YES or NO - Should LL add this voice chat?

Ive made an interesting observation. The Blog article on this seems to have *stopped* at 527 comments.

I wonder why that it is?

when the form vanishes, it means comments have been closed. =)

i voted yes, with reservations about implementation and social ramifications.
if anybody wants to discuss my reasons, look me up on skype.

lawl. =D

ahh ..

But why were they closed? IF its such a momumental thing and such a great idea?

*laughs*

So the whole Voice in SL issue is falling on deaf ears, eh? LOL What are the odds of Linden Village having Voice On or Voice Off? *snerk*

Got a no vote from me. Live Help is useless, Abuse Reports are a huge black hole. What will happen when griefers can jack blaring rap music into a sim? Think they can't do it, think again. Do I want to hear the chatter all around me? If I did I'd go to a rl venue. No more adding the chat logs to abuse reports either, or being able to scroll the history of things I missed while I had to attend to some rl issue.

Are there some good reasons to use it? Undoubtedly, but the idea of a sim wide open chat is horrifying.

I know all this has already been mentioned, these are just a few of my personal thoughts on it.

It's really a Moot point as whether we want it or Not, whether they Should or Not, We ARE getting it. That Decision has been made. I think now we should be anticipating how we will Live with it as a More useful line of enquirey.

~Does anyone Know for sure whether it Will, or Will not cause Lag?
~Does anyone Know for sure whether land Owners will have any control over it's use within thier property lines?
~What sort of Monitoring does LL propose to prevent it from becoming a Tool of griefers, or Spammers?
~What is the Effective In Game range of audability? Will hearing fade out at the thirty meter range like On screen Chat? Will it be Blasted all over a Sim? Will we have to Listen to our neighbors Party/Make Love/Argue?

Angel.

~Does anyone Know for sure whether it Will, or Will not cause Lag?

LL has already stated that the system will be supported by another companies server infrastructure. The affect (possibly lag) might be seen at your end, depending on what kind of bandwidth your ISP is giving you... but I don't suspect voice uses very much.

~Does anyone Know for sure whether land Owners will have any control over it's use within thier property lines?

LL has already stated it will be land-based. Probably like current streaming audio and movies. You will have a setting to control voice on land you control.

~What sort of Monitoring does LL propose to prevent it from becoming a Tool of griefers, or Spammers?

In your own land, you will be able to turn off voice. Griefers will have great fun in voice-enabled places though.

~What is the Effective In Game range of audability? Will hearing fade out at the thirty meter range like On screen Chat? Will it be Blasted all over a Sim? Will we have to Listen to our neighbors Party/Make Love/Argue?

LL has already stated the distances voices can be heard. It is spacial 3D sound, meaning it will comes from the direction of the person speaking and volume will be directly proportional to distance. Turn off sound on your land or mute your noisy neighbors if you don't want to hear parties. sex and argueing.

Voice in SL will be better than voices in RL. In RL you can't control whether people can talk on your land and you can't mute them. Well, you can, but you might end up in prison.

Even though I think voice will be handled properly in SL, I still won't be using it. And I won't have it enabled in my land. And I will be muting noisy neighbors.

I vote no for many reasons
1. what makes anyone think i want to hear there lips flap well i watch tv and pretend to leason to them?
2. kills RP and by that I am not talking just about the sex factor. Think of all those that may be older then there avie , a oppiset sex of there avie, a "shy" person ? To many people out there SL is about what they can be , not what they may be in RL.
3. ahhh yahoo chat room ?
4. If your a girl you can realte to this one.. How offten do you get asked to cyber some retard well out and about SL that you dont even know? Now just think of that person with a mic?
5. They cant even make textures work half the time for god sake
6. Any one wanting to use voice chat can buy useing one of 1000 free 3rd partty ap and not split the SL comunity.
7. Will miss all the creative type o.O x.x lol and so on
8. as mentiond it will drive up the cost of escorts , pobbibly as high as RL phone sex, now just think how hight the Linden will climb in price then.
9. To fit in one must not be made to take part in one aspect of a game or be considered a "faker" or no as much as a important player.
10. Some people dont desirve to have a mic.

