Microphone support

Feature Requests Engine Features
#1

This is my first client feature suggestion, so I’d like it to not be brushed over :smiley:

I would like roblox to support voice chat, which is only enabled for players of an age over [insert maturity age here] and can be disabled by script, or by settings on your acc(or set to friends only hear, etc), the chat would show the name of the player who was chatting while they were chatting, and would optionally have a simple pitch changer that can be disabled?, so that anonymity is preserved, and it’s not invading the policy of forced privacy Roblox has

The reason why I want voice chat is apparent if you’ve ever played a game like PlanetSide2, where you can communicate in real time, while performing complex maneuvers, allowing players to work as a team, and it would also boost how social games that don’t allow characters can be. This idea comes mainly from Control, where the majority of players are older than average, and play because it’s a strategy game, but as Control has a RTS camera instead of characters, I get complaints, and general feelings that the game isn’t social enough, so I was thinking… lots of RTSs and Combat games have voice chat, why not roblox?

Main challenges:
Easy way to moderate voice chat (suggestions on this?)
Keeping players’ identity private (simple pitch changer you can slide back and forth to a pitch you are comfortable with)
Networking in a way that it doesn’t hog bandwidth

Main bonuses:
Social aspects for more complex games
Better teamwork, and ultimately, better bonding with friends (making a better roblox experience)

As far as my game, I’m not worried about voice chat being hard to moderate, I’m working on an admin script that essentially gives me an army of moderators to do my bidding, so I can employ them to moderate the chat to my standards. My guess is though, that anyone to enable voice chat will be prepared for content not as moderateable as text anyway.

8 Likes
#2

I don’t think this will play out very well. Skype, Teamspeak all of those other platforms are great for this, but not ROBLOX.

2 Likes
#3

It would add a new layer to social interactions, and many people just won’t download programs they aren’t familiar with, and won’t give out their contact information because it’s linked to private information, which is actually breaking the roblox policy worse than if they supported chat officially

The main issue is how to moderate it, but unlike text chat, it’s also something you could make easy to turn off, which ‘almost’ eliminates the need to moderate it.

1 Like
#4

The main issue is that you can’t moderate it. That means that the voice chat is very much like any offsite communication: Anything that happens on it didn’t happen in Roblox’s eyes.

Someone could very easily make a bold claim about someone else and say it happened on voice chat, and there’s no way to prove that they didn’t.
Someone could also very easily make all kinds of threats/inappropriate comments/swear on voice chat, and there would be no way to prove that they did.

And there’d be a bit of an issue with mobbing. What, for example, if a group of players decide to target a specific player and report him for making real life threats on voice chat? That player, of course, never said anything like that. Who does moderation trust more? The group of players who reported him, or the one player that got mass reported?

At this point it’s more an issue of trust than a matter of looking at facts and making a decision - and with people the moderators don’t even know, it’s anyone’s guess as to what happens if someone gets reported for things on voice chat, whether they’re true or not.

And then there’s the “issue” that Roblox would like to keep their Trust-E badge, which brings a whole new set of difficulties into this.

1 Like
#5

The only things I request of it is the following.

  • Channels, developers can create, edit, and delete channels. Also set players to certain channels.
  • Ability to completely disable voice chat on your place. It will also be disabled by default, so developers have the choice to actually enable it or not.
  • Ability for everyone in game to have to ability to mute others locally.
  • Ability for developers to mute people, this way we could create a vote to mute script to mute screaming people.
  • Events that show when people begin talking/and stop talking, maybe force push-to-talk.
  • Maybe even a audio volume detection, so people who play screaming music or something through the mic will not be able to transmit.

Only as long as the above is added, I could maybe see it being a thing.
I doubt it would be added, but these are a must-have thing.

2 Likes
#6

They have talked about this a lot before. And basically said they don’t plan on adding it soon.

However I believe after the Friends update this is very much possible. You should only be able to talk with your friends through voice chat. Sure it limits a lot of good features like making new friends but reduces scams, moderation and general annoyance/bullying from other players.

