As the title asks, I was wondering about this, as I rarely use voice chat. I have a voice that carries through the house and our gaming room is pretty close to where my wife would be sleeping. I could probably listen to the chat on headphones and type my replies, but actually talking later at night is kind of out of the question.
I personally prefer using voice chat but I won't be forcing others to use it. If you are the type of person that uses a cheap mic, a desktop mic with speakers, or doesn't use the push to talk button than I would prefer that they just type. Which makes me hope that include amute buttons for each individual player in your group.
I'm not one for voice chat either, usually. I find that it can be somewhat immersion breaking and a bit off-putting. Unless I know the people fairly well, then it's nice. I would expect with this community that voice chat will not be of concern either way. If you like it use it, if you don't don't.
As far as gameplay, this shouldn't be an issue. Even though we hope for intense combat, it shouldn't be "twitchy" and require on-the-spot communication. I could be wrong, but from the streams as well as past similar games you should be fine with no mic.
You may have times (like raiding or something similar) where you need voice chat, but not necessarily a mic. That would work in your scenario as well.
As Liav mentionned it is the new standard nowaday for harder content or raiding so I would then recommend paying attention to the class you want to play depending whom you play with for when your wife is alseep. However alot of us once did it without when it was not an option and it worked fine even for hardcore Guilds ~ Macro are still an option for quick msg !
I hate, despise, abhor, abominate and despise voice chat. Plus, I don't like it.
I much prefer listening to the game sounds and music that the developers spent so much time and effort on. I find it immersion breaking when the tiny female (fill in name of your favorite very very small race) has the voice of a large male. I've been communicating in these games by typing since the MUDs and am quite happy with that. I will most certainly look for a guild that mostly types that is actually my number one priority.
I understand I am in a declining minority on this. I understand that for raids or other difficult content many people insist on voice. Its one reason I focus on leveling and crafting not endgame content. In fact it is a strong reason I look forward to Pantheon. With much slower progress to level cap, many races, a distinct difference between classes, a robust crafting system etc. I can spend years getting a family of toonlings to maximum adventure and crafting levels without needing to worry about raiding.
I can see it for raid leaders- easier to commucate.
I prefer typing. But if we are on an adventure I get exited- and if in a raid, that is exciting, I would think that would also be expressed ( if not required) by those using chat to share that excitement, and not the deadpan delivery as satirized in SouthPark when they did the spoof of WoW.
Not anthropomorphism (which is what makes having pets, fun- not work animals)- what wlould be the term for ascribing human characteristics to machine? Deus ex machina? no thats God in machine- the thing that makes live video someties perceived as the ultimate truth as well as the old theater mechanic to move the play along. Machinapomorphism?
I remember playing EQOA where voice chat wasn't an option. I would set up macros that explained the mechanics for each of the raid fights. I agree that voice chat definitely makes difficult content much easier to manage, but for the most part, it won't be required. When I'm adventuring or leveling up, I like to hear the in-game music/effects. If I'm pulling an all-nighter, I'll probably turn some of my own favorite music on to keep me in the groove. For me ... when it comes to group content, voice chat will be the exception, not the rule.
We managed to raid really high end content in EQ without ever using voice chat and I'm also not really a big fan of it. It is much easier to chat with people when using text and I absolutely hate it when people don't use push to talk. I'll use it if I am forced to but I'd rather not.
If Pantheon is going to have voice chat built in please for the love of all that is holy make push to talk madatory. Although with platforms like Discord being free I really don't see the point of games having built in voice chat when Discord is likely to be so much better and have a better permission system. Seems like a waste of developer resources to me.
Cromulent said:We managed to raid really high end content in EQ without ever using voice chat and I'm also not really a big fan of it. It is much easier to chat with people when using text and I absolutely hate it when people don't use push to talk. I'll use it if I am forced to but I'd rather not.
If Pantheon is going to have voice chat built in please for the love of all that is holy make push to talk madatory. Although with platforms like Discord being free I really don't see the point of games having built in voice chat when Discord is likely to be so much better and have a better permission system. Seems like a waste of developer resources to me.
High end is pretty relative. Vox and Nagafen are high end compared to an orc pawn.
You can not succeed in the highest end EQ content after the Gates of Discord expansion unless you already have foreknowledge of the mechanics. When mobs hit hard enough that your tank gets one rounded, or you're trying to balance the HP of 4 mobs to not hit a fail condition, it's practically impossible to get 50+ people on the same page even with voice chat.
Most bosses in the Planes of Power expansion and prior have very, very simple mechanics. Pantheon will be far beyond that. Vanguard is a great example - no guild was succeeding at killing mobs like Sparkles without the use of voice comms. I use Sparkles as an example because I can't 100% remember the names of a lot of the other raids. When the Summoners were new, those encounters were extremely tough. Even then, the raid difficulty of Vanguard was below that of the level of difficulty provided by games like WoW.
This kind of got off topic, my bad.
Cromulent said:Seems like a waste of developer resources to me.
