93 réponses à ce sujet

[dch2404]

Half of the women on my ME3 list never talked, and the other half only ever said "Hi" in the lobby and nothing else. When I asked one of them silent ones why, they said they'd prefer that people didn't know she was a girl. I didn't push for any more details, and just assumed she'd had bad experiences because of her gender. I only knew she was a she because she put in her real first name on the Origin list and forgot to set it to private.

 

I heard stories about ME3 text chat being hacked on via the dev console, so it seems to me that BW put effort into disabling the text chat. Considering it was the Unreal 3 engine, it makes no sense to not have innate text chat.

[TheThirdRace]

Respectfully disagree on most points.
 
Yes we are 'behind the curve'. Consoles did not have a generation of gamers who played with text-based input, PCs did.  Trying to move away from it is not trivial.  You are far more likely to end up with silent players (ME3MP on PC) than people speaking.  People can be missing a mic or not willing to use it, but every PC player (I hope) has a keyboard somewhere nearby.
 
Since DAMP seems to be also more strategically paced in terms of dungeon crawling (you pick the time to engage, not have swarms spawn as soon as previous wave dies over), players could discuss engagement strategy (if briefly) in chat before engagement.  And I highly doubt that an in-game or in-lobby chat is a massive investment.
 
And oh, if only kids slept from 10pm to 7am, life would be such a bliss   Waking a child up with light keystrokes is nowhere near as likely as by talking on the mic.  And as mentioned, confusing older family members is another drawback of voice chat.
 
During college years, I had no issues with voice chat.  An empty room/apartment doesn't care if I am talking or not.  However since then I got a family, so now I have to adapt my gaming to family schedule, which can be difficult if talking is required to play.

While I understand every points you made, I still disagree.

It's faster to just talk about strategy instead of writing about it. It's also faster to get someone's attention by speaking to them. Text chat would only introduce delays and longer waits.

As for the kids sleeping, tell me something: do you unplug every phone in the house when they go to sleep? Do you put them all in vibrate/mute mode? Don't you answer if someone's calling? When kids are sleeping, they're usually not on your lap while you play, they're usually in their bed in their own room. When kids are sleeping, you'll talk with a lower voice, you don't scream to your heart's content either. So really, explain to me how a headset will wake up everyone in the house like if you were throwing a party?

When you dig deeper on all the reasons people gave for text chat, ultimately the disadvantages outweights the benefits. With it you'll spend more time in the lobby instead of playing. You'll also spend more time idle in-game discussing strategy so clearing the map will take longer. It's inefficient from top to bottom. Even if it could be useful on some occasions, it will make you wait for the others every step of the way.

I was like you when I started ME3MP, I begrudgingly got a headset because I was tired that a retard PUG used Disruptor ammo and gimp everyone on the team because it superseded all our abilities. After 1000 hours on ME3MP, I can say I do not regret getting the headset, it makes the game so much easier on all levels. You don't have to get one and I respect that, but be aware you're voluntarily gimping yourself. In a sense, text chat will gimp everyone that follow the curve and got an headset... not exactly a 2014 trend.

[Zana]

There, that I can (mostly) agree to. 

 

I guess the issue is that I am approaching the problem from another perspective.  Yes, voice chat > text chat, no arguments from me.

 

Here is the way I am approaching the problem:

Ability to communicate increases the chance of group doing well.

Not everyone is willing to use voice chat (for various reasons, regardless of how valid these reasons are)

Some of the people not willing to use voice chat are willing to use text chat

Addition of text chat allows these people to communicate (at a level worse than voice chat), which is beneficial to the party as a whole.

Not going to argue that they could communicate better if they had voice chat, but I'd take text over no communication.

 

I guess what I am saying is that given 10 random people, I'd rather have 1 person with voice chat, 6 people with text chat and 3 silent people, than 2 people with voice chat and 8 silent people.  Now ideally, you'd have 7+ people with voice chat but if ME3MP is anything to go by, this is not happening.

 

The issue is not limited to ME3MP.  In MMOs raiding guilds more or less required people to have and use voice chat, however once you enter any sort of PuG, you'd end up with majority of people not using it.  Unfortunately, this has been going on for a while, so this is not a new issue and it doesn't seem to be going away on it's own.

 

Only ways to go around lack of communication from people without voice chat is to either talk to them without any feedback, talk to them and get feedback in term of text, or don't group with them altogether.  Most competitive people pick the latter choice, but those who are willing to PuG would probably prefer *some* feedback to none.  I would rather take extra 5 minutes in a half hour dungeon to complete it successfully by communicating via text than fail it.  Obviously it's a wasted 5 minutes if you have voice chat, but better than the alternative.

