In case you haven't kept up with the thread, it's been stated multiple times that pokemon has voice chat and no major problems have arose from that.
IGN: Splatoon's lack of voice chat is "cheap and lazy"
- Thread starter Oddduck
- Start date
Yeah but even Pokemon and Smash Bros allows some voice chat with friends.
KnockOneOff
Banned
The problem is people in there late 20's - 30's are judging this.
Nintendo always has been aimed at kids
Nintendo always has been aimed at kids
Yeah. Just played a game of KF2 and everyone was having fun on the voice chat and on the text chat. I can't recall when was the last time I had a bad experience in that game.
Now not all communities are the same and you might encounter some obnoxious people... Which is why the mute option exists! And how would you even know what the Splatoon community is like if there's no way to find out.
Playing with people without having any means of communication is not that different from playing against bots imo, it just takes away from the experience.
Again, having a global mute option turned on by default and locked behind parental controls invalidate this argument.
Rebel Leader
THE POWER OF BUTTERSCOTCH BOTTOMS
Pokemon has it? Since when?
It's obvious they aren't adding a voice chat capability for this game, so this thread is essentially "Why there should be voice chat" / "Why there shouldn't be voice chat" / "I don't care"
The faster we realize that it isn't happening, the faster we can get to having a great time playing this game. Not surprising with Nintendo's typical weird antics, it is what it is.
The faster we realize that it isn't happening, the faster we can get to having a great time playing this game. Not surprising with Nintendo's typical weird antics, it is what it is.
Diamond and Pearl has it.
Is it with friends only? Or can you chat with strangers?
Smash Bros. is upsetting too because I want to talk during the battle but oh well.
EDIT: The parental controls is a nice argument to make. I'm with all of you on that but the reality is parents don't do this. They only see the results and then complain. Having to dig in settings is too much for a large portion of the population.
Voice chat only works with friends its the same thing.
what I would have posted if I had posted on the first page
I don't mind it but would have preferred them include it as an option. I honestly don't want my son hearing the crap people say most of the time in MP anyway. He enjoyed the beta.
good grief some of the text chat messages I hear him repeat from Minecraft are bad enough
Are you sure? I'm not sure about the 3ds pokemon games but iirc you can freely chat with strangers in diamond and pearl.
I'm pretty sure you can chat with strangers in Pearl and Diamond. Not too sure about X/Y.
To be fair your answer also describes yourself if you replace bad with good. There is a reason ethnic people and females disguise themselves online. I think its safe to say people have different experiences online so let's not discount other peoples views just because we've not seen both sides of the coin.
The best solution is an option but clearly Nintendo did not want to spend time or money on it. Considering the game is already being shipped out in pieces we probably would have seen the game delayed until fall.
Seth Enosh
Member
Just double-checked (an excerpt of) the interview and saw something I'd missed previously
http://www.polygon.com/2015/4/9/8379367/splatoon-voice-chat-wii-u
I dunno, this seems about as bare-faced as he can put it. It's about new players. It's a design decision. It's one that a lot of people disagree with - hell, it's one I disagree with. But it's a conscious decision. It's this guy's vision for his game.
http://www.polygon.com/2015/4/9/8379367/splatoon-voice-chat-wii-u
Co-Director Yusuke Amano said:
I dunno, this seems about as bare-faced as he can put it. It's about new players. It's a design decision. It's one that a lot of people disagree with - hell, it's one I disagree with. But it's a conscious decision. It's this guy's vision for his game.
Mute 1 guy? That's a quarter of your team.
What's the point of having chat in a 3min game with a quarter of the team muted?
That picture is so true
silver.tongue
Member
There's nothign wrong with giving the player the option to use voice chat.
Not having it at all is a really stupid decision imo.
Not having it at all is a really stupid decision imo.
Still, that means that there has been no major issues with voice chat with pokemon on the DS which renders the 'Nintendo is focusing on the kids!' arguments kinda moot.
I am aware of the bad things that voice chat have led to but just because I always cut myself with a can opener that doesn't mean I should tell people not to buy one.
It takes up bandwidth[1] and the actual trend data is that public non-party voice chat usage is dropping. A large amount of users are either in system chat (Xbox/PS) or using Skype or Mumble/Ventrilo to talk to their friends.
