EverQuest II Voice Chat!

Tock@Antonia Bayle wrote:

I remapped my keys so that the Thumb Button on my mouse is my PTT button, it works really well for my and does not imped my keyboard usage at all.

Calberak@Valor wrote:

so you heal using both hands? why not use a button on your mouse instead?

A feature I'm wondering about that I don't believe has been asked is the 'whisper' feature. Will it be possible to say 'click' on a persons name in group, raid, etc... and say something only to them? I use tell a lot; especially when I do raid as to not spam everyone in channel. Having the 'whisper' option would help tremendously on raids as well as many other areas.
Also, not sure if the devs thought of this, but I'm concerned about spammers misusing such a tool such as sending a link tricking people into accepting the chat channel and then getting **** or profanity spit through your speakers. This would especially be bad for parents with kids in the same room.

Sola wrote:

I would love to do a whisper/voice tell feature. We actually thought of it early on in feature planning. However, since we're using Vivox's technology, we EQII devs only have simple control over the voice data stream; we never get raw data from the microphone. Unless Vivox adds some kind of functionality for that, the Voice Tell feature is nixxed. Your second point is correct though: Voice Tells would probably have to be something you're given a choice to hear.

It will be an interesting ride for sure seeing how easy it will soon be for anyone to set-up a chatroom and invite in other players.
I'm sure there are a lot of weirdos that would love to use voice chat to spam or to toy with people. once children have heard a spew of filith its not easy to make them forget that experience.

Any updates on the voice fonts? So Ogres sound like ogres whey they are going on about pretty pink armor and Ratonga sound like Ratonga that and gender lol

After reading the Brasse post, I'm even more excited, as I wasn't sure what chat fonts were. Heehee I love the idea of being more of a character by talking I haven't seen an answer about what happens when several people speak at once; would really like to see the answer to this.

Calberak@Valor wrote:

Odd, I've never had any issues with push to talk. I'm not a super chatter box or anything on voice chat, but I've never had issues at all hitting the button to say add from wherever the add is from or add on so and so and at the same time healing/warding or doing whatever I need to do in the situation, even if it is pulling agro on myself to save the squisher person from an add the tank didn't find fast enough. I just map the push to talk key to one that doesn't interfere with my other key manipulation.

Hmm I wonder how disturbing it would be to have a female Dark Elf Shadowknight with a Paladin-like voice?

Kigneer wrote:

What games or servers are you playing on? I've been using vent/TS since the start of EQ2 and have been on chat in group and raids with many women and never heard the guys calling every women the P and B word, nor hitting on every single female they come across.

This looks absolutely amazing. I've always, ALWAYS wanted there to just be a channel created for the groups I'm in (I'm a dirge, that's all I do) because typing really interferes with movement and attacks. Thank you Devs! I have no nit-picks (I'm don't RP, so the fact that I'm a guy playing a female Kerra doesn't matter to me at all). Great work, great idea.

Why? Why did you waste time developing a VOIP when:

Several already exist that work just fine

When there is still broken and incomplete content in game

When the population has dropped on several servers to the point where even T8 zone populations are approaching single digits at peak times

When the forums are full of posts about revamping and balancing classes

I have never read one post where someone begged you to add a chat client.....So you wasted your resources by doing so...

Will this client be a required download? Will you once again force your code onto my hard drive like you did with LoN? I didn't ask for or want that...but there it is....on my hard drive...no way to remove it.....

Do you guys even consider how the players might feel about this before you do it?

bleap wrote:

Hmmm, I think the short answer is that ... they didn't. They contracted with Vivox for the VOIP and simply build an ingame UI for it. UI folks tend to work on UI stuff. Is there some part of the UI that you would rather have them work on? Because they would not have likely been tasked with the other stuff you mentioned in your post. For all we know they actually borrowed UI developers from other SOE projects (they do have a few going full swing right now). It isn't likely but, hey, as long as we are throwing out conjecture and hyperbole ...
I do agree with you about LoN though. Hate that whole concept.

Skywarrior wrote:

OK but it's still going to be a required download, take up more hard drive space and use more bandwidth...Regardless wether you use it or not you will be affected by it...simply put, the more data using SOEs bandwidth, the more potential for lag. This may end up making the game unplayable for players with limited bandwidth....

I still say they need to fix what is broken and incomplete before they go adding more and more code to the game, regardless of who actually developed it...

Heh, a few things to reply to here...

Push 2 Talk. Absolute requirement, and it must be fully mappable to anything the current keybindings can map to. IE: a mouse thumb button, alt-printscreen, whatever. Every time some joker gets on vent and tries to use voice detection, we get to listen to them muttering under their breath, watching TV, yelling at their family/pets, and a dozen other things we really don't want to put up with. Anyone who tries to argue against P2T has never taken part in a large group where hearing what's going on and what people are about to do is vital.