I will stop there.
PS BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Also lest we forget about all the RL married people out there that play sl and have SL boy friends and girl friends , how you think that will go over with the RL partner with there voice comeing in?

well yes its coming I just wanted to know who this majority is that put it on the top of the features list ;p


My guess - it will work really bad at first, then get better. In response to all your questions.

In that case the question really IS moot because after the tone of All the threads on voice here, and on third party Forums, NOBODY who worked at putting it on top of the Features list will Fess up. Lol.

Ylikone Obscure:
Thanks for the answers, it seems we Do have some control, and the FIRST control i will excercise on my property will be to disable it to Minimize Lag there are enough Lag producers Now, i don't need extranious ones added.

Trixy Perhaps:
Oh by All means Keep going if you have More. Lol.
Like i've said elsewhere, In RL i am Painfully shy, and somewhat Agorophobic. I can speak here in this way Mostly because i can neither see your face, nor hear your voice. I Love reading, Books have always been my companions so to me there has Never been anything Intimidating about Text (But i still get flustered when the conversations flow too quickly from Multiple sources).
Put a Mic on me, and i would Instantly Freeze up, and I'm not the Only one like this.
People with speech impediments, Or thick accents will find this an Unattractive feature also. and you are right, a Woman of mature years who has been living Young and Vital for the first time in Many years because her Body no longer holds her back is Not going to want to have her Illusion spoiled either. I can see this feature Will appeal to some, But i think there are Too many Drawbacks to having That much reality in a Fantasy World.

Should LL have made this decision?

No. There are enough third Party Voicing resources for those who want to Voice without causing Lag to other players.

Angel.

I say put it in, see if people like it. If it breaks the grid or causes as much lag as people think it will, take it back out or disable it.

It seems like most of the reasons people are giving are just reasons not to use it, not reasons not to have it at all.

AFAIK, it's not like LL's forcing anyone to use it. I'd hate to see a slingo session with voice chat on. It's noisy enough already. So disable voice chat in the sims there. Or have permissions where only one person can speak or you need to ask for permission to speak. Just because it can be annoying at times doesn't mean it couldn't be useful for others like education, like the Spanish lesson coming up at NCI.

While it's true you could always just use skype, you can never tell who's speaking in Skype unless you're able to recognize their voice, so it's nice to have the 3d audio and some sort of animation to tell when someone's speaking. Plus, with SL hogging all of one of my cores and Skype using up the other. My computer isn't exactly pleasant to use when running both.

Basically I think there's ways of fixing peoples problems with it without getting rid of it completely.

Interesting. That's a pretty clear opinion from a pretty good cross section.

Personally I don't want it because I play a female but am a male in real life. It's not a secret really, but I either opt out which makes me different, or use it and sound like a guy. Either way ruins the immersive effect for me.

As far as lag is concerned, I wouldn't worry about it. a voice transmission is about 2kB per second, which is only about 6% of even the worst uploads speeds and maybe 2% of a slow download. The code to handle it client side isn't very heavy, so the processing time won't hurt. All told, I doubt anyone will notice a change because of it.

That said, i still don't want it

No

Not that I doubt they will listen to us or even actually finish it ala havok 2, mono, and other broken promises...

1. as a class 4 private isle owner, I would have to pay more where as mainland would get it for the same teir price I pay right now. This is not only unjustified, but a consious decision to rip off those of us who invested in SL prior Nov of last year.

2. Again as a class 4 private isle owner, this will potentially take away my ability to sell it if I wanted to tell LL where to shove this baddly run platform.

3. I really don't want to hear your voices. It's bad enough that I have to tp to shops and see moron chat fill my screen.

4. How many new shiny things actually work?

5. Pro Voicers really want LL to waste time on something thats already available (skype) instead of actually improving SL, or at least make it work?

6. They are only doing this to distract from the fact that SL does NOT run more then it does.

I like to roleplay too. I like playing the role of a charming handsome bachelor who is a highly educated multimillionaire. I find it makes me much more appealing to the pretty girls.

