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.
Revisiting the idea of Proximity Voice Chat
Sathrago
Member, Alpha Two
In the latest livestream we saw a video displaying the nodes. And guess what they did in the first few minutes? They "pretended" to walk around and introduce each member of the discussion as their characters appeared. Which is basically proximity voice chat. Their conversations are similar from then on to it as well. Its a fun experience, and really adds to the video/immersion of the game.
Now, what do we need to have this sort of thing be realistic to put in the game? We all know the downsides of prox chat, so lets think of some solutions to stop or otherwise reduce the negatives associated with it, because I really think the positives are worth working towards.
My suggestions:
An Easily accessible mute option on targeted players, as well as an icon for when someone is speaking so that its easier to identify the annoyance inside of a crowd.
Harsh punishments, up to and including permanent muting, or account suspension for verbal harassment that breaks the ToS. Id also apply this to the blasting of high volume noise of any kind in an effort to annoy others.
Well, thats all I could think of at the moment lmk if you have any other ideas. Id appreciate it if we could keep the thread to "how it can be done" and not another "ew I dont like it" thread. We already had one of those.
Now, what do we need to have this sort of thing be realistic to put in the game? We all know the downsides of prox chat, so lets think of some solutions to stop or otherwise reduce the negatives associated with it, because I really think the positives are worth working towards.
My suggestions:
An Easily accessible mute option on targeted players, as well as an icon for when someone is speaking so that its easier to identify the annoyance inside of a crowd.
Harsh punishments, up to and including permanent muting, or account suspension for verbal harassment that breaks the ToS. Id also apply this to the blasting of high volume noise of any kind in an effort to annoy others.
Well, thats all I could think of at the moment lmk if you have any other ideas. Id appreciate it if we could keep the thread to "how it can be done" and not another "ew I dont like it" thread. We already had one of those.
5
Comments
There has been no game with proximity voice chat in the history of humanity that players weren't able to mute, or have muted by default, so there aren't really no arguments to be made against it
I have an argument against it.
If it exists, many (perhaps most) players will turn it off.
Thus, all it is doing in terms of high level effects on the game is splitting the population between those that use it and those that rightly won't.
So, it is spending development time creating, and CS time moderating, all for the singular effect of splitting the playerbase up.
Essentially, it is Intrepid spending time and money making the community worse.
There are theoretical benefits to it, but those benefits seldom actually come to pass in reality. The main actual use it would see in a game like Ashes would be for someone to mock the player they have just killed - something the game is better off not enabling.
But if the goal of this is to see "how it can be done" I can play along with kicking the ball around about it.
Centralized Locations
When dealing with prox-chat the biggest issue I ran into was the sheer chaos in towns/central areas. Even if everyone was being respectful it was still an overload of sensory information that made me want to avoid using the bank function because there was so many people talking. To limit this there could be a restriction on areas where it opens up. Like perhaps in taverns or social hubs prox would turn on, but on the streets or in "game focused" buildings like the town hall or a crafting station it would be off. This could help spread the noise while in towns and prevent people from abusing the PVC around those who don't go seeking it out. I guess it could also be turned on in the open world too as I never had a problem when I was in the woods/walking the streets and hearing a random conversation go by (when the people weren't being poo poo heads of course)
Group Based
So when it comes to dungeons or raiding most people will already be using an outside voice chat since communication needs to be clear and quick. However, it could be for strangers that there is a party voice chat or a voice chat for a dungeon area (etc) so players could group up or communicate with others doing the same content as them.
Those are two ways I think it could help mitigate the spam/noise pollution despite it causing its use to have limited functionality. I'm still in the "prefer not having it in games" camp though since people...can not be so great a lot of the time.
@Noaani Show me data that proves that many/most will turn it off
pulling statements like this out of your ass based on your group of friends or a tiny vocal group of 20 people within a 4 Million player community is irrelevant
and again, as Always, the shit you say makes absolutely No sense, you create this ridiculous argument that VC will "split" the playerbase
and proceed to say adding it is making the game worse due to splitting the community, wtf?
so people that play with music turned off and people that play with music on - are also 2 different groups of players = playerbase is now split, don't add music? lol
I could also debunk the other part of the argument about intrepid spending resources coding/CSing it because they will already do this, they are planning on having it in the game, in POIs, taverns, etc so the tech will exist, they wouldn't be making anything new,
but I'm more interested in the data
I'm really sorry you weren't a part of it.
If me playing with music turned off or on had an effect on your game experience, then yeah.
Since they don't, then this is just you grasping at straws.
Are you suggesting that the same amount of moderation would be needed for tavern based proximity chat as would be needed for universal proximity voice chat?
You shouldn't need data to understand that the more use an in game chat system like this gets, the more time it will take to moderate it.
Now, if you were just complaining about me saying it will take more development time, then the above wouldn't apply. However, you specifically included CS time in your reply as something you don't think to be valid.
I do believe VC is doable in towns but needs to be some sort of dynamic volume.
In the street - the "volume" or voices may sound more loud or clearer for those closer to you and muffle/mumbling/distorted.
example: let's assume prox. VC has a unit of 60 spaces by default.
* Dungeon: you can hear everyone clearly.
*
* Town Streets: voices are clear up to 10-20 units. 21-40, voices are lower. 41-60 voices are muffles/mumbling, hard to make out what they are saying. Basically there is 3 audio field distance. Close/Mid/Far (X/Y/Z)
* Town Store: so the X/Y/Z here would be 10/20/30-60. People would be more quieter the further they are from you. The audio dynamically changes as if it is pretending you are speaker lower tone to your friends when in a shop like in real life.
* Town Taverns: Just like in real life, taverns/bars are loud by nature. so the X/Y/Z dynamic audio changes to 45/50/55. So you will hear a lot more players from a distance of unit 40 clearly.
* Open World PvE - the XYZ will be 30/45/60
As long as we have 2 settings:
Global VC on/off
Individual player VC on/off - because there will always be that one dumbass.
Easy for gamers to be talking about all kinds of OOC crap.
But... we'll have to see what we get.
I'm fine with proximity voice chat as long as there is an option to disable it all together in settings with added individual mute lists as well. I honestly don't want to hear ANY real life voices/noises in this game at all unless i am in a group with close in-game friends.