Communication Immersion

[Eric Snyder]

Hello. I am very interested in any feature that enhances the awareness of the players and promotes team cooperation. In all of the games that I have played, it has always annoyed me that it is very hard for me to speak to people sitting right next to me. Pretty silly that it is hard, really. If I am in a room with a few fellows, it should be easy for me to speak to them, and for them to know that I am speaking to them.

There are probably quite a few different implementations that could improve this. One would be to have a dramatic change in volume level based on range. Being able to whisper, talk, and shout would be helpful with this method also.

Another might be to have the player press a key, which would cause a "communication" cross-hair to pop-up. Select your target, speak, and that person is alerted that they are being spoken too, and by whom.

Obviously, I have not fleshed these ideas out completely, but was hoping to get some feedback from all of you.

Thanks,

Eric

 

[Nezzer]

IMO, the voice chat shouldn't be heard all across the battlefield and by every soldier of the team. I think there should be something like the RnL system(never played, but I've watched some videos wit this feature), where the voice comes from the character himself. So, if your teammate is speaking too far from you, you wouldn't be able to hear him. To do so, he should yell at his mic to be heard by farther players. And if you've got enemies around, they would hear you. Same thing should happen with the quick commands, like in DH.

This way, you would know where the speaker is, and if someone yells "grenade" you'd know it's close by.

 

[<animal>INSTINCT]

I got too frustrated with trying to communicate as a pubber thats why I joined the clan scene early in my RO career. I say its just better to join a clan and jump on their ventrilo server, it helps improve teamwork and you know that they will actually watch your back instead of getting it shot off like most pubbers do

 

[Nezzer]

I got too frustrated with trying to communicate as a pubber thats why I joined the clan scene early in my RO career. I say its just better to join a clan and jump on their ventrilo server, it helps improve teamwork and you know that they will actually watch your back instead of getting it shot off like most pubbers do

Ventrilo, Skype and Teamspeak are good for teamplay but they actually don't add immersion to the game. Still, you can't know where the grenade was thrown when hear your teammate warning you via Ventrilo xD

 

[<animal>INSTINCT]

Ventrilo, Skype and Teamspeak are good for teamplay but they actually don't add immersion to the game. Still, you can't know where the grenade was thrown when hear your teammate warning you via Ventrilo xD

lol, that reminds me of the time <animal> was playing F|R, it was on Krasnyi, and the match had just started. We were the russians, running to defend Petrol. Then I hear FUR say "Throwing a nade..." then two seconds later "OH SHI...." as the nade bounced of the overhanging horizontal pipes and landed right at everyone's feet

-BOOM-!!!! The entire animal team of 7 or 8 guys had been wiped out in the blink of an eye by the world's deadliest TK of all time, FUR didn't even have time to yell "grenade!"

 

[OneBloodyHero]

Ventrilo or teamspeak totally add immersion into the game, mostly to those that participate in the dialogue . It gives the player a distinct feeling of participation and fun through voice chat, whether it be RO's voice chat, Ventrilo, or what have you.

Having "realistic" communication immersion like you described, where the voice became fainter the farther away the talking player was, would be quite cool. Except that it would also be incredibly unpractical. That player would no longer participate in team-play as no one can hear him, albeit that is really awesome feature to have. And second, people would be required to yell in their mics which would also be very unpractical. Most people don't play RO or video games in a cabin in the woods. Yelling commands and what have you at the top of your voice could lead to non-virtual consequences .

Otherwise, pretty cool suggestion.

 

[Mormegil]

Easy. Just have a local chat and "radio chat" button. Technically, radio chat would be unrealistic, but it would likely stay for game play reasons.

I can't remember, it could have been in back in the mod days, but I had a binding setup, so I had one button for team chat, and another for vehicle chat. When you press the specified key, it would switch channels, and activate voice chat, and OnRelease switch back to regular Team Channel.

 

[Nezzer]

And second, people would be required to yell in their mics which would also be very unpractical. Most people don't play RO or video games in a cabin in the woods. Yelling commands and what have you at the top of your voice could lead to non-virtual consequences .

Yeah, I thought about that and I would have some problems too if I started yelling here, but the problem is that I'm a realism fanatic

 

[Eric Snyder]

Having "realistic" communication immersion like you described, where the voice became fainter the farther away the talking player was, would be quite cool. Except that it would also be incredibly unpractical. That player would no longer participate in team-play as no one can hear him, albeit that is really awesome feature to have. And second, people would be required to yell in their mics which would also be very unpractical. Most people don't play RO or video games in a cabin in the woods. Yelling commands and what have you at the top of your voice could lead to non-virtual consequences .

Otherwise, pretty cool suggestion.

You make some valid points. I did not really envision the whisper/talk/shout to be a function of your real-life voice volume, but of a separate key for each.

