Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
will you only do sieges or competitive play?
Progress and change are different things. Progress is when you improve upon a game, with changes that are liked by most. PVC is not progress, it is change to fit a vocal minority. Many players (myself included) Feel as if PVC is a waste of resources that can ruin games. Even if you turn it off, it still has core flaws that break immersion rather than help it. AOC already has a ton of features planned for release, and this would be useless.
https://knightsofember.com/forums/members/winner909098.54
Be it for RP or quick player interaction, I always find PVC as a cool addition. It's not perfect, but nothing in the world is.
I legit believe it would be epic, in a 500 man army, if you could ride on a horse like King Theoden and give a grand speech before a huge battle. Its something that feels way more satisfying than a mere raid VC. Sure, not everyone does that, but does that mean no one should?
Convenience and emergent gameplay : ease of communication during open world encounters that last for brief periods and don’t feature grouping. Examples include solos stumbling across another solo who pulled to many mobs, groups crossing paths and negotiating peace, bandits negotiating surrender instead of going straight for the throat, etc. Without access to prox chat, these things are severely diminished and sometimes or even impossible and every encounter quickly becomes about who pulls the trigger first. Discord cannot satisfy the demands for the need of immediate ability to talk. Anybody who’s played a game with ffa pvp and resource scarcity knows that two individuals fighting over a single picked flower can escalate out of control into a full fledged realm v realm war.
Interconnected-ness: being in control of your character means stopping to type is not practical. What ends up happening is people who are actively adventuring are not communicating. The result is that the players around you end up feeling like NPCs instead of living breathing humans. Prox chat deals with this issue by meaning you can continue to control your character while communicating. You’re not stuck in place or clumsily trying to manage your character on auto run while typing. Meaningful relationships are formed and memorable experiences are had because of prox chat, that no other feature can quite produce in the same way.
All of these little occurrences seem irrelevant when taken as stand alones, but the sum of the experience is one that is rich, fulfilling, and changes the way the community cooperates in a way that is substantial and meaningful.
Prox chat has been employed successfully in numerous MMOs with different pvp structures (from faction based no loot too FFA full loot) including Rust, Mortal, Planetside, Atlas, Star Citizen, Scum, Tarkov, and recently, New World. AoC falls right in the middle with flagging rules and partial loot; but what it has in common with all of them will be small scale spontaneous encounters that occur organically and often feature great deals of tension - these are the moments where prox chat thrives and cannot be sufficiently supplemented by third party programs like discord.
Prox chat enriches gameplay experiences and prompts relationship building. If prox chat can be included, it should be.
Secondly, and this is the only other major point in my opinion, the interactions facilitated by VOIP can range from toxic to epic or even hilarious. These conversations can significantly influence public perception of the game's performance. Maybe I'm in a niche, but I greatly enjoy videos where strangers in games like Rust or Ark become friends, or even enemies. VOIP enables conversations that simply wouldn't happen with text alone. For many, especially newcomers, VOIP will likely be the preferred, if not the only, communication method. Consider that many gamers born after 2000 haven't used text communication while playing games. Yes, they can learn to type, but VOIP offers a more familiar and comforting experience in a world increasingly dominated by gamers.
Not to mention, I am personally not a big advocate of using external communication platforms like Discord when in a game. I feel it greatly detracts from immersion. Any game that implements in-game VOIP, I use it, as it brings a sense of realism and immediacy that external apps simply can't match.
The only scenario where I'd oppose VOIP is if it causes performance issues. I don't believe it offers any unfair advantage, as some suggest. Customization could resolve many potential problems.
While VOIP is not a make-or-break feature for me, there have been moments in my gaming life that left me in awe: first, booting up World of Warcraft as a 12-year-old and experiencing an unprecedented sense of connection; second, playing on my friend's Xbox at 13 and conversing with a stranger, where we would spend hours in online games just to talk and enjoy fun conversations; and third, playing Ark, which combined those feelings and experiences into an ultimate sense of connectedness, unique to our server. Forming relationships and knowing the people we interacted with made the game feel like a second home.
I understand that the current plans for VOIP are somewhat limited, but I am here to advocate for its full implementation. It would truly be a game-changer for myself and many others. I completely understand if a majority opts out, but having the option would open the game to so many unique moments, friendships, and conflicts.
So you are a solo player?
Guild members talk in Discord.
AoC needs to offer ingame proximity voice with "push to talk" key.
Same key can be configured as "push to mute" in discord to prevent them hearing what you say. And one more helpful Discord key is to toggle both mic and headphone, so you are like "away" until you finish ingame chat.
A visual indicator in game should show if the player enabled voice, to know if to talk or write. And a visual indicator that the player pressed the push to talk, to know that if you do not get an answer, it's actually a problem with their mic.
I would describe myself as a connoisseur of playstyles. While for leveling content and farming etc. I much prefer riding solo and running across randoms, I will assuredly partake in some party based events, if not all of them. So I like playing both ways, and I will be using the party chat features when needed, no doubt. But when playing solo I enjoy meeting new people, and in those situations I would partake in voip. Your solution also sounds good, push to talk voip that mutes party when talking in the wild, to get the best of both worlds!
I just hope dev's consider the amounts of people who would really enjoy voip! Even if it's not a majority, it seems like this game isn't being made for the majority in the first place. It all comes down to that running up to someone to type out a question, only for them to scurry off in a hurry before hitting send scenario for me. It's happened countless time's and is a simple barrier to fix for those willing to partake.
I just describe the system from another MMO where NOT using VOIP is not normal and you are a noob if you don't turn it on.
But I doubt Ashes players will favor VOIP.
When the vast majority of players play silently, everyone will switch to that style by default.
A mix of both is not a stable behavior and I think in AoC players will fallback onto written chat if chat channels will exist.
People want instant messaging now. You can always turn it off and if you get close to someone with non voice it should tell you somewhere.