[TheThirdRace]

@Zana
This is pretty reasonable and I kinda agree with your vision. The only thing I fear is that some solutions are perfectly fine until some point.

5 minutes isn't such a big deal in and by itself, but when can it become a problem?

For example, when you start ME3 you have the "press this key to continue" prompt then the multiplayer auto-login even if you only play single player. That's about 30 to 60 seconds of your time. The problem rise when you start the game you can't go get something to drink because the game pauses at the prompt waiting for you to press a key. Doing this once isn't a big deal, but every single time you start the game you lose 30 seconds or more. Bioware literally forced you to stay in front of the screen and punish you for not doing it. That's a problem. Load the game 3 or 4 times a day, it become pretty annoying as it's unnecessary. Playing for a year makes it frustrating.

Back to the 5 minutes for text chat, it's not really a problem for 1 or 2 games. But after the 10th game of the day it becomes tiresome. After playing for a year you'll want to bite the head off the guy that thought about it...

I've played my share of PUG in my ME3MP days, it's true most of them don't have any headset and this makes it harder to coordinate our efforts. On the other hand, I had a headset so I could take the lead. There were players that wouldn't listen to anything and others that were very responsive. Most of the time, the players that wouldn't listen to anything were pretty bad so even with text chat that wouldn't have changed a thing. All you can do is move on, those that play well you add them as friend. Eventually you get enough people on your friend list so you don't really need voice or text chat because you're comfortable playing with them which makes the games much more enjoyable.

I know I've come up as pretty much against any text chat, but that's more a result of "when will it become more a nuisance than a benefit".

[Pablo Cavalieri]

Yeah sure, it's much better to hear loud and clear a shrieking and raging kid than to sometimes notice a small screen in a text chat. Bsn always astounds me with a quality of it's arguments.

Your comment full of intelligence overwhelms me.

[LexXxich]

What about people who can't talk at all? Are they to be denied communication?

[TheThirdRace]

What about people who can't talk at all? Are they to be denied communication?

It's an Origin problem, not a DAMP problem. XBox and PS3/4 have chats in their own system, the game isn't responsible for chat. Since DAMP will require Origin, you should relay your demands there...

[Silvershroud]

It's an Origin problem, not a DAMP problem. XBox and PS3/4 have chats in their own system, the game isn't responsible for chat. Since DAMP will require Origin, you should relay your demands there...

Except unless I'm missing something, Origin only lets you chat with people on your friends list, so it's kida usless for pugs.

[TheThirdRace]

Except unless I'm missing something, Origin only lets you chat with people on your friends list, so it's kida usless for pugs.

You're perfectly right, that's what I meant by relaying your demands to Origin. They should allow you to send messages to someone not on your list like XBox and PS3/4.

[Silvershroud]

You're perfectly right, that's what I meant by relaying your demands to Origin. They should allow you to send messages to someone not on your list like XBox and PS3/4.

Ah, sorry, I misunderstood.

[LexXxich]

It's an Origin problem, not a DAMP problem. XBox and PS3/4 have chats in their own system, the game isn't responsible for chat. Since DAMP will require Origin, you should relay your demands there...

It is DAMP problem regardless of what Origin can do. It couldn't do voice chats in ME3, but the game itself had it on PC.

[CapivaRasgor]

Well, not everyone is a native english speaker you know? And some of us have problems born out of not speaking regularly. I myself had to deal with a lot of assh*les mocking me because of my brazillian portuguese accent(which they confused with spanish accent and spewed all kinds of xenophobic BS). After some plays I just learned to ignore it, but that doesn't stop the people I live with from forming an audience around me to hear me speaking a foreign language, which just gets weird and annoying.

Personal stories aside, text chat is a good alternative for people who aren't confortable speaking english on a mic.

[TheThirdRace]

It is DAMP problem regardless of what Origin can do. It couldn't do voice chats in ME3, but the game itself had it on PC.

 

As of 2014/10/09 (which is October 9th for our American teammates), there's a new voice chat room included in the BETA of Origin.
http://help.ea.com/c...n-beta-release/

 

Even if it only applies to friends in your friendlist, I suspect it shouldn't too long until something more along the lines of XBox Live or PSN whatever-the-name-of-the-service-is  makes it way to PC.