Voice fonts are a cool idea. As long as the transform doesn't take much CPU, I'm all for it. Would SOE be providing built-in fonts for each gender/race combo, and would third party filters be allowed?

Why re-invent the wheel when everyone out there just uses ventrilo? Well, why not? Let's be honest... vent is a good functional piece of software, but it does add another layer of management to your game. Integrating voice channels so I automatically get them when I join a group/raid/zone is good. Having what I say automatically go to the right audience (group, raid leaders ONLY, etc) is even better. You can't do that with a third party app unless they work hand-in-hand with each game company and both sides provide hooks into each other's software.

People whining about disk space... seriously? Are you playing on a Commodore 64? EQ2 could add full live video chat, 6 more expansion packs, 3 more mini-games like Legends of Norrath, and STILL come in way under the install footprint of Age of Conan or Vanguard.

There will be people who continue to use vent, because it's what they're used to. There will be a few paranoid folks who suspect SOE of snooping conversations. There will be people concerned about censorship. The rest of us will probalby enjoy it.

My only suggestion is to integrate the voice stream sockets with the launchpad application so that logging your character out or even exiting the EQ2 client doesn't (necessarily) kill your voice session. It would be nicer to have it fall back to a higher level channel or lobby. I expect SOE intends to eventually have voice chat be cross server and cross game, so that would also make sense from that perspective.

Dread Quixadhal wrote:

As you allude to in your last paragraph, I think people will continue to use Ventrillo more for the functionality than because "it's what they're used to." The new chat system simply does not have the same functionality that Ventrillo gives, especially for guilds that raid. Character-based chat (rather than client-based) is too limiting for many people. Yes, it certainly has an appeal factor for some playstyles and persons who have different groups of friends depending on the character. But for many, being able to continue listening to raid/guild chatter while on an alt or offline, or not getting disconnected from the chat stream if you change characters, is much more important than the conveniences being offered here.
It will be good for some and "meh" for others. I'm curious to see how it does on Live and what my guild will do. Since it is free I imagine my guild will put it through the ringer in hopes of being able to drop the NOT free Ventrillo service. But the cost will not be the determining factor of whether we switch completely or not - Functionality.

Skywarrior wrote:

Very true. Ventrilo and the like definately have their appeal, but having a voice session created especially for each group you're in? How awesome is that? There are times when I'm fighting through an instance or battling a named where i wish I could be talking to that one guy who's not assisting the tank instead of having to interrupt my debuffing to type to him to stop.

And the alt problem you mentioned wouldn't be an issue because each guild would have their own chat. As long as your alt is in the guild, you'd be talking to them. Still, I wonder how a guild officer that's grouped with non-guildies would handle the 3 chats open (guild chat, guild officer chat, and group chat). I guess it's just a choice if the guild wants to have guild officer chat anyway.

What's the story on voice detection...? Personally I think supporting it is essential. My regular group wouldn't use the built-in voice app as PTT loses you a lot of the casual nature of a regular group. And if you tweak your settings, it's as good at PTT (better, as I always let go of the button too early!)

Quite agree that PTT is useful in pickup groups, guild chat and so on though.

My preference would be to allow voice detection/ptt mode to be set by the group leader - they can *require* ptt if they want, or allow choice...

(btw, Vivox engine does support 'open mic' as they call it - and other games use it)

strange

Skywarrior wrote:

The Seperate Client issue, will likly be solved once they intigrate it into Station Launcher, as that is a seperate client that can run concruently with the game client.
As to bandwidth issues(from another poster), This voice chat does not use one byte of SoE's Bandwidth, the voice chat is all tied to Vivox's servers, and if you disable it(wich is an option) you wont see any reduction in bandwidth.
As to Developer time, as this is accually being implemented on every one of SoE's IPs, it is most likly being implemented by the Platform Group and not any "Game" dev team.
As to Hard drive space, Other then 3 UI Pieces, and these are small and take up VERY little HD space, it's mostly XML code linking to pictures in files you already have on your HD anyway, and the one that is not is not that large. All the other stuff is server side.

Oddity wrote:

I'm sure it will support voice detection, it just has to also support PTT, or no serious raiding guild will touch it.

Personally, I will never use voice detection. I've heard too many people on the other end of the connection that use it, and I get to hear their heavy breathing, them yelling at their kids/pets, their TV when the volume ramps up for commercials, them cursing when they get killed.... the list goes on.

In a small group, that's just mildly annoying. In a raid, that has the effect on communication that network lag has on playing the game... namely, it means the people who need to hear what's going on and make decisions can't do their job because of all the noise and distraction.

The thing is, no matter how well you tweak your settings, you can't account for unusual events (the cat decides to jump on the desk lamp and both go crashing to the floor while you yell at them). You also can't tweak the settings of the other people in the group.

I like the idea of a group/raid leader being able to require PTT though... that's something you can't do with an external client.