Voice Chat Feedback Request

[Fyst]

Sins of a Dark Age now supports voice chat. By default chat is only enabled between friends and party members on the same team. You can never chat with the enemy team.

But, we are still debating whether to allow chat with anyone else on your team. Please Let us know your thoughts in the discussion below!

[Corpsefoot]

I think it's always better to add extra features that are disabled by default, because thinking "oh man, I wish that thing was here" is a bit worse than, say, "oh man, it's so annoying when I accidentally turn this thing on."

In other words, keep voice chat between allied strangers disabled by default (leaving intra-party communication permanently on unless you've already disabled ALL comms in Options), but with both parties needing to op into "public mic" before they can hear each other.

Chat between enemy teams would be ludicrous, though; I can't imagine which developer would first want to open that cataclysmic Pandora's Box haha

[manny the veric king]

My understanding is that Steam's settings are always on if you have a mic (unless you have push to talk enabled) and the software toggles it, so I suggest to make voice chat's toggle idiot (manny) proof. Maybe have a master button that turns off voice chat for you and others that is separate from the audio sliders. (Edit: Or make the act of forming a party itself be the actual toggle.)

If not, then Voice Chat's button in Sound could a little misleading as it may just affect the volume of others.

If you turn off the Voice Chat volume slider and disable push to talk . . . can everyone hear you but you can't hear them?

Maybe rename the slider to Voice Chat Volume or something, as people might think they are turning off voice chat but only basically muting other people's voices.

I'm sort of a paranoid parrot (Frillspitter?) and don't like having voice chat in games unless I'm playing with friends, so I just mute everyone traditionally. Half the time people are eating things or listening to music in the background and it's very distracting. Another factor is the popularity of streamers. You have no idea if you are being recorded half the time, so you may end up on a stream somewhere saying something or cursing and not realize you are being recorded. Some people are just more private than others and prefer just typing out in chat with strangers. (Everyone on the internet is a Wood Imp until proven veric.)

That being said, how will it work with in-game Twitch Streaming? If the streamer is wearing headphones and talking to the stream, will a party member's voice chat go through the game/stream (and be audible by the viewers) or will it go through the steamer's headphones (so that the streamer will be responding to something only he can hear and confuse the viewers?)

What are the party options? At least by forcing voice chat to be party only, it allows some control of whom you get to hear and potentially avoid trolls/people you don't want to talk with. The only problem with this is can you party up after the fact? Let's say you get matched up with someone that you like and didn't realize was on, but you are already in a party. Can you party up with them while at the character select screen? Or have some sort of invite thing, "manny the veric king would like to add you to chat" sort of toast? Or will you have to wait for the next match to party up with them?

One of the benefits of party only chat is you opt out by default, and the act of partying itself is essentially the toggle for voice chat. What about allowing chatting through the party window in front end while queuing? If it's tied to that window, that window persists through character selection, doesn't it? Should there be party transparency? Should your score screen disclose that someone was in a party, so that you can say to yourself "Well they were all in a group with voice chat, so that's why we lost."

If Voice Chat with strangers becomes a thing, muting might become tricky. What if you want to mute someone's voice, but not ignore them? Maybe there can be an individual mic mute under Tab that is separate from Ignore? That being said, if you do ignore someone, will it mute their mic?

Same with front end stuff. What if someone is trolling while at character select, can you right click their name to mute mic or ignore and will that carry over into the match?

What about new reporting/flagging options? Will "mic abuse" be grounds for Vice? How will you determine that, since there will be no chat logs to back up anyone's claims? Will game replays include voice chat for moderation purposes? Are Wood Imps spying on us? Are the Vasari recording our thoughts?[fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net]

These are just a simple veric's thoughts. Thanks for reading.

[Corpsefoot]

Originally posted by manny the veric king:

These are just a simple veric's thoughts. Thanks for reading.

I am quite literally in awe.

[manny the veric king]

Originally posted by Exorcised:

Originally posted by manny the veric king:

These are just a simple veric's thoughts. Thanks for reading.