 

As for what CapivaRasgor, it's unfortunate you've been subject to such players in the past. I've played with Russians, Slovaks, Africans and probably loads of other nationalities in ME3MP and we always were able to communicate by mumbling a couple words in english here and there. There always be morons that make fun of you or someone else, I think it's better to report them instead of stopping all technological advances in the name of few rotten apples. Also, there are only 2 reasons to be ashamed of something (in this case speaking english). First, you're doing something you shouldn't, the solution being to stop doing it. Second, you're doing something that shouldn't shame you but you feel ashamed nonetheless, the solution being to grow a pair and stop being ashamed for no logical reason. I'm not a native english speaker, I sometimes make mistakes and my friends made fun of me from times to times, but that's allright because I'm doing something I love (play ME3MP) and there's nothing wrong with that. It's all about perception, when you change your perception to something positive, you'll see better results.

[Ser Jynx]

I support text chat for PC but the other platforms need it too. For the sake of the deaf, mute, or shy. 

[TheThirdRace]

I support text chat for PC but the other platforms need it too. For the sake of the deaf, mute, or shy. 

 

What about blind people?

[Ser Jynx]

What about blind people?

now that's a challenge

[kouzrah]

Pretty please? Can we please please have that for MP?

Wng pls. Not having a text chat on PC was genius. No insult, limited interactions. And if you wanted to get involved you'd have to use a mic.

I spent countless hours pugging on ME3MP and those silent mercenary times were awesome. I would have to befriend someone before being able to communicate. And that was okay.

Also if ME3MP had text, I would never have mic'd up. I made the effort when I met people who used mics and were friendly. And I wanted to interact with them. Then I realized that using a mic, even with strangers, was no big deal.

I don't think I've lost any crucial communication by not being able to type to strangers.

[TheThirdRace]

I support text chat for PC but the other platforms need it too. For the sake of the deaf, mute, or shy.

What about blind people?

now that's a challenge

 
Not really, blind people use a microphone to communicate, easy as pie...

[Ser Jynx]

then it's just a matter of how to play

 

prothean beacon?

[TheThirdRace]

then it's just a matter of how to play
 
prothean beacon?

Stay on topic please, we're talking about how they communicate

 

Granted, they might not top the scoreboard, but they also won't screw the spawning points or put you in a bad position... which is 200% better than most noob!

[Ser Jynx]

haha very true

[coldflame]

Wng pls. Not having a text chat on PC was genius. No insult, limited interactions. And if you wanted to get involved you'd have to use a mic.

I spent countless hours pugging on ME3MP and those silent mercenary times were awesome. I would have to befriend someone before being able to communicate. And that was okay.

Also if ME3MP had text, I would never have mic'd up. I made the effort when I met people who used mics and were friendly. And I wanted to interact with them. Then I realized that using a mic, even with strangers, was no big deal.

I don't think I've lost any crucial communication by not being able to type to strangers.

Actually, I think this was the reason insinuated by one of the devs when asked why was there no in-game text chat for ME3MP.

[kouzrah]

Actually, I think this was the reason insinuated by one of the devs when asked why was there no in-game text chat for ME3MP.

I've always thought it was to save costs as me3 was ran with a limited budget. 

Text chat means you need moderation so you have to pay staff to deal with it. You can't moderate voice chat. Problem solved.

[Cirvante]

I've always thought it was to save costs as me3 was ran with a limited budget. 

Text chat means you need moderation so you have to pay staff to deal with it. You can't moderate voice chat. Problem solved.

 

There was text chat as far as I remember, you just had to use the console for it. I remember playing a plat game with RyncolAddict from BSN. The two other players disconnected and when I commented on it, he answered with text chat.

 

While I agree with you insofar that a lack of text chat forces you to use your mic for communicating, voice chat has the potential to be much more annoying. Breathing, eating, annoying voices, annoying people, echo and no option to block it. Text chat would be much easier to ignore and would allow players who don't have a mic or headset to communicate.

[Slash_luke]

I'm not using mic when I play online games (with exception of friends, of course) mostly because I'm insecure about my accent and my spoken english. But I will probably give it a try with Dragon Age MP

I would be glad if there will be in game text chat, but I won't feel dissapointed if it won't be there. But I must say that text chat at least in lobby (if not in the game itself) would be nice.

I don't need that, but I (for example) NEED to know what latency do I have in current lobby. That's far more important imho, because it will tell you whether you will experience lags or not. Some of my ME3 MP games were unplayable, because the host had terrible internet connection.

 

Does someone know if there will be some way to know what latency do you have?