YES or NO - Should LL add this voice chat?

I'm for it...with reservation.

I was a 100% FPS player, and the only thing lacking in the various games like quake, unreal, BF 1942, Americas Army, ect... was voice chat. Using MIRC was the only way to communicate to teammates for a long time. Other programs were just too much to mess with.

Then it happened...

The first and last time I used a voice-chat in game was, I think Halo2.

Every voice that came over the comm reminded me of a pimply-faced pubescent teen cussing and trying to act cool, and yelling at people in a cracking high pitched girl like sound, that was so irritating that I never turned on voice-chat ever again while playing.

There are definite Pro's and Con's to have it in SL.

It will be chaos in the beginning when everyone tries it.
But, then I predict that eventually people will not use it, or use it sparingly amongst personal friends. And only lecturers and some classes will be the ones making use of it.

Let me put it another way..........
From what i heard they not even close to following through on voice yet. Ever since 1.8 they talked about voice.

Well as they llabs does not care about people disliking well like in RL we don`t count right?

Its been since 6/6/2006 llabs STOPPED caring about us. Only cared about adding people and then changing the games basic overall rules and style. Its been nothing but a joke over these past 9+months.....

First is dance event, then games, then teaching, then Money making devices MONEY CHAIRS/Dance Pads.........and now big business on sl....... Whatever the case is love they throwout whomever they feel seems to be a problem person(s) and then moves on.......These days Second Life is nothing more then a mass of voild space money chair hell and a total lack of repect of the other players that helped make sl grow........

Roma was not buildt in a day but it burnt to the ground alot faster........CASE IN POINT SL...................

Voice was probably a request of the corporate clients.

A for sure alternative for voice in other games ect, for VOI. Team Speak, and Ventrillo. Incorporate these into the system..and all would be better..having run on a seperate server. With multible rooms (especially Team Speak) where if confgured right, any user can create a temp/permanent channel. Perfect for this game.

Bingo. Or if not an explicit request, it's a feature box LL felt the need to tick in order to pimp SL more as the metaversal future corporate business arena of the future-web.

Everything else is just dragging people along with that. Don't forget, "we" are not residents, or people or anything like that. We're paying beta testers and worker bees, and probably more trouble than we're worth. LL wants all the shiny .com people to set up in SL, and voice is paramount to that.

The rest of us can go fish. They don't need us, and increasingly don't want us, except as handy stats for quoting how many eyeballs we have. (two here, at the last count).

The future of Second Life is an empty corporate sim treading on the face of a cartoon bunneh forever.

I can see the value of voice for corporate and educational use. For just about everything *I* do in SL though, it would only downgrade the experience. Discussions that are easy to follow when there's a chat history and each person's name attached to their comments would become chaos.

Text chat is easy to ignore even without muting people. Voice would be much harder. And many people can't practically use it. People who like to have a TV or music on at home while in SL, or people who have others sharing their living space (and I'm betting most do).

LL can add it, but I don't plan to use it. For those who do, I hope there'll be a way for them to speak and me to text back, or there will fewer people I can talk to.

Apparantly the private beta started yesterday: http://www.reznation.com/?p=100

Polls in the forums never reflect the true SL world because only a small portion of SL members come to the forums.

I've seen this aired before .. but then polls are usually only in a tiny percentage of population anyway?
With the diversity of opinions here in other areas I would think it very representative of a 100% poll; after all, can the issue of whether a user comes to forum or not be tied to any single outlook?

This is often brought up, probably true, as is the fact that a lot of people do not like how polls turn out.

I know lots of people whose voices don't match their avatar.

I also think that instead of adding new stuff, there should be more direction towards streamlining the old stuff.

This has been my first post on the forums. Thank you.

Thoughts after using the voice enabled beta:

* my ears hurt
* people shouldn't use voice with speakers (echo madness)
* push-to-talk is not enabled by default so you get to hear all the random weird noises
* if you switch away from SL, voice still comes through
* falloff for voice seems to be well over the current chat limit (soft background muttering at about 70m)
* if you can cam to it, you can hear it... I could hear someone who was about 120m away from me just by camming over to them

sounds like a lot of fun / lol

Hopefully they make it better

No, it's not very representative of the total population because most people, who are happy with SL and are busy playing, do not bother with the forums. While a higher percentage of malcontents tend to prowl the forums looking for something to complain about. This is characteristic of most gaming forums, not just SL.

Im not totally opposed to voice chat I just hope its done right. For instance, at home I can screen my phone calls and accept calls from those I want to talk to. Will I be able to do this in SL? Is it going to be like IMs are now where although you may not show as online, people can find out if youre on or not by simply sending an voice IM. Because now if the IM doesnt respond with an offline message, then they know youre online and just ignoring them. I know I have the option to just not talk if I don't want to, but isnt that rather rude?

So I don't mind voice because I can see where in certain situations it can be convenient. But in others not so much. I just hope LL is able to address many of these concerns. The ones Im most worried about are voice harrasment, because I can see were some guys will feel free to say whatever they want especially if theyre unverified. It wont be fun at all if everytime I log on I get bombarded with constant rude and incosiderate sexual remarks and harrassment. Oh well, I guess we'll soon find out.

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April Firefly
Posts: 1,244
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OF course you are completly correct - we who hang out on the forums are all malcontents!

I think you misunderstood my comment, I didn't say we were all malcontents, just a higher percentage of malcontents tend to post to the forums.

Also, I'm not a malcontent. I think LL is doing a wonderful job. They are an incredible group of dedicated professionals dealing with a lot different customers with different needs that cannot always be met, even though they try hard and are not appreciated. They create a fantastic world and give us tools that blows anything else on the internet out of the water. They make us think and stretch our imaginations.

In return, they have to deal with petty complaining at every decision they make. Here they provide a new cool feature and instead of being appreciated for it, they are met with a myriad of complaints even before anyone has seen it implemented.

No No No! At least not until the system is stable and reliable. PRIORITIES! Nothing to do with being anti-voice. I can't open inventory and I'm a girl again. Oh and Ive got no friends. Happens each night, every noght . NO NO NO NO NO Listen NO!!!!

the 70% that voted no? all guys in female avas ........cause everyone knows Women dont use the intarwebs!!

I'm for it. Can understand other point of view.

I fi t doesn;t happenk, interested parties can open accounts on things like teamsepak and Ventrilo.

I didn't read any posts after the OP.

I vote yes

edit: and if you would like to discuss it, meet me on the voice beta grid later tonight. There is sure to be a party

I voted no cause we'll see weeks and weeks of issues with lag and more lag. They just took out the ratings, in world transaction history, and other things to reduce lag and now add this?? I also think there are other things they can fix first before any other features should be added.

LOL

I voted yes

Yes lets add more bugs to sl. More ways to crash.

This thread (which I started) was right after the feature was announced. In case people missed it it was mildly necromanced. 3-01-07.

A lot of people didnt read the OP of course becuase the Poll was suppoded to assume that the Lag impact was as neglible as the Lindens Claimed it would.

Judging by the responses I think that the vote would have been a lot closer if all the "I voted no becuase of bugs/lag" had abstained. It might even have been reverse.

My main concern is people who are less considerate than the average Forums goer will be pressuring people to use it, thus making people feel unwelcome in some areas.

I have heard that this wont happen, but Im surprized people think that - Since it already happens with Teamspeak and Skype.

Well see how it goes. I think I will try it sometime when I have the house to myself,
but I am also certain that I will develop a pretty irrational dislike for people who judge others based on whether they will voice or not.