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Voice?  

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  1. 1. Do you want to see in-game voice?



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Will there be an In-game voice? mechanic, and if not can there be a solid one?

 

An in-game voice mechanic which allows you to talk to players that are within a certain area near you. And they can hear you louder the closer you are? And also possibly a way to amplify your voice for example if you're giving a political speech? Or something like PA speakers so you can alert your crew to abandon ship? Even something else like using ships to contact another one of your ships to give them an order or even a motivational speech?. 

 

Without an in-game voice, people would be negotiating by typing or even using software such as discord and this can be long and complicated just to talk to someone you just met. And let's say you have a meeting with a high up official who just sent you a message to meet him. Would you rather click on a discord room with him in it and talk? Or would you rather stroll down to the hanger and enter a ship and flying to the officials command ship. To then proceed to walk into his office and sit down for a meeting.

 

This could be done similar to games like Dayz, Rust, and many others. It would really push forward how realistic cooperation between two people can go and the entire game in a whole. 



Update - (3/03/2018)
This suggestion was made a long while ago, and during the course of that time, some interesting questions and ideas have been brought to the discussion that I would like to touch on here.

 

This type of communication is a necessity for Dual Universe, for the scale of this game having a voice system really boosts its quality and can even make the game, Chance encounters are one of the most important and exciting moments you will experience, without a proper communication system they simply cannot be brought to their full potential. One of the largest reasons is that Dual Universe is a societal game, from nations to pirates and companies. You need a way to convey information that is easy and and connected to the game, some examples of this include traders trying to convince you to buy one of their products, a police officer asking for identification, a pirate asking for demands, a superior officer in the military giving you a quick order in an intense situation and the chance encounters that were mentioned earlier like someone who has managed to settle on the same asteroid as you or someone in the street of a large city. These examples show you why 3rd party services cannot be relied on, they take too long to configure and to hold one for an entire organisation would require a stupidly large amount of constant micro-management. 

 

A city is alive because information flows through it, cities are what keep organisations alive and if you cannot allow information to flow through a city then it results in the eventual collapse of that establishment and possibly the organisation. An in-game voice system perfectly fits into the city and maps it accordingly unlike 3rd party software.

 

[Further Explanation of above point]

For example, lets take discord and build up a small model area of a city, we have a marketplace with around 100 people trading and talking to each other, we have an area not too far away where there is a political candidate giving a speech and between them another area that is a residential building, some conversations are taking place between people looking to buy an apartment and neighbors talking to each other. Its possible at this point to create a setup in discord, you could have a voice room with everyone in it, but then you face difficulty hearing the person you are trying to listen too because everyone is the same volume, you could take the more obvious root and divide the channels into speech, market and residential but then each one has the same problem of not being able to hear the person they are talking too maybe directly calling someone is a better option but then no one can enter that conversation so you divide up the rooms again. In a sense an attempt to map the city to discord. The problem  with mapping in discord is that when a new instance is created discord cannot simply be updated, lets say there is an explosion or crash nearby, a new environment has been created, for in-game voice its a matter of walking into this area to hear the new environment and for the map to be updated, you would also globally hear the effect of the crash and how it affects the market, speech and residential area. Discord cannot have a new environment in this area unless you have someone online who can create a new channel in a hurry, and even then you would not get the connected experience you would with an integrated voice system. 

 

Some common problems/points:

 

This would put too much load on the server: 

It could, I'm sure if NQ puts there mind to it they can find a way around it, for example, it could become P2P.

 

This isn't what NQ should be focusing on right now: 

I agree they shouldn't even look at this feature until some time before launch, or even after launch, it doesn't mean it shouldn't be in the game.  

 

This would be an annoying feature: 

It might be in some places, but if you are in a nation it becomes there responsibility to moderate it, there could be some settings in-game which allow you to disable it, mute specific people, adjust your hearing range etc. 

 

 

Thank you, this has been an interesting discussion and I hope it continues to be. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I would like to see this happen because it is immersive as all hell, though realistically I see it working on more of a opt in channel basis rather than a passive "hear everyone around you" type of thing. This could be extended to have elements that create a secure communication channel for those interacting with it.

 

This would be great not only for simple 1-on-1 chats and political discussions but also in-game concerts.

 

While very nice to have, because there are workarounds like Discord, I don't see this happening till after release if at all.

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I can only suggest to consider this for the roadmap at one point that is perhaps not too long after release.

 

The advantages can be seen in games with local VOIP and where you can meet random players. I like to think it's the same topic with the logos - there is room for potential abuse or annoyance but bottom line, more people benefit from this I like to think.

 

You could add mechanics that allow "quick muting" - for example by local VOIP you can see who is talking and mute individual players.

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I have no problems with an ingame VOIP system.

 

BUT it has to be set to 'push to talk' by default.

 

I'm tired of people breathing into the mic. Babies screaming in the background. People coughing, the random guy playing while talking or screaming to his friends oblivious to peoples request to mute himself.

 

In my experience it becomes very tiring to always having to manually mute people.

 

Sorry for the little rant but this topic brings up memories of many frustrating evenings. :)

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I really think it should be opt in. I don't think the immersion that would be gained by half-hearing potentially thousands of irrelevant conversations around you outweighs the additional strain on servers and connectivity. A simple GUI could be used to start a conversation by tuning into a channel and others would have to do the same. Channels could be dynamically created and invites to join various channels could be sent. Mute/ignore functionality would also be required. I have less of an issue with push to talk but having that as a default sounds like a good idea.

 

I would envision such channels to only function within line of sight unless they are extended through the use of an element or item.

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I can only suggest to consider this for the roadmap at one point that is perhaps not too long after release.

