Dev Post - Voice Chat (Comms) Issues

Hi all,

We've started providing additional resources to dig into the sporadic (but consistent) reports related to Voice Chat and in-game comms - there are many new reports within the last week or so, but given how many date back years, there's almost certainly a deeper issue we've yet to fully identify.

What we're asking for is any and all information you can provide ON THIS THREAD if you've experienced comms issues recently. The more detailed and specific, the easier it'll be for us to identify the cause. Details such as:

-Comms channels affected (squad, platoon, prox, outfit, all of the above, etc)
-Time/date it occurred (as specific as you can be)
-Account/Character/Outfit name
-Server Region
-Specs
-Specific circumstances (in heavy battle, in Sanctuary, what was going on around you, as much detail as you can provide)

There are a number of other reports on this subforum, on reddit, on social media, etc, that we've been collecting and examining, but this has been an extraordinarily difficult issue to consistently reproduce, and the more we can get from you guys, the easier it'll be to investigate and troubleshoot.

Charcter: ScorchDraken
Outfit: The Peacemakers
Server: Emerald

For me, these issues began with the Bastion update (have not seen these issues before and I have played on and off since December 2012).
I have seen one instant where I played the game since the Bastion update, where the coice comms did work. It was around the start of peak server hours for Emerald.
This occours for ALL voice channels for me, and even appears to have the wrong channel open for my mic when I press a button (i.e. I press squad hot key and end up in command or outfit)
This also occours on every continent, VR Training, and Sanctuary for me, both during low server/area population and high.
Turning the voice chat off and back on has mixed results, and reloading the game does not fix the issue for me even temporarily.
There are also others in my outfit that are in my discord server that have told me they have the same issues.

I also have noticed a lot more server latency issues (abnormal for me to have) and wonder if this could be related.

Here is what I am seeing

Behaviors

Channel lost or silenced when:

1. 1. first game arrival
   2. squad change
   3. continent change
   4. PL promotion
   5. "random" - maybe other players joining impacts my voice streams, not sure

Resting Voice Comms Used to "fix it"

We used to be able to disable in game comms, re-enable it after 5 seconds of playtime, but now, it either no longer resets it, or if it does, channels either go silent, or switch around at random.

Features

Voice muting

(this is long standing), and seems to be on whether or not we installed from steam, we 2 that have this, GreenKozak and DocNupe7Klub from Emerald NC), when we try to click on the speaker icon to mute someone, it does not take, and the red X mark gets removed from the speaker icon next to the person's name, and again we still hear them whether it is proxy or command channel. the only option is to reduce volume

Voice volume

In the useroptions.ini file I have I see entries with potentially significantly broken formats -all 3 entrie below exist in my file, seems weird to me that the second entry does not have the "world" characters in it, and that the last entry is numberic only, seems so inconsistent, there is likely a bug somewhere in the code that is trying to deal with this inconsistency

[VoiceVolumes]

sip:world17.hobbs4life-@psp.vivox.com=0.740000

sip:17.judokanc-@psp.vivox.com=0.320000

5428028648517605201=0.540000

Keybindings to voice channels

When logging in, or at random, without changing anything at my end, the keybing for platoon voice will actually trigger squad voice speaking (as shown in the bottom middle of the screen when speaking, the charact name and the channel name are shown). This happens for any channel, not just the PL voice

In game name: Thk654 Outfit: [WNTG]
Time: before the escalation update, and (I think) post escalation, but pre hardwear upgrade (continuing to current day but current day is worse and different, outlined at end)
Bug: Effects not entirely consistent, but after being in an active squad for at least 5 to 10 minutes and then moving/being moved or promoted, all related voice channels usually become bugged in some way (before that time everything is fine when moved)

• Fireteam: 'Left' in original fireteam's voice (Only have one data point, don't use fireteam often)
• Squad: Often get 'left' in the original squad's voice chat. (most likely channel to 'survive' bug free) (occasionally get 'left' in squad chat when leaving the squad/platoon entirely)
• Platoon: (when moved between squads) Works fine prior to moving. After being moved, the platoon tab in 'voice and chat' shows no one in platoon. (not even me) However, I can still hear, and (I think) be heard in platoon voice, but it no longer shows who is talking and volume settings are no longer applied (everyone is at default) and can not be modified (cant via 'voice and chat' because no listings and the current speaker volume up and down binds do nothing) Note: The behavior is similar to what i think is a more reported bug with with being stuck in leader voice chat except here the tab still exists in 'voice and chat'.
• Leader: I think being promoted to leader usually went smoothly, but being removed (or demoteing self) leads to being 'stuck' in leader voice hearing everyone at default volume with nothing showing who is talking and no leader tab in 'voice and chat'.

