@Thumbdunked on console? yes.

NewBlacksmurf wrote: »

Merkabeh wrote: »

NewBlacksmurf wrote: »

It seems like an anti-social perspective in the thread. Or those who are anti guild store and feel that text chat is their place to use as a market.

Ppl pay to block pop-ups and adds...why would they put this into the game for an alternate communication purpose. Maybe a limited 25 character chat bubble but nothing more (with a limit on how often the chat bubble could be used)

I get the response to players who don't use etiquette with their mics but after mute it's not an issue.
I just ask nicely or let them know everyone can hear their background noise and ask them to mute their mic.

If they are rude, I mute them. If they are over the top and intentional or do so with malice I report them on Xbox.

Otherwise, it's a great feature that's far better way of communication.

Yes muting people repeatedly is a blast... No, wait, it is not; what happens is people just get fed up with it and remove themselves from the voice comms completely; leaving exactly 0 ways to effectively communicate (I'll concede those quick chat options as communication when you can describe a boss with mechanics with it) with these people, or with other people if you remove yourself from the voice comms.

No communication channels is never better then multiple communication channels. Many people are abandoning voice chat with randoms in this game; my social guild (http://alessianorder.enjin.com/, 145 members currently) has many people who instantly remove themselves from Area chat.

Finally, you must be ignorant if you do not see that text chat and voice comms both have pros and cons, and there are scenarios where one option is obviously superior to the other. For example, text chat has voice comms beat hands down when it comes to multiple channel communication. I can have 1 chat window showing me messages from multiple channels at once; I can also type to multiple channels at once. With these voice comms, I can hear only 2 channels at once, and can't communicate effectively through those channels without monkeying around joining/leaving channels. There, off the top of my head, I can name at least one scenario, common to MMOs, in which text chat is the superior option; nullifying your last statement.

Last note; I've been lurking on this board since PC launch, just an idea, but stop speaking for "console gamers"; I've seen you do this way too often when there were no console gamers here (because we couldn't post until we owned a copy of the game); limit your opinions to yourself, I am a console gamer and disagree with almost everything I've seen you stand for on this site.

I'm definitely not ignorant and actually feel that I'm well informed on different forms of gaming communication, especially for console games and MMO games. Having worked in the gaming industry I have a perspective. You may or may not agree with my perspective but it's definitely not from ignorance. Perhaps you're identifying that I apply a responsibility to the players and support consistent form of communication by platform vs. a traditional use of cummunication by game genre. Again...not ignorance but it comes from years of experience.

Ignorant no, but stubborn, yes. How something that can be put in as a optional feature is bad, is beyond comprehension. Voice isn't working in this game and when it goes down...you have ZERO communication. Text chat is already coded, it's in the console game, it was just turned off before May beta. Let's not make it like it's some huge effort to implement

Continuing to argue against text chat is honestly against the majority vote and ZOS can continue to ignore the community on this topic, that's fine. See where the game is in 6 months when people realize they really can't do much of the end game content with voice (pvp, trails, selling end game crafted gear). And when players leave the game in masses, watch how quick text chat makes it back into the game to align with other MMOs.

I just realized something rather amusing...
(Amusing to me, at least.)

I have been using gaming forums, and forums in general, since the 1980's.
I all that time I have NEVER "muted", or "ignored", anybody...NEVER.
Why?
Because SEEING stupidity, foul language, or what-have-you, in TEXT doesn't hurt me...at all.

However...

Within TEN MINUTES of starting ESO...I had to do my First, of many, mutings of another player.
Why?
Because HEARING stupidity, foul language, and LOUD NOISES, straight into my ears DOES hurt me...quite a bit at times, in fact.

Like I said...amusing...if only to me.

It's crazy they did not add such a basic MMO feature. Please add the option for chat box!

Pawkette wrote: »

@Ace-2112, @Shunravi I'm not speaking to the precedent of other genre similar titles, but the platform as a whole. Text is not the preferred communication method on the platform and presents many accessibility issues. Most players don't have a keyboard attached to their console, most players probably aren't seated in a way that it would be effective to have a keyboard, and switching from keyboard to gamepad during high intensity play is pretty damn inefficient.

