GuildCast 24: ArenaNet Says No May Guild Wars 2 BWE

> Neither of those should be an issue for GW2.

Well, the resolution might not be an issue, but since GW2 seems to bring even 4 GHz CPUs to their knees, I definitely don’t see it running very well on the current generation of consoles. 

> As for the 500k peak, that doesn’t really matter as
> much for GW2 since the important thing is the initial sale.

It matters because it shows you what the potential sales are. If we’re talking about half a million console players, it’s probably worth the cost to make the port, but if we’re talking 200k, it might not be.

And remember that Sony, Microsoft (and, I assume, Nintendo), charge publishers a ton of money to distribute patches, and an MMO needs to have all clients patched to the same version. FFXI had a subscription fee to cover that, but GW2 won’t, so a console version could actually end up _costing_ Arena Net.

 > place players in different channels/groups depending
 > on the server/team they are currently playing on/in.

If you read what I wrote, you’ll see that’s precisely the problem. Player B needs to be on the same “team” as A and C, but A and C are not on the same team. 

>  It isn’t necessarily impossible to do without ANet’s support 

If the game doesn’t voluntarily expose player coordinates through a plug-in, the only other ways to do it are to patch GW2.exe or intercept the network traffic and extract the player position. both will probably be flagged as cheats or bots by GW2 (assuming it runs those kinds of checks).

>  this idea would break any immersion

Yes, the ability to hear people who are talking next to you would… break immersion. Makes perfect sense.

I often feel a sense of detachment from reality when someone talks to me and I can actually hear their voice. It’s just so… unnatural. o_O

> Third party services are always going to be better anyway

Clearly you didn’t read any of what I wrote. None of those things is even a possibility with external applications. It’s not a matter of being “better” or “worse”, it’s a matter of not working at all.

> WoW put in-game voice communication
> in and absolutely no one bothers with it 

And so, because WoW did something wrong, the entire industry must either do it equally wrong or completely forget about it…?

WoW’s voice comms have atrocious sound quality and lag. Why would anyone use them when you hear things 3 seconds too late and can’t understand a single word?

>  the ‘people’ around you in-game are not
> going to be ‘in-character’ and thus will
> break my immersion in a ‘fantasy’ game.

Then click “restrict to friends list” or add that person to your ignore list, same as you would do to remove their chat / spam from the chat window. Or move away from them and sit at a different table in the tavern, same as you would in a real restaurant. 

Some people jump around a lot. Some people cast spells non-stop. Some people keep summoning pets / mounts / whatever. That’s just how MMORPGs work. If the presence of other people makes the game less enjoyable for you, you can always look into single-player games (or into an MMO with a different kind of community). 

> [WoW] was the only MMO that attempted
> in-game comms. The entire WoW community
> asked for this feature and when it was
> implemented everyone realized that in
> game comms were simply unnecessary

None of those three statements is correct, but nevermind. WoW’s built-in comms don’t do anything useful and have terrible quality and terrible lag. Neither I nor anyone else suggested duplicating WoW’s voice comms in GW2, so your “example” is irrelevant. You just picked something that is clearly broken and said “this thing is broken, therefore I am right”.

In fact, if you read the very first paragraph I wrote in this thread, you’ll see that I immediately pointed out that “simply duplicat[ing] the functions of 3rd party voice comms [...] would indeed be pointless.” 

Your comparison with WoW is like saying “game X has a terrible in-game chat, which is worse than opening an external IRC client, so other games shouldn’t even attempt to have built-in chat”.

I think the logical fallacy there is pretty easy to spot.

Your point about “not wanting to hear certain people” is perfectly valid, but I had already addressed it above (blacklist that person or restrict voice comms to your friends – which is what people already do with text chat), so I’m not sure why you’re repeating it.

> how do you propose
> you censor voice chat?

I don’t propose to censor anything. Are you telling me you censor voice chat in Ventrilo? Wait, who am I kidding? You never actually use Ventrilo; that would expose you to other human voices.

> If you don’t like foul language
> all you have to do is turn on
> censor in texts

Yes, because no one can type “$hit” or “sheeeet” instead of “shit”, right? And it’s impossible to be rude without using any swear words, eh…?

Automatic censorship is absolutely useless. If you’re that scared of what other human beings might say (and that incapable of dealing with it), turn off your sound or set the voice comms to “restricted to friends list”, which I’m guessing in your case amounts to the same thing.

> And if you say just ‘add to ignore list’
> you would be required to have the
> ignore list UI feature permanently on
> your screen at all times.

Have you ever played any multiplayer games… ever? How do you ignore people in WoW? How do you mute people in TF2 or Counter-Strike? 

> You think this is a good idea
> and Elixabeth and I think its
> a bad idea, gg.

Oh, so this is a case of whiteknighting? Should have guessed.

> I win because they
> will never implement this

Why such modesty? Why stop at GW2? If I were you, I’d also claim “victory” for the lack of voice comms in Doom, Tetris and Photoshop. 

Now all you need to do is convince Valve to remove the voice and chat support from Source games, and I’m sure the IGDA will give you a special award for “Strongest Opposition to Human Communication”.