Server: Emerald
PC Specs:

Windows 10 (upgraded from 7)

CPU:

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4770 CPU @ 3.40GHz

Motherboard:

Manufacturer: Alienware

Product: 0PGRP5

Version: A00

Hard Drives:

ATA SAMSUNG SSD SM84 SCSI Disk Device (install location) (steam install)

ATA ST1000LM024 HN-M SCSI Disk Device (problem still occurred when this was install location)

GPU:

GeForce GTX 1060 6GB (founders edition)

RAM:

16GB

Problems post hardwear upgrade:

I managed to be in proximity chat with someone on Amerish while I was on Hossin, (on my Thk6543 character) also all other voice chats (that I had access to) were non-functional at that time. Toggling 'enable voice' in 'voice and chat' restores functionality, but needs to be done periodically to as voice will just stop working periodically, hard to tell when because it has yet to cut anyone off, typically find out it stopped working again because of text chat suggesting something being said in voice chat that i should have heard. The old problems may still be happening, but if so were not noticed while being plagued with total function loss.

Comms channels affected (squad, platoon, prox, outfit, all of the above, etc): Proximity and Squad. When I tried to speak in Prox, nothing occured. When I spoke in squad, a person who was no in my squad responded.

Time/date it occurred (as specific as you can be): Approximately 9 am US PDT
Account/Character/Outfit name: This one/JamesCalhoun/No outfit
Server Region: Connery/West US
Specs:

------------------
System Information
------------------
Time of this report: 3/30/2020, 02:09:12
Operating System: Windows 10 Home 64-bit (10.0, Build 18363) (18362.19h1_release.190318-1202)
Language: English (Regional Setting: English)
System Manufacturer: ASUS
System Model: All Series
BIOS: BIOS Date: 04/19/13 17:27:15 Ver: 08.01 (type: BIOS)
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4770K CPU @ 3.50GHz (8 CPUs), ~3.5GHz
Memory: 16384MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 16322MB RAM
Page File: 10189MB used, 14324MB available
Windows Dir: C:\WINDOWS
DirectX Version: DirectX 12
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
User DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent)
System DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent)
DWM DPI Scaling: Disabled
Miracast: Available, with HDCP
Microsoft Graphics Hybrid: Not Supported
DirectX Database Version: Unknown

DxDiag Version: 10.00.18362.0387 64bit Unicode

---------------
Display Devices
---------------
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chip type: GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER
DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC
Device Type: Full Device (POST)
Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1E81&SUBSYS_87121043&REV_A1
Device Status: 0180200A
Device Problem Code: No Problem
Driver Problem Code: Unknown
Display Memory: 16171 MB
Dedicated Memory: 8010 MB
Shared Memory: 8161 MB
Current Mode: 2560 x 1440 (32 bit) (144Hz)
HDR Support: Not Supported
Display Topology: Internal
Display Color Space: DXGI_COLOR_SPACE_RGB_FULL_G22_NONE_P709
Color Primaries: Red(0.645508,0.343750), Green(0.315430,0.625000), Blue(0.139648,0.044922), White Point(0.312500,0.329102)
Display Luminance: Min Luminance = 0.500000, Max Luminance = 270.000000, MaxFullFrameLuminance = 270.000000
Monitor Name: Generic PnP Monitor
Monitor Model: ROG PG278Q
Monitor Id: ACI27B1
Native Mode: 2560 x 1440(p) (59.951Hz)
Output Type: Displayport External

-------------
Sound Devices
-------------
Description: Headphones (SB Recon3D PCIe)
Default Sound Playback: Yes
Default Voice Playback: Yes
Hardware ID: HDAUDIO\FUNC_01&VEN_1102&DEV_0011&SUBSYS_11020015&REV_1009
Manufacturer ID: 1
Product ID: 100
Type: WDM
Driver Name: cthda.sys
Driver Version: 6.00.0101.0062 (English)
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
WHQL Logo'd: n/a
Date and Size: 18/06/2015 12:00:00 AM, 1058600 bytes
Other Files:
Driver Provider: CREATIVE
HW Accel Level: Basic
Cap Flags: 0x0
Min/Max Sample Rate: 0, 0
Static/Strm HW Mix Bufs: 0, 0
Static/Strm HW 3D Bufs: 0, 0
HW Memory: 0
Voice Management: No
EAX(tm) 2.0 Listen/Src: No, No
I3DL2(tm) Listen/Src: No, No
Sensaura(tm) ZoomFX(tm): No

---------------------
Sound Capture Devices
---------------------
Description: Microphone (SB Recon3D PCIe)
Default Sound Capture: Yes
Default Voice Capture: Yes
Driver Name: cthda.sys
Driver Version: 6.00.0101.0062 (English)
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
Date and Size: 6/19/2015 09:47:12, 1058600 bytes
Cap Flags: 0x0
Format Flags: 0x0

Please note: I've excluded information here for privacy purposes and because I doubt it's relevant.

