Add a Voice chat

[MaksikPiska]

I am writing this message to the developers with a request to add voice chat. This can diversify content and help communication between players. Perhaps this will create some chaos in crowded rooms, but it will add atmosphere.
I'll give you an example. The security officer runs after the criminal, in order to shout stop, he needs to stop and write it in the chat. Even if the player writes fast, it will still slow him down. Therefore, I ask the developers to add this feature.

[veritius]

Voice chat has been suggested before, and has never been added for two main reasons.

1. Microphones. You can't guarantee everyone has, or has the same quality microphone. So, while someone might have perfect quality and audio levels, someone else has an Xbox 360 microphone and blows out your eardrums.

2. Identity. There exists in the game an 'identity' system, which mechanically disguises you if you remove identifying qualities or items, like an ID or concealing your face. If you speak normally, it will say something like "Urist McHands says:". If you use a voice changer item, it'll say "Real McPerson says:". Having voice chat completely breaks this, as unless you are a professional voice actor, you will never be able to actually fool anyone. At best, people will have to pretend they think you're a different person. At worst, you'll just get killed on the spot by certain kinds of people (read: bad players).

[Davidian1024]

I see how difficult it would to put this in place.  And yet, at the same time, I think this is something that could really make this game an incredible experience.  Here's some thoughts on how to overcome the issues listed above.

1. Microphones (audio quality): Have voice-only, non-voice-only and mixed servers.  Have an additional set of server rules revolving around voice.  For example, people who's audio quality is a problem might have to be restricted to non-voice-only.
2. I know voice changing software exists.  If this were integrated into the game I tend to think it could overcome the identity issue.  Here's an example open source project: https://github.com/symphonly/figaro

[moony]

Okay but how the fuck do we moderate it.

(We're not adding voice support and even if someone not us comes in and codes it, we're not running it on official servers.)

[veritius]

Also cannot be easily recorded for later viewing by admins.

You know how text is very small and can be stored efficiently?
Audio files are huge. You can't store that for tens of people, thousands of rounds, etc.

[deltanedas]

now include ghosts hearing all chat...

[Jezithyr]

is natively supported in Windows and Mac (with some Linux distros featuring support too), so I don't think it would be as difficult to implement The closest thing to voice chat I see us getting is Voice-to-Text dictation support (as an accessibility feature). Like Moony said it's effectively impossible to moderate. It's also expensive network-wise (sending encoded voice is more expensive than raw binary data), and it's effectively impossible for admins to store and review logs later (unless you want 100s of GB of voices recorded for logging, which would be hell for GDPR or COPA enforcement...).

Voice-To-Text is something that is natively supported in Windows and Mac (with some Linux distros featuring support too), so I don't think it would be as difficult to implement it as an accessibility feature (for those who type slowly or have a typing impediment). I could see a feature like this ending up on upstream sometime but like always WYCI.

[PlushFox328]

I know I'm late but damn, that would be funny but also hell for mods and expensive.

atleast from looking at the other replies