I love the idea of the modulator, but I think that would take up more space on the hard drive then its worth. But we definitely need vocal communication - from squads to company leaders and beyond.
Voice modulators would be badass. I'd throw down additional money to sound like an actual Space Marine.
I have used Skype, Vent, TeamSpeak, ICQ, AIM, in game text chat, and built in voice chat (FPS games). In short this game should have integrated voice communication, but it should offer more than an external source could. Read on for details. Voice chat is really my prefered method of communication. One of my issues with outside voice programs is that there is a lag to play time as everyone decides what server and account to log into. Any new people joining your group have to start up their programs and get connection info. Just very clunky. Also with out of game voice it is much harder to have rooms that can be easily changed and switched in battle. Easy enough to set up before you go out with this room is for people doing pve, or that room for people doing pvp, but when you have large groups together there is a lot of cross chatter that gets in the way. I used to drive an Albion zerg around in Dark Age of Camelot. We used vent and I had 30-50 people telling me we should go here or do that. The ability to mute/ignore individuals is a must Dark Age had a nice text system for doing raids where the raid leader could set the raid chat so only group leaders could chat in it, but everyone could freely chat in their team chat. It had it's short comings....like the team lead going afk, but for the most part it worked well when you had to organize 50-100 people in a touchy pve raid. With an integrated system I would expect a better way of doing "rooms" to quickly switch between squad, team, battle, etc levels of communication both for listening and talking. I might want to have it set to listen to the force I'm with, talk just to my squad, and rely on my force leader or designated comms personel. In battle you talk to your squad mates, use a radio for your force, and a comms person to relay messages from high command. It would be nice if the ingame chat could work the same way. It would be really difficult to do outside of an ingame system that understands your current situation and can be adjusted on the fly with out leaving the program or messing with a second communication on laptop. This game should have voice comms, but focus on functionality first with things like voice modulation as stretch goals. Voice mods are easy enough to do out of game on the mic side so if the teams is doing well schedule wise on developing how it works, then they can expand into the extra's. Not to mention voice mods could be added as micro transactions the way some games offer skins which is a potential revenue source, but if the voice system doesn't work well then no one will use it. If no one uses it the voice mod packs wouldn't be bought, and you've wasted dev time and resources. Definatly a function over form system. Keep in mind the way chat works in a lot of games. I'll use Dark Age again. I could set my display to watch any or all chat rooms (global, raid, guild, party, etc) Then I could type to any of them using a /p, /t, /g, etc. This was very convenient considering it was typed communication. An integrated voice system should try to do something similar. Since your talking voice mod already it would be nice if there was a voice command key to mimic the /p type command. So I press the key, the software listens for my command, I release the key and the software acts on the command. Like Siri, or Sync, or any of the other voice command systems. These commands can be use for voice chat only so I could say "Global" and my listen and talk is set to the global room, or I could say "Listen force, talk squad" and it would set my listen to the overall force room while my talking is set so only my squad hears me. The rooms are basically filter levels. The voice commands could be backed up with an easily accessible click interface for individuals that don't have mic's or are difficult for the software to interpret.
Once again I'll point out that EC will be a single server multinational multilingual game.....voice chat doesnt grant instant translation from one language to another,
Altho the ingame modulators seem like fun, i doubt ud be able to understand what people are saying in midst of battle. Im up for game having some kind of voice chat in game, but I'm certain that most people will still use TeamSpeak or Skype to play with their crews and friends.
I like the modulator option. I'm not sure if the free players should have the option to use voice chat. A lot of people like to join games just to troll. If there is a free option, this might be more prevalent. Only issue is that free players can't use voice to communicate with their squad then.
If the voice modulator is available, make it a clientside option. That is, if I enable it, all orks sound like orks and all eldar sound like eldar, but if I disable it, I hear everyone's voice without the modulation. Also, if removing your helmet is an option at higher ranks, your voice should not be modulated unless you wear it.
Yeah, if you couldn't hear enemies, it would be kind of lifeless. You should be able to hear enemies based on proximity. It should also take into account if you're speaking to a private channel or publicly.