I don't want text chat, and I don't want to be made to use it when playing a console game.

(oh and I'm a chick)

Precedence in genre similar games is important; you can't just ignore history. These games have shown that text chat is perfectly viable on consoles and believe it or not, console gamers are capable of adapting to the simple requirement of having a keyboard.

You also ignore the trend that society in general is moving more text based; one simply needs to look at common usage of smart phones and the internet in general (both support VC) to see a trend towards simple text based communication.

The simple fact is each method of communication has strengths and weaknesses, I personally believe console gamers are smart enough to know to use the most appropriate method for the communication they want to perform; you apparently don't have that much faith. Voice comms are great for activities with people you know, but as this game has already proven, based upon the plethora of threads regarding the voice comm system, are not the best for anonymous random communication. Additionally, multiple channel communication, which is a common need in an MMO (which this game still is), is vastly superior in text chat.

You've mentioned (in a different post) the fragmentation of the community, well, hate to break it to you, the voice comm only method is doing it much faster then text would (once again, view all the complaints about the voice comm system), people simply remove themselves from the system instead of dealing with the random annoyances. Adding text chat will do nothing but give another way to communicate for the people who already have chosen to fragment from the voice comm community. Most people are much more tolerant of what they will read vs what they will subject their ears too; at least in my experience.

Edit - I'd also like to add, not directed at you pawkette, I am tired of the anti-text chat people claiming we are anti-social. That couldn't be further from the truth. I am part of a social guild of well over 100 members now, and I am regularly a participant in our guilds voice comms (often 20-30 people at least, online and talking at once, which is yet another problem, with voice comms, but we can get into that later); that is being social right there. What we do not want is random annoyances, by limiting our social circle to areas we have some direct control over (membership, for example) we avoid many of the poor behavior Area Chat seems to contain.

One can be social, but still not want to socialize with random annoying people; these concepts do not exclude each other.

I have noticed that the "few", or a few of the, people that are against Optional text chat seem to say something to the effect of; "It will split up the player base.".

So?

People that are alike, and like the same things, will end up with people like them...just like out here in "the real world".
Isn't that what the entire Guild System is about?
Do they also feel that they need to be in every guild because...they might miss out on something if they are not!
Oh My!

These people just "want it all", and if somebody decides to do something a different way than what they like then it should not be allowed because they "might miss something", and not "have it all" anymore.

Frelling Childish...if you ask me.
And, I don't care if you are 100 years old, if you want somebody else to go without something just to make sure you "have it all" then you are being childish.
I know...you are going to "take your ball, and go home", right?

Shunravi wrote:

I can only immagine trying to communinicate only through emotes.... That must be insanely frustrating. Even if everyones character suddenly became fluent in sign language.

And sign language us the only form of emote based communication that would be even remotely acceptable. But then that brings up other issues. Will they have to make a clunky robotvoice translator for everyone else who doesnt understand sign language? I guess its fortunate that the kinect exists huh? But i really dont see how signing into a motion capture system is any less clunky than text for most things. What about if you cant see the person talking? Well, i guess you are boned.

I remember the 360 had a little keyboard you could attach to your controller. That would be perfect for text based chat on consoles.

This game does need some form of text chat. I usually run around preset with zone muted as people like to
A.) Play loud music
B.) Not understand that you don't need the MIC inside your mouth for people to hear you
C.) Cursing just to curse (yes children do this and think its cool)
D.) When you try to zone chat, get flooded by people all talking at once, mixture of helpful info and trolls
E.) Or my favorite I have seen (well heard) the last two days. ***. Yes the sounds of someone watching *** has been coming over the MIC rather frequently as of late.

To that guy that says he has " worked in the gaming industry"....really. You are against text chat on consoles with the above problems. Go to eso on console. Get in zone chat. Start asking questions. Point proved. Either noone will answer, or trolls will be there. Text chat is easy to ignore people, easy to use, and doesn't assualt your ears with trolls doing troll things. What was your position in the gaming industry? You were either a person that fetched coffee, or one of the many people in the gaming industry who think they know what gamers need. Either way its a bad job.