Specific circumstances: Issue began at login and persisted. I've had this before, I usually need to log out and log back in and it will fix it.

One thing we found, may not be relevant at all, is that some people in our outfit (Emerald, [RITE]) have the following entries in their UserOptions.ini file

[Group]
AutoGroupOnLogin=0
AutoGroupAsLeader=0
AutoGroupWithFriends=0
AutoGroupWithGuild=0
AutoGroupOnLoginNew=0
AutoGroupAsLeaderNew=0
AutoGroupWithFriendsNew=0
AutoGroupWithGuildNew=0


While others members of our outfit ONLY have the last ones with the "new" at the end
[Group]
AutoGroupOnLoginNew=0
AutoGroupAsLeaderNew=0
AutoGroupWithFriendsNew=0
AutoGroupWithGuildNew=0

those having both "seem" to have more problems (but not sure)

Seems to be a config management approach to handling a new version of a feature.... without having to use a version number, if there is still old program logic is looking for the entry "AutoGroupOnLogin" somewhere in the code, it will always only find the first one, if the search is poorly implemented (as is the case in 50% of confi reading logic).

While others members of our outfit ONLY have the last ones with the "new" at the end
[Group]
AutoGroupOnLoginNew=0
AutoGroupAsLeaderNew=0
AutoGroupWithFriendsNew=0
AutoGroupWithGuildNew=0

Confirmed both my new installs have this top section in there, and a old backup of mine had the entries without "NEW" section.

See my other post on same issue.
https://forums.daybreakgames.com/ps...-chat-doeing-weird-stuff.253829/#post-3547913

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/578864850

I got a video here, obviously I'm not happy with what is going on since I just came back to the game a few days ago (was only gone for a few days with escalation launch being in the middle of the duration)

Anyways hope it helps

More info: The keybindings WILL work when you 1st load into a warp gate, but after joining/redeploying to a fight its all messed up
You can fix it by logging out to char selection screen and it'll still only work at warp gate

Another thing, when i go to verify there are 17 files missing everytime
And after DL'ing them the launcher kinda crashes on the 1st attempt (doesn't show up at all) but works the 2nd time
But after the 1st attempt the files are missing again

More detailed explanation here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Planetside...nds_for_voice_are_all_set_to_outfit_and_more/

I've restarted the game, PC, changed audio devices, enabled/disabled chat, and checked the ini to ensure it's enabled.

-Comms channels affected: All. Squad, platoon, proximity, etc
-Time/date it occurred: 4/6/2020 3:13-4:55PM EST
-Account/Character/Outfit name Ultramarine 6 of Lux Eternum on Emerald
-Server Region: NA Emerald
-Specs Ryzen R72700x, MSI Gaming X GTX1660 Super, MSI Gaming Carbon B450 MB, running on a Solid State Drive
-Specific circumstances: From launch til close. The voice never worked, and would not start working. I could see names "connected" but none of them lit up as if they were speaking, and no sound was made

-Comms channels affected (squad, platoon, prox, outfit, all of the above, etc)
All

-Time/date it occurred (as specific as you can be)
Since launch. Some periods of time coms are better than others. Most recently they were working fairly well for most until maybe 3 weeks ago. One Friday all coms stopped working for all players entirely. Maybe a week ago they started working for some again.

-Account/Character/Outfit name
Diablio | WTAC

-Server Region
Connery - NA though, this is game wide

-Specs
NA - this is not a client issue. People with everything from a beast of a PC to a potato have been reporting problems since the game launched.

-Specific circumstances (in heavy battle, in Sanctuary, what was going on around you, as much detail as you can provide)
Coms in this game just stop working often. Usually toggling voice off then on again will fix it. Though when they died for all recently this did nothing for anyone.

Often a sign coms have died is you press one com channel and you see a different com channel light up.

When coms are down pressing any voice channel key will not show your name light up most often.

Some times when you leave a squad / platoon you can still hear the coms from that after you are no longer in it. Even after you have joined another. Resetting voice coms in settings will fix this.


When the coms start not working it seems to go in cycles. Works fairly consistently for awhile, then is all messed up for a period of time. This is perhaps the worst persistent bug in this game. Without in game voice coms this game is nothing. Team work makes this game go. Yes many outfits use outside coms, but I bet they used in game coms to get people in their outfit. People will and I am sure have, left the game because no one was talking. Please make this a priority.