Add the E rating, which causes a lot of developers to outright drop online functionality completely (Every mainline Rock Band supported online play, while Lego Rock Band didn't even have it, because it was the E rated one).
And I'm not even defending Nintendo here. More and more AAA games on Xbox and PS are starting to exclude public voice chat. Halo Reach greatly cut down on who you could hear. Halo 4 outright does not let you hear anyone outside of your team. Destiny launched with no public voice chat - they later added an option to publically voice chat, and I've yet to hear a single person actually use it on PS4.
My guess is Nintendo may be working on OS-level voice chat anyway, so there's no reason to implement it in Splatoon because the statistics show that party chat is the dominating method of communication on the other two consoles. This isn't the days of Halo 2 anymore, social chat is fucking dead.
1. This was the reason why the voice codec in 360 games got better over time, especially in the Halo titles - Microsoft determined a bandwidth limit for games, so you had to choose a codec and quality setting that wouldn't consume the bandwidth. They slowly bumped up the limit and the voice codec was nudged up along with it. Voice chat is not free, bandwidth wise, and many developers now prefer to design their networking with the assumption people are in party chat anyway and use more bandwidth for game data comms than voice comms.
Then let some kind of in-game voice chat available in the meantime.
Simply making it so we have neither in-game nor system voice chat is a mistake.
Felix Andrews
Member
Unless my friends are playing, I have never felt the need to chat in an online multiplayer game. Context makes things clear in gameplay, and why the fuck would I ever want to do it socially?
Hey guys there is totally Skype.
Hey guys there is totally Skype.
MatrixMan.EXE
Member
I am black, and I do not disguise myself online. What on earth are you talking about?
Sho_Nuff82
Member
It's not 2002 anymore.
The most popular kids games (like Minecraft) have voice chat.
Majmun
Member
*looks at Wii U sales
Resisting it seems to be quite easy. Nintendo's blooming irrelevacy in console space is their own fault.
I fully support you on this point.
There is also plenty of non-white sounding voices (aka doesn't sound like American white man as foreign sounding people will get some shit thrown their way if a random person feels like attacking that angle) and female voices dishing it online too. So even with the possibility of running into a venomous crowd these players still engage in chat.
And we've finally come full circle in this thread.
Wasn't that whole Nintendo Letter Box fiasco like 2 years ago?
Seth Enosh
Member
Bandwidth was mentioned in regards to not having chat in smash bros games. It's never been mentioned in regards to Splatoon. In any case it's pretty obvious to everyone here that bandwidth is not a problem for a game like Splatoon. Game chat or party chat works fine in similar games such as gears, halo, destiny, and battlefield. It is true that people have complained about the netcode for all of those games on this board but the average gamer clearly finds it satisfactory enough to keep buying and playing the games.
Spieler Eins
Member
I don't voice chat on any platform. A keyboard is more than sufficient for communication, and I don't play many online games on consoles at all.
Sometimes voice chat can be helpful in TF2, for example, when you're so focused on shooting things that you miss stuff in the text chat, but most of the time it seems to be just obnoxious British children yelling about nothing.
So Diamond and Pearl had voicechat but they later removed it? Sounds like it's similar to Mario Kart DS' custom decal option that they'd later remove to limit what people could share online.
Their Miiverse policy on sharing friendcodes should give some ideas on Nintendo's views of communications between strangers.
I'm surprised New Leaf was so relaxed in regards to communications between strangers.
Their Miiverse policy on sharing friendcodes should give some ideas on Nintendo's views of communications between strangers.
I'm surprised New Leaf was so relaxed in regards to communications between strangers.
Voice chat with randoms seems redundant on consoles, this isn't 2007 CoD4 any more, most people turn it off and the other lot are in party chat on the OS level. That's where the issue is, the Wii u doesn't have party chat (does it?).
The structure of splatoons 4v4 random shuffle mode really really doesn't require voice chat. Not having it isn't going to affect longevity in the slightest. For the team vs team mode however there should definitely be some voice chat enabled.
The structure of splatoons 4v4 random shuffle mode really really doesn't require voice chat. Not having it isn't going to affect longevity in the slightest. For the team vs team mode however there should definitely be some voice chat enabled.
