WIP: Proximity Voice Chat

One thing I get from threads like this: most of the contra-arguments are concerned about abuse. This thread is three pages by now and focusing on potential abuse of the additions. It's also not the only thread of this kind.

So I see green names reacting on that and spending time on closing holes in the basic mechanics to avoid abuse.

Dear green names,
did you ever think about that abuse is such a repetitive and numerous concern because of how soft offenses are dealt with ingame? Did you ever think about how much more confidence large parts of the community may have with new additions if these people could rely on offenders being dealt with, in appropriate/repetitive cases permanently, and that even if/despite the offender already sunk $2,500 in this game?

Right now, the larger part of chat in this game is an annoyance. This is a recurring theme on this forums, yet no reaction and thus, improvement has been noticed; maybe because no reaction took place by now. While the situation stays like this, any project related to "forcing" chat on players is dead weight and will result in the described reactions.

If you don't have enough manpower to enforce rules ingame, you may want to cut on the abilities to break rules in the first place. Chat of any kind is widely presenting lots of these abilities. When wanting to improve on that, try to find preventive means of countering abuse instead of reactive means (ignore, walk away, report) before thinking of the improvements - or add more manpower so community concerns will no longer focus on "abuse" as the offenders get the hammer ingame, discouraging potential further offenders from walking that way, too.

If you don't want to improve on manpower or rule enforcement at all, I strongly recommend walking away from chat as a means to organize cooperative gameplay at all. There are technical solutions to manage that via the UI; such an approach is technically possible at some suggestion have been posted in the forums over the past two month as well to replace "functional" chats like "Trade" or "LFG"; also such UI solutions will solve the language barrier for the client versions that are translated.

For this current WIP: if there is no option to allow to get rid of proximity chat permanently with just one click in general, I'd prolly go for the "no sound at all"-solution after implementation; at least with the current situation regarding chat and ignoring offenders - which will turn the "usability factor" of it to "dead weight".

Best comment I've read all day.

Um i have a backbone thank u very much and even if no1 said a single word about if would choose to abuse this u somehow think people still wouldnt do it? So because we dont say it it wont happen? Ok so i wont say im going to win the lottery 2mor and ill win...awesome

Seriously tho people are saying no to the idea simply because there are alot of very immature people playing this game that go out of their way to bother and annoy people. Because we know it happens and i personally know 1 player right now who i know would 100% use this to try and bother people is the reason we dont want it. I play the game to have fun and the i dont want more ways for players to annoy me or any1 else. Ive had players somehow get into my leagues ts server and it was very very annoying. And thats our own server so it doesnt happen alot. But now its in the game and any1 can make a choice to act like a fool and i can hear it if they are near me? Nah sorry dont ever want that.

Horrible waste of time and resources. This, if anything, will give the griefers/trolls more ammunition.
People don't use proximity chat because it doesnt work, it's because they know whats on the other end and don't feel like hearing it.

Here's a question:

Why do I need an instance chat tab to pop up when I go into solo challenges? Maybe you can fix that while taking a look at Proximity Chat.

I'd say dont bother. I have to mute/ignore enough ppl from group content and chat boxes. If someone is blairing music/another tv while grouped i ask the to mute and if they dont i turn down there mic. This would just be a turn down volume or add to ignore fest every in game meter in watch tower. Keep in mind not everyone in this game is mindful or even cares about others. Forget this idea. If i want to talk to someone i'll grp them so i'm free to duel, craft, recieve mail or anything else i can be doing instead of holding buttons to respond.

One: I think this is a good idea. You guys over at DCUO have been doing good things as of late.

Two: Conversely, I've never understood any objections to proximity chat to begin with. There seems to be something insipidly inept about someone that finds it "aggravating" to simply use the "Set Player Volume" option.
I suppose as a Marine, coddling the faint of will isn't something I agree with. Even if an entire society has embraced said faint heartedness.

I've met many new players that needed help, directions, a free aura (lol), or honestly just someone to talk to, through prox chat. And I'm always willing to lend a hand.
Obviously, the guy blasting his Nelly or Greatest Elvis hits album can be alitte annoying, but to let that hinder a new player's ability to engage a zone freely, I think is heading down the wrong path... a totalitarian path. Shall we rid ourselves of the "Say" channel aswell?
We can't "get rid" of the guy playing his loud music in his pickup truck irl. We deal with it, and thus we should, dare I say must, deal with it in the virtual world with the tools already provided us.

Just let people stand on their own two feet.. ..and never coddle the weak. imo.

Yeah there's really nothing bad with this at all.

The people already commenting here seem to forget you can set player voice volume easily, and considering the fact that if you're broken into 2 raid groups if you're doing open world ( 16 players) this would be much easier to communicate between the two, I personally don't see what's wrong with this WIP.

Also, I like how you guys take care of the little things like mechanics, powers, and nifty stuff first rather than completely overhauling the whole system and delay the servers for hours upon hours, you're doing a great job devs.

nt

Truthfully the way it is now is kind of bad. Most everyone has it off bc there are a lot of kids who play this game and kids make noise for no reason. Kids try to annoy people and elicit reactions (trolling). No one likes having the ever living crap scared out of them, the dog freaks out and the baby woken up bc some kid starts scream singing Whitney Houston's I will always Love you...

