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Captain-Awesome
38
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Posted - 2012.09.10 00:46:00 -
[1] - Quote
Hello all,
I joined the IRC chat room earlier to a discussion on "the better corps making UVT a requirement to join" which shocked me because UVT is no where near ready, worthy or desirable by me (and IGÇÖm sure many others), below is a post on why:
Why I won't invest.
Why should I? I have a hundred tools on my laptop 100% free, without issues/bugs people can join. If my corp doesn't like that? I'll make my own corp with my ideals on how it should be run. The features of UVT give me nothing to improve my gaming experience other than hearing people go on about their day which to be frank I couldn't care less when it comes to parting my money. This isn't value, it's a cheap gimmick; and here is why:
1. Every player has to pay aurum for this "feature"
there is only one reason you will pay aurum for this - to talk to people in the channel you frequent. Notice I say "channel" because at the moment, it's not even for corps, it's just password protected channel / local / random channel. It's as useful as telling your friends to go to yahoo! chat, and join the super secret channel you created for it. This is only useful if other peopl in the channels you visit have purchased UVT too. I speak to my corp guys in these channels with a keyboard and mouse, but I have a mic for squad chat and some of them have said I should get UVT but for what cause? I don't care about channel chat, there's nothing going on in there that expands on my in game experience to this game. But I digress from the point at hand. Telling me to pay for UVT is only (ultimately) to make THEIR purchase that much more, to expand on their justification of paying for a weak tool. But this is not the real issue. The real issue is that EVERY person has to pay this, not just you. Why should YOU pay for a channel you didn't create, where there will be 3 or 4+ people with UVT. I can't say this is worth "throwing" money at. I say throwing because it's a tool that you can't reuse once it's expired. So once someone has decided it's not worth it and the channel becomes dead - you are stuck with UVT items without purpose, with just hope that someone will purchase to talk to you. I don't consider "Hope" value for money.
2. You don't get anything from it
You get to use your mouth instead of your fingers..... Again I look at yahoo chat for this. a 14 year old tool that's been doing it for free all this time. Why should I part my cash for a worse tool than something 14 years old? It's nothing new, it's just a game with voice. It's not a game changer, it's not going to make me sit back and remember the days of sitting in channels hearing Nova and Ironwolf debate the price of a weeks shopping. No, I pay for quality, for something that is WORTH my cash, if it's a tool, it's going to be a damn good one, with no bugs, full of rich intuitive features that make my experience a joy. In the case of dust that is my product, uvt is the tool to that product and it is no where near worth me entering my card details.
3. at this early stage, it has the oppertunity to rise/fall
people are buying aurum and spending it on UVT now, but this is simply because not only do they know, the next wipe will give them everything back, but because it's an experiment to see if it works. When it goes live, people won't get that oppertunity, nor will they get a refund if they don't like it. There's also the fact that we are expecting CCP to improve the feature set voice chat offers because at the moment it is basic at best. I want so many features implemented that there are features on features, Features that aren't even listed in what you get in the price. "Talk in a channel"? heck I want to choose who can talk, who can't how many can talk, voice overriding and every other bell/whistle I can think of. This should be a service and I want QUALITY. It's a free game but if you want us to pay for anything, you can't put a piece of battered chicken bone on a plate and say "dinner is served... b****"
The harshest thing with this statement is a lot of people will give it a go, if they don't like it, they will come back in 6 months and give it another try - if it's still a joke, they won't come back for a long time. I like the fact UVT is pay to use, But ultimately I think it's implemented wrong, even when I assume there will be added functionality in the future. |
Captain-Awesome
38
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Posted - 2012.09.10 00:47:00 -
[2] - Quote
So I'm going to say what could tempt me into paying for this "service" and what I expect from it.
Implementation
I'm going to start with the implementation of UVT; I don't care that it gives me voice chat to channels - you can give me infinite channels and I don't care. I will most likely use 4 or 5. 3 regular, 2 sparingly. So why should I pay for voice on 5 channels? I don't think I should, infact I think the use of it is all wrong.
Universal Voice Transmitter can be a neat feature, but I would rather it be called UCT (Universal Communications Transmitter) it's just a means to an end yet we have 2 methods doing the same thing. We have text based chat which is great for talking about how crap your day is, but if your voice is annoying, I don't want to hear it - yet I'm pretty much forced to because you paid to annoy me, and I paid to hear it(?!). Rather than UVT being a voice channel enabler, it should be a "channel service" on the whole spectrum, voice and text included and should be supplied by the corp.
