PS3 rids voice chat due to foul mouth gamers
I have been beta testing the PS3 Home for a couple months and the one thing that has always been present is the public voice chat. However, Sony recently took that feature away via firmware update. It seems like Sony has brought that feature back handicapped, which is most likely due to foul mouth gamers inside Home.
One of the most annoying things about Home is the loud mouth gamers who just run around bothering people. These occurrences are far and few between, but it is still a nuisance nevertheless. The voice chat feature in Home is quite dynamic. If you walk close to someone their voice gets louder and the further away you are the more faint it sounds.
However, there is still a distance problem. You have to be pretty far away in order to get away from the voice chatter. The proximity should have been decreased to within a foot of personal space. Of course you can imagine issues like 20 people bunched up together in a cluster just to hear each other.
Another issue with the voice chat was that people would be talking inside the theater while you were trying to watch whatever was playing on the screen. The chatter would drown out the sound from the video. It was quite annoying and the only thing you could do is to select that user and mute them.
It seems like the solution Sony came up with in the latest firmware 1.05, is to disable voice chat in all public places. You can still voice chat in your private apartment and in social clubs. Disabling voice chat in public places does seem like such an inefficient way of handling the problem.
I suppose the best solution is to hire some moderators inside Home. I suspect there are a few moderators lurking around with the ban hammer within Home. However, the chances of meeting them may be like winning the lottery.
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27 Responses to “PS3 rids voice chat due to foul mouth gamers”
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December 22nd, 2008
A bunch of loud inconsiderate people yelling ethnic and racial slurs – it kind of reminds me of Xbox Live. It’s sad that they had to resort to this in a matter of days after the release of the public beta. The administrators shouldn’t hesitate to ban people permanently form the service.
December 22nd, 2008
I read elsewhere that they disabled the voice chat to save bandwidth.
Barnabe Jones, do you even own an Xbox? If you did then you would have dismissed your own comparison as asinine. There is nowhere in Xbox live that you can just walk up to another user and begin taking to him/her.
December 22nd, 2008
Its called ‘mute player’.
But then again, Sony is like every other company. Scared to death of some kind of fucking lawsuit and of the impression that all users are dumb.
so instead of engineering some kind of solution where by you can pull a list of players in a room and mute them (because once you start to bowl you CANNOT mute players, you can however walk upto someone and mute them if you are just walking around) they just crippled it.
Well done Sony.
December 23rd, 2008
I haven’t, in all honesty, experienced loud mouth and foul mouthed people in home. I have experienced people playing their HI-FI at maximum volume down their microphones and then dancing. Thats pretty annoying. But On the whole, people with Microphones (especially on games) aren’t that abusive and the language isn’t too bad, more foul language at a football match tbh.
December 23rd, 2008
A couple of future options:
1. Blanket mute capability, and unmute ability for those you wish to listen to.
2. The ability to zap people that you no longer wish to deal with out of your Home Experience.
3. Only have those in your Home whom you invite.
Home is still evolving, so I am sure they are still working on it to make it one of the best experiences possible by the time PS4 rolls around.
December 23rd, 2008
CarlB do you mean for 3. your ‘personal apartment’? Or your home experience? Because I think only people you invite can come back to your apartment anyway (nobody hit me if I’m wrong).
I think that muting public areas is a bit much – how hard is it to just mute people in the cinema screen area? Or perhaps have an option in the user panel thing where you can see a list of names of everyone in your location (like ‘Cinema’ or ‘Mall’) and have the ability to mute/add/block like you would in a lot of online games anyway.
The only sorts of people with the headsets seem to be the people REALLY into their online gaming, arranging squad tactics, etc or people who just want to be very annoying.
December 23rd, 2008
now this is funny….
oh well, you get what you pay for…. i have a feeling it’ll get worse before it gets better.
open network, huh? great idea sony… lol….
December 23rd, 2008
Umm kev, it isn’t THAT bad, just something that is a little distracting. I love the open, wild life, as opposed to a sheltered one.
December 23rd, 2008
Well its annoying that they decided to do this. I only ever experienced one guy playing trance music in one of the secret drakes rooms. %90 of the people around him were loving it tho.
I just muted him… All they need is a popup list that allows you to mute, thats all.
‘open network, huh? great idea sony’
Correct!
December 23rd, 2008
LOL @ kev.
There’s no douchebags on Live. /sarcasm
Your argument would be like me saying….
“stupid MS…they put the headset in every box…..how could they not expect a bunch of cussing kids”
kind of dumb, isn’t it kev?????
December 23rd, 2008
royzy – YOU may love the “wildlife” but you can be assured mommy and daddy’s having their kids sexually harrassed, stalked and cursed at while just standing around won’t be appreciated.
wait…it’s gonna get worse before it gets better… IF it ever gets better.
judging from the rabid, easily angered, ps3 fanboys just on this site alone, is a testament to the mentality of the average ps3 user. not good.
remember, online gaming is supposed to be a social feature. so far, psn and home doesn’t sound too social to me.
December 23rd, 2008
phranc- if you owned a 360 you’d know ms has safeguards in place to avoid unruly gamers.
single player moot, booting, and player feedback. MS has proven they’re not unwilling to drop the banhammer. will sony? only time will tell…. but it’s off to a bad start…. and looking to get worse. sorry.
