VoIP-How to enticing/lure people to use it?

(Wolfmeister) #1

Its pretty clear from the interviews that SDs enticing players to work as a team by offering XP etc but how should they go about to get people to use VoIP?

In BC2, where VoIP is a perfect match together with the Squad feature, its nonexisting.
Its so bad im not even sure its working. (ive heard rumours its working now and then but never heard anyone myself)

In TF2 and L4D i used it all the time with some great teamplay with people i didnt know.

IMHO theres two criterias that is a must,

  1. That it works perfectly out of the box and is easy to use.
  2. That you quickly can mute annoying people.

ATTENTION! For those of you that think VoIP sucks, that players just play music or talk crap and that it doesnt help teamplay, stop right there!. This thread is NOT for you, create your own whine thread.
This thread is for positive thinking about how to get players to use VoIP in pubs.

(DarkangelUK) #2

I’ve found it to be a PC thing more than a game thing. Players on XBL speak all the time, players on PC don’t. It’s the PC players that need to get into the mindset… it happens on clan and well established servers, random pubs it doesn’t exist.

(BioSnark) #3

People are much more likely to use it if they are not the only ones using it so… and I hear having a common language helps :slight_smile:

Some l4d and tf2 servers have voip set to global, however. As such, it should be obvious within the game if a player’s voip is set to Global or Team (or ft/clan/friends) as is NOT the case in Quake Wars among other games. Obvious and stupid mistake.

(signofzeta) #4

lol, people on the PS3 don’t speak either. I guess it must be that headset that got bundled with the xbox 360 (don’t know if that is the case now), and also in the early days of xbox live, people there assumed that voip is a must, although it really isn’t.

I don’t know the exact numbers, but who here feels that between xbox live users, PSN users, and PC users, the xbox live users have more of a chance in kicking people out of their server for not using voip? Because it happened to me in RTCW on the original xbox many times.

(Nail) #5

less of a problem on consoles where P2P pretty much guarantees people are from the same region. With PCs, on a euro server you might have 5 or more different languages at once, not everyone is multilingual, we found this a problem on our ETPro server even with type chat

(Apocalypse_Pony) #6

I remember the same lack of communication playing BF2. A sure way to have a squad all to yourself was to put “mics only” in the name. Funny though, people always seemed to appreciate a squad leader or commander who had a mic and could communicate verbally.

ETQW was markedly better. Not perfect. Still a lot of people typing frantically, trying to communicate or just not communicating. But definitely more voip use than any game I played before it. I think just having an objective based game helps some. Other than that, not sure how you can entice people to talk who don’t want to.

I’m not sure what the problem is exactly. I’m not a big talker myself, but it sure is a hell of a lot easier to communicate important information by speaking. You would think a few typing deaths would convince most of this.

(Darkix) #7

Tbh, I think 60% of the people that play games like these don’t want their voice heard on VoIP, which is why it’s not implemented in many games.

Take W:ET for instance, most competitive clans on GamesTV and Clanbase will use it, and some miniteams inside teams on Pubs will use it, such as myself and a few others. I think that VoIP just being out there is enough, we don’t need to force people to use it to enjoy the gameplay.

(LyndonL) #8

I much prefer voice comms when working cooperatively also, but they’ve said numerous times that the autochat will alleviate the need for a lot of voice comms. Hopefully that bridges the gap when a player doesn’t have a mic.

(Wolfmeister) #9

Good points about not wanting their voices heard and different nationalities.
I know that some female players are reluctant to use VoIP because of the abuse they get from the less subtle of us male players. Which is a shame because its refreshing to play alongside female gamers imo.

Some countries protects their language which is honorable but for us gamers it builds this wall that prevents us from getting that perfect communication. This is mostly a problem here in Europe though.

I wonder if an ingame VoIP achievement would help getting it going? (Achievement Loudmouth ;))
The question is, how would such an achievement look like?

(Apples) #10

VoiP is made for people who know each other IMO, or for matches, as in a pub game no matter what you say a total stranger will almost never try to listen to you, and will keep taking the boat on island or do stupid stuffs like that…

I’m a bit fed up with all these “how do you “force” player to play that way” threads, people has the right to play how they want as long as they bought the game right? And VoiP is like any other features, its powerfull if you know how to use it, but in the wrong hands its actually worst than a silence guy which play lonewolf IMO.

peace

(Wolfmeister) #11

Where did you see anything about forcing anyone to do anything?

And i disagree, VoIP works with strangers too, not friends only.

(LyndonL) #12

What he’s saying is there tends to be a lot of arrogant people who won’t listen to instructions… or even requests. I’ve come across it too. Not too often fortunately, but every now and again.

(Apples) #13

Thats why I quoted the “force” word, and voip will work a bit with ppl who have a clue, usually when you love to teamplay a bit you play or know allmost all the players who like to do that too, so basically they’re not strangers, if I played a game for x time and then suddenly a wannabe leader whom I dont know try to tell me blabla do this do that, I surely wont listen, if I try to team up with a friend then I’ll listen what he has to say.

Well its just a matter of taste as usual…

Peace

(BioSnark) #14

Well, yes. Actual coordination is most likely among friends. Handing out orders may generally not be effective but it doesn’t matter if your playing with strangers or not if someone calls out which wing the brain is hitting or that there’s an enemy in disguise at the objective.

(Kl3ppy) #15

Just do someting like in ETQW the fireteam! When someone wants to use Voip to increase teamplay and fun, he can create/join a public fireteam, and there he can talk/use voip because the other fireteam members mostly use the fireteam for the same reason. If someone is playing music, mute him locally.

(Wolfmeister) #16

True, i once experienced, what mustave been a 10 year or younger, kid trying to tell everyone what to do.
I must admit it was very hard to let a 10 year old boss you around :slight_smile:

(DarkangelUK) #17

Mute option takes care of those

(murka) #18

Most of the time in pub, i rather have voip off to hear footsteps and other vital sounds rather than people taking forever to say something that happened half a sec ago… Just use god damn words not sentences.

(Jamieson) #19

SD should consider reversing the defualt VOIP off decision for this very reason. It may be good for consoles but for the PC it does not make sense.

I would like that and possibly a special offer for a cheap £10 headset included as a leaflet in the box and ingame hints to use VOIP more often etc. Something like that might work more for the PC crowd.

The way I see it you pritty much require a headset for the consoles because there is no keyboard to type, most people on the PC probably don’t have a Mic because they get on fine with a keybaord.

(Senethro) #20

Eh, as long as its a dialogue that appears during installation or the first time you run the game I think its fine. Some big words saying “WOULD YOU LIKE TO TALK TO HUMAN BEINGS?”