I am quite literally in awe.

Well, it started out simple, and then I edited it 25 times and kept adding more questions. :P

[arakiel]

Manny has a ghost writer now?

[manny the veric king]

Originally posted by arakiel:

Manny has a ghost writer now?

Sure do[scontent-a-atl.xx.fbcdn.net].

[Corpsefoot]

That was one of the...better puns I've seen from Manny haha

He pretty much summed up all of the pertinent concerns to OP in Post #2, though; hopefully voice comms earn the IC seal of quality before the F2P gatecrashers arrive =|

EDIT:

Originally posted by manny the veric king:

Well, it started out simple, and then I edited it 25 times and kept adding more questions. :P

That's literally the only reason mine come out as big as they do; I usually add to them absentmindedly while eating dinner =3

[manny the veric king]

So friends can hear you regardless of party status, but only strangers can hear you if you are in a party with them?

I was under the impression that you had to form a party to talk to people, but lo and behold I was able to talk to everyone in my group sans party.

Now that being said, everyone in my group I think was my friend, but I didn't have enough time to verify if each person could hear me and vice versa (since it may be tied to friends only hearing you?)

However, I sort of broke things (twice!) and still have to test it out more.

If it is tied to friends, one thing we have to test is to friend someone during the lobby to see what happens when they accept it. (Have to try mid/post match as well.) What if you unfriend someone during lobby or match?

Also, let's say someone is the odd veric out and everyone on the team is friends with each other except him. One thing I can imagine happening: You and three friends and one stranger. You and your friends keep telling the stranger to do things but he won't respond (because he can't hear you.) Does he have any indication that you are talking to him? Will he see your blinking names? What if it turns into a Vice issue for his being "uncommunicative?"

What happens if you have a sub-party surrounded by a team of friends? So let's say you are friends with three other people, but are in a party with your brother who just started playing (and has no friends.) So your brother will be able to hear you, not but your friends, but you will be able to hear everyone, but your friends won't be able to hear your brother? Or what if you have a party of two friends with a party of three friends, but one person is friends with everyone. Will that one person hear both parties? Will the parties overlap at all? Or what if you form a party of just yourself and queue? I . . . I think I'm overthinking this.

[Corpsefoot]

Originally posted by manny the veric king:

I think I'm overthinking this.

Far from it, mate; you're about to do to voice chat what I tried to do for Beroth haha, bravo I say

[manny the veric king]

In my defense, I did break something (twice!) about two minutes into playing with it, so it's better to be safe than sorry!

[Schu]

I'd like the ability to disable it, not just 'push to talk' but full-on disable the incoming voice (not just mute in sound either, no sending, no receiving) and see how that reflects on the game, as I noticed with this patch a horrific amount of lag that I hadn't had before this, ping was unstable as hell. As soon as the ping started moving my game turned into a slideshow.

Funeral for one didn't know his mic worked last time we played and he was blasting music (till I took my headset and rambled through it).

Also noticed that you can talk during lobby, and talk during game, and talk in the aftermath, but not in the loading screen.

[Fat Viking Nerd]

Originally posted by Professor Jinx the Wisp Queen:

Also noticed that you can talk during lobby, and talk during game, and talk in the aftermath, but not in the loading screen.

Voice chat during the loading screen works for me, however it may only work once you are fully loaded? There are currently no visual indicators on the load screen to tell you who is speaking either, but that will likely come.

[Schu]

Originally posted by Tug:

Originally posted by Professor Jinx the Wisp Queen:

Also noticed that you can talk during lobby, and talk during game, and talk in the aftermath, but not in the loading screen.

Voice chat during the loading screen works for me, however it may only work once you are fully loaded? There are currently no visual indicators on the load screen to tell you who is speaking either, but that will likely come.

Both I and Funeral got cut off, and I'm quite sure that when we played that initial game everything got cut off as well (since I got no response nor did I hear anything until the game showed the in-game screen instead of the loading screen)