December 23rd, 2008
i find it refreshing that mike has the cajones to admit what the ps3 fanboys don’t; PSN is handicapped.
did anyone read how psn is deleting your purchased items now? that’s one way to make money i guess… lmao…
December 23rd, 2008
http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2008/12/22/home-loses-your-items-returns-voice-chat-merry-christmas
ouch…. i hope you guys didn’t spend too much money on your “items” *snicker*…
December 23rd, 2008
only time will tell. Lets see how the “beta” turns out.
http://communities.canada.com/montrealgazette/blogs/inthegame/archive/2007/11/27/raging-homophobia-on-xbox-live.aspx
December 23rd, 2008
as long as I can by horse armor I’m ok with it.
December 23rd, 2008
phranc – you can buy it. you can pay for it. can you keep it? one can only hope.
December 23rd, 2008
Royzy:
I meant for your home experience. It should be your experience and controllable by you, to the degree that it doesn’t invade other’s experience. If you want everybody around and or hear them, or any one, or group of them, fine, if not, why not be able to control “your” environment to some degree?
Again, these are just ideas for what I would like to be able to do if I had Home. I know Home will take time to evolve, and the experience is still free, so it may be awhile or never before any of these become reality.
Here are some other ideas:
4. Be able to “freeze” frame, rewind (or fast forward if you have already rewound), and record the experience, and manipulate the individual avatars (recordings, of course) ala “Click”.
5. Gain and customize powers. These could be developed to parallel your gaming experience, trophies, etc.
6. Treasure hunts.
7. Quests.
8. RPG-like character development.
December 23rd, 2008
kev.. no one is forcing you to download and install home… just like no one forces you to make a fool of yourself here… but you still do…
its a free service… I dont expect anything from it… you can delete it whenever you want… and you dont have to pay anything for it…
and yeah… in LIVE there is NO WAY of stalking people
http://www.destructoid.com/death-threats-do-not-equal-free-gamertags-115701.phtml
I dont care about PSN service… because its free… I do care if LIVE is shit or not… because you are paying for it… its a premium service… so I better be getting some premium shit-free service… because I expect more from it…
when you compare LIVE and PSN.. youre actually insulting LIVE… because even with “20 zillion” people.. and a subscription based service… it still has flaws…
December 24th, 2008
DWH_PSP, That was just one case that has made the media during the years of Xbox live being in action. Home has been out for weeks and already has been having problems like this. It’s going to become more widespread as time goes on. Well maybe not, most people would be bored of it soon and stop using it.
Anyway, that guy who was given the death threat deserved it. I was reading a more ‘in-depth’ article about this (let’s face it, you’re really reaching if you are going to start quoting from Destructoid) and he was talking trash to the other guy too, it’s not he was sitting there doing nothing. It’s a good lesson to learn, and that’s not to talk trash.
December 24th, 2008
dwh – the only one who is the fool here is the one thinking ANY service is w/o flaws…. ie; you.
December 24th, 2008
ohh so now destructoid arent good enough for you guys… so… any site that has something negative to say about the 360 is instantly crap…
how bout this… since you guys know so much… why dont you guys start a blog… or a website… call is “harrynkev” lemme know when you are respected among the gaming communities… then maybe people will take you seriously…
I know that death threat isnt a “system killer”… it just shows that the LIVE that you think is perfect… isnt perfect… and I really think it should be perfect… it should set the standard for other companies and consoles… I criticize because I care…
December 24th, 2008
http://kotaku.com/5116336/maybe-gamertag-change-fees-should-be-waived-in-case-of-death-threats
I guess we cant trust Kotaku anymore…
all we can trust is kevnharry… and their “inside sources”
December 24th, 2008
“lemme know when you are respected among the gaming communities”
gamer.blorge is not respected in the gaming community. in fact, several of their articles show up in links in some communities i visit as “what a fanboy writes” type of thing. always great for a laugh how “gaming journalists” can know so little about the industry.
noone EVER said live was perfect. that was you. but it has set the standard to which sony is STILL struggling to match…and not very well…
December 24th, 2008
I never claimed gamer blorge was respected among anything kev… now youre desperate enough to make stuff up…
because you put down every site that disagrees with you… like destructoid and gamespot (that was a LONG time ago)… and guess what… your comments dont matter… cus the only people who are listening are either fanboys… idiots… or me…
and I only come here to talk about games… I dont care what blorge writes… and its been how long since we talked properly about games???
I still want to play gta 4 online…
January 2nd, 2009
Sony, how about giving us a sort of tunable hearing aid, and let us turn it down to 2ro if we want? I mean, a compelling application for watching a movie at home versus the theater is the fact that at home I KNOW I want have stupid talking people around me ruining the movie. Why can’t I have a setting that let’s me go into a theater and turn down (or off) all chatter while keeping the movie itself audible? Same for public places. Why not give me a selectable range on my hearing, so if I WANT the chatter of people 20 feet away audible so be it, but maybe I’d like to turn it down so I don’t hear ANYONE that’s more than 5 feet away.
Best feature in Home? No irrational Xbots!
January 6th, 2009
DavidB,
They already have that, they are called noise cancelling headphones. Yes, you are right of course as well in saying that Home is exactly the same as a public space and you should have no control whatsoever (that doesn’t interfere with other peoples experience at all). This is why the EyeToy follows you 24/7 with a mic. It’s not like Home is software that you are supposed to be able to customize anyway, right? Irrational, indeed.