5punk

Jim Rossignol has written a lovely article on the influence of voice comms on modern multiplayer gaming. He hits some good points which apply to us - how early adoption and good voice based teamwork can be a big advantage, how so many people avoid it with randoms because it's full of dickheads. 5punk was the first time I ever used voice comms, and I've hardly ever used it anywhere else. I turn off built-in voice in all games, because I don't want to interact with randoms in anything more basic than shooting them, maybe occasionally teaming up silently with friendlies. I might be missing out on the grand adventures he mentions in the likes of the Planetside 2 musters or the huge Eve battles, but then again I'm not sure I have the time or inclination for them anyway. Even so, voice comms is certainly at the heart of 5punk.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2013/05 ... -of-voice/

It's an interesting article. I did serious raiding in WoW for many years without voice comms, which was crazy in retrospect. We tried several times to persuide the raid leader to use TS, but he always refused much to our bemusement. It transpired in the end that he was actually a she but thought it would ruin her credibility if we knew. It did explain why every fourth week was a bad raid night though (some of you may remember Cymek from Emerald Dreams).

In Eve it's a matter of course that the first thing you do is get on TS. In most big PvP alliances you're expected to join TS before even logging in and stay on TS throughout, and Eve more than anything as given me the confidence to jump on voice comms with randoms. 5punk is slightly different as we're among friends first and in many respects VOLCBAT (my ArmA2 lolclan that some of you know) is the same, although TS is mandatory for that group - and we use a rather funky plugin that simulates radios so you can have multiple people talking at once in the same channel. I now use TS without a thought for most coop games such as flightsims et al.

However in more casual games I still tend to avoid voice comms as a preference and I don't think I've ever used in game voice chat for anything. TS is still the de facto go to (and sometimes Mumble), despite the advantages that an integrates system brings.

Ah, voccoms!

I tend to use them when playing with organised groups. I have in the past hopped on clan servers and such, as they've generally some coherency and people aren't massive twats when in a group or clan, so you can talk and people will listen, but I pretty much avoid open voice comms with truly random people I tend to find there's always at least one proper dick about.

Of course, there are exceptions depending on the game. Things like Red Orchestra 2, partly because of its smaller user base, but mostly because of its serious and more hardcore gaming nature, tends to attract hardly any muppets, so you end up having quite a good experience if other people on there are willing to talk and listen.

Voice comms are important though, I couldn't ever imagine playing EVE in a corp and not using voice comms on ops, simply due to how much power there is in quick communication. There's also much more bandwidth in your voice than you can type into a chat box.

The other side of this is that the more people rely on voice, the more exclusive the game becomes. As someone who can only go on TS for a few hours a week I'm excluded from playing heavily team based games. Most I wouldn't have time to play anyway, but it can be a little frustrating.

Actually, something along those lines is why I've not thrown myself back into EVE properly, despite Friz and others reforming 5punkorp.