I’ve written about “voice chat” in the past (1, 2, 3, 4) and pointed it as a danger for these games. The danger isn’t its use, but its imposition on all the players. Simply put: another process of exclusion. Another barrier used to discriminate.

It can be “optional”, but in a game with support for it, if you don’t use it you are excluded by other players.

The sad part is that I see this process (toward voice chat) as something that cannot be fought back. So, while the rants and dangers can be justified, it’s still something to which you’ll have to adapt.

Yes, voice chat can be a slight advantage and, yes, players will always take the shorter route to the carrot. But it is still not *required*. It’s an ease of use, it helps trivializing some forms of content and transform other players in just puppets. That’s why 5-man instances can be so much more fun. The players can regain their will and play the game in “first person”, instead of being there just to be a number and hit a button when yelled at.

Brainwashing could make some production processes more efficient, it’s true. But brainwashing doesn’t really lead to competence or people who are really good at what they are doing.

Voice chat can “compensate” for the presence in the group of some very bad, careless or distracted players. But it doesn’t really help to make them better ones.

From the latest thread on FoH’s.

—
Zehn – Vhex: One of the chief aspects about Vent I really like is that I don’t have to keep scanning the chat box. Anything that helps me spend less time staring at components of the UI and more time watching the game is a good thing. That’s why I have pretty much every ability with a cooldown tied to a sound to play when it refreshes. I’ve known many mages who rely on the sound the netherwind bonus or clearcasting makes.

Voice is becoming more and more important in WoW simply because you don’t have the time to type shit out. I miss the days of having our guild leader type, “JSSUFHCKING CHRIST SOMNE TANK THS SHTI” when a mob gets out of control…but I welcome the days of him screaming over vent, “You fucking cocksuckers need to go learn how to dodge the giant fucking red beam” with open arms.

—
Abalieno: Yeah, laziness.

As in that example, like if it wasn’t obvious enough that the mob gets out of control and should get tanked. If your players suck, it’s another problem. The voice chat can be an help to babysit people, but again it’s just not *required*. Its advantage is a false one because it requires maybe less attention from each player. But it’s something that you can easily compensate with some attention.

Let’s say this. Flipping the difficulty of the game to “easy” doesn’t mean that the game was impossible otherwise. Just that you settled for something slightly simpler because you are lazy, don’t want to pay attention to a chat box, don’t want to learn coordination, don’t expect awareness from all players, don’t expect them to take initiative and so on.

Voice chat works for “herding”. It isn’t really necessary if your players are competent and are really trying to learn the game. Which, then, it’s about ALL the fun you can have in the game.

Executing commands without even understanding them is what makes raiding so absolutely dull, pointless and unfun. You are just a puppet and the true challenge of the game is one: stay awake.

—
EmiliaEQ: And a God Send blessing for Fucktards.
Because now those fucktards will have their fucktardness hidden.

Want a simple example ? Chromaggus

CTRaid Emote : AE Fire DoT INC in 10 Seconds
TS/Vent (Raid Leader) : 10 Secs to AE ! GET THE FUCK OUT OF THERE

Do you need TS/Vent to dodge the AE ? Nope.
Hell i remember people using stopwatches with EQ (hella lot harder)

Who’s willing to bet there is more than a handfull of players that couldnt dodge the AE without TS/Vent.

I’m impressed.

And I personally like #1 (masterpiece), #4 (the “why all is as it is” part), #7 (the idea of “cultivation”) and #10 (because it’s just true).

I’m starting to seriously think that #8 is overestimated (edit: Oh, and Matt agrees). People are picking Raph too much on that one.

Not much else to add. He wrote something that I suspect will be quoted a whole lot. which, I guess, was the point (and a risk, when they will be used against him as blunt weapons).

Nothing about mmorpgs, I just wanted to dream about something that I know will never happen. You’ll have to let me wish impossible things.

Put together a small/medium sized team, but with all the key roles covered (artists, programmers, writers, designers etc..), take the 2D Infinity Engine and give it another round of polish, make sure it is up to date and compatible with the latest hardware, add support for a couple of new features and nifty effects, then take the whole pack (the original Baldur’s Gate + expansion and BG2 + expansion) and work to streamline and unify it into a single, seamless game, add to the mix David Gaider’s Ascension (here), Tactics Mod and Baldurdash fixes (odd coincidence: Kevin Dorner seems still alive and updated his site just yesterday after a LONG time with the release of the “unofficial” Oblivion patch), add an handful of new monsters, revise and enhance all AI scripts, polish the whole content throughout the two games and expansions, making sure the flow is good, add some new rooms and locations here and there, some new dialogues, fun bits, some spice, a few new items, and a brand new charismatic NPC with related side-stories and content, to fit with the whole storyline, from BG1 to the very end.

