I never like commanders yelling at me, but all of the different thank you messages, and buffing messages in different accents were really nice, in my opinion, for adding color to casual play. I would suggest that you restrict the automatic messages to colorful stuff and allow people to disable it…that way nobody can complain, because they aren’t missing any key information if they do disable it.
Then the manual vsays should have all of the stuff that is actually useful.
Well I was referring to the ETQW tactical stuff NOT taunting (which I totally agree is an annoyance). Sorry for not being clear about that.
I understand that. But there’s not a practical difference. It’s only demonstrating that once a message can either be automatic or manual players won’t be able to tell which is which. This completely takes out the value of manual messages.
Bilko: automated vsays dont consider everything that is actually happening in the game, with all of its tactical nuances.
For example it may look at your HP hit below a certain threshold and autosay - i need a medic… when in that particular moment attracting a medic would do more harm than good. When the medic comes to help and sees 5 guys waiting there ready to shoot at him, with you incapped on the ground, hes unlikely to react to any auto-vsay again.
When its manual an average player would not call for a medic, because they would see 5 guys waiting there.
When they die, they wont ask for a revive… so that no medics blindly run to their death. - refer to incapitation thread 
So with all that said, when theres both auto-vsays AND manual vsays — players will ignore ALL vsays as they cant differentiate them. If devs decide to give them different sounds and text colours, players will ignore the auto.
Based on my 8 year WolfET in-game experience, I consider first option of this poll as spam in most cases.
However, someone could find auto-requests as good thing no matter what. So everyone could be satisfied if one can turn off sounds/text generated by auto-requests.
@tokamak: Agree there is no difference on the receiving end but from the sending end there is.
@Humate: I’m well aware of about the difference between the v-say and automatic shoutout.
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As I already stated I prefer the RtCW manual before any automated way. But if a server admin actually wants to have automatic tactical shoutouts e.g. call for a medic, then by all means make it optional.
Back in the RtCW we had the spammers who just couldn’t stop shouting for ammo the millisecond they spawned in. We usually enabled the spam filter and got rid of the problem.
Seems like it is rather about if a player can’t bother to find out what v-say combo to press or could it be that the console generation is just to used to get all served in stead of actually learning the more advanced features or maybe it’s not even implemented on consoles due to restrictions of the controller. I don’t own any consoles so I can’t really tell.
Bilko:
I wasn’t describing the differences b/w auto and manual. 
I was stating that we simply cant have them as optional for the reasons I described.
As you said this:
Just add an option for those who want it.
See no reaon to limit it either way if it can be optional
:stroggtapir:
It’s not about the nice cozy feeling you get from sending messages all over the place but about the value the message have to the receivers.
Automated of course!
I’m not messing with buttons during gunfight, LOL. And if I’m gonna add more details I’ll use my headset! No voicelist can ever be detailed enough, and the rest is better when i’ts automated, so you don’t have to say everything all the time. Automated messages are more basic and arguably just informational, people will not instantly react to them unless you specify.
YES, I’m talking for console gamers. We have our headsets plugged into the controller, so we will add details ourselves, I’m not gonna press button combinations to say ‘I’m attacking’ or something like that!
I know messing with something like Ventrillo or ‘Push to speak’ is annoying, so PC players will need some special list mechanism.
Il trigger them myself ofc
There is nothing like V55, V57, V21 and V54
That was a fail in Brink
Exactly, its meaningless. Everyone I knew playing Brink eventually muted the the auto-chatter in the menu.
I know there are devs that are against the idea of players gaining advantages through a menu system, but those values cant be applied to an ET based game.
That’s the problem, that reduces them to meaningless chatter. Great for immersion but totally useless. There are better ways for cosmetic sounds, like TF2 or L4D did.
I thought Brink did cosmetic sounds a lot better than TF2. Play TF2 right after playing Brink, or vice-versa, and I think you will agree. It seems like there are a lot more quips for a variety of things (you hear less of the same stuff every match than you do in TF2…“stand on the point!”), they blend in well, and do a better job of adding color even without taking as much of a comical tone as TF2 does. TF2 has a better commander voice though, but I hate commanders yelling at me.
But if you just mean that TF2 did it better by be purely cosmetic and not trying to give much meaningful information, then I agree.
I like color and personality…but at the same time, its better if it fits with the context, and in trying to fit them with the context, you might make some of the quips sound like they are trying to give meaningful information. I think it automatic quips should be purely cosmetic, to give color to a casual pub match, and we should be able to turn them off. And there should be a clear difference between V-says and automatic quips. I think that automatic quips should be proximity chat… you only hear them when you are standing nearby, and even then they are softer. They are softer the further away you are. V-says should sound like they are coming in over the radio.
TF2’s sounds were environmental rather than team-wide. That’s what made them cosmetic and immersive as it gets more hectic as the combat grows.
Yea, I guess Brink’s automatic quips are a mixture of team radio chat and environmental/proximity chat. They should all be environmental chat, and let the manual v-says come over the radio.
As an aside from the current topic but related to vsay spam and “etqw did it best”, I like the idea of limiting class specific requests like “Medic!” or “We need a radar” to being heard only by the pertinent class. These are useful in saying “we need more medics” or “we need a competent covert ops” but that meaning is redundant and, imo, more wasteful than useful.
Things like asking for medpacks or a medic or ammo (the small redundant tasks) should be performed by the game automatically. Let me do the stuff like telling what objective I’m doing etc. myself.
I definitely think there is room for both manual and automated v-says in the game. Determining which should be automated though, is a different matter altogether. I think people will always be split on what should be automated and what they want to handle themselves.
Maybe they should just be limited to either global team or game events… either way - I’m hybrid.
In RtCW you had to ask for ammo/med packs yourself, this meant that the only way a medic or field ops knew you wanted ammo or health was by you vsaying or them looking at you… an indicator would appear above your head if you asked and an icon would appear on the compass to let them know where you were. Most importantly, it kept the HUD CLEAR! No stupid health bars constantly over your team mates heads, no icons littering the screen the whole time even though they didn’t need to be there. I get the feeling that the auto-chatter did nothing for the game and they felt the need to have this constant readout in place as automatic stuff gets ignored.
Look at this Brink screenshot, it’s an absolute mess. I think you’ve got it the wrong way round, auto-chatter should be left for when you’re engaging the objective etc because the whole team DOESN’T need to know all the arbitrary stuff that the player has time to vsay anyway if need be.
Where did it suddenly come from that players need to know every single thing happening audibly and visually? Did gamers get stupid or lazy? Do devs think they’re stupid and lazy and added it, or did they add it because the gamers are stupid and lazy?
Random rant, apologies.