On Fri, Mar 12, 2010 at 06:09:06PM -0500, cflrich wrote: > Well, in terms of any compliance, this should simply be a matter of an > addition to the EULA of the client. It is no longer the case that I don't understand. I thought that the client was a standalone app that would run alongside the netrek client? Is this not the case? Does support have to be built into the netrek client itself? And no, I've not really spent any time reading up on this as I am slammed with work at the present time. > having voice communication in a game is an exotic feature; nearly every > game either supports it directly, or the players require the other > players to use ventrilo/teamspeak servers to remain competitive. Many > MMOs have voice communication built into groups these days. These > things are self policing, and this is fairly effective. You deal with > vulgur voice the same way you deal with vulgar chat: via the ignore > function. Additionally, many have a mute feature, allowing a team > leader to mute offending players, although I don't think this particular > mechanic will translate to pickup netrek. Server admins should have the ability to squelch players as they see fit. Their server, their bandwidth. > In my experience (and I have quite a bit with using voice > communication), people are far less likely to abuse it in the manner > described than they are text chat, mostly because its a little less > anonymous, and people can directly and quickly tell them to stop. In > any event, avoiding putting something like this in because of these > concerns is, I think, short-sighted. User <-> User squelching should be handled by the server as ignores are currently handled, ":s" for example sent to the offending player. I'd go so far as to say a new majority vote to silence a player might be useful, also. > As for which players opt-in, once voice communication is in the game, > most players will require other players to use it, or at least have the > ability to hear commands as they are relayed. It is just so much faster > and more effective. You can have it be opt-in, but the player who is > not using voice will be at a severe tactical disadvantage to the players > who do, and so will his team. This will take care of itself naturally > as the players and teams using voice communication respond more > quickly. Noobs not reading will become less important, because every > noob can hear. This is a good thing. While I agree that getting newbies more involved is good I really don't believe that voice is the end-all be-all that many think it is. It's easier to mentally tune out the fluff on Team and All boards than it will be to do the same to voice spam. There is also the issue of understanding players and language barriers that I feel might be an issue. For what it's worth I won't use voice; I have no desire to hear twinks and I can RCD what needs to be done where faster than speak it; so my investment in this is minimal other than just general opinion. And I feel bandwidth utilization may be an issue, but time will tell. Rich, are you going to want your darcs repo regenerated? John -- "Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present. There is each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is." -- William James -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mailman.us.netrek.org/pipermail/netrek-dev/attachments/20100312/6ec30595/attachment-0001.pgp