In-game VOIP


Pathfinder Online

Goblin Squad Member

I'm not talking party/charter/kingdom channels the player can create and is pretty much an alternative to Vent/TS

What I want:

When you talk into the microphone, your avatar's mouth moves and your voice is carried a logical distance.

Every time a person is talking in your earshot, you can open up the "voice" window and see everyone that is talking, then easily click the "mute" button on the person making annoying noises/playing gay-porn book on tape with dramatic music in the background(great global agenda match pre-mute button).

Force push-to-talk functionality. Using voice-activation is ok on a chat server with a group of friends and everyone is aware of it. There are the occasional hilarious off-mic conversations that get picked up, and lots of annoying crunchy foods. But bottom line, it's more trouble than it's worth to have a voice-activation system.

This system seems necessary for any game with the slightest focus on RP.

Goblin Squad Member

Champions Online tried something like this. I'm not sure if they ever got rid of the bugs, and there were plenty at the time I saw it, but the end idea was that you could click on your chat window and decide whether or not you wanted to hear local voip broadcasts, which could be heard at set ranges.

Goblin Squad Member

I wasn't with champions long enough, I played the beta and canceled my pre-order after playing max level PvP (the epitome of cookie-cutter builds)

I think it appeared in DCUO before I gave up on that game. I know it was in the pipelines, but I used ventrilo for all communication so i never messed with it. I did occasionally hear people talking in the open world, but that may have been the bug where you get stuck in some random voice channel.

To add to the OP:

The voice range should diminish the volume, so a chat in a bar is actually possible. Some volume normalization would be nice too.

Also you should be able to switch between shout and talk, which would increase your radius.

Goblin Squad Member

Maybe it's DCUO I was thinking of, not CO. I got bored of DCUO after I programmed my G11 keyboard to level my character up from lvl 5 to cap while I slept - just stand in a crisis zone with back to allies spamming ranged attack. Done, game won. Bleh.

Goblin Squad Member

I like the idea. I think it would be a great feature.


I'm not really for this. For one, and this is the biggest problem, that would force people in proximity to listen to anything a person may be saying.

The second problem, bandwidth. Forcing people to shut off game sounds to avoid being bandwidthed to death (something that can be abused in pvp much like text bombs) is not something I would like to see.

Most people are largely capable of using freely available software to do voice on their own in groups. Let Paizo/Goblinworks concentrate on the game, and let the people who make VOIP software do that. I have problems expecting game designers to design non game software like VOIP. VOIP is not game content. Stick to content.

Goblin Squad Member

A side addition might be ok, but inbuilt would probably be more resources than it is worth. No reason to reinvent the wheel, use separate software and let the game designers work on the game.

I have no issue with it, but frankly I do not want to bog the server checking for who can hear you, how far, and if they are ignoring you or not. At most, maybe a specific area that would allow open communication, or allowing a party to use voice.

Liberty's Edge Goblin Squad Member

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Honestly, rather than spend development time on it, license and use an existing voice chat client like Ventrilo or Mumble and develop an add-in to give control/display functionality to it in-game (so you don't have to Alt-tab out to change channels). There isn't a point in doing more (at least at the start of the game).

Goblin Squad Member

Totally agree with Robert, but would strongly prefer Mumble over Ventrilo. If you've ever had someone in Ventrilo get excited and start screaming, then you'll really appreciate what Mumble does.

I also think there's a lot of value for a built-in system (licensed from Mumble, that the devs don't have to spend much time on) because it would allow the potential for local voice, where you can basically speak to the people in the same game area.

Goblin Squad Member

Nihimon wrote:

Totally agree with Robert, but would strongly prefer Mumble over Ventrilo. If you've ever had someone in Ventrilo get excited and start screaming, then you'll really appreciate what Mumble does.

I also think there's a lot of value for a built-in system (licensed from Mumble, that the devs don't have to spend much time on) because it would allow the potential for local voice, where you can basically speak to the people in the same game area.

