What's wrong with VOIP and is there alternatives?

[badwwolfe]

Hi, I play in a group of 5 (including myself), and we're occasionally joined by others. With a buncha people the discord voice chat gets loud and chaotic, and directional voip is something I've been looking into. The voip in 7days doesn't appear to be directional, and it certainly isn't loud enough even with all settings adjusted. I've looked for a mumble directional voip option but it doesn't seem to be supported there, is there any alternatives that people recommend or is there some way to better the directional voip that I just can't see? Are improvements planned for the next update?

[Loboling]

Honestly, distance and positionally relevant voip would be amazing. Haven't heard this, although I imagine it's more likely for them to just boost the volume and move on. I do hope an option like this gets implemented. I'd use it over discord if I'm just goofing around with friends. 

[Liesel Weppen]

What do you mean with "directional"?

 

Afaik the ingame voice is "local", meaning only close by player can hear you and the bigger the distance the more silent you hear others. I don't know if it also takes player position into account so you could hear from what direction someone is talking.

I'm not sure if there is a party voip and/or it is also "local".

Probably that is your issue why it sometimes isn't loud enough?

 

However such ingame chats can not work with 3rd party tools, as no third party tools knows ingame player positions.

 

I also don't see the problem with just 5 people in discord. Probably you should think about your group's voice usage. Of course it becomes chaotic if 2 people are discussing real live weather while 2 others try to do a quest together. Or if you split in 2 groups doing 2 different quests. Then you probably should simply use separate channels in discord.

 

If you think of "giving each player a hotkey and only this player can hear you while pressing that key"... well.... i don't think that will work. 5 player = 5 hotkeys. And that is only one direction. If player C "directional" asks you a question and you want to answer only him you need to know which player that is and press the correct button to answer only him.

And with that you can't talk to 2 people at the same time.

I guess that's the reason why no voip-tool i know can do this... it won't work anyway.

 

However with e.g. Teamspeak you can define hotkeys to switch channels and there is also a whisper function which may perhaps help you, but i doubt that it is exactly what you are looking for. Don't know if Discord has a similar feature.

 

I play various games with 4-8 players in voip and i don't see a problem there. It just requires a little discipline for the attendees not to talk useless stuff all the time.

Edited April 30, 2021 by Liesel Weppen (see edit history)

[Canute]

Many VOIP app's allow you to adjust the volume of user individuel. When someone is too lound you can just him turn down, or up if someone to quiet.

Too many background noise from someone, tell him to adjust his voice activation level abit.

If someone is chaotic at the chat, you should tell him to use Push to talk, so he need to press a button before he curse, which mosttime allready calm him down.

If that don't work you still can say goodbye to him and mute him for the day ! 🙂

 

[badwwolfe]

On 4/30/2021 at 9:33 AM, Liesel Weppen said:

What do you mean with "directional"?

 

Afaik the ingame voice is "local", meaning only close by player can hear you and the bigger the distance the more silent you hear others. I don't know if it also takes player position into account so you could hear from what direction someone is talking.

I'm not sure if there is a party voip and/or it is also "local".

Probably that is your issue why it sometimes isn't loud enough?

 

However such ingame chats can not work with 3rd party tools, as no third party tools knows ingame player positions.

 

I also don't see the problem with just 5 people in discord. Probably you should think about your group's voice usage. Of course it becomes chaotic if 2 people are discussing real live weather while 2 others try to do a quest together. Or if you split in 2 groups doing 2 different quests. Then you probably should simply use separate channels in discord.

 

If you think of "giving each player a hotkey and only this player can hear you while pressing that key"... well.... i don't think that will work. 5 player = 5 hotkeys. And that is only one direction. If player C "directional" asks you a question and you want to answer only him you need to know which player that is and press the correct button to answer only him.

And with that you can't talk to 2 people at the same time.

I guess that's the reason why no voip-tool i know can do this... it won't work anyway.

 

However with e.g. Teamspeak you can define hotkeys to switch channels and there is also a whisper function which may perhaps help you, but i doubt that it is exactly what you are looking for. Don't know if Discord has a similar feature.

 

I play various games with 4-8 players in voip and i don't see a problem there. It just requires a little discipline for the attendees not to talk useless stuff all the time.

 

Directional Voice Chat is common in a lot of immersion games, where you hear friends voice chat like it's in real life. Louder the closer they are, and you hear the direction through your headphones as well. Unfortunately 7days voip isn't directional, it's just distance.

 

I mentioned in my post that Mumble has a VOIP application that uses reported player location data from supported games to make directional voice talk work, they have it for dozens of games including the Arma games, Minecraft, Dota, etc. Unfortunately 7days isn't on that list, and my search for an alternative hasn't gone well. So yes, it's definitely possible to have it.

 

5 people in discord is just on the edge of handleable when it comes to the amount of conversations being had, but like I said we often have more people join us so the number goes up. We COULD just move ourselves between rooms on Discord for private excursions but that's tedious.

 

I just want a decent directional voice chat that gives us better immersion. I want to hear my friends screaming far away in the south when they drag a horde towards the house. I don't wanna hear somebody who's a mile away, but I want them to hear whoever's around them WITHOUT tedious discord movements.

Does anybody know is any of this is in the works right now? I think the only thing stopping 7days from being a great game for me is the lack of quality VOIP.

 

 

[TWORDY]

I would never recommend using Discord with +3 people in one channel. Also push to talk would have to be a necessity. If one person out of 5 has got enabled voice activation, then You may forget about hearing anything, especially on Discord - sound quality seems flat without additional fees for better VoIP quality.

 

I would suggest renting with Your mates Teamspeak 3 server which never fails me while playing such series as Battlefield, Company of Heroes, having at the same time even up to 7 people in one channel. Discord (which is for free) in this matter is just a misunderstanding (never tried to pay for better bandwidth). I solely use Discord to send a message to my mates if they come to play and that's all. I don`t recommend using an in-game built VOIP system in any game, especially while playing competitively. I also used Ventrillo back in 2012.

 

I own a high-quality motherboard with decent headphones so actually, I may tell a difference. Forget about Discord when it comes to voice communication or pay for better options.