Voice chat worries?

[thedevilsjester]

Voice chat is not required for most of the FFXIV gameplay elements (although it makes things much easier) but they are almost a necessity when it comes to end game and raid communication.

Currently the options are Ventillo, Teamspeak, XFire, or any of the other numerous voice 3rd party voice chat applications.

While this is all well and good while we are all on the PC, what is going to happen come 2.0 when a large part of the user base is on the PS3?

Sure, I am aware of the many clunky work arounds such as using one of the PC based applications on a PC near your PS3, but for many of us this is an absurd suggestion (especially if you use push-to-talk and wired headsets!).

This leaves us PS3 (and at some far future point, maybe 360) users without a voice solution, which in many LS's means no raid for you!

I am worried about the PS3 release and the lack of ability to easily communicate.

Is anyone else worried? Do you think they have a solution in the works?

To any LS's out there that have a Vent/TS/Etc... requirement, what do you plan on doing with PS3 users who are unable to realistically utilize a PC for this?

I guess my suggestion (since this is in that category) is to allow us some form of voice communication between the PS3 and PC. I know that the built in PS3 voice chat system will not allow for this, so it has to be an in house solution. There are many options, from licensing the Vent/TS/Etc... services (and letting us connect directly to our PC friends), or a custom in game chat solution (which is often less than ideal, but better than nothing).

[grandm]

you bring up some good points. could PC and PS3 talk together? i wasn't aware they had confirmed team speak for 2.0, but was always hopeful that they would, but the points you raise do make me think it wont be happening, also i can see endgame LS's being all PC users and all PS3 users, i know PS3 do have mic's so i hope they can talk to PC's. any tech-head have any info on this?

[Lienn]

Would be nice the game itself supporting voice chat option as part of LS features. I believe that the PS3 have access to headset so all needed was the game itself supporting it.

[Renshi]

That's a good point actually. I wouldn't say that PC users have troubles with this, because there are VoIP programs that do this pretty well (just see WoW, it has VoIP but nobody uses it and sticks up with 3rd party VoIP programs).

I would approve something for the PS3 users in order to talk along with their friends. This would be both interesting and useful =)

[syntaxlies]

hopefully they will launch 2.0 with a cross platform voice app.

[thedevilsjester]

you bring up some good points. could PC and PS3 talk together? [...] i know PS3 do have mic's so i hope they can talk to PC's. any tech-head have any info on this?

Voice 'data' is just a data stream, there is no difference (in the digital world) between sending a group /tell with text or sending the same with voice excepting that voice takes (vastly) more data and has to be interpreted by a software codec. In other words its not the PS3 talking to the PC, its FFXIV talking with FFXIV, the hardware doesnt enter into it except to record and playback the audio, which PCs and PS3s both have this capability.

I am not a 'tech-head' but I have been developing software and games for well over ten years, so take of it what you will.