I'm a total piece of shit in the real world, and I can hardly string a sentence together. It's not a really secret though.

Voice is really going to ruin the immersion for me.

Please, Linden Lab. Please let me continue living in my dream world!.

Lest we forget , there was no public cry to bring it in in the first place but look at the public out cry about bringing it in. Bottom line they dont care what we want they only care about the money it can bring them in teir. They will change the game world for everyone by doing this and may lose many paying clients if the voice thing ends up excluding a large group of people who are paying teir. All the free acounts in the world wont carry SL and the inflated numbers they produce.
When will the Lindens pay attention to the things we do want ?? and make the things that are in the game already actulay work? Its a sad day and over time I think the in world numbers will show a drop. But if it doesnt take off they will then have to find another way to rase teir to cover the numbers they hope to get from chargeing for voice.
When is it do to start?
Basterds

Ok people im the Lindens and let them know how you realy feal about this. Let them log on to find there off line im's full with us paying clients fealings on this

People arent saying that Linden Labs will force people to use it. They are saying that it being a standard feature will help other residents to pressure people into using it. Or else risk suspicion, harrasment or segregation. This already occurs at some level but right now voice isnt integrated into SL so its not very common.

The way Linden Labs chose to impliment it is hypocrytical to the Opt In system they claimed they wanted in the past. An Opt Out system means people who opt out will be the ones going againt the norm.

So of course no one will be forced to use it. But to those posters who think second lfie wont change for those who say no are really playing the ostritch.

SL for the non-voicers will grow smaller, while most of the voicers will continue dismiss the non-voicers concerns.

I never expect anyone to agree with anything I say, but I hate being dismissed or ignored. People read those comments about exclusion many have posted, and then consistantly type comments which show they didnt comprehend.

Personally, I understand eventually voice chat was coming to Second Life - I thought it was a long ways off. I usually play with my sound off, also, Ill obviously have to change that habit. I have freinds in a broad spectrum some will type and some will voice.

I am sorry but isnt that the same as forceing people to use it?

Linden Labs isnt doing the forcing - Other residents will do some coercing though , Ill bet money on that.

I dislike the idea 100 %

I simply don't see this working in crowded busy areas. How will you know who is saying what?

There's not a whole lot they are going to do about the 3000 some-odd estate sims that won't have voice unless they upgrade and pay an additional $100 a month. I can't imagine a level of coercing that will make class 4 island sim owners eager to take on that extra tier. Those that want voice will have to gravitate towards the newer, class 5 sims and the older sims will remain cheaper and quieter.

The grandfathered tier was only promised till the end of the year, a promise LL might currently be regretting, in which case "only for mainland and $295/sims" might become more of a common thing until finally "we feel that over the past few months we have added enough compelling features to justify the $100 increase for grandfathered sim owners. Effective immeditately the old pricing will cease".

(I'm also finding it odd they left out any mention of educational/non-profit sims who are paying $150/month for their private sim. Considering that educational application is one of the main reasons for addng voice, I doubt they'll disable it for those sims either, even if they're only paying half the tier)

There is no way at all to "force" someone to use voice chat, its just silly to even argue that, and futhermore, the non voicer group isnt going to get smaller, look at all the other platforms that use Voice, WoW, D&D, Ultima online, I would say about 15% to 25% of the users use voice chat. its just not as popular as one might think. SL is a second Life, bringing real life into SL isnt going to fly well with most people, looking at the vote thread thats also here it is steady at 70% of the people voting are opposed to it, so at best your looking at 30% i think these numbers stand enough on their own without futher support.

Just warn me before you make the announcement that the new voice feature is an added excuse, err I mean value for raising mainland tier LL so I can sell my land and get out.

@Kitty - I was thinking more along the lines of Collete predicting that peer pressure was going to drive the switch to voice. The end of the year is still 10 months away and a lot can happen, but my crystal ball tells me that if forced into a tier increase, a lot of island owners will walk away. I know I would certainly like to be a fly on wall when they tell Anshe Chung that her tier is going to increase by $420,000 a year....