--------------------
From a post above:

Voice muting

(this is long standing), and seems to be on whether or not we installed from steam, we 2 that have this, GreenKozak and DocNupe7Klub from Emerald NC), when we try to click on the speaker icon to mute someone, it does not take, and the red X mark gets removed from the speaker icon next to the person's name, and again we still hear them whether it is proxy or command channel. the only option is to reduce volume

I and everyone else I have ever spoken to about this have had this problem. I believe it is initially triggered by pressing keypad enter and muting someone. It can often be fixed by pressing keypad enter to unmute them when they are speaking, but not always. Unmuting someone when this is happening by any other method does nothing.

--------------------

When I first log in on ps4 mic works but when I change to a new area mic cuts out. Can still hear others just fine.

I have better details.
The issue did not resolve for some reason over the past few days. I had expected it to go back to normal. What I did notice is that It's not all of voice.
Every channel was affected, but not every player. The first platoon I joined had 3 squads half full to full, 20-30 players. I had about 6 of them visible in the platoon voice chat menu to adjust. At first I thought they just didn't have voice, but I could hear one of the ones I did see speaking to someone I didn't over squad and platoon and coordinating orders. I asked over text chat, and they said they were talking in Platoon.

In the second platoon I had restarted my PC and fired up planetside immediately before opening other programs. I tested my voice in proximity and got a response from a few players, so I joined a platoon and found silence. Text chat suggests they were talking a lot, and it was one of the more coordinated groups I've run with, but I never heard a thing. 4 of the 30 or so in that platoon were visible in my platoon voice settings.

Other weird quirks. The reset voice fix (uncheck then re-check enable voice) did not resolve this or change the list of connected voice users. Strangely, decreasing the maximum voice channels did sometimes cause new players to connect or disconnect from the list I could see in Platoon, but not reliably.

-Comms channels affected: All. Squad, platoon, proximity, etc
-Time/date it occurred: 4/9/2020 4:00--6:00PM EST
-Account/Character/Outfit name Ultramarine 6 of Lux Eternum on Emerald
-Server Region: NA Emerald
-Specs Ryzen R72700x, MSI Gaming X GTX1660 Super, MSI B450 Gaming x Carbon MB (I'm using it's HD audio), running on a Solid State Drive.

-Specific circumstances: Above

This is a great point I forgot to mention. It's random who it affects and when. Coms will be working fine for some amount of people in the platoon and then the rest will have no coms, or only some channels. Prox chat seems to be the most often broken channel for most people.

I have asked repeatedly for people to come to this thread and chime in. Sadly none have. This is a much larger problem than the responses in this thread indicate. If a dev posted this on reddit you would get hundreds of replies to this with more info.

-Comms channels affected: All channels except outfit, outfit has been the only one to constantly work for me.
-Time/date it occurred: Started 1st Day of Escalation update
-Account/Character/Outfit name: katsumiferryhil / KatsumiFerryhill / WTAC
-Server Region: Connery
-Specific circumstances: From the moment I log in coms do not work, if I disable them and then reenable them they "MAYBE" work and most of the time when it does, they die with in 5 min.
-Other events: There also have been times, when I press my squad or platoon key and it talks in outfit, and other times I press the same and it talks in proxy. There also been times when a person talking in proxy at warpgate is heard across the entire map no matter the range.

Hey friends, glad you know reached out to the community. This issue has stopped me from running public squads, and has effectively ended my mentorship career

-Comms channels affected (squad, platoon, prox, outfit, all of the above, etc): All are affected

-Time/date it occurred (as specific as you can be): since escalation

-Account/Character/Outfit name: Neoromantic/Neoromantic/Vindicators

-Server Region: Emerald (US EAST)

-Specs: AMD FX 6300, GTX 960, 16gb ram, Windows 10

-Specific circumstances (in heavy battle, in Sanctuary, what was going on around you, as much detail as you can provide)

No comms have been working for me lately. I believe the problems started with the Escalation update, though I have occasionally experienced them throughout my ps2 career (since 2014ish?). Sometimes I will see my name light up, but my squad members won't be able to hear me. Sometimes my squad will be partitioned as if in separate rooms. Sometimes the push to talk keys will give me no feedback. Sometimes I will be able to transmit despite not having the name light up. Often if I hit one push to talk key, I'll see my name light up in a different channel (push squad chat, transmit into platoon). Often, when this goes on, I will be in a completely different comms channel. I logged on once and could hear someone's squad chat despite never having joined a squad. Once I received someone's commands to the squad he was leading in my proximity channel, despite not having anyone around. One time I made a friend because I was at the Amerish warpgate, not being in a squad, and my squad push to talk key took me to a proximity chat that included a guy in sanctuary. We chatted a long time and laughed. These issues do not come one at a time, but in a seemingly random assortment or combination.

