EverQuest II Voice Chat!

FluffyPuff wrote:

The Vivox system runs in separate threads, so it should take advantage of multiple cores. However, it's very efficient CPU-wise, so even people with single-core processors should be able to run it well.

Very nice feature. I am looking forward to it. Sounds like even if it does not have everything Vent and TeamSpeak have yet, that it soon will have the equivalent and with the voice changing feature coming at a future time will be something fantastic. The only thing that is a negative is when someone does get kicked off the server for whatever reason, they are also kicked from voice. This can be a major drawback since many of us are used to vent and TS, but over time I hope a fix can be implemented. Kudos to everyone working on this project.



>Edited due to my horrible grammar, spelling, and typing ability.

Sounds great, although I probably won't use it much until the voice font is in and maybe proximity chat. As others have said it ruins immersion and immersion is a big deal with me and why I'm playing EQ2.
But I won't be stuffy about it, if others in the group/raid are using it I will too. I may turn it off for guild. They chatter too much as-is. At least when it's in a text box I can ignore it.
Guess I need to toddle down to Best Buy this weekend and get a microphone.
I suppose won't be able to play EQ2 on my laptop in the living room with the rest of the family just using headphones while they watch TV or something. Or maybe I'll just use listen only. I'll figure it out.

Powers wrote:

To the Imersion issue, I can see where you are comming from here, but if the Voice Font stuff is everything I have heard I don't think you will have a problem with imersion as long as people use the fonts correctly.

Amana wrote:

The Station All Access pass is to get 7 games for the monthy price of 2, all the other ansilarry iteams are Freebe Bonuses for using the service, I doupt they will be either raising the price of All Access or giving anything addtional in reguards to voicechat for people on All Access.

Maloc@Crushbone wrote:

Well once they get it tied into the New Station Launcher, then it can be run from another client(the launcher) wich may eleviate many of these problems including I would think the crash issue.

I love free content/game additions - keep them coming!!

If you're booted to Character Select, you will disconnect

This is a huge problem. It's not just me either. I was listening to the COHpodcast and they mentioned similarly that one of the most important features is that it be independent of the game client. You should package it into station launcher and run it with character aliases the way that the forums work.

If, on a raid, I DC 2 seconds before a pull, my guild needs to know that. I have that with vent.

That seems to be my only concern as well.

If its tied to the character that's logged in and i crash, i can't say "hey guys hang on i just crashed." It wouldn't be that big of deal if your character instantly exited the game, but of course it takes up to 30 seconds sometimes to happen so my group would never know.

While it doesn't happen to me often, when you raid 4/5 nights a week, you hear it often enough from someone.

Kathy@Antonia Bayle wrote:

It was already stated that they intend to include it in Station Launchpad, just not at launch of the Vivox service. Probably because the Launch Pad is still in Beta while Vivox is ready to go in the next LU, so instead of waiting until Launchpad is ready they are getting it out now, with the unfortunate limitations it will have being tied to the game client and not the Launchpad client. Also even if it was tied to the Launchpad Client they would still have to make it part of the game client as well because some people don't want launchpad running in the background while in game, so to have the feature still available to them it would have to do what they are doing now as well.

I will ask again,
How much extra load will this be placing on the game engine/cpu by implementing this system. You have finally started making some headway into alot of the performance issues, will this set us back to the performance we had a couple of months ago?
What about people who use dialup, will they game still be playable for them with the added data being transfered?
See this is a great thing for lots of people, but I know some people that are on dial-up and high speed Internet is not available to them. The game is barely playable in some zones when grouping, and not even playable in others depending on zone load. The cant run vent or TS while the game is up.
Yea Vivox is easy on the cpu load, but are you comparing that to your internal systems that can run this beast at 90+ fps, or are you using a system that meets your own labeled min system requirements?
I am going to have to agree with a couple of other posters that this might be a bad idea to add this feature, and for more reasons than are listed here.
Do you guys really want to HEAR what others think of some of the changes or lack thereof?
How about just waiting till you get all the features in instead of giving us something half finished for a change? I mean the voice fonts certainly sound cool, but why add it without that being enabled?

Can it fix not having a mic?

BTW what Role-playing options are there so you can alter you voice to sound like a Ratonga a ogre (I end up sounding like a drunk dwarf) male or female even. (There are many cross players of both genders)

Read this the other day and I am looking forward to this feature, but I do have some questions in reference to the launch:

1. Voicemail was announced as a feature, is this on schedule?

2. Being able to phone in and chat I think was also suggested, again is this possible?

3. Chatting without the game loaded, and seeing whos on. I imagine this will be done via launcher is that correct?

4. Web based app to show whos on chatting in guild/raid etc? We have this Ventrilo mod for our website to show whos on, can we expect something similar from Vivox?