I somewhat don't see the local thing working, party's I can see some plausibility. Local.... well I have a feeling the roleplayers will rapidly be outnumbered and snuffed out by kids carrying over barrens chat from WoW. (for those who are fortunate enough not to know what I'm talking about, barrens chat was a map in WoW, in which chat was literally 24/7 chuck Norris jokes.

Goblin Squad Member

I agree a system borrowed from mumble would be the way to go, but I would be concerned with the bandwidth when theirs 50 people in the same room

Goblin Squad Member

@Onishi, there are a couple of different ways to solve that.

1. Whitelist players you can hear, or Blacklist players you can't.
2. Specific Channels for Local voice chat. I can see an RP-Local channel, and as long as there is an ability for moderators to kick people out, then it's fine. Not to mention, most people won't bother joining the RP-Local chat just to be a jerk once and then get kicked out and banned.

Goblin Squad Member

Nihimon wrote:

@Onishi, there are a couple of different ways to solve that.

1. Whitelist players you can hear, or Blacklist players you can't.
2. Specific Channels for Local voice chat. I can see an RP-Local channel, and as long as there is an ability for moderators to kick people out, then it's fine. Not to mention, most people won't bother joining the RP-Local chat just to be a jerk once and then get kicked out and banned.

1. But to what extent... Odds are the numbers generally don't favor RPers... with a white list system, you may as well limit it until you join a party.

2. Possible... but who moderates a channel? Would it be plausible to create new channels as desired and then the creator being the moderator? If that is plausible then there is a shot I suppose. IE you manually hit /join RP-local or something to that nature... though I'm not 100% sure if any server or system can handle infinite created channels. pre-set limited channels, how will moderators be picked and chosen.

Goblin Squad Member

@Onishi, I would be perfectly happy if the GMs moderated a small number of set *-Local voice channels, and we could complain to them if someone is clearly violating the spirit of the channel.

Goblin Squad Member

Nihimon wrote:
@Onishi, I would be perfectly happy if the GMs moderated a small number of set *-Local voice channels, and we could complain to them if someone is clearly violating the spirit of the channel.

I absolutely would too, but I can't see that as a small number of GMs, if you are talking about local as in limited to an area... 122 sq miles x 3 channels = woah that's a ton for a small team of GMs to moderate. if you are talking server wide. even 300 people talking at once would be completely indecipherable, there's a reason why almost every game handles chat issues with screenshot + submit, and the GMs might search the server logs to verify within a few days. I can't imagine how much it would take to monitor localized voice chat. On a technical level, option 2 sounds more plausible.

Not that option 1 doesn't sound awesome if it were possible... but in general even high budget studios can't keep 1 GM on 24/7

Goblin Squad Member

@Onishi, the point is not to have enough GMs to monitor everything, but to have them available to receive complaints from the players and handle them the same way they'd handle non-voice-chat harassment complaints. I understand your concern about not being able to get a screenshot, but it wouldn't be that difficult to be able to right-click a user in local voice chat and select "Report" and have the game attach the last 10 seconds or so of voice chat that came from that user.

Goblin Squad Member

Pucktheplatypus wrote:
I agree a system borrowed from mumble would be the way to go, but I would be concerned with the bandwidth when theirs 50 people in the same room

The system would require the server to combine the audio files and send them to you as a single stream.


Adding to what Valkenr said, it can be optimized pretty easily also. Are you in a group +20% volume, have someone targeted +%, white listed +%, in crowded rooms no more than 6 streams get sent and one of them is just a backdrop crowded room sound effect on loop. This would make crowded areas bearable.

Goblin Squad Member

Voice communication destroys immersion and RP'ing for me in fantasy games. I'm not opposed to it but I feel strongly against it.

When I play BF2 I love to use it and every themepark game I use it to run instances and the like.

In UO my guild has vent but most people elect not to use it, and when we are all in vent most just use in game chat.

But honestly when you play in a heavy RPG voice chat will most likely kill the RP and immersion on the game fairly quick.

But that might be because when UO started we didnt have any voice chat programs and had to use ICQ for instant messaging, vent didn't become available for many years after the release.

Fantasy sandbox rpg = no

Thempark mmo = yes

FPS = yes

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