 

The advantages can be seen in games with local VOIP and where you can meet random players. I like to think it's the same topic with the logos - there is room for potential abuse or annoyance but bottom line, more people benefit from this I like to think.

 

You could add mechanics that allow "quick muting" - for example by local VOIP you can see who is talking and mute individual players.

 

kill'em to mute'em

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Local voice that falls off with distance... which does take into account the intervening walls to even further reduce it. 

 

Voice modulation so those who wish to play female or male characters can make their character sound as close to the way they want as possible.

 

Radio transmission like mechanics... so you can call an individual... hail 1 ship... or broadcast to the whole area... as well as create "encrypted" private channels for your group to organize...

 

Yep I want all of that.  I don't want to use third party programs to get some of the above functions... I want it built into the game.

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You can wait long for some of that however - I doubt they'll have the time to go for that level of soundscape and depth regarding voice comms. Star Citizen (as example doing it) seems unique in that approach but they have the larger funds and team for that and specifically consider it some sort of priority.

 

I'm somewhat happy I have the modulation part already - at least to simulate a radio or vocoder. The "falls off with distance" part seems more manageable however.

 

E: ARMA III radio plugin could also seem comparable.

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this is a good idea, but it isn't too complicated to integrate, any decent sound libaray already integrates all these tools, and some more would be used for the modulation, wich are simple mathemetical functions, FFT -> shifting of frequencies -> recomposition into sound waves

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It should be a very short ranged distance as well. before it falls off. And if its easy to mute it would be hard to exploit since most players won't be very close to each other or close enough to hear each other all the time. And if some annoying guy is screaming into the mic you could either walk away or mute him. 

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Have you any experience with this?

Spending most of your time muting players isnt fun.

 

Just sayin' ;)

 

Well, the thing is where would you run into a player? And if it's in a gathering every other player may feel the same about the guy and "force" him to stop. Maybe you could run into him in a street in a city were he is screaming as people pass. And if that was the case it wouldn't be that hard to mute him. And before that someone else might have complained and the local Authorities of the city would have already dealt with him. And I doubt this game would be full of people screaming into their microphones especially with push to talk being default. And if a city can be built and sustained in the first place you would think the people who built it are also formal enough not to scream into their microphones for pointless reasons. 

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...And I doubt this game would be full of people screaming into their microphones especially with push to talk being default...

Yes if push to talk is default that would fix most of it.

 

But you'd be surprised to discover how common it is for people to be annoying with in game open mics.

 

Like I said I'm not against VOIP perse.

I just feel it needs some extra attention if its to be done right. :)

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Petite nuance: despite being annoying, you still need to be close to the person to talk to him. This allows you to make him shut up by killing him. Problem solved. But then the respawn point will be filled with afk's baby cries, bodily sounds and other wiered noises.

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Petite nuance: despite being annoying, you still need to be close to the person to talk to him. This allows you to make him shut up by killing him. Problem solved. But then the respawn point will be filled with afk's baby cries, bodily sounds and other wiered noises.

Haha yes.

That is if you can kill them in the area.

 

Going to the market might be maddening. Just imagine the crowds of people and the amount of noise...:P

 

Though I'm sure if NQ implements it at some point they will be sensible about it. Unlike some other developers...????

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Depends on the market. Again emergent gameplay strikes us - or this issue. If it's a major player city or settlement, they can control who they let in and kick out - or at least do not let back in as soon as they leave.

 

They could make it a regulation or law that continuous yelling is forbidden in general - of course they could also allow yelling on the market if it's done for advertising purposes. Market crier.

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Going to the market might be maddening. Just imagine the crowds of people and the amount of noise...:P

Sounds like a real market honestly.

 

I like the potential for it - NQ don't have to make background noise for markets for example, and a PA system on a ship for issuing commands is really immersive.

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Haha yes.

That is if you can kill them in the area.

 

Going to the market might be maddening. Just imagine the crowds of people and the amount of noise... :P

 

Though I'm sure if NQ implements it at some point they will be sensible about it. Unlike some other developers...

 

 

I would also be totally onboard with pushToTalk.   Markets and anyplace there are groups of players can be a challenge but the biggest downside to open mic is the break of immersion if you have someone that's got a lot of r/l stuff going on in the background that you don't want to hear.  ie, cnn, etc.  

 

I've played too many games where it's just not implemented correctly.  I'm confident NQ would do it right but I don't recall it being mentioned yet in the dev logs or phone chats.  

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Perhaps text to speech would solve many of the perceived problems and provide advantages such as female avatars with a female voice, profanity filters, no unwanted background noises, less work and bandwidth used by servers, players choose from a dozen or so voices that can be tweaked slightly with sliders at the point of avatar creation, limiting the voice assets required on each client. Also provides a text log on the client in case you were afk during a conversation attempt, client could set distance range to hear conversation

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I really think it should be opt in. I don't think the immersion that would be gained by half-hearing potentially thousands of irrelevant conversations around you outweighs the additional strain on servers and connectivity. A simple GUI could be used to start a conversation by tuning into a channel and others would have to do the same. Channels could be dynamically created and invites to join various channels could be sent. Mute/ignore functionality would also be required. I have less of an issue with push to talk but having that as a default sounds like a good idea.

 

I would envision such channels to only function within line of sight unless they are extended through the use of an element or item.

 

If feel you're grossly overestimating the population density we're going to achieve in this game. Juggling channels for line-of-sight communications sounds needlessly complicated, somehow I doubt it will be a common occurrence to have so many people around that you need to filter them. Except maybe for the early days, when everyone is still milling around the arkship.

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