[Suggestion] Voice chat for Parties (Full or Light)

I really wish there was a voice chat feature for parties. I'm sick of so many parties dying to people not knowing mechanics, and not being able to explain things in the middle of fights because you're too busy playing with your keyboard to type.

I don't care if people have social anxiety and would rather die than actually speak to another human. Voice chat is a necessity for the fast fights, alerting people to emergent situations and helping to organise in general. Why isn't it a feature for instances?

You could always include a mute option for people who just hate to talk to others. Language barriers aren't a worry either, because I'm pretty sure every player, aside from on JP servers, speaks English.

Don't know why, but pretty sure the devs said no.
It would be helpful or may increase internet bullying, esp as many douches play this game. In many cases it would just turn into a huge fuck fest of shouting, name calling, and people dying from high blood pressure.

I think its more of an implementation thing, with cross platform, and cross server parties, may be a bit expensive to implement such a thing.

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Originally Posted by Eye_Gore

I think its more of an implementation thing, with cross platform, and cross server parties, may be a bit expensive to implement such a thing.

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Currently, we play a multiplatform MMO, on 3 different platforms. Implementation is not a problem.

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Originally Posted by Xakery

Don't know why, but pretty sure the devs said no.
It would be helpful or may increase internet bullying, esp as many douches play this game. In many cases it would just turn into a huge fuck fest of shouting, name calling, and people dying from high blood pressure.

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And? I already suggested a mute option. Whatever vitriol would come from voice chat could easily come in text chat as well. You could always have an option for muting specific members. Simple.

Since it seems so easy, by your standards, develop an app for FFXIV to utilize.
There are currently voice chat programs players can use, not sure if it is game rule breaking, but mumble, teamspeak, vent, and ven in some cases skype. I'm sure there are more.
I know mumble has a nifty overlay but only in full screen mode.

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Originally Posted by ProstatePuncher

Currently, we play a multiplatform MMO, on 3 different platforms. Implementation is not a problem.

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I understand that, but I thought I read somewhere that the VoIP would be a bit to implement cross platform. Not an IT guy but I just thought I saw that somewhere.

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Originally Posted by Xakery

Since it seems so easy, by your standards, develop an app for FFXIV to utilize.

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Nice fallacy you've got going there. The only problem I can see with voice chat implementation is rubbish to do with consoles and how they handle voice communications, though considering text chat and general interaction is all possible, I don't see a problem with working in voice communication at all.

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Originally Posted by ProstatePuncher

Nice fallacy you've got going there. The only problem I can see with voice chat implementation is rubbish to do with consoles and how they handle voice communications, though considering text chat and general interaction is all possible, I don't see a problem with working in voice communication at all.

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I have plenty of friends via psn and we voice chat with zero issues on the ps4 console. So point the blame elsewhere not on a console issue not too mention party chat via ps4 is the entire "chat group" ie no matter if you, him, them are all running different quest guess what, voice chat works fine.

If the devs said no, then we should just keep asking. As a developer I know there is not a good reason to avoid putting this into the game. There are ways of implementing it which would indeed be a burden on development and servers, but there are also ways which would not.

One way that comes to mind is that some games integrate other voice services simply to ensure platform barriers are not an issue. For example, since Mumble was brought up, Mumble is open source and fairly easy to enable an embedded client. Devs could bridge services like Mumble, PSN, Steam VoIP through SDKs that already exist without developing a whole voice system. If individuals could login to a voice channel shared by their friends, parties, alliances, free companies.. it would be a huge bonus.

I don't see this as an optional feature or a thing that people should accept being missing. Similarly what's up with the development on gilseller filters. How can you program the rest of this game and not realize how basic things like these two features are? They're not that complicated.. do you need help lol?

Reason for it not being implemented is because it will isolate/alienate groups of players based on their platform. For example, Playstation players can only use the Playstation network for voice chat. Sony will not allow outside voice traffic into their network. IN order to get in-game voice chat for parties, they'd have to away with the cross-platform and make a Playstation Only version (like CoD, for example).
Basically , it's not that they "can't" do it, they simply aren't permitted due to legal/contractual obligations.

While there might be some technical and / or legal obstacles for creating the voice chat in FF XIV those could be solved if needed however Yoshi has clearly stated that he don't want to implement the voice chat and I'd say that no amount of "demands" will change his standpoint on this. There are two main (non-technical / non-legal) reasons for this - one official / public and one "hidden" / internal:

1. They don't want to create situation where players unable / not willing to use VC will be alienated or excluded from participating in group content by "elite" groups and so on. (Frankly if you're in pro group you're using Mumble, TS3, Skype or some otehr 3rd party VC solution anyway). This is the official public reason.