Then let this team work full time on this project for about a year, a year and half and then repackage the whole thing as a remastered edition to be sold for $30-$40.

I wonder if it would be possible even if they wanted to, since the rights of those games may be spread between Interplay, Bioware, Black Isle, Atari and WoTC. I guess it isn’t so simple as I imagine.

And yeah, I know that various mod teams have already tried to hack something like this together in a playable state, but it just cannot be compared with something done by a professional team working full time on it.

The point here is that I bet it would be a HUGE commercial success with a very good cost/profit ratio. It could be a very interesting experiment and I truly believe that it would outplay most of recently released games.

Note: While digging the recent developments of the mod community I found out that there has been a significant progress. It looks like what I pictured is now possible and is supposed to work well enough. Project’s name is Baldur’s Gate Trilogy or BGT in short (forum here). Since BGT is now WeiDU-based I guess it can be easily integrated with Ascension. There’s also another named BP+BGT which not only unifies the two BG and expansions, but also incorporates all the major community mods that were completed along these years. The installation process is looking crazier that the “Falcon 4 dance” and I suppose you cannot expect the same quality of Bioware in the art assets and content, but it’s still quite amazing what these communities have accomplished.

Again, game companies should take notes.

This is in reply to what Lum wrote about community managment. I couldn’t disagree more.

Picture the guy who’s been plucked from the community of gamers and is LIVING HIS DREAM! He gets to WORK ON GAMES! WOOOH! And MMOS! HOOAH! It’s the big show, and every day… every FREAKING DAY he’s sitting in on a meeting planning out incredibly cool stuff that is going to ROCK YOUR WORLD OFF, and he just has to tell SOMEONE… and then the producer gets to deal with the community seeing yesterday’s brainstormed three bagger as a promise with the weight of Holy Writ.

I just cannot picture a situation in which a significant portion of the players are playing a game because of devs promises. That only works for beta hype, and not so well even in that case.

Players choose their games and get deeply involved in them when they like them. When they are caught in. And when they are caught in, as it happens with every activity you dedicate to, they develop their own ideas, perception and expertise. The dialogue here can be good for a very simple reason: it could lead to a better game.

It’s the “better game” that the players judge and react to, in the end. Nothing else. If one of the devs goes to explain and discuss an idea in detail this just means that he is analyzing a potential, opening a confrontation, a research. It just means that he considers that idea potentially interesting for the game and he is examining all the different faces it presents.

It can be then implemented or not. In stages or all at once. It’s mostly a matter of prioritizing what needs to go in sooner than later. Have a good grasp of the overall structure, define a good long term plan and “vision” for the game.

All these things are possible and useful again for a precise goal: make the game a better game.

And at the end the players will decide to play if the game is good enough. And not because of devs promises.

If they rant, let them rant. The problem isn’t about keeping them quiet. The problem is about interpreting what they are saying. And search a dialogue in the measure you find it useful. It’s a need that should come spontaneously and not imposed. What is important is to remove the self-censorship, the discouragement. Which is what Lum actively promotes, instead.

It has been my whole point for all these years: there’s nothing to be scared about. No reason for damage-control. What matters in the end is the game. The dialogue is useful only in the case where the necessity of it comes directly from the developer.

From a pragmatic point of view: NEVER force the developers to talk with players. But instead let them absolutely free to establish the kind of relationship they find more useful. Without any form of self-censorship, control, inhibition or whatever. There isn’t really anything to worry about, if not the potential loss of one of the most useful resources that a mmorpg has: the community.

Is this too naive? Or maybe just free of unfounded fears.

A note: CCP is *contantly* promising and failing to deliver. This becomes a delusion for a lot of players, me included. But it doesn’t change the fact that they are keeping pushing the game, set interesting goals, trying to make the game a better game. And people are there for the ride because they recognize themselves in those objectives. Both in contemporaneity (what the game is today), and future (what the game will be tomorrow). The journey between those two states will be always filled with mistakes and misunderstandings. The points is about deciding whether the community can hinder or help that process.

Another example: the Honor system in WoW was firstly implemented around April of the last year (If I remember correctly). I, along with others, started to rant heavily against it in January, when the first details were disclosed. More than one year later Blizzard recognizes that the system didn’t work as they expected. There was no dialogue to be had.

Maybe even with a dialogue the Honor system would have been implemented exactly as it is now, maybe the dialogue could have lead to a better acknowledgement and a better solution. At the end the dialogue or lack of it wouldn’t have created a greater discontent or a dissatisfaction. The game did.

While the endless efforts from the community managers to justify the system, doing damage-control, trying to convince how the system was going to be open to casual players just because casuals are the majority and so on. All superfluous for a very simple reason: it was a fake dialogue with a puppet.