2 Likes
#8

We might as well remove the moderation process for audio? :stuck_out_tongue:

1 Like
#9

Audio can be repeated/ distributed and stuck in games for a long time

Voice chats can be disabled/ turned off, you can mute users, you can create a big filter to have access to voice chat. Age verification, option in menu, and a “Beware of risks, do you accept?” sort of deal, toggle; this is enough to prevent a load of “vulnerable” users.

It’s like comparing writing, publishing a book, distributing it to everyone including little kids, containing profanities

and then saying profanities out loud in a public location.

2 Likes
#10

Think of the Co-Operation this also promotes.

Ain’t nobody got time to use your keyboard to chat ‘ITS RED GUY WHO MURDER’ VS 2 second voice chat. I think this is like group games, it should be added just a feature. ROBLOX has nothing to do with it nor settle claims made about voice chat. Similar to group games and for precautionary accounts under 13-14 shouldn’t be able to voice chat at all.

My few cents

2 Likes
#11

If you look at ROBLOX’s average user age, this feature is not necessary. Besides stress on the server, there are a plethora of issues with a website that would provide voice chat to kids. Moderation would be ridiculous, and yes it’s necessary. I also don’t want to join a game and have all of my stalkers going “ruk ruk ruk ruk ruk ruk ruk” over my headset. At least I can ignore them with chat.

Why don’t parents let their kids play with older kids? Because the older kids teach them things. I would’t want my kid playing a voice chat game where they talk with randoms. That might as well be chat roulette without the video. I’d much rather they only talked to friends that they know, using something such as skype where I know they aren’t talking to hundreds of different people every day. This idea is almost not worth discussing.

And I doubt an age limit would solve much. All it takes is for one kid to say “hey, if you say you’re 14 you get way more features!” and then he can show his friends how to make a new account. It’s just so risky to implement a voice chat.

1 Like
#12

Further reading:
http://developer.roblox.com/forum/development-discussion/14185-

To have native mic support on some games would be sweet. Even only a select few at first to see what everyone thinks. Like a colonial warfare game, pirates, murder, prop hunt, call of robloxia, armored patrol, card games, MOBAs, hunger games, and apocalypse rising.

I can not imagine it going very smoothly if enabled on roblox high school, random obstacle courses, tycoons, adopt a baby/pet, or beach/pool games.

For people with stalkers, there should be a feature that mutes everyone by default unless they’re on the friends list.

1 Like
#15

This video sums it up, warning its not suitable for children under [strike]18[/strike] 14.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-ix5fpOePs

1 Like
#16

The REAL issue is after-the-fact moderation. Players would still need to be able to report profanity over the mic, but now you have to store a multi-minute audio file on ROBLOX’s servers each time someone reports another user, and I take it people report each other hundreds of thousands of times a day, whether it be legitimate or not. So not only would ROBLOX have to find a way to store hundreds of thousands of minutes of audio on their servers a day, moderators would also have to listen through hundreds of thousands of minutes of audio a day, and neither of those are even close to feasible.

So the ultimate answer for microphone support is a big, fat no, because I seriously doubt ROBLOX will get rid of the report system.

1 Like
#17

If this came out, I would definitely disable it in all of my games.

I don’t really thing it’s something too appropriate for Roblox, with its target audience.

1 Like
#18

You wouldn’t need to disable it, and for most roblox games, there’s no purpose in voice chat, but there’s a few specific games that would really benefit, so having it optionally enabled for them would be awesome

The ‘children will hear swears’ excuse doesn’t work, as you can restrict it to account age, besides, with chat filter, roblox already allows a surprising number of curses

The ‘trollers will annoy me and spam voice chat’ doesn’t work, because you can just mute them, or if it was a opt-in system, never add them to your channel

1 Like
#19

The only way this feature will be safe to use is if we had a quantum voice annalist that could detect swear worlds before you ever said them and filter them out. But this doesn’t exist and I don’t think I’m going to see this exist in my lifetime so no I do not support this idea at all, its a bad idea. You want voice chat use TS3 or Skype or Steam or XFire or the old fashioned Cell Phone way.

1 Like
#20

I already told you why this can’t be implemented. There’s no need to drag this on another page or two.

1 Like
#21

Imagine going into the complex with voice chat tho…

3 Likes