Voice chat on CC - for you?

[geomaniak]

With the release of Dungeoneering and Jagex's continued effort to build fruitfil team-based games and throwing RuneScape into the direction of many other MMORPG's... strongly guild/clan based. VoIP has become a more and more important feature, that RuneScape should have, but it doesn't.

 

How would you feel if Jagex implemented a voice chat system into the Clan Chat system? Opt-in.

 

Would this have any 'security' risks for our younger plays, and would it be able to be controlled feesibly?

 

Having said that, we see VoIP chat on everything - Steam, XBL and much more. Most of which are played by players as young as RuneScape players.

 

I feel it'd be a great aspect to add to the game, extremely useful, and more fun. Not to mention easy discussion of tactics in places such as Daemonheim and God Wars.

 

I wasn't sure where to put this thread, but I went with suggestion-discussion for it's genre...

[Ronan]

It would be an interesting feature to have - I agree that it's something that would certainly help the team-based players as well as general clan chats, depending on the clans of-course.

 

With things like Xbox Live - I'm not actually sure on offensive features, but it certainly seems like that isn't really controlled that much - because of that you obviously do hear some more swearing and the like - but if you play with friends or not with 'random teams' it tends to be lessened if that's the kind of people you select obviously. Having a level of control would be essential to it of-course, if you're wanting to not negatively impact those who don't want to use it, or don't want to be listening to that overly-aggressive and yet whiney 12-year old. :P (I know it's the standard stereotype, but it holds in cases!)

 

I think maintaining a feature like this would of-course be difficult, I'm not sure on viability but in a similar form to standard chatting, sound samples could be recorded up to a certain length of previous time - if someone was reported that player's logs could be listened to and if deemed offensive they could be muted etc. It sure seems manageable, but there are of-course behind the scene repercussions - higher bandwidth use, greater storage capacity required, more monitoring perhaps etc. It's certainly something that I'd imagine Jagex would really desire to implement with the voice-chatting if they did, I can't quite see them being as open about the language-used as some other games are.

 

If they implemented the feature, I'd like a good level of personal-control over it, muting certain players from talking in clan chat, turning off the feature for yourself - Ignore list filtering for select individuals perhaps? ;) Overall, I'd probably use it with some friends, others not so much.

[geomaniak]

I guess it wouldn't be available to players who are Quick-Chat-Only.

 

As far as moderation goes, I guess reporting and saving sound clips would be how it would work, resulting in a ban from voice-chats in more severe cases.

 

I could see myself accidentally swearing in front of someone who's going to report me, I wouldn't be using the voice-chat feature for long.

 

It's definately something Jagex should consider, and ask players about their opinions - if they haven't already. Voicechat is almost essential for some team activities on RuneScape and would surely only add a little more to Jagex's pockets.

[Bladewing]

There would need to be a mute option for individual players.

[Skeptical]

Jagex is far too conservative and hands out bans and suspensions too liberally for Voice Chat to be implemented, unless they do something silly like make it 18+ only, and then pretend that they don't actually swear?

 

I wouldn't use it even if it was implemented: there are plenty of 3rd party services available that won't mean living under the punishing bureaucracy that is Jagex.

[Profins]

Yeah, Jagex are WAY too overprotective of 11year olds playing this to actually implement it. It'd be awesome as not everyone can get themselves a ventrilo server for example. I'd love it for the first 30 minutes at which point I'd realise there are hundreds of raging nubs.

[RSBDavid]

One thing Jagex would have to conquer is latency. Unless the VoIP is hosted on a secondary server, the lag in game would increase.

 

They can use Teamspeak's API with a little JNI to achieve this.

 

Swearing is another issue, for Jagex, not me. They allow you to use mild swears in game, but what's going to stop someone from using them in voice chat? Unless they add a way to turn off the chat filter in clan chats, I don;t see a voice chat for clan chats anytime soon.

[Siggrid]

As cool as it would be, Jagex won't do it as they are far to over-protective of their younger players, most of whom already do swear, and not the mild ones Jagex lets by, lol.

 

I would still prefer to use Teamspeak and Ventrillo over a RuneScape voice program, mostly because you don't have to deal with idiots and worry about getting muted/banned for dropping a couple F-bombs unintentionally.

[Will H]

I would be a really nice feature, so long as Jagex irons out the potential problems with offensive language getting to people who don't want to hear offensive language. I don't see a problem with people hearing offensive language when they don't mind, though.

 

It should be hosted on secondary servers, but accessed in the game. I wouldn't mind if they condense the Quest/Achievement Diary interfaces again to do this.

 

[AxinDarkfire]

I would love to see something like this, but I imagine it would be incredibly complex, and will burden their server's heavily. RuneScape is meant to be a light game you can play anywhere, this might just make it too big.

 

While I really want to support this, weighing everything in, no support :/

[RSBDavid]

I would love to see something like this, but I imagine it would be incredibly complex, and will burden their server's heavily. RuneScape is meant to be a light game you can play anywhere, this might just make it too big.

 

While I really want to support this, weighing everything in, no support :/

 

It wouldn't be as complex as it seems. You would have to transform voice data into bytes then send an encapsulated UDP (TCP increases latency due to checking if the packet arrives) packet through your ISP over the web to Jagex's servers. Jagex's servers would then have to retransmit the packet to all connected clients which will need to transform the bytes into voice. If they run the voice system on separate servers, they can add a simple connection button. If connected to the voice server, users may experience a slight lag difference. If the user does not choose to connect to a voice server, they won;t notice a difference.

[Will H]

I would love to see something like this, but I imagine it would be incredibly complex, and will burden their server's heavily. RuneScape is meant to be a light game you can play anywhere, this might just make it too big.

 

While I really want to support this, weighing everything in, no support :/

 

Not really, most games use this technology with ease. It's server light, and it's highly optional.

[Carl]

If you want to have voice chat with people you know there are many places you can do that, it is not necessary at all for RuneScape and would involve absolutely no real moderation and could potentially be dangerous for the younger players. This would be something which would have to be disabled for people who aren't 18+, but then you'd be left with people simply re-registering as 18+. I don't think it's a good idea, I've thought about it myself many-a-time but I honestly don't see any necessity for it.

 

Text chat has been used for 10 years, no reason for that to change with the release of a skill.

[Will H]

If you want to have voice chat with people you know there are many places you can do that, it is not necessary at all for RuneScape and would involve absolutely no real moderation and could potentially be dangerous for the younger players. This would be something which would have to be disabled for people who aren't 18+, but then you'd be left with people simply re-registering as 18+. I don't think it's a good idea, I've thought about it myself many-a-time but I honestly don't see any necessity for it.

 

Text chat has been used for 10 years, no reason for that to change with the release of a skill.

 

You're saying that the release and the prospect of future release of complex activities which require teamwork and coordination isn't a reason to have voice chat? Other multiplayer games get along with voice chat perfectly well, why can't this game?

[Aiel]

I would say that if this was implemented, moderation should be left to clan chat officials. When activating voice chat you would receive a message saying that you could potentially hear offensive things and that jagex bears no responsibility blahblahblah. After that all moderation would be left up to clan chat officials, who could have the option to temp/perm mute people from voice chat, and individuals would have a separate ignore list for voice chat. Could be turned off throughout a CC or set to ranks only. Could also have a option to listen or to listen and to talk.