Microphones in lobbies

[Spekkio]

Solution to all this: Just don't disable voicechat when a player dies, it's lame and makes people get creative using third party tools.

You really think that people use ventrillo and TS because they can't speak to each other for a whole 10 seconds?

Is there any other reason? If you don't mind not voicechatting when dead or out of lives, what's the reason you will be using a third-party tool to voicechat about the current game you're playing if the game supports that natively?

Most of the excuses I've gotten in CT revolve around the voicechat in CT being "shitty quality." However, if you set your options to high quality sound, the voice quality is more than understandable.

So maybe you're right that people are using 3rd party chat programs to bypass the mute upon death, but that doesn't make it right. People communicating within a game should not be able to give each other heads up while dead, particularly when you get a temporary bird's eye view of the action. It's this very aspect of third party chat programs that has most people upset over it.

Yea, sure, voice hacking is a neat feature, but as a merc its use is spotty and as spy it's useless entirely. Mostly, I just use it to taunt other people.

[Cronky]

Mostly, I just use it to taunt other people.

Which is the best part!

But it did have a viable use. Though Voice via Spy Bullets/Traps/Hacking was very shotty in terms of actually being useful, it's those times that it was when it shined.

I believe it had MORE use on Xbox. Seeing that the Voice chat was the ONLY means of communicating to your partner. It meant that plans were actually formulated in game, talked about in game, and executed in game. Hearing in that a Merc in deftec is going to leave B to go and check on A could be a vital piece of info for that spy that was waiting in B for their chance at getting the objective.

It depends a lot on the players involved, but this is one of the only things that anyone could mention about the Xbox version of SvM that was better than the PCs.

Perhaps this whole idea of "Forcing" in game voice chat doesn't work with PC, but again, if you put time into making a Voice Chat system for gameplay purposes (Which is the only reason you'd make it, right?)... you really shouldn't let people bypass it just because you think it's "Too Restrictive".

[Farley4Fan]

It was fun when it worked for sure.  Sometimes it just glitched and didn't work and Ubisoft never bothered to fix it.  It probably worked about 90% of the time and sometimes people don't have mics/don't talk.  So I'd say it was only effective/fun about 50% of the time.  I'd would guess that's higher than on PC though.

[Cronky]

I'd have to guess it would be.

While on xbox there was the chance that the opponent wouldn't have a Mic/Didn't talk. It's very different than talking, but bypassing it with a secondary program. PC also is also subjected to the same people, but adding in Text input, and... any messenger/voice chat program can render in-game voice chat useless.

Now it would be interesting to see if when people were spy trapped or bulleted that it ALSO "Listened In" on their text chatting too (In-game).

[Farley4Fan]

What would be a cool little detail is to have the merc's text communications scroll down the monitor's screen while you are hacking an objective.  Maybe pick up something interesting if you care to look.

[Cronky]

OR perhaps there could be a hack (I think you've mentioned this before) that instead of hacking Vocal communications, it hacks text. Like you bug a signal transmitter of some sort. Mercs could take it off, much like Spy Bullets/Traps, but instead it's on this thing, rather than your partner.

Vocal is still left to spy traps and spy bullets, but text is handled by this.

[Farley4Fan]

Yeah I remember saying that.  Sounds cool to me but that's all it would really be is cool.   :D

Kind of like the current communications hack.  Possibly getting some text info makes it more useful than the current hack, but it's still kind of just a novelty feature imo. 

[Cronky]

Those little features are so underused in the games of today.

We've all seen two sides fight each other. We've all seen weapons and counter weapons. We've all heard smack talk from the other team. This all happens in most games now a days regardless of what genre they are.

The small novelty ideas like Cross-Team communication hacking is something I've always found very appealing. Those kinds of interactions are used so little. My friend that I played CT with and I still talk about all those fun moments, and features such as those come up more than anything else.

Your partner, getting grabbed in Deftec getting dragged into the upper door to A, only gets out "He got me" before the spy cuts off communication to give a sly, "Thanks for letting me into A". You turn from your position on the C side catwalk to see your partner, quickly scope in and let off a bullet just as the door shuts. A split second of doubt goes by as you wonder whether you missed or not, but the kill text pop up washes away all worry.

I felt awesome at that moment! Without the communication feature, it would have just been another kill. With though, it became an intense situation with a sprinkle of irony.

Without running said hacking feature into the ground by just rehashing it 15 different ways; I have to wonder what other ideas run that same line of uniqueness?

[Farley4Fan]

I'll run it into the ground a bit more by saying a wireless glove would be cool for hacking text coms.  You could literally take the text away from a distance.   :D

Another little novelty feature (that could actually affect gameplay) is controlling the merc's heartrate while you've grabbed him.  Or, maybe something simple like just hearing the merc's/spy's heart beat slow down could be an indicator of when he's about to choke to death.  That doesn't sound so hard to do but it would be kind of cool.

Anyone have any low priority novelty ideas to discuss? :D