2. They don't want to take over of responsibility of storing the recordings and then monitor and investigate griefing in the VC. Currently, enough resources is already used by GM to investigate text chat logs (and for SE to store those for extended period of time). Now imagine the amount of resources needed to store and investigate VC on top of that! Add the issue of even undestanding what everyone is really saying in the actual voice recording - try to filter out all the dog barking, kids crying, people with different accents etc. There is no (ore very little) confusion in ivestigating written text even if some participants are not native in the language used. In the voice though - Total Nighmare! IMO - that's the main reason why SE is avoiding VC in XIV ... although they don't publicly state / "advertise" this as reason.

I think its pathetic that you consider it on their part responsible to deal with voice chat griefers. There could be a mute function to deal with it, and blacklist functions already exist in the game. People always cry, whinge and moan but won't do anything on their own part to deal with problems with other players.

And guess what? You don't see any of those kinds of issues with the built in VoIP on WoW, a much bigger and definitely more prone to griefing MMO environment.

I see it as a function that could easily be argued to exist. And if we're gonna go down the road of Sony not liking outsider traffic on their network, why do we have cross platform servers in the first place? Oh, wait, its because its totally possible, and not a good excuse for its exclusion!

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Originally Posted by ValarMarghulis

Reason for it not being implemented is because it will isolate/alienate groups of players based on their platform. For example, Playstation players can only use the Playstation network for voice chat. Sony will not allow outside voice traffic into their network. IN order to get in-game voice chat for parties, they'd have to away with the cross-platform and make a Playstation Only version (like CoD, for example).
Basically , it's not that they "can't" do it, they simply aren't permitted due to legal/contractual obligations.

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I'm sure that SE, which has a long and prosperous relationship with Sony, could work something out with them to get cross-platform voice chat implemented for a game. There is no technical reason for why PS3 and PS4 players cannot chat with each other using PSN, given that it's a virtual service and not a hardware thing. Even if that meant Sony "creating" a voice chat program and integrating it into the PSN, and that FF14 players who wished to use said voice chat program had to create a PSN account. I'd be alright with that.

With cloud computing, the idea that software differences between the 3 systems would prohibit a voice chat program from communicating on all systems is not an excuse. And lastly, to hammer the final nail in the coffin, you can use your iPhone to Skype with someone on the Xbox One and someone on an Android, at the same time. Software and hardware pose no issue there.

Regardless of whether or not people feel like hearing noises from strangers' microphones in their ears (I know I don't), there's the more important question of whether the feature will even be used.

I never saw it used in World of Warcraft. I never saw it used in Eve Online. This was in years of playing. And Eve's voice chat had some nice features.

In World of Warcraft, I think it was mostly because the game community was terrible - who wants barrens chat in their ears?

In Eve Online, it was mostly fear that the servers would drop a fleet commander (pvp raid leader) in the middle of battle, causing chaos to ensue.

I'd honestly rather not trust Square-Enix to handle this, even with the low consequences for death or failure in FFXIV compared to Eve.
I mean, seriously, we're talking about developers that have difficulty with sorting here: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...20#post2361420

I'd rather they just focus on making the game itself even more fun.

If people want to talk, there are services available. Even most console players have a computer that can use those services.

Or you could just explain the mechanics and stuff BEFORE you pull... I know, insane concept, but it just might work.

I don't see problem with Voice Chat at all, if people are acting up in the game just mute them. I have play so many MMO and if I came cross people who are so you know I mute them. Voice Chat while in Party and Free Company will help out a lot or Voice Chat - Codec Caller it means you hold the button down or select it then you can call anyone within the game if their are on your friends list, Free Company, and Party.

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Originally Posted by Xakery

It would be helpful or may increase internet bullying, esp as many douches play this game. In many cases it would just turn into a huge fuck fest of shouting, name calling, and people dying from high blood pressure.

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Not having voice chat hasn't eliminated mean people from the game.

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Originally Posted by HEC-

...Yoshi has clearly stated that he don't want to implement the voice chat...

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Sorry to OP, I am the one support YoshiP not to implement voice chat in ARR.
Why not keep using TS ..etc if the ppl need voice?
Just imagine, when those "SR needs stop" happened with voice chat... ^^;