Octopus Overlords

So more and more games support built in voice communication, and third party programmes have been available for a while now.

Who here uses it and how does it affect ping and gameplay.
(I have 1500 kbits/s downstream and 256 kbits up)

My guess is that it can be quite effective in an organised manner, as in people who play regularly in a clan setting, Team and Co-op games.
I also guess, that people will just yell and abuse each other in a pick-up match.

I would like to hear some opinions of people with some experience in this.
Thank you.

Well I used it along with several others here for about a year and half in NASCAR 2K3 races. When we used it to communicate problems or asking where the leader wanted us when they were coming up to pass us it worked great. On rare occasions we had a bit too much finger pointing and flaming over a wreck. I don't however think we were the norm but an exception as everyone who joined us for a one race deal would always comment on how considerate we were to each other.

Now I've used it in games like Ghost Recon and Raven Shield as well and it is pretty invaluable in planning and executing.

I've also used the XBOX live with others from here and it really made the experience a lot more enjoyable being able to kid around with the other players.

Thing is I've almost always used it with people I've chatted with in type first or knew from GG or were friends of those I knew.

Playing with people you don't know YMWV.

I never suffured from bandwidth problems using TeamSpeak or XBOX Live but others I played with had to drop it but I was never sure if it was a software conflict issue or a bandwidth issue. I even played GR with a guy who was on dial up and he was still able to use TS.

If people you are playing with offer a voice server or the game has it built in go ahead and try it, you can always just disconnect if they bother you for any reason. One hint though, use push to talk instead of voice activated when talking or others will get a lot of unwanted noise from your mic.

Never had a problem with it using Broadband. Mostly use Teamspeak or Ventrilo. Even my Dial Up Squadmates seem to be able to use it as long as we don't clutter it up with too much joking around.

Sometimes the built in VOIP stuff is problematic for dial up users, my example the Voice Chat built into Aces High.

My Joint Ops clan uses Ventrilo, and it is clearer than my cell phone. No performance hit on broadband.

I've used teamspeak on my 56k, serious compress granted and no one sounded very human but it was workable.

OO has a Teamspeak2 server up. I could set you up with an account if you wanted some hands-on experience. I used to also run a TS2 server alongside the GR server (on the same connection no less) and we could usually play and talk without too much trouble. There's many different levels of compression, and some take up more bandwidth than others, so depending on what the server is set to, you could be using a pretty hefty chunk of bandwidth overhead. Generally, the clearer the voice, the more bandwidth it uses, but even still, the highest settings typically use around 16-18 k. They're best used with push-to-talk, and with a headset microphone, preferably a mic attached to a set of good quality stereo headphones, so the rest of the family isn't subject to everyone elses random mumblings Of course, they'll wonder why you appear to be talking to yourself

The only two real drawbacks:

1: Your family watching you stare at a computer screen shouting "Target 3 o'clock! Alpha, flank left, go!. Negative, Bravo; hold back and lay down supressive fire!"

2: Getting killed by Corporal_Pun1shment is bad enough; hearing him brag about it in a squeaky 12-year-old voice is intolerable.

my girlfriend and her roommates have a ventrilo server that we use when we play world of warcraft together. i can't imagine playing without it. so far, i've not seen any instances of it causing me to lag terribly.

It's invaluable in games like Joint Ops.

I use Teamspeak and Teamspeak Overlay and there is no performance hit. Same for in-game voice chat like UT2K4 and CS. I have 2500 down and 768 up.

In team games and coop, you can set teamspeak for teams and even squads. You won't hear opponents talking shit or what have you if you set it up that way. Nor will you hear other squads, which actually makes calling out contacts useful. I never use voice comm in DM games.

I'd like to use voice chat in games but it seems I can never get the volume set correctly. It always seems like either the voice or the game is drowning the other out. I usually end up shouting down the hall to my housemate or talking on the phone to another of my budies when we play Kohan 2.

I had some issues with that until I bound Voice Volume Up and Voice Volume Down to some keys in Teamspeak. Now when I switch games and I need to tweak it I'm just a couple of keypresses away. Works like a charm.

The #gg crew almost always jumps on a public TS server and makes a private room when we play anything online that's competitive. There's nothing like Ronin cussing 90% of the time, El Borto speaking in an accent you don't understand, and KePoW completely ignoring your pleas for help or a ride in any of the Battlefield games. Ahhh... comraderie.

Actually we all do pretty well when everyone communicates and we try to win. It's also fun to communicate and participate in mass amounts of fuckery and jackassery too.

Thumbs up for Teamspeak.

gellar

I'd rather stab myself with a screwdriver than use built-in Voice chat or Teamspeak. The voice quality rivals Roger Wilco in terms of crap.


Ventrilo, on the other hand, is amazingly clear. Especially if the server is running the updated voice codecs.

Odd, how long has it been since you've used TS2? With Speex codecs up to 25.9k, I find the clarity is on par with, if not better than Ventrilo's. Ventrilo is fun (AGE uses it for Joint ops) what with the text-to-speech, but TS2 I find is easier to set up and manage than ventrilo, plus there's the TS2 overlay. displays the name of the person talking in an overlay on the left side of your game screen in DirectX games)

My first experience with voice chat was when Starsiege: Tribes (the original) first came out. I was in a clan that used Roger Wilco every match. I think it gave us a pretty big advantage. It wasn't too horrible, really. Though now that I think about it, a lot of "What the hell d'you say?" or similar phrases were heard. I had dial-up back then, and I don't remember it lagging me too bad.

After that, my only use of voice communication in online games was in Half-Life mods. I forget which patch they added it, but it worked pretty well. It was very strange to suddenly hear the voices of the people I'd been playing TFC with for years. Luckily, there was the ability to mute specific people, which is a MUST for playing on public servers. People singing, playing music, etc. Of course, I don't play ANY Half-Life mods anymore since they moved to Steam-only.

R.I.P. WON