Revisiting Risk vs Reward

[HaemishM]

Hearing a deep booming Australian voice as the player behind the female tiny gnome...breaks immersion for me.

Voice fonts, daddy-o.

[Venkman]

That I'd pay for, even as just a listener. I needs people to give good voice :mrgreen:

[Akkori]

Even when I played paper RPG's I never used a girlie voice to enhance the female NPC the group encountered. I also did not use a deep, gravely voice for Drarves, etc...

Textual communication sucks, plain and simple. For some reaosn, there are people out there who do not want people to hear their real voice. It seems to me that it is usually because they are not the gender character they are playing. But certianly there are mute people, or those with speech handicaps.

I'd love to see an integrated "Dragon Naturally" in games. Let the player train the system, and then the things they say will be put out in text form in the game. This would be a viable option for those who *can* speak, but dont want to.

[Paelos]

I know more than a few people on my TS who do not talk because they are manginas, and they like the attention. If I had the luxury of not speaking on TS I'd probably take it, but as MT you don't really get much of a say there. It's just too slow to issue commands in text on the fly when something goes wrong.

[Venkman]

I'd love to see an integrated "Dragon Naturally" in games. Let the player train the system, and then the things they say will be put out in text form in the game. This would be a viable option for those who *can* speak, but dont want to.

I've actually been meaning to try that, see if I can't get Dragon to send text to these games. I doubt it, but only because it's been a long while since I looked at the program.

At the same time though, I don't think this would necessarily solve the issue. Some people read faster than hear (like those who get annoyed by EQ2 VO for example), but more importantly, reading text pulls attention away from the action. It's quicker to respond to a train you see coming than to have it arrive while you're reading about it :)

Voicechat is the panacea of gaming, as soon as we can get rid of these old farts holding us back.

Like me :)

[cevik]

At the same time though, I don't think this would necessarily solve the issue. Some people read faster than hear (like those who get annoyed by EQ2 VO for example), but more importantly, reading text pulls attention away from the action. It's quicker to respond to a train you see coming than to have it arrive while you're reading about it :)

You are right.. in PvP voicechat is helpful because you no longer have to look down at the chat window.. which means you can pwn twice as many newbs in the same amount of time.. :)

[Sky]

What's the point of a persistent world if there isn't some compulsion to group?

Social interaction. A rich, vibrant world with people bustling around doing their own thing. Compulsory /anything/ in a game is just a bandage or a crutch.

I'd voice chat with you folks for EQ2, but I don't have a mic capable of suiting the purpose, and I'm not shelling out for a wireless headset just for that :P

[Venkman]

That's the sandbox approach though. And unfortunately, that hasn't proven to be the huge success many (including myself) wish it would be.

[Sky]

I'd posit that we haven't seen a decent implementation of a sandbox yet.

[HaemishM]

I'd posit that we haven't seen a decent implementation of a sandbox yet.

I'd posit that no matter how brilliant the implementation, the average MMOG player (i.e. the LCD that MASSIVE entails) would just fuck it up with whining.

Niche, baby, niche.

[Venkman]

And I agree with both of you.

We have not seen a truly quality execution that has both the combat/quest/RPG depth of a WoW (at least) and the sheer breadth of SWG. We've seen many attempts, but I'd argue they were doomed by the lack of money behind them, or the lack of belief in the idea enough to get that money.

It's a Catch 22. Companies that are hugely successful already are not ones taking chance after chance after chance. Blizzard is the best example in this regard, doing what they always do and innovating on the work of their forebears. No way a company like Blizzard is going to spend 74mil (or whatever) on something like SWG. They're going to go with stuff they know works so they can make back that money.

In this era of corporatized budgets being the price of entry, we can't expect any different. It's the reason why we have to rely on the groundswell/grassroots titles like Eve to drive the exposure on alternatives to dungeons and loot. I continually hope that game gets successful enough big companies start ripping that off.

Only when the alternative to D&Ds and Dikus become successful (750k subscriptions, a lot of positive press, etc.) can we break out of this logjam. Until then, we have to hope for the talent of individual teams to have the authority to drive creativity against all odds.