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f13.net  |  f13.net General Forums  |  The Gaming Graveyard  |  Archived: We distort. We decide.  |  Topic: The Telling Barrier 0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
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Author Topic: The Telling Barrier  (Read 16859 times)
shiznitz
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Posts: 4268

the plural of mangina


Reply #35 on: November 15, 2004, 01:10:01 PM

If you want to solo, be a crafter. :P  

Grouping is both a curse and a driving mechanic for an MMOG.  However, if a game is going to require grouping, finding and organizing groups needs to be done much better. Every group game should have CoH's Recall Friend as a tool for the group leader. Give it a 1 hour timer per person to limit travel abuse.

I have never played WoW.
koboshi
Contributor
Posts: 304

Camping is a legitimate strategy.


Reply #36 on: November 18, 2004, 01:29:24 AM

SWG did it best.  Chat bubbles, yea, but the customizable chat windows were the best.  I had it set up so that in one nearly transparent window I had the local chat, in another I had guild and tells AKA. people I actually wanted to talk to, and in a small one in the corner I had the fight channel telling me about the damages I was giving and receiving.  Finally when i couldn't even be bothered to type I could always click on my hand picked emote shortcut bar.
As with any recollection of SWG I'll end by saying, goddamn The Italians.

-We must teach them Max!
Hey, where do you keep that gun?
-None of your damn business, Sam.
-Shall we dance?
-Lets!
Monika T'Sarn
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Reply #37 on: November 18, 2004, 07:35:55 AM

Interesting observation - really makes me think about the way in which I play. In each new MMORPG, the first thing I modify in my interface is increasing the size of the chat/combat text window - to see whats going on. To much history of playing MUD's I think.
I never even considered that we shouldn't really need combat spam anymore ! Most things that can be seen as text can be show directly on screen these days, and if its only as floating numbers. Maybe its time for a perspective change: We're not playing graphical muds anymore, we have graphical games that output lots of text as well. And to be honest, most of that text is pointless. If I want to see my average damage, or how good my special attacks are, an interface like Cosmos combat stats provides for WoW is much better.
On the other hand, I really like what recent games are doing with graphical emotes, where text input influences the graphics: If you say 'lol', your character actually laughs, a question mark in say makes you shrug and so on.
The problem with including graphical representations for all text communication this is that there's no logical in-game representation of those channels. What really is a tell, what is a guild channel, in the 'reality' of the world of warcraft ? Thinking back to MuDs ( Genesis, where I played for 5 years, had no general chat, no tells except to wizards, no guild channels), how about pigeons ? Every time you get a tell, a messenger pigeon flys down to you from the sky, sitting on your shoulder until you confirm you got it by clicking.
Maybe a guild channel could be represented by some sort of 'guild stone' or symbol everybody carries around, visibly tied to your belt, and it glows everytime somebody says something.


Quote from: WonderBrick


As a side note, I would like to see more MMOGs embrace the preset hot-key voice macro menu approach, like most team FPSs have.  (press 1 for Aggressive commands, 2 for Defensive commands, etc.  In the submenu, press 6 for "Heal me now!", press 4 for "I need a Rez", etc.  This services dialup, unsavy/unwilling voice chat players, or those that play from work.  ;)  )


WoW has that. Heal me, incoming, run, lots of different voice commands you can use. /v silly and /v flirt are nice to. But they seem underused in real combat - not sure why really, could be a volume problem making them hard to hear at distance..

I wonder how far we are technically from just not distinguishing anymore: Any speech is automatically translated from voice to text or the other way around. Let the user choose which form he wants to get from each player.

As for the text interface itself, DAoC seems be to be perfect. Having lots of windows (tabs) available taking up little room is the key. A channel for tells, a channel for guildchat, and you don't miss things anymore.

Monika T'Sarn
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Phred
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Reply #38 on: November 20, 2004, 06:51:12 PM

Quote from: Viin
Oh, and the whole 'voice chat takes too much bandwidth' thingy:

Baloney. Again, look to programs that _already do this well_. Aka: Teamspeak, Ventrilo, Roger Wilco. How do they do it? There are 3rd parties out there that host these server programs: it doesn't kill their bandwidth and they've got tons of people on their servers.