I never ever use voice chat when playing with randoms. Not ever when playing PS4 or Xbone or PC so why should I want it for Splatoon?
Randoms never coordinate anyway, whenever I play GTA Online or Destiny or something like that, PvP is an unorganized clusterfuck, and I'm fine with that. Heck even Battlefield works fine without it.
My friends aren't going to get this anyway so eh. And even if, theres no group matchmaking at launch.
I think IGN is overreacting.
Randoms never coordinate anyway, whenever I play GTA Online or Destiny or something like that, PvP is an unorganized clusterfuck, and I'm fine with that. Heck even Battlefield works fine without it.
My friends aren't going to get this anyway so eh. And even if, theres no group matchmaking at launch.
I think IGN is overreacting.
woopWOOP
Member
Minimap can tell you a lot without voice chat, but it'd be nice to let other people know you got a barrier ready or whatever and you should rally together for a short while. Maybe there's a pre-written text command for that tho, I dunno.
I'm guessing SplatoonGAF gonna go the Skype route then?
I'm guessing SplatoonGAF gonna go the Skype route then?
Microsoft will force change or temp ban you if you have your real name anywhere in your gamertag or profile and they catch it.
Had a friend with "Johnny" in his gamertag since it was his name since the Halo 2 days, and as of two-ish years ago they force-changed it.
This is a company that encouraged people to sync their FB to their Live account.. so people could see your real name.
Corporate policies(tm)
Even with voice chat that was going to be my go-to solution with friends.
Not sure whether GAF itself is into IRC stuff or not, I'm interested in knowing whether there are any ways to build a little more organized community here (I know MKGAF tends to startup through posts but with the tournament function it's easier there).
twothunder
Member
We pretty much had the exact same thread before. So it's pretty much people repeating themselves.
The only interesting thing is that IGN is apparently uninformed of the fact they left out chat on purpose, not out of lazyness. If the devs are to believed.
Regardless. I'm looking forward to play more on the 29th
This is actually more interesting to discuss. I can see them drop chat if it would cause problems with the online play and not wanting to actually say that's the reason. No way to know though.
All those posts starting with "I never use it anyway", missing the point.
It's not because you personnaly don't use a feature objectively important to others that it shouldn't be there in the first place.
There are no sides to take in this discussion I feel like: you don't like voice chat or never use it. That's perfectly fine. Don't let your own personnal preference be the standard to all the other gamers though.
Putting voice chat behind an option that has to be activated (and restricted by parental control if the current user connected on the system is less than 18 years old), is the all-in-all solution Nintendo should have decided to implement.
I agree with the title of this IGN article, it's cheap and lazy, and I'd add to that, very backward thinking.
It's not because you personnaly don't use a feature objectively important to others that it shouldn't be there in the first place.
There are no sides to take in this discussion I feel like: you don't like voice chat or never use it. That's perfectly fine. Don't let your own personnal preference be the standard to all the other gamers though.
Putting voice chat behind an option that has to be activated (and restricted by parental control if the current user connected on the system is less than 18 years old), is the all-in-all solution Nintendo should have decided to implement.
I agree with the title of this IGN article, it's cheap and lazy, and I'd add to that, very backward thinking.
Psycho_Mantis
Banned
Hibiki Kurosawa
Member
I don't think it's 'cheap and lazy' (I mean Smash and MK8 have voice chat to some extent, do they not?). I completely believe their reasons for not including it, but at the same time it would be nice to at least have the option.
Edit:
Edit:
Actually, now I can see the 'cheap and lazy' argument.
Seth Enosh
Member
For Splatoon GAF purposes, I'd vote for Mumble personally or another server based chat solution that doesn't require an extra step of friending people, being added to conversations, etc. like Skype does.
With the OT not going up till the day before I'm not sure where this discussion is going to happen though.
test_account
XP-39C²
Regarding Mario Kart 8 and Smash Bros, which reasons did Nintendo give regarding voice chat there? Those games have voice chat, although not in-game, but you can potentially do shit talk when voice chat is available.
I don't entirely agree with that. In 200 hours on Monster Hunter 4 online, I've seen teams of random players (which would include myself) organise themselves and settle into roles far more often than not, often having tailored their own sets of shoutouts.