The further debasement of team play could be a problem. Team play is VERY important to my gaming experience, and this is a key feature that I would like to see enhanced in the new game. I do, however, think that realistic voice can play a part in this, taken together with other team play incentives. The new Battlefield game has a limiting and structured voice mechanism. Are we going to let an arcade shooter beat out RO in team play mechanics!?

Having "ranged" voice would force players to stay together in groups if they wished to be truly effective. If they did not stay together, then the lone wolf syndrome would be the norm. The trick is to make people want to stay together. A number of ideas have been suggested to help this. Having designated squads with leaders would help, I think.

Perhaps I will cull this forum, and bring together all of the team play enhancing ideas under one thread, to help discuss...

 

[Floyd]

Isn't TS3 SDK supposed to have locational/directional voice capability? I'm theorizing TW will use it ingame and be among the first to utilize its potential for 64bit voip awesomeness. I could be wrong. But I can dream can't I?.....

 

[Nezzer]

Having "ranged" voice would force players to stay together in groups if they wished to be truly effective. If they did not stay together, then the lone wolf syndrome would be the norm. The trick is to make people want to stay together. A number of ideas have been suggested to help this. Having designated squads with leaders would help, I think..

That's the point, people play too dispersed across the battlefield in ROOST, so this would make the team stick together just like in real life. And in WW2, especially in the eastern front, there wasn't much radio communication with soldiers in the frontline, this way the teams should plan their tactics before the battle starts.

 

[Dr.Atkins]

The much talked RnL style communication from the upcoming RnL beta:
YouTube - 3D Voice Audio
Quality wise that video sucks as the guy speaking has lousy mic but the idea is awesome. Remember to use headphones while watching that video.

Another video of the RnL alpha 0.4 from 3rd person perspective to see how the mic system works:

YouTube - RnL meets CS:S kiddy

 

[Nezzer]

The much talked RnL style communication from the upcoming RnL beta:
YouTube - 3D Voice Audio
Quality wise that video sucks as the guy speaking has lousy mic but the idea is awesome. Remember to use headphones while watching that video.

Another video of the RnL alpha 0.4 from 3rd person perspective to see how the mic system works:

YouTube - RnL meets CS:S kiddy

The only thing I don't like in RnL are the sound icons above their heads xD

 

[Eric Snyder]

The only thing I don't like in RnL are the sound icons above their heads xD

It is not realistic to not be able to tell who is speaking when they are right next to you. Contrariwise, I am sure that in real life it would be quite disconcerting to see a speaker icon appear above someone's head.

Normally, I would agree with you, but if the game mechanics do not allow you to determine where a sound is coming from (as in real life), then I would want an on-screen indicator.

 

[skittlesareyum47]

Either way... a mic is the way to go in the first place.

 

[FlyXwire]

Good gosh, that second video illustrates why I enjoy gaming off-mic.

I'd rather see some sort of authentic hand signals being used, with a game system of icons or some visual equivalent to make this work in-game.

Sorry, but I'm one of those gamers that just get tired listening to talking during my gaming time. And really, when it counts, hand signalling was used instead of all this talkie-talkie.

 

[Colt .45 killer]

3d voice chat. I do know that Ts3 now supports 3d voice chat when used in conjunction with Arma 2 and some mods that allow 3d voice chat, quite a neat setup of radios they have for short/long ranges etc.


What would be Ideal to see would be a 3d sound system with one volume level (no need to complicate this) which everyone is on automatically. then for low realism levels everyone could have access to a 'radio' channel which would have a small bit of distortion on it for players to easily identify that its a radio chat. Players could turn their radios to either their teams bandwidth, the enemies, or off ( because the sound from the radio is 3d and can give you away). On harder difficulties perhaps only the squad leader ( and any other officer classes introduced?) would have the ability to talk on the radio channel, while all players could still hear the radio channel ( unrealistic yes, but it does bring some semblance of a command structure into play ). There would also be a series of channels for armour.

possible thing to remove : tuning to enemy radio frequency, this was not always known and would have been in a foreign language, and likely in code.

 

[Dr.Atkins]

So any news if there is gonna be a 3D ranged voice chat system?
I sure hope it wont be that everyone-has-a-walkie-talkie-system that ruins immersion like in Roost. Those who like ruining the realism part of the voice chat can always use TS3/mumble etc. to lower their immersion.
3D voice is a must nowadays. Say no to walkie-talkies in WW2 realism games!

YouTube - RnL - Found you!

 

[Zetsumei]

The only thing I don't like in RnL are the sound icons above their heads xD

Sound icons could be made to only show up in the tactical overview hud thingy, with the hud on demand system.

So only when you press the tactical key will you see stuff over people their heads and otherwise see nothing.

 

[EchoJ7]

Being able to gesture at an object with some form of subtle marking/highlighting/hud indication to reinforce this (adjustable server control for maximum realism)

Hand signals to correspond with voice commands or menu commands.