That being said all of what you suggested, P2T, staying in your current VC, cross-factions etc... Does sound pretty cool. I still don't know how much I'd use it, but I wouldn't begrudge anyone working on it.

Sounds reasonable so far, I would also like to propose any idea of a new text chat vhannel similar to LFG.
There is already a league recruitment center section in the forums but how about a Looking For League channel.
Especially because of all the new league hype.

I absolutely agree with this. I can't speak for PC gaming, but last time I had a gaming rig, it seemed the norm for people to not want to hear others unless they were grouped, and even then, particular people were going to get muted (especially in shooters). As far as the consoles go, when it comes to the playstation platforms specifically, there is a lot less talk in general as the platforms gaming influences in Japan did not make strides to emphasize voice communication as much as they did to implement in-game canned phrases or canned chat, as well as keyboard text support (very few games on that last one). The xbox crowd in comparison is much more talkative (good and bad) as their platform launched with an emphasis on social talk for their games (plus they had the system ram to allow more features).

Due to the accessibility of the console platforms, there are a lot of casual gamers and inexperienced MMO gamers who fail to grasp particular concepts of MMO group gaming. More often i've found that when these people use mics, they're either not that interested in what's happening in the game and are chatting away with others in their own home (leading to some particularly awkward situations at times), or they are the podium mouth breather hell bent on inflating their own ego (teens mostly) who will boast about their gaming skills (even if they have little), are quick to spread misinformation (IE: dominance = aggro control).

I think the gain you're looking for is probably going to be something in line with making it easier to invite people to a chat channel (autocreating the channel in the process, no 'naming the chat', etc) to discuss any particulars. If the person being asked doesn't want to be bothered, they can cancel out of the request. This would be a preferred addition, I believe, over enforcing proximity chat.

It's clear that this is being done in an attempt to enforce socializing in the community as a means to maintain the population, for reasons we don't have to get into. Suffice to say the players know what's up. Regardless of population conditions (long term activity, not randoms playing for a day, week, or possibly month before they leave and another random takes their place), the game's features for communication OUTSIDE of mics and keyboards, namely the canned phrases, have been horribly lackluster due to the problems with the game's UI speed. The optimal conditions for canned chat's mission (group) critical phrases would be a fast loading UI featuring a radial menu that pops up and can break down into categories where these phrases can be selected very quickly. This isn't something new to the console experience, especially on the playstation platform, as the same has been utilized in several games and works well, even moreso when audibles are associated with the text. That opens up a new level of immersion where players would be able to give their characters a voice. (This was a much loved feature of Metal Gear Online, and it's likely one that may make a return in the next incarnation of MGO when MGS5: Phantom Pain releases)

Speaking on terms of immersion and the need for UI tweaks, something i've always wanted to see that's not as invasive as proximity chat is comic styled talk bubbles that float over your characters head for five seconds after speaking. Something that may be entered through text via /say chat, or possibly it's own format, like /cap (caption) as you can't have people dropping walls of text in a bubble, so a character limit for it's own format would can be readily implemented. This would allow people to communicate to players in the proximity without invasive audio using simple phrases. It also draws attention to itself and would be easier to read compared to what is often ignored in the chat channels, either because it's too hard to see (non HD tvs), people forget to look, or people choose not to look because LFG is still melded into their chat system and they don't know it can be filtered out of the default chat tab (should have been off by default or separated into an LFG tab by default).

I don't use Prox chat and never would.

I haven't been able to get Voice Chat to work since I first started playing. The little icon is there, but no voices. The system is far inferior too Skype, so my main teammate and I stuck with Skype while we play. Still, when I'm soloing I would like to take advantage of the voice chat system. My impression of it, however, is that it is wildly buggy and mostly useless. If it worked, it could make teaming much easier.

Thumbs up for comic chat bubbles.

While I agree that whoever you got to work on voice chat has been a godsend, how about having him work on things like this that seem to go wonky with every game update:

https://forums.station.sony.com/dcuo/index.php?threads/usps-ps4-chat-switches-through-doors.214817/

Aren't there bigger fish to fry? Albeit small potatoes, can't this time and resource be better spent elsewhere. Prox chat is a pretty useless function.

It's a very nice improvment,
I'm looking forward for the new voice system

The practical use will be great and certainly once in action most detractors will be rectified

Nothing good will come of this .

Personally (and as others probably already mentioned), I believe that the only way Proximity chat will be viable or even usable is when the Ignore Feature finally gets revamped to Mute players automically; i.e.. the player being ignored should be muted only for the player ignoring them AND the player ignoring someone, should also be muted to the Ignoree.

The Recent VC list should also list player names regardless of the time that passed by since they spoke; i.e. if VC piced up feedback from your mic & you are obviously in their proximity, then you should be able to put them on Mute/Ignore from that list without having to do it right away too.

Also, I don't want to be bombared by obscene players. Thus the proximity vc would be better when at closer range rather than 15-20+ meters. Bring it down to 10 meters to reduce obscene, violotile, disgusting, mic pollution. >_<

This post, so much!

I once got very badly verbally abused in a PVP match because my game bugged out and I couldn't use powers. Telling him was of no use, he went on for the whole match telling ppl stuff he made up trying to sell it as if he knows me.
It's the internet, ppl will use it as their playground and emotional punshingbag and stress release. If they upset other individuals with it or not. They know they have nothing to fear. Make verbal abuse a bannable offense and voice chat might be enjoyable outside of the league chat.