So after talking with the devs, it seems this is something the community needs to talk about in a discussion. Hopefully this generates enough discussion and an answer for them to put in something extra.
Question> Is communication going to be available in the game? Being able to write, atleast on PC first, will help with missions. (Context: Myself and my friends have spent extra 10 - 20 minutes on objectives because we had no idea what was going on. Dealing with it now and not being able to help people learn really hurts the community.)
Answer> MercurySteam
This is a tricky proposition. We have tried to empower communication with the ingame icons, as our community encompasses dozens of different countries and languages. And then there’s the cross-platform component (platforms don’t communicate between each other!) It’s something we are not immediately changing, but we’ll keep an eye on it if we receive an overwhelming number of petitions.
Currently in the game there is a communication wheel to say four different non-voiced options.
"Help!"
"Come with me!"
"I need ammo!"
"OK!"
While this is an ok start, the problem lies in a community unable to talk to each other. Explain things to each other. Grow with one another. As stated earlier. I was stuck in matches where people who take all the Aleph kills and not know to use it on objectives to progress. My biggest thing is I'm not able to make friends. I cannot teach people things that they may have not of known for their class. Heck, I forgot I had character abilities for a long time! Mercury has expressed that issues may pop up due to language barriers. We all know how things get when a language foreign to you enters your chat, people will often make fun of them or try to harass them/troll them.
Let's give them some options!
Some options I have thought on include the following:
-Voice the lines via the character's Voice Actor, that way you're able to distinguish who is talking to you.Honestly, the text that appears is just a solid color with no black outline, so you barely even see it sometimes. Having characters voice things, kind of like Smite, would be extraordinary. To prevent spam, ensure you can only use a voice line once every <seconds> , if it gets spammed. Disable them from using emotes for <minutes>.
- Added emotes/iconsThe current four can be used for maybe... 1/4 of the game. Then there needs to be communication of whats actually going on.
"Need Aleph to do <objective>"
"Antag has respawned "
"Do the <objective>"
"Cover Me"
"Antag sighted" Adding more and having the above option merged (Character voiced lines) would be pretty great.
- Pre-written messages that auto translate to the user's region language or language of choice.Final Fantasy XIV has a great example of this. You have tons of text you can select through that has tons of types from greeting, to objective, friendship and goodbyes. This would eliminate the language barrier and as long as certain lines were mission specific, I don't see why this would hurt.
"Use Aleph to overpower the generators!"
"Get on the cannons and shoot the aircraft."
"Use Aleph to overload the Guardians!"
"Kill the snipers!"
"Use Aleph to over charge the prisoners to find the protector!"- Typing Now the response received mentions how PC and consoles cannot communicate. Paragon was (not sure if it is or is not still) cross platform, however they allowed PC players to type in chat and the console players were stuck using the emote system, kind of like how it is in Raiders. I'm almost certain the consoles were able to read what the PC players wrote.
- Voice chatThis one is honestly my least preferred. Without proper options to mute people and dealing with people who do inappropriate things (Yell racial slurrs, demean people with lack of proof for reporting, blaring music, etc) this could turn into a nightmare REALLY quickly.
We all know that with the ability to communicate, problems arise. Language barriers, stress, trolling and toxicity. That's where we need to make a proper choice here to get across to players how things work. The game is still fairly new, why not test the water?
