, earpieces dangling in front of my shoulders, just to use the mic. I keep the regular computer loudspeakers on for listening.
LOL. I like the distinction and to a large degree, think your assessment is correct. Larger guilds that are doing end-game raiding typically require the use of ventrillo or teamspeak. Trying to get 40 people to act as one, doesn't work as well without it. And not just the leaders need it. If you get yourself into trouble or need to warn the group qucikly while in the middle of a battle, you can bet that no one is reading chat.
I was very averse to using it at first and often dont sign on unless I'm doing group quests as it is a distraction from the game's immersiveness. But sadly, I'm finding that the RPG in the current RPGMMOs is starting to wane.
I was very averse to using it at first and often dont sign on unless I'm doing group quests as it is a distraction from the game's immersiveness. But sadly, I'm finding that the RPG in the current RPGMMOs is starting to wane.
# posted by : 31/3/06 17:58
: 31/3/06 17:58
Most everyone is for Voice Comm, and they tell those that prefer not to use it to go find people to play with that don't want to instead of complaining.
Answer: http://www.silentgamers.com
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