Voice Chat System Hurting PS3 Experience

MMOs are largely built and succeed based on social experiences, and the PS3 version of the game is failing to deliver right now. Its bad enough that Voice Chat is extremely limited, but to add insult to injury the Voice Chat system (brought to us by Vivox) only seems to work about half of the time.The other times its in a broken state where its of no use. Further frustrating is the fact that sometimes text chat goes down as well, reducing the more resourceful of us to using the PSN Chat Rooms to communicate. Seriously?

And that's where the problem lies, at some point a decision was made that PS3 users either didn't communicate or would just use the Chat Box, and type to communicate, like most MMO users are used to doing. The problem? DCUO marketed itself as "a break from the usual monotony of MMO's" and a word Chris Cao likes to use is "fun". FACT: typing is NOT fun. The bigger issue is that not many PS3 users have keyboards, meaning that either they won't communicate much if at all. There are already too many instances in-game where we have to leave the game world (accessing our journals, completing missions) there is no "pause" in online gaming and to have to constantly leave the game to type is making the experience tiring. While DCUO has largely avoided the usual exhausting Raiding, Leveling MMO Grind, they've exchanged it for one of the worst social experiences we've ever seen.

This is a next-gen platform, too many of us are spending too much time standing around typing. Isn't this an action MMO? Give us the option to communicate with mics exclusively if we choose. The technology is there, people.

Want an example? Ok, say i'm in metropolis and Superion shouts in chat that he needs some assistance with some Hive goons downtown, even though it'd be much more user-friendly to type his name in a player search and have a voice chat option be right there with Tell, Group Invite and the others---let's use the current system.

So we shout back, "the legion of truth (forgive my corniness) is on the way!" ok, so we get there and we see a battle, but we don't see Superion since there are 4 nearby blocks where the hive is attacking. So what do we do? sigh...we fly high into the air where hopefully we don't get sucker-punched and then we hit select (pause essentially) and shout back "We're here. Superion where are you?" then what'll we do? you guessed it..we hope he's not in combat (if he is it'll be awhile) and we wait for him to shout back...doesn't that seem a little involved to anybody else? couldn't that all be avoided by just doing an area or city-wide broadcast that Superion could hear and toggle to with his d-pad and quickly respond? or by just staying in voice chat with him the whole time as we flew over so he could tell us EXACTLY where he is...

Here's another one, we see some of the Immortals in the Police Station, right? cool! let's see where they're going and if we can help. but D'oh! none of them have keyboards, or heck, maybe they didn't see our greeting in chat...ugh! now they're too far away to see "near" text and wouldn't you know it? i forgot how to spell their names so I can't send them a Tell. (insert facepalm moment here)

Just thinking about that gives me a headache...AND I HAVE A KEYBOARD! What about a system where clicking L3/R3 sends the person we highlight with an in-game cursor (so we never have to leave the game world) a voice chat invitation? and channels where we can broadcast to the whole world (if we're high enough level) or everyone our level or lower, in our vicinity, our league or a certain person with player search...and Proximity Chat (regardless of faction) wouldn't that be sooo much better?


Maybe as a girl i'm picky, but right now there are a number of online games WITHOUT the Branding, Support and COST of DCUO doing voice-chat much better than SOE and Vivox are, what's up with that?

Had the game not incorporated a subscription fee, we might understand, but expecting people to pay for an experience that feels lacking and incomplete is not acceptable. Something has to be done before too many people decide DCUO was a great idea, but just "not worth the money."