From the Ventrilo homepage page:
Bandwidth usage is determined by the codec and is dictated by the server. It could be as low as 600 bytes/sec or as high as 8000 bytes/sec per voice stream.

Since only one person at a time normally talks, it's really not that much per party.

You could also go the other route and implement peer-to-peer voice chat  instead, putting all the bandwidth on the players. With a multicast implemenation it wouldn't take anymore bandwidth for the broadcaster than normal.


Peer to peer might work, but a few points. My Everquest guild used Teamspeak. Using a codec that sounded decent got the person hosting the server's internet service cut off, as the bandwidth was seriously noticed by their ISP. As well, with the company supplying the server side bandwidth. Isn't going to happen. I've heard of EQ coders getting bonuses for knocking 5 bytes off the datastream for every client.
Viin
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Reply #39 on: November 20, 2004, 07:13:06 PM

Yah, I don't know how well Peer-to-Peer would work, just an idea.

As far as a server service goes, I could see guilds paying money to have an integrated voice channels. They already do, so why not tap into that market as part of your game? That way it wouldn't "hurt" the game and actually generate revenue.

Heck, just providing a plugin for your game that interfaces with a player owned or leased Teamspeak/Ventrilo server would rock. Hmm, I wonder if that could be done with the EQ2 and WoW UI/client customization stuff.

- Viin
eldaec
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Reply #40 on: November 28, 2004, 03:30:42 PM

Chat bubble are great and all, but the one thing they all miss is putting the characters name in them.  Seeing a coh chat bubble appear in the middle of a wall that someone is standing behind, then having to check the chat box to see who spoke is annoying.

As for voice chat - I suspect the bandwidth is still too big and too expensive to make it work.

What might work is macroable sound effects. For instance, a CoH defender in my guild has a particularly good macro to tell everyone that his pbaoe buffs are up, basically he has pre-written text saying something like 'recovery aura in 5 seconds' tied with a whistle emote. Even random players spot the pattern where the whistle means 'stand by defender' before too long. Other defenders, without the sound effect, can spend long periods of time being frustrated while trying to get people's attention using only the text.

Of course, macros are all very well, but mostly too complicated for the archetypal 'casual' player. Being able to easily drag audible or very visual emotes onto the command bar could be a big help though.

"People will not assume that what they read on the internet is trustworthy or that it carries any particular ­assurance or accuracy" - Lord Leveson
"Hyperbole is a cancer" - Lakov Sanite
HaemishM
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Reply #41 on: November 29, 2004, 08:04:48 AM

One thing that I just thought of is something Shadowbane, yes SHADOWBANE, had. In terms of interface, Shadowbane had what could generously be called an arcane one, but once you got the thing down, it was butter. It treated your screen like a desktop, allowing you to drag any action/macro/power/skill/spell onto the screen as a clickable button. Sure, you had hotkeys, and you could bind any action to a key, but you could also have stuff on screen for clicking when you ran out of keys.

Perhaps games could allow these kind of macro voice commands for important things like "Heal me before it eats my face off" or "I'm running screaming like a little girl and I got 5 steps on you." Allow me to set that macro as a button I can stick on the screen. Use the number keys and such for my powers/attacks/skills and use the clickables for my communication macros.

For as buggy as the game was, the interface for Shadowbane was really nice. WoW with Cosmos UI is still no match for the shee power that was SB's interface.

Samprimary
Contributor
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Reply #42 on: November 29, 2004, 08:59:46 AM

Quote from: HaemishM
Nothing like making you pull your hair out like screaming over and over again 'DON'T GO UP THIS RAMP OR THIS RAMP OR YOU WILL FALL INTO THE PITS AND DIE' only to see one lone ranger do JUST THAT.


Oh, I hope you remembered the name of this mysterious One Lone Ranger! If you did, I'll make him my idol and name my character after him.
HaemishM
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the Confederate flag underneath the stone in my class ring


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Reply #43 on: November 29, 2004, 09:03:10 AM

Unfortunately, every single Vox raid I ever went on had multiples of this character, who never listened and were always the first one to die.