Thanks!

ke'la wrote:

Well that's the key, isn't it? How many people do you think will bother to set them up correctly? And even if they do, I'd be impressed if they're that good, but time will tell.

Even with the voice fonts, though, there's just the simple fact that when I'm gaming, I don't mind having music and generic combat sounds emanating into my immediate environment, but actual conversation could be distracting to those around me. Headphones alleviate that but right now I don't usually have to use them; with voice chat I might.


Powers &8^]

Powers wrote:

I am basing my view of how WELL it works on what I have read at Brasse's Website, and you know there are not many more strident Roleplayers then Her. As to will people use it correctly, I agree with you that is the rub... but if they don't you do have the option of turning it off... though personally once voice fonts become available, I personally would LOVE it if the fonts available to you are restricted to the race and sex of the toon you are currently playing.

Brook wrote:

I've not much interest in voice chat but thought to give it a try once "voice shifting" features are added. However, I worry that proposed upcoming extra internet fees for "high volume" users will kill this (as well as stifle movie downloads and the like) for all but the wealthy. Since I don't currently use any sort of voice chat, whether in EQ2 or elsewhere, I've no idea how it effects net usage, but imagine it adds substantially to the amount of data transmitted and received.

The "cap" one needs to exceed to trigger these extras fees might be geared more toward those DL'ing a ton of DVD and/or HD quality full-length movies and pose little danger to us MMO'ers. Then again it might be low enough to cause concern.

Anyone have more knowledge of this than me?


-Roybob

I just wanted to chime in on a few things here.

First I see a lot of people comparing this to Vintrilo & TeamSpeak, the Dev's can correct me if I am wrong, but.. I think as far as a voice chat this is more like Skype of IM Voice services, working on the IP Phone technolagy more the the walky-Talky type voice chat services.

I will admit it I am a full geek and programmer by trade so when I heard that SOE was using something called Vivox as a voice chat, I went out on the web in search of this elusive beastly. I first typed in http://www.vivox.com/ and found it on the first try. Those of you out there that are panicing about it shutting down your computer or interfering with you game play might want to check out the link. The model is on that may have less effect then running a separate voice chat client. Also Wikipedia has a good section listing games and online communities that use the service.

As for those that are complaining about voice chat ruining your immersion into the game simple "Turn It Off, Don't Use It". Let those of us that enjoy hearing other peoples voices and talking to other people, enjoy our our game play.

Also, I saw a comment a asking why SOE is not putting in all the bells a whistles at launch as a systems Engineer (that's a programmer that also works on how to program something) SOE is doing it right. You have your choose when releasing a new product release it all at once or stage the releases. Staging is always better, when I write w program I write it in sections, write some code, fix the bugs, write some more code, fix the bugs, on and on. If I write it all a once it takes me longer to find bugs. so instead of writing 10,000 lines of code and trying to find where I put in ":" instead of ";" I write 100 - 1000 lines and correct it then easier to find the mistakes. Same with the Voice chat Get the chat and interface working now you know that works when you put in the Voice Fonts and it goes south you know is something with connecting the voice fonts with the Chat and don't pull what little hair you have left out trying to fix the voice chat.

Well, I think I've rambled on long enough for now, just remember Voice Chat is new and mysterious just like any new world quest; get involve, have fun, immerse your self in the adventure, or just ignore it as you like.

Zorlok@Guk wrote:

Thanks for your comments.

We're aiming to attract users of all current voice chat clients. The integration ties elements that we like from those other chat clients to our own unique take on integrating voice chat with EverQuest II. Before releasing to the Test server we've been doing a LOT of internal usability tests (in our new AWESOME usability lab) and we want the initial user experience, even on Test, to be intuitive and enjoyable. That means we're doing a planned roll-out of important features with this first release and adding "icing on the cake" features as time goes on.

I'm very excited about our voice chat feature and ideally (no promises), I'd like to hop on the Test server after the Test community has had some time to play with it and do some voice chatting with the Test community to get feedback personally.

Oh, and we're way over 10,000 lines of voice-chat code already.

I have a couple of questions regarding the permission levels:
1.) Will guild leaders/officers have the ability to mute/ban individual players guild wide? Meaning - not just mute them on my computer, actually keep them from being heard guild wide?
2.) Some services let you record the chat. Is this an option? will it be?

Overall I think its a good solid addition to the game. However, gamers tend to be creatures of habit, so I have to disagree with the poster who said "release it in stages". We've seen this before. This is the type of thing that should be released with 100% of its functionality intact. Personally I'd LOVE to drop my ventrilo charges every month for the hosted server I pay for, but I dont think I will until things like voice activated chat are in game. I dont think you will see a major change from the traditional services such as vent/teamspeak/skype until the functionality of the new server surpasses those. Still, I cant wait to give it a try and see for myself.