On Mon, 7 Apr 2008, Mark Mielke wrote: > Niclas Fredriksson wrote: >> On Sat, 5 Apr 2008, Mark Mielke wrote: >> >>> It is a team sport, though, and having separate plays isolated from each >>> other is a bit anti-team. >>> >> >> This comment of yours is a comment on netrek, not the audio part. It's a >> fact that there are several separate plays going on continuously in netrek. > > No - I don't think so. Team messages have been fine for tracking team > efforts for over a decade. You're ignoring the difference between written and spoken communication in netrek: - For most people (everyone but the super clue) written communication in netrek is not received (read) by everyone at the same time. Most people read messages when they have the time. - Written communication is very many times faster to receive (read), especially in netrek. - Written communication can be filtered much more effectively (by RCD's for instance). - Written communication in netrek is independent of things like dialects, speech impediments, non-native English speakers, etc. Voice messages only will never be enough to (as you say) "tracking team efforts". If you had ever played a netrek game using voice communciation this would be more apparent to you. Voice messages can only be seen as a compliment to written messages and a very poor one as such. > Voice is more efficient. This is not true in netrek. In netrek, written communication is extremely more efficient than voice dito. How can you even begin to claim that voice communication in netrek is more efficient? Ctrl-T on the keyboard instead of holding the "send message button" and saying "Ok guys, I'm now carrying five armies to orgus, no sorry I mean Organia. Is anyone up for giving me an escort? Hello? Do you guys have sound activated?". > If you isolate voice - you end up with people NOT getting important team > messages. Why? What kind of important messages? Have people missed important team messages for the past 15 years due to not having voice communication? > If the team captain says something important, and isn't heard, because > you are off doing your own thing on a separate channel - whose fault is > that? What if the team captain says something important and you miss it because there are seven other guys on the channel and you don't recognize his voice and even if you could recognize it you can't hear it over supervisor swearing at everyone for not escorting his cloaking DD+5 to KLI? Like I said earlier, voice communication is a good idea. It would give people a chance to chat and give the game a more social feel. But it will never be able to replace written communication in netrek, and the game play situations where voice communication is helpful (and slightly superior to written dito) can be counted on the fingers of your right hand. -- Niclas