My outfit does not use ingame comms anymore because they don't work for anyone. The outfits I hang out with don't use them either for the same reason. From what I could see, everyone who plays has these issue. I think the reports are sporadic because we don't have a culture of reporting bugs besides the occasional rant on reddit. I have joined public platoons that say in text chat to join their discord to take part in communication.

Enabling and disabling voice chat seems to reroll the bugs if it changes anything. Definitely something that seems to trigger/exacerbate the issues is changing channels (joining/leaving squads, changing squads within a platoon, changing fireteams, promoting to leader role etc). I think outift chat, if it works on login, persists to work. I therefore assume that the issue lies in hooking up to the comm system. I suspect that when the light doesn't come up when it outright breaks, maybe some uncaught exception or whatever that is just caught and ignored, though I have no idea how it works on the inside, so I can't really comment on it.

Today, for the first time, though, I happened to join a public squad (we were doing construction in the same area) today, and squad chat seemed to work. We did not stress test it, for fear of breaking it, but we did manage to pass squad lead twice and have comms still work, which seemed to us a major breakthrough. I am not sure as to if command chat persisted working, but when I got passed squad lead, I began hearing command chat work. I left the game without checking if I had access to leader comms after I passed the lead, but that was a common thing to happen even before escalation to hit.

I hope I've been able to help, and I wish you utmost luck and clarity in fixing this issue. This game means a lot to me, and I can't wait to be able to interact with pubbies again.


EDIT: Incidentally, it was a real pain to be able to post on the forums. I found out about this thread through someone in [FwF] (Fish with Feet) discord pointing us to it. I could not post until I switched browsers. For the record, I mostly use Firefox, but I finally thought of using edge, and that let me post. Until then, I got a message that said I had unsufficient privileges to post. I hope you are paying attention to the reddit threads on the issue, because I'm sure other folks have the same problem. I saw many threads across the different daybreakgames forums on the topic, and the most common response I saw was a frustrated "yeah, they're just broken".

If there's anything else you guys need, feel free to reach out.

I must admit that has been the same experience for me, outfit comms seem to be the one that works most often.

• The most recent occurance all comms channels I attempted to use were affected
• April 9th just before 9PM EDT, i.e. 2020-04-10 00:55 UTC, according to FISU Alert Tracker
• Boildown / TacticalGamer [TG] (see sig)
• Emerald server, Amerish Continent, Western Warpgate (but was happening everywhere on Emerald server)
• full specs in Twitch link... Intel i7 4770K, Windows 7 Ultimate, GTX 980, Realtek HD Audio onboard Asus Maximus VI Hero motherboard, 1G Google Fiber internet
• Specific Circumstances...
  All circumstances encountered from heavy firefights to standing in the warpgate. You can see for yourself here when I possibly fixed it in this timestamped Twitch VOD link, view entire highlight for more context: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/587997575?t=7m40s

- All comms channels
- LorrMaster, Emerald
- Intel i5-4680K, GTX 970, 8 GB ram, Windows 8.1 64-bit
- So I have a problem with my headphone connection port, as it is slightly bent. This means that my audio headset disconnects from my computer pretty often an I have to move it around a bit to reconnect it to my computer port. When this happens, the audio in Planetside tends to turn off completely and the only fix is to go to the audio settings and choose a new audio source (typically this just means that I switch between "System Default" and "Audio Headset"). However, even though the regular sound effects return to normal (such as gunfire and explosions), voice comms usually do not. I can still see who is talking via the voice comm names at the bottom of the screen. Beyond that I can't give any more details with certainty other than it sometimes does come back.

Edit:
To summarize: audio device disconnects, I reconnect audio device, Planetside audio still off, I change audio device in audio settings to get audio back on, but voice comms still don't work

I am being told by a handful of people I asked to post here they do not have perms to post in this thread after making an account. One person said he had to wait 3 days to be able to post. This is limiting the amount of responses you are getting here.

-All channels
-TheKaikouraTrainspotter, Connery
-Windows 10, Intel i5-6500, 8GB RAM, GTX 760
-Broke some time early in March. Notification would show people talking and decrease game sounds, but couldn't hear anyone nor could they hear me, no matter the settings. I have several players show up as being muted but I cannot un-mute them, and can see them talking otherwise normally.

I am playing from New Zealand if that has any effect on it.