The intrusion of TS/Vent into mainstream PvE

This has been bothering me lately, and I wanted to see how the community feels about it.

After the introduction of DoA, most groups I see require players to have a Voice Com (Teamspeak or Ventrillo) and a Mic. VoiceCom and Guild Wars have existed side-by-side since the begining, but until now, it was mostly restricted to high-level PvP (GvG / HA) or a group of friends or guildies hanging out in Vent in PvE.

While I realize Guild Wars provide limited avenues for role-playing, a lot of the enjoyment I derive from this game (and others) directly relates to my level of immersion in it. I am my character for the duration of my gameplay. I dont PvP heavily in Guild Wars (I'm satisfied with CS or UT for my pvping needs), but I've been an active PvEr since release - and that includes all the aspects of PvE - quests/missions, exploring, socializing, farming, power trading etc.

I find that my immersion in the game is significantly affected if I use a Voice Com, and I dont like it that I am forced to use it to experience certain content in the game, though I'm perfectly confident of maintaining similar levels of performance without the use of it. And this, I'm speaking from experience. There was this usual fuss about TS/Vent in raids in WoW as well. But my guild in WoW has been successful in completing all of the 40man raids that game has to offer(which less than 0.1% of the game population have) without bothering with Voice Coms. I find that people dont get unnecessarily diverted this way. They dont start discussing off-topic stuff, they pay more attention to whats happening in-game.

In Guild Wars, I occassionally accept invites into groups which use a Voice Com, where only the leader speaks, and others are not required to. But I find myself staying away from groups which require me to have a mic and talk along with using TS/Vent.

Is it just me being uncomfortable with it, or are there others that are having their level of immersion, and thus the enjoyment from the game being dimmed by the use of TS/Vent?

Then don't join those groups. Problem solved.

Don't worry, vent/ts won't bite you.

I wouldn't want you on vent either - if you have one of those squeaky voices. (Age 10 type)

I think it's just you.

i dont know about you, but i can talk way faster than i can type. doa missions are full of areas where the team needs to discuss what to do next, and voice comms are a helluva lot easier than typing it out.

I've seen TS/Vent group in FoW/UW since that BWE in which we first got to try the places. People have been using them in Sorrow's Furnace, Urgoz and The Deep too (or even THK).

Seriously there's nothing new. People just want to use them when communication is important.

It has seemingly been an issue in Factions Elite mission as well and i have never joined any TS/Vent teams yet i gotten the greens i wanted from there with non ts/vent group.

Eveyone in the team knowingly exactly what their role in the party is, is more important than having someone bark down your ear what you should do, which is to me very annoying. But then to find a PuG team that does the former could perhaps be even much rarer these days.

I don't like TS/Vent being needed for PVE, but I understand it.

Yet another reason to nerf the heck out of DoA with extreme prejudice. Then the DoA TS/Vent groups would disappear.

I can only cheer to people using TS or vent. It helps the teamwork, and will prevent ragequitting etc.

I don't see a problem at all.

Yup, totally understand it. Haven't tried playing DoA for about a week so far, and won't have a lot of time either, so I haven't experienced it yet.

i havn't bothered with DoA yet. but i've been into UW, FoW, The Deep with some pretty good PvE guilds and we've never needed voice comms

Vent makes it easier to Ragequit, not the other way around

Anyway, there are no-voice com groups in these areas too so if you want to preserve your RPing (role playing) then you can :\

What about X-Fire I’ve seen this way to many times unused so much, for it has voice chat and all? I know some of us have it constantly run in the background and most games have it on as a plus. I understand where you’re coming from but I can’t use any of those third party-programs I’m too afraid to come near them. I would actually love to see GW have some type of voice alterative so it easy to get a hold of people and it’s already easy to access.

Ts/vent has its positives and negs, with my experience at the Deep and Urgoz ts has DEFINATELY helped us, we always had a successful run with my group as long as everyone was on ts.

however i think its not really neccessary for 8 people to be using up a ts server because 8 people isn't that hard to manage, we do it for FoW, we do it for UW, we can do it with DoA... plus i want to listen to my music

I find my immersion broken when people send me tells. So far, I haven't figured out a way to roleplay someone from another continent sending me a whisper. At least I can turn off guild/alliance chat and only use team/local/trade, but tells?

In short, OP, what advice can you give me to roleplaying my way back into immersion that the tell system is breaking?

Voice communication needs to disappear from the face of this planet.

ALL HAIL THE MUTES.

- Leader of the mutes, Souma.

Afaik you're referring to whispers and not tells...
Tells are WoW business and not interesting in this forum :P

Okies on topic now.

It's a bit of a double edged blade here;
Sometimes the use of TS can give a positive influence in a party's progression but this is not a certainty.
It's true that it cannot become a necessity in order to being able to join a party.

wow... i mean WOW...

Well aside from the fact that lots of people have annoying ass voices (to me), I don't really mind it that much...

I mean, when a guy is 20+ and he sounds like he could be 14... I just want to slap him. I HATE the nerd voice lol.

good players have vent.

bad players do not.

When forming a party, if someone says "I don't have vent" then you know they are bad. And then you can kick them.

Our guild has used voice comms since the first time we played GW , it just makes it easy to setup attack and defence when everyones knows whats going on.