Being supplied by the corp means that EVERYONE pays, and EVERYONE has it. this is taken via the corp tax to pay for the services, this can either be paid for by aur, or via ISK at a very expensive rate.
The price should be low enough to guarantee that on a whole it wonGÇÖt cost much, but means ccp does get money out of it and itGÇÖs a service so the cost is forever present. It also means you are not just contributing to your experience in comms, but everyones and improving their service - guaranteeing you a feature rich interaction with your teams both in the field and out. the tax can (if ccp wishes) be graded on corporation size, by a percentage size, or modular (pay for specific features of the service) although personally I would prefer a percentage by size of corp.
Features I want to justify cost
IGÇÖm a believer of GÇ£services should pay for themselvesGÇ¥ - by that I mean create a rich enough service and people will consider it a product more than a service. Take a sky box for example, you are paying for a service, but the box itself with the software is usually free (for promotion). This UVT is strictly a service and thus needs to be good enough to consider it a requirement.
I would like to see:
- All text based channel tools from EVE intuitively implemented into dust.
As expected - we are playing a game that compliments eve, therefore we should get the same toolset as them implemented to complement a controller as well as keyboard/mouse
- Favourite channel mini screen
A small partition of the GUI that will always show 5 lines of text of a particular channel on your screen, set by accessing the channel tabs list. This means you donGÇÖt have to stop playing your game to check on your favourite channel/see who has been typing what.
- On Screen Squad Comms List
Already requested by many, the ability to see who in your team is talking is incredibly valuable, this can be a small list of player names with an icon to the left of their name and a speaker icon to the left of that when they talk. The background can be semi translucent with a colour depending on what squad colour they are, assuming there will be 4 squads per team - colours can be red, blue, green, yellow.
- Cross channel chat:
Each squad gets their channel as they do currently, but those elected (described further on) gets an additional feed - lets call this the GÇ£primary channelGÇ¥ where those members and squad commanders can talk across squads.
Having your squad chat + a primary GÇ£cross chatGÇ¥ channel promotes team efficiency and allows the commander to speak with all enabled at once without the need of changing channels.
Levels of interaction: (command + squad leaders only / All in one channel / disabled) This means command can tell squad leaders where to go without having to hear every other member in the team (although some people like that).
As this means there are now an extra 5 members in your voice channel (commander + 4 extra team leaders) to avoid confusion, a GÇ£cross channel chat shortcutGÇ¥ should be assigned to avoid confusion to squad leaders.
- Team Channel Management
Elected leaders of a corp can setup their GÇ£squad channelsGÇ¥ with a default set of preferences and then change those settings on the fly. Settings I would like included:
-- Cross Channel Chat: (Command + Squad leaders / All / Disabled) explained below
-- Mute members: team commander (disabled / player / (when cross channel is enabled) squad / non squad leaders) / squad leaders (mute player / rest of squad)
-- Lock Squads: (enabled/disabled) Only the commander can assign a player to a team, players can leave and squad lead/commander can remove. When disabled players can switch freely
-- Cross Squad Objectives: (enabled / disabled) squads get a colour for their team, and also for their objective when set by the team commander, and can see other squads commands (in different colours) when 2 or more have the same objective, the objective colour flashes between the teams colours (red, blue, green, yellow)
-- Voice priority and level control: (Enable Commander Priority + voice level, Enable Squad Leader Priority + voice level) This sets who is heard over other users. As people tend to jabber a lot.... a whole lot, itGÇÖs crucial to be interrupted clearly and concisely in intense moments. Trying to compete with other players is annoying and in a game set in the future, there should be management here. The levels occure when a regular squad member is talking - when the squad leader interrupts that members voice level is turned down by a percentage set by the leader in the options (in incriments of 25% / 50% / 75% / 100%), the same then happens to the squad leader when the team commander talks.
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Captain-Awesome
38
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Posted - 2012.09.10 00:48:00 -
[3] - Quote
As you can see, the list isnGÇÖt very large, which is why I still think charging on an individual basis isnGÇÖt justified, but the toolset provided is important enough to justify a corporate transaction.
All opinions and questions welcome. Including bacon and egg sandwiches. |
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