Friday, August 26, 2011

A neighborly suggestion for those using voice chat

[Warning, a bit of a rant. I spent last night experiencing one of my pet peeves in a party.]

I know that some of us live in less than ideal environments for gaming. You might not be able to help the fact that there are screaming kids, a really loud television, or perhaps constant machine gun fire and explosions where you are playing from. If you are in a party using voice chat, the background noise can be a little annoying and distracting to the rest of the party. However, I know that not everyone can afford living quarters with more that one room and/ or a secure bombproof bunker to game from. I'm not here to judge.

That said, if you are gaming from a room filled with screaming children, a desk near a blaring television [apparently being watched by someone legally deaf], a sidewalk near an active jackhammer, the middle of an ongoing gun-battle, the runway of a major airport, or an environment with similar constant levels of background noise....





FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY %#@&/$ USE PUSH TO TALK!!!



Believe me sir, or madam, your party will thank you.

5 comments:

  1. You know that when the MMO Love In goes ranty, things have really gone down the drain.

    There was a time that I used voice communications in games, but I can't bother anymore. But when I did, PTT all the way. It's just rude otherwise.

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  2. I debated whether to post it or not, but I hoped a few of my readers might be able to relate and get a giggle out of it.

    Normal upbeat posting will resume as of my next one :-)

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  3. Sometimes you just gotta vent. We've all been there.

    And +1 for PTT.

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  4. Been there and done that, and not just for gaming but also work conference calls/webex sessions.

    Those tools has better options to handle it though, since the meeting host generally can mute a participant. Which could be something MMOs could consider for their voice chat support (or for the voice chat software being used).

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  5. I can relate. I ended up having to do PTT all the time. When frustrated with laggy clients, for example, I was too prone to call the lineage of the devs into question in a socially unacceptable manner.

    One of my similar pet peeves is the guys who insist on using speakers and whenever you talk you get an echo of your voice back...it's good for keeping peoples sentences short, I guess.

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