ZOS, please join is in game and give us a speech on why voice is better then text. Don't worry, we will wait for u to mute the trolls so you can speak...oh wait...crap you can't (you can but not in-game so I don't see it as counting). Stay calm lets work around this, please ask the trolls to keep quiet so we can hear you. I'm sorry what was that. I can't hear you over the sound of the raves and *** studios who have access to the game. Please just type it out. ***. Nevermind. Oh well, hope I didn't miss the while speech.

My predictions if ZOS used voice chat like us to give notifications in

It's pretty simple to me. There are certain standard systems you can expect to see in an mmorpg.

What REALLY stands out here is that most of these systems are already in the game. And these features work infinitely better using a certain form of communication called text chat. If you make a list of all the aspects of this game the majority of us would like to utilize fully (or at all) and actually enjoy, most of us would not conclude voice chat to be an effective means to do so.

As much as I love it for other things, it just does NOT work for everything. And for some people it's not even an option they can choose.

I would expect to just play solo or with mostly a small group of friends in a co-op title, where there's no larger community to really take part of or have to ignore. And so you're okay with being confined to the voice chat channel you're in. With no real means to still communicate, because there's no guildie to help that's not in your group, who would type a question that you could see in guild chat and answer. No area chat you can be apart of while in a voice channel for your group. Etc. The list goes on.

Those things should exist in this game. Everything else is in place, just not the proper means of communication for it to function. I love being a part of a far wider community than were currently experiencing on the console. That's what an mmo should make possible.

Just want to ask, if text chat is implemented, and we have both voice and text (don't see them scrapping voice chat now, but who knows) why are people complaining? If we have our text, and you have your voice. Why do you or whoever care enough to disagree. Don't like text, when it comes don't use it. But no one can deny that voice chat right now is a pain and isn't good for much.

@Vulsahdaal would a registry work? Perhaps an auction house and a guild registry. There are nearly always multiple ways to solve a problem.

@yeffy I tend to spend a lot of time blocking and ignoring people in chat, having it take up a large portion of my screen for something I don't find useful seems like a negative to me. If I want to read what people have to say, I'll sit at my computer and read

I did not read through all 24 pages, but at least as far as the XBOX is concerned I believe that the use of Xbox glass with some sort of interface from ZOS would be a perfect way to get chat onto the console version of Xbox (sorry PS4) without having to have a keyboard plugged into the console.

Raash wrote: »

Could it be possible to make a special server for deaf & mute players etc and add more advanced character emotes? Would be almost as IRL sign language?

Yup. It's just as possible to make a sever for people who want to be anti-social and only use this limited voice chat.

Yup. For never winter, I used smartglass on my phone n text chat was just like texting. Easy as pie.

I for one, my personal opinion. Each console has party chat. Better quality of chat then in game or zone. I like the guild voice chat when everyone isn't talking at once. But personally, I could live without it. Whenever I'm in game with friends, we use the party chat via Xbox instead of game chat.

I guess what I'm saying, no matter the state of ESO at any given time, you can still load up party chat and talk to guildies and friends. So voice chat works, even if ZOS were to take it out. Yet...

...if I want to talk to randoms in ESO wether to help them or ask for help, I have to hope they have a MIC, have to hope they don't have voice chat muted, have to hope they aren't trolls who will start screaming f u into the mic until my ears bleed. Or if I'm just wandering around without zone on mute I hear that stuff anyway.

Tect chat, want to talk to people, easy. Words appear over my head or in a box the other player can see. I could whisper or pm someone no matter the zone or distance. Could have trading chat box, guild, zone, and normal to seperste each other for what they actually want.

Some people mumble, some people have thick accents, some people (on Xbox) use Kinect for MIC only and sounds like they are in a fish bowl or tunnel. Text chat is just that, text that everyone can read and understand. A deaf person couldn't hear voice chat and a mute person wouldn't be able to talk. But with text chat, easy. Don't even know why there is a discussion and why it wasn't implemented.

3 things I wish the console version had. Numbers for damage, icons for group members on screen no matter how far or if behind an object, and finally, good ole text chat. Other then that. Perfectly content for now.