Personally I can read significantly faster than I or most people can
talk. When I was on Leftovers Chuck had use voice communication for a
few games and it was very confusing. Some people would keep shouting
so others got angry and muted them so tat nullified their voice
benefit right there. Too many people would talk at the same time.
Information was lost (unintelligible words, person talked too fast) or
had to be retransmitted thus wasting time ("Can you repeat that
please?"). Also it takes time to learn anake the association of which
voice maps to which player. Whereas with text it is much easier to
ascertain who is talking. I think voice could be cool for observers
and for coaching newbies (a coach player talks the newbie through how
to do things) and for private chats but I'm still wary of how
effective voice communication will be with lots of people talking
simultaneously. And will this teach newbies to no longer rely on text?
I think Niclas is right that text is more efficient at least in the
context of netrek's gameplay. In 1 or 2 seconds of reading I can
gather a wealth of information that you could not possibly comvey in
the same amount of time or even in 3 times the amount of time.
Experienced players don't just gather 1 piece of data per read. Also
distress messages (fuel, damage, shields, armies carried status) would
take longer to convey unless you sacrificed some information.
Perhaps we could do an experiment and have a few clue games where
everyone used voice then poll the players afterwards to gauage their
impressions?
Zach