The intrusion of TS/Vent into mainstream PvE

I disagree with the OP.
Pen&Paper RPG are made with dices, pens, papers and... Voice.
Do you feel less immersed? No.
I don't understand how TS can kill roleplay, as it is so simple to act and RP through TS as if it was your character who was talking.

I can see that a lot of people would be shy to use teamspeak, but with my friends it is the only way to play effectively. I miss typed chatter as my concentration is somewhere else when fighting. I think built in VOIP would be cool, or a simple mechanism of gestures. The compass is quite cool but is open to interpretation. Maybe there are some key that I am unaware of.

No. The question was whether Voice Communication was an "intrusion" into mainstream PvE.

People may drag in player skill levels to the argument, but they make too much of it by doing so.

Having said that, generally your more serious players will choose to use voice communication when playing. PvP does not and never has had a monopoly on voice comm.

Not being able to afford a microphone still doesn't preclude a player from being receive only and following voice directions/cues.

I agree anyone that automatically and negatively judges a player's skill level based on the lack of voice comm. is being silly, but the use of voice can be an indicator of how long that player has been kicking around online games as well as how serious they take their gaming.

When it comes to the intrusion factor I personally have not felt it.

Ive even been very successful in completing Faction Elite missions, although just unlucky on the drop factor but going from start to finish I can do.

Do I want to use TS/Vent? Absolutly not. In PVE to even the less competetive PVP I find it uneccessary. As long as everyone knows there role in the team and its made clear before entering it should be easy still. All you do is have the "designated leader" ping the group and/or targets to hit if the team seems to be slowing down or get confused or some such stuff the would slow down progress and its always been fine.

I dont want to feel forced to have to use this object or be limited from certain aspects of A GAME. I play to unwind or rev up not to listing to arrogant people tell me what to do when a bit of common sense allready told me that well before he ordered it.

I find it annoying enough when im reading peoples egos and attacks on other people in the chat windows, I certainly dont have the patience to deal with that with actual voices. I simply dont have the patience for what is way too easilly described as power tripping. People can say people who use these speaker programs are more mature, and although somewhat true its also evidently false. Just like the the typing chat we see theres probably a frightningly close ratio for the vent/ts. So far in fact from my experiences personally through doing the elite faction missions as an example Ive found that the people demanding we use those programs to be frankly jerks. They demanded, then insulted then left, we quickly replaced this person and entered the mission without and guess what. Success, and simply cause you took a wee bit of time to make sure everyone knew there role before entering and it probably only took a grand total of half a minute to a minute longer to do that by typing rather then venting/tsing.

I find all you have to do to ask a non venter/tser is ask them "Do you know your role?" and so long as they do they will be just as effective even though they dont have Vent/TS.

*delte* Dont know why but it double posted on me :s

Hell no, I am always on TS or vent with my guildies and sometimes alliance members. I have gotten to know a whole bunch of great people that way.

I had a friend that would always adamantly refuse to go on TS. after a while I took this to mean she was a he or something equally bad. He/she was a great person and I know there are people that do not like, I guess real chatting but it was a little too adamant about it, TS filters that duplicitous crap out.

Plus, in those hard areas there is nothing better for communication than TS/Vent. It makes a huge difference.

I've never seen a PUG that requires you to have voice com, but then I tend to avoid PUG. I still haven't set foot into the DoA for this reason; I really really dislike playing with immature brats and it's hard to know in advance. We have an instance in this thread of someone saying good players play with voice and bad ones don't, so you know who to kick. Keep me miles away from players like that.

I find it hard to type and play, so I like playing with voice com and then headsets are essential. I don't want to hear my own sentence coming back at me three seconds later. And this is for PvE. I don't do PvP because the first time I tried Random arenas I got someone who hurled insults. Does nobody know how to behave in public any more?

TS/Vent a must:
There are only a few parts of the game that I think that TS/Vent is very useful and maybe required to complete.
- For PvP (Heroes Ascent, GvG)
- For PvE (Urgoz, Deep, DoA)

Guild & Friends:
Any other time I'm on a TS or Vent it's because of socialising with Guildies or other people I know. Talking and having fun on TS while playing is something I can't seperate anymore I guess. Actualy I first start the TS of my Guild before logging into Guild Wars ^^

It sounds to me like your not comfortable using voice com. This is not meant to be critical of you. Many people aren't. The solution? Don't join groups which require you to have a mic or learn to be comfortable with it. In my experience, yes it is very possible to pve without a mic and if your team is well-trained you can even gvg effectively. However, in no instances on any game I have ever played has VC proved to be anything but helpful. Like you said GW and voice com have always gone hand in hand and I don't think VC is going anywhere. I pvp, but I also pve alot. When I do I'm very much into playing the part of my character. I find this is easier to do with a VC than without. (though atm, I don't have my mic :/)

Now, while I do support VC in farming and in other high level pve areas, I DO NOT support the overuse of it. Recently, my views on casual gaming in GW have changed for reasons I won't discuss here. Since then, I've realized that when VC is used in areas where used is not necessary (such as missions and even quests) it further restricts the available gameplay for casual gamers.

I have never not had TS or Vent running while playing with guildies or alliance members. But then again, I have not played any online game in the last 8 years without having some sort of voice communication. IMHO it's the only way to fly, but your mileage may vary.

I've enjoyed voice chat with my guild in the past, but my experience with voice chat and PUGs is universally bad. I'm beginning to suspect PvE group leaders who require it of being partially illiterate.

While a simplistic idea up front, I think this really has some merit, but only if ArenaNet were to actually incorporate a mechanism into the game to help with this (assuming built-in voice-chat, of course).

The leader of the party is the one who controls voice-chat being enabled or disabled for the group. And, in the party search window, a little microphone icon is displayed if the team is using voice-chat, otherwise it's left blank. This icon could also display when an invitation is received, so a player knows if it's a voice-chat or text-chat group.