I think if you looked at a Venn diagram of "painfully shy people" and "people who play a Star Wars game for hours at a time", you'd actually see quite a bit of overlap.

 

This.

 

And in the past, talking on Vent (thereby revealing my gender) has occasionally (but hurtfully) led to douchenozzlry of the first water from other players. Why subject oneself to that?

Am a deaf gamer myself, frankly I find it insulting to see guilds requiring even deaf players to use voice chatting.

 

I have played with a deaf guild in World of Warcraft doing dungeons and have had no problems clearing them. I do not understand this extreme hostility toward deaf/hard of hearing gamers by SWTOR community.

 

Shame though have not seened any deaf guilds or guilds friendly toward deaf/hoh players here in SWTOR, seems they are not present... Wonder why?

 

Those subititles bioware put in was to help the deaf/hoh players, which makes playing the game little easy to deal with. Unfortantly there are still quests or fp's that cannot take part since sound is required to figure out the puzzles or traps which makes it somewhat difficult to be in a group with other gamers...

 

When learning a fight and attempting to be a server first then Vent is pretty much the only way to pull it off as time is against you as others are doing the same thing.

So unless you are the only Guild attempting it and no other guilds are at that progression then that is your only chance for a server first.

Not that Deaf can not pull it off but it is a huge disadvantage. Not picking on you just stating facts.

In general yes.

 

If the player has extenuating circumstances. We allow it but it can not impact Ops. In wow I had a deaf guildie who ofc did not use comms but made sure he did his research before fights so we did not have to spend longer explaining. He was actually one of the best player I have played with.

I don't own a headset. I don't own a microphone. I had to skip on those so I could afford the game in the first place. So I guess that means guilds will be discriminating against me for being POOR, too?

 

Slightly on-topic: on the off chance I can afford even a crappy headset in the near future, can I run Ventrilo/Mumble/Teamspeak on a separate machine than the one running the game? I don't have THAT much wiggle room hardware-wise, and I'm about to start running video capture software to record some footage for a friend to use on thier gaming podcast...

EV pylons = yes

KP Fabricator droid = yes

EC story mode/hard mode = YES x 1000

EV pylons are perfectly fine without voice even in HM. You just have to know when to confirm (before/after other team). Different people clicking buttons is also quite natural.

KP Fabricator droid - this is more tricky, SM is fine because you can take some time with the puzzle, but in HM enrage will come unless you're fast

EC - did not try without voice and don't want to

I don't own a headset. I don't own a microphone. I had to skip on those so I could afford the game in the first place. So I guess that means guilds will be discriminating against me for being POOR, too?

 

...

You can download a free chat program such as mumble, and the other people's voices will come out of your speakers.

 

It is less important for you to speak, and more important for you to hear. If you're in the Fabricator and someone calls out "Firing in 3-2-1 FIRE" and you don't move out of the way, you're dead.

 

Unless you have no speakers, you're fine.

Strictly speaking is ventrilo/TS/mumble required for Operations? No, it is not. But for practical purposes? Yes, it is.

 

HM EC boss fights proceed at a fairly frantic pace. A lot goes on. Maybe something goes awry, maybe something doesn't. Voice comms allow the raid leader to relay information to the Op very quickly. Now if the raid leader wanted to do that via text? He (or she) would have to stop what he (or she) is doing to type that. Sometimes this isn't exactly feasible. Then there's the whole issue of strategy explanations. It takes a long time to type it all out. It takes a fraction of the time to speak it.

 

I do sympathize with those who have hearing disabilities. I really do. But for practical purposes, voice comms is essential.

This.

 

And in the past, talking on Vent (thereby revealing my gender) has occasionally (but hurtfully) led to douchenozzlry of the first water from other players. Why subject oneself to that?

 

You don't need to speak. You can lie and say whatever. If you're not the op leader then there isn't really a "need" to speak at any time.

I'm lazy more than I am shy, so speaking with crappy accent (english not my fist language) beats typing every single time. So if I were the op leader and I had to write craploads and waste everybody's time because someone CBA with listening, well I'd be kinda mad

douchenozzlry of the first water from other players.

 

I just wanted to say that this turn of phrase made laugh quite a lot. +1

 

Someone else already mentioned that you don't really have to talk so much as you need to be able to hear what is being said. Indeed in my experience someone in the raid will be a chatty cathy (sampling bias since I'm talkative and I'm in every raid I'm in obviously), and too many people talking at once can be counter productive, but someone communicating things going on (like everything going on for Soa, Firing on Fabricator and Tank Swapping if you use the strategy that keeps him in place, where shields are spawning in Tanks on EC HM, this list isn't exhaustive).

 

To the person who said they can't afford a headset/microphone I will mention that at Target you can buy headsets with microphones for like 10 bucks, and barring that if you just need to listen in then yeah someone already mentioned speakers as a work around.

 

The the Deaf/Hard of Hearing. I hope by now you've found the workarounds to not having audio cues and I salute you for going the extra mile. Sadly a disability is still a disability and not being able to hear definitely puts you at a disadvantage. Luckily there ARE workarounds and I wish you nothing but the best in finding guilds that are willing and able to accommodate you. I've played with deaf players in the past and have never had anything but positive experiences with them, and in my experience most guilds will be willing to be flexible for really good players.

Kind of off-topic here but I'm curious has anyone used Axon by Dolby as form of voice comms? Is it cheap? Is it good in terms of clarity and ping?

 

So far, my guild currently uses Ventrilo, which I'm very accustomed to using. I found it and Teamspeak to be very similar, but overall stuck with Vent in WoW.

 

Used mumble and I don't know if it costs more, or what the ping was, but it seemed really clear. Seemed like a really good program and lots of settings and customizations available. Only used it the one time though, but everyone in the channel was crystal clear.

The other thing that I like about voice chat is the instructions as you go.

 

Things like Kephess are pretty hard for new people to grasp w/o doing it a few times. You can explain it ahead of time, but there is just a lot going on to remember it all if you have no frame of reference. You don't really know what to expect when. With the voice comms, it's easy to play and teach as you go and keep everyone on the same page. You could never do that with chat.

 

You also have the option of on the fly modifications which are really hard to type out and keep playing.

While it may not be required...it is certainly easier to say "Switch in 3 2 1" than it is to type it :].

 

 

 

THIS 100x Over.

I was wondering if vent or mumble or any kind of voice chat is required for HM FP, Opreations etc.

 

Raidcall for the win Raidcall is the best Voice i have found. Everyone should give it a try.

I think it's good to use VC, it's easier than typing. I think that it's easier because you can keep fighting when you talk, but if you type while fighting it's alot harder to fight at the same time.