I cant agree on that with you Crom. While I think using external site is better may it just be for when someone go Linkdead to know what is up or figure out if they went out of power etc.
I Believe internal voice chat will be prefered by many.
Liav said:Cromulent said:We managed to raid really high end content in EQ without ever using voice chat and I'm also not really a big fan of it. It is much easier to chat with people when using text and I absolutely hate it when people don't use push to talk. I'll use it if I am forced to but I'd rather not.
If Pantheon is going to have voice chat built in please for the love of all that is holy make push to talk madatory. Although with platforms like Discord being free I really don't see the point of games having built in voice chat when Discord is likely to be so much better and have a better permission system. Seems like a waste of developer resources to me.
High end is pretty relative. Vox and Nagafen are high end compared to an orc pawn.
You can not succeed in the highest end EQ content after the Gates of Discord expansion unless you already have foreknowledge of the mechanics.
When I said high end I was talking about Plane of Time. We also completed GoD without voice comms as well. Not sure how much further we got as a guild because I quit when Omens of War was released.
Rendall said:Cromulent said:Seems like a waste of developer resources to me.
I cant agree on that with you Crom. While I think using external site is better may it just be for when someone go Linkdead to know what is up or figure out if they went out of power etc.
I Believe internal voice chat will be prefered by many.
Well if the majority of people use internal voice then I'll be happy to use it. But I already have a Discord server for my guild set up in case they'd prefer to use that instead.
Did up to Omens without voice chat myself and it was fine.
Also I agree on the forced PTT (push to talk) hearing someone breathing loud ,or random noise cause the guy is watching TV at the same time has to be annoying.
Then parsing became a thing and Global Parsing .... I so hope this will be forbiden ... for communication sake. ( thx to regex )
Liav said:I guess I was thinking more along the lines of from a progression standpoint.
Regardless, I hope Pantheon's raids are complex enough that voice communication is practically required.
Oh we reached Plane of Time before GoD came out. We were quite a high end guild. I just don't think voice chat was ever required for raids in EQ if everyone knew what they were doing and the raid leader could type at a decent speed. Oh and we had separate chat channel groups for each class so that the raid leader only ever needed to talk to the class leaders and it was the class leaders job to give instructions to people who played the same class.
Edit: This is why I think it is so important to be able to create global text chat channels that are password protected in Pantheon so that players in a guild who play the same class can swap tips and tricks with each other without spamming up guild chat with class specific info that doesn't apply to anyone who doesn't play that class. It also helps to have things like global auction channels and other random chat channels as they are needed by the player base.
Having an in-game voice chat will be good. Discord has taken over as the authority voice chat service which is nice, but there will be folks who don't use it. It's not really a waste of development resources to have this added either ... pretty sure there are folks on the team who will be working on stuff like this exclusively. If anything, it would be a waste of resources to NOT have it added. It's a nice feature that many people will come to expect when playing a modern MMO. I do agree that having global text chat channels would also be nice. Used them all the time in EQ2 and would love to see those added in Pantheon. As Crom pointed out, they are a great way for the "class communities" to interact cross-server while still playing the game.
Cromulent said:Liav said:I guess I was thinking more along the lines of from a progression standpoint.
Regardless, I hope Pantheon's raids are complex enough that voice communication is practically required.
Oh we reached Plane of Time before GoD came out. We were quite a high end guild. I just don't think voice chat was ever required for raids in EQ if everyone knew what they were doing and the raid leader could type at a decent speed. Oh and we had separate chat channel groups for each class so that the raid leader only ever needed to talk to the class leaders and it was the class leaders job to give instructions to people who played the same class.
Edit: This is why I think it is so important to be able to create global text chat channels that are password protected in Pantheon so that players in a guild who play the same class can swap tips and tricks with each other without spamming up guild chat with class specific info that doesn't apply to anyone who doesn't play that class. It also helps to have things like global auction channels and other random chat channels as they are needed by the player base.
Raid content in early EQ was kind of a joke difficulty wise Pre GOD tho. Most of it was incredibly easy because of content design limitations and the fact raiding at those scales was basically a brand new concept. Pantheon more than likely will have things in the raid game and upper end group game that are far more complex then that based on what the developers have said, which will necessitate voice chat because the requirements will be higher on cohesive action.
Now if you are saying you did EQ raids like Uqua, Inktuta, Txevu, Tacvi, The MPG trials, Vish, and Demiplane/Deathknell without voice chat, thats another matter entirely. Though thats just making things more difficult for no reason honestly.
Cromulent said:Edit: This is why I think it is so important to be able to create global text chat channels that are password protected in Pantheon so that players in a guild who play the same class can swap tips and tricks with each other without spamming up guild chat with class specific info that doesn't apply to anyone who doesn't play that class.
How talking about class specific in guild chat spam ? To an extent it benefit to everyone to know every class. Not saying its wrong to have specific channel but dont think it have to be class specific within a guild.
Custom channel achieve that perfectly and it's the modern standard.