VOIP do's & don't

[Exploding_Silver]

Built in VOIP will be in QW in Nov see this thread

Originally Posted by QW announcement

The ETQW 1.2 Update features full voice communications (VoIP) support, allowing rapid and easy coordination with your team-mates. You can select the input and output devices independently of your speakers which allows you to use dedicated headsets and microphones, communicate on three separate channels, mute all VoIP, specific channels, or just specific players (which incidentally also cuts all bandwidth usage), set the volume and test your devices in-game. There's full hardware refresh support for connecting and using USB headsets while the game is running too.

I've created this thread to discuss what makes good VOIP communication on our server

To kick it off

How about his

Imagine ;
Several new players randomly pick our server and join at the start of a map. A voice using the teamwide VOIP says "Welcome to the server, I'm running a Learn QW TG style fireteam for beginners, please join if you are new to the game or the TG way of playing, this is how you join ... xyz (how to join fireteam instructions)". A few of the new people join the fireteam. "I have now switched to the fireteam VOIP channel so its just us talking, type up your questions by pressing the ? key or press the ? key to ask in the fireteam VOIP channel .... etc ... etc" This is really the Learn TG squad idea from BFx taken into ET:QW

[sc1ence]

With the ETQW server having 11 players per team, perhaps we could learn a bit from how voip is used in TF2?

Until we know exactly how voip is implemented it is going to be difficult. I see having teamwide voip most important.

[Exploding_Silver]

We can expect 2 of the 3 VOIP channels to be
1. team VOIP
2. fireteam VOIP

if the 3rd is one player to another player VOIP then this could be fantastic for admining

imagine ;

• player 'badboy' breaks the server rules
• player '|TG| goodguy' wants to report this
• player '|TG| goodguy' looks at the player list and see |TG-Admin| Sc1ence
• player '|TG| goodguy' opens up a one-to-one VOIP channel with |TG-Admin| Sc1ence
• "Admin Sc1ence I have a report for you"
• "What's your report Goodguy"
• "Badboy on Strogg did xyz"
• "Thanks for the report Goodguy, I'll sort it out"
• |TG-Admin| Sc1ence opens one-to-one VOIP channel with 'badboy'
• "badboy this is a server admin, I have had a report that xyz etc .. etc"

This has three big advantages

1. Its like having everybody on teamspeak. Teamspeak has been the tradional TG way of reporting to admins but the number of server players on teamspeak tend to be a lower percentage and they tend to be in the teamspeak IHS channels, so the number of reports is low. With everybody in effect on teamspeak, the value add to server quality by having reports to admins will go up.
2. verbal communication with a rule breaking quickly after they broke the rules is the most effective admining
3. If the admins had the tag on of |TG-Admin| then the above procedure could be spontaneously realised by a server visitor

This is an idea , we dont know what the 3rd channel for VOIP is yet

[sc1ence]

that would be huge from an admin standpoint.

[IMI-50AE]

Yeah, but I thought that you weren't real hot on the |TG-Admin| tags science, said anybody could put them on.

[sc1ence]

The admin tags not so much, but the ability to simply just talk to the offender is critical.

[Steevo]

The tags are not that importend in the game, when you login as admin your admin status is shown besides your name in the player list.

[mentholated]

Wow.

All I can say. Imagine what battlefield could've been like if these guys had done it from the start.

[Red]

Maybe I will pick up this game.

Another thing that a lot of you wanted is for Fireteams to stay together across maps instead of being disbanded at the end of a round. This is in the game now, so once you create a Fireteam on a server, it won't disappear unless you tell it to or switch teams, and this maintains your voice communications channel too. StopWatch mode now features a bit of added logic code to better deal with ties. If neither team wins the map outright, the team that progressed further through the objectives gets the win. While this is the only StopWatch improvement in this update, we have a separate push to add lots more features to tournament support overall. More on that in another Blog.
User Interface Improvements

[Exploding_Silver]

from my BF and TF2 experience ...

Relevent to how many ?

This is the first of 2 key factors in teamwide VOIP

In battlefield there are 6 in a squad and the squad sticks together and and controlling one area of a map, they are spawning on the squad leader so they are always in the same local. VOIP comms when people are all in one local is relevent to everyone.

In TF2 the spawnpoint is at the back and people move up to the front line, like ET:QW. VOIP comms of what is relevent in your immediate local is heard by everyone but is probably not relevant to half your team or more. I have experienced the unfortunate player who is a selfish motormouth in TF2, they give a running commentary of their game, they can ruin the experience for everyone except themselves, but they are having a great time and they are selfish so what do they care.

Who's the leader

This is the second of 2 key factors in teamwide VOIP

In BF the squad leader controls the spawn point and their authority comes from that. In TF2 VOIP gets good when there is a 'spontaneous leader' who marshals the troops. The 'spontaneous leader' will be key to ET:QW, just as it is in TF2. Without this people are just not pulling together in more than 2 or 3 people at a time.

Desired end result

I see the desired end result as it being routine for a real plan to be executed on TG public server. by this I mean a handful of threads coming together into a plan eg 4 key ideas (threads) stated in two sentences. Fast movers rush up the left to distract them, while aggesors move in on the objective on the right, followed up by the medics, when they secure the area the engineers rush in and fix the slipgate.

This kind of simple plan that everyone can understand in two sentences, creates & requires the teamwork.

High standards on VOIP

I would want to see TG get to the point where just talking is not enough, although thats the stage we are at and encouraging now, as VOIP is new. I would want to see the standard expected for VOIP on TG is talking that is contributing directly to the plan achieving the objective. That could even be a rule on the server

Where are we now ?

For whatever reason there has not been a large number of TG folk moving to ET:QW, but there will be at least some retrying ET:QW now that there is VOIP.

A lot of the future server regulars will come from server visitors who come from QW predesessors eg castle wolfenstein, these games did not have VOIP. So a lot of server visits will be experiencing VOIP for the first time. Think about it, this is a completely different crowd from the existing TG folk.

What is good now ?

• Restate the objective I know the game says it regularly, but on VOIP we can restate it as well, eg "right guys we're stopping them repairing the bridge, if an engineer is there at the front repairing, they are our top priority to kill" etc
• Focus on what is key to the objective right now a subset of the above, eg "their tank is rigt infront of their engineers fixing the bridge, kill the tank so we can get shots on the engineers"
• Sprinkle teaching into your sentences "We gotta get that plasma cannon down, there's three ways x,y,z"
• Compliment by name people who contribute to the team This goes a long way to creating server regulars
• Encourage VOIP useage eg ask who's got a mic, tell them the default button for VOIP to team, tell them about menu options for setting up VOIP, the first time someone talks immediatly respond warmly
• Encourage people new to VOIP to do 2 things (1) contact reports & (2) good suggestions directly for the objective If they are doing these two things then that person new to VOIP becomes a recruiter for VOIP because others hear how easy it is to get in on the action
• Tell people TacticalGamer is the talking teamwork server So they know where to come next time when they bookmark our server
• Express your enjoyment to encourage everybodies enjoyment I've seen this in TF2 a lot, expressing your excitement at achieving an objective, really brings out the excitement in everybody

[Steevo]

Exelent pointers for VOIP usage, thank you for taking the time to write that all up!
+Rep

[sc1ence]

As the level of teamwork grows, I hope to see fireteams enter the equation. For now, silver's excellent post is great advice on how to make use of VOIP.

[IMI-50AE]

"You must spread some reputation around before giving it to Exploding_Silver again."

Awesome post, man.