They were also the first one to complain when we had to hold up loot rolls until everyone's body could be found and ressed.

eldaec
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Reply #44 on: November 30, 2004, 02:41:21 AM

I guess the downside to macro'd voice is that predictable stuff like 'heal me' is counter-productive. The cleric has a group window. It's all they look at. They don't need you to tell them you are low on HP, they probably knew before you did, and telling them the obvious just gets their back up. If you aren't getting healed either your healer is an asstard who won't respond when you tell him anyway, or (more often the case) he is having his face eaten off by the enemy. In which case a more useful voice macro would be 'Oi! Mouth-breathers! I can't heal your bitch-asses while this purple con "Vicious Badger O'Doom" is chomping on my friggen spleen!'. I have yet to see a game that offers this vital (certainly more vital than 'heal me') message included as a quick message.

The real trick would be to find a way to let leaders make special raid instructions audible.

Thinking of DAoC, before leading any kind of raid I would always have to make up to thirty or forty macros of instructions I knew I was going to need, then you put them in all caps, and obliterate everyone's chat box by spamming them when they become necessary, and people still don't listen. Things like...

'Such-and-Such guild please build ram on Northern Door 3 right fucking now'.
or
'Watch the dragon spam, if it glares at you run the fuck away idiots'.
or
'Don't attack such-and-such-mob you frigging moron, it gives guard spam to the enemy realm.'
or
'If you aren't a cleric do not attack this mob because it full-heals when you do. PS. I hate you all.'

(DAoC, for all it's faults, always had the best sim-cat-herder experience of any MMOG I ever played.)

This sort of stuff is too complex to do by preset voice macros. But abstract macro'd sound effects might at least draw attention to the bubbles or chat box.

"People will not assume that what they read on the internet is trustworthy or that it carries any particular ­assurance or accuracy" - Lord Leveson
"Hyperbole is a cancer" - Lakov Sanite
shiznitz
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the plural of mangina


Reply #45 on: November 30, 2004, 08:26:48 AM

Well, after playing EQ2 for a bit now, Haemish has really hit on something. I can go 30 minutes without even reading my chat boxes. Some of our newer guild members are feeling ignored because no one is reading the greenspam. I have all combat spam turned comepletely off since all the information I need is displayed in the game window now.

I have never played WoW.
Shockeye
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Reply #46 on: November 30, 2004, 11:05:32 AM

Quote from: HaemishM
For as buggy as the game was, the interface for Shadowbane was really nice. WoW with Cosmos UI is still no match for the shee power that was SB's interface.

Yes, Shadowbane spoiled us with a desktop drag and drop approach to the interface. I miss that in WoW.
Xuri
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Reply #47 on: December 02, 2004, 04:25:10 PM

Say what you will about UO - but for the extra immersiveness (Is that a word?) the over-head text created for me, I'm able to forgive flaws such as making it hard to hold normal conversation at hot spots such as Britain Bank because of all the traders/spammers. Now if only UO had some sort of auction-system which could take some of that trade-spam out of my face, it'd be perfect ;P

The ease of UO's over-head text system combined with the 2D perspective is something that has really stuck by me ever since, and personally I find that the "chat boxes" of more recent MMORPGS/MMOGS makes the game less personal for me, as well as harder to make out who's saying what - especially in crowded areas where the text scrolls by faster than one can read it.

Sure, it's possible in most of these games to disable "general" chat and only see guildspeak or partyspeak or what-have-you, but then I lose out on something again; All the other players then just become moving background art, and immersiveness drops. For me, at least, immersiveness is amongst the top 5 things I look for in any such game I try. *shrug*

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kaid
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Reply #48 on: December 03, 2004, 07:52:04 AM

I have no desire what so ever for voice chat in a MMOG. Do you truly want to be looking at some female elf with deep barritone voices?  It would just be way the hell to creepy..

It works okay in games like planetside where you need to tell people what is going on very very very fast. This is rarely necessary in MMOG.


kaid
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