EVE General Discussion

I have always been a solo player so voice coms have been a non-issue for me, but recently I have been thinking about fleeting up with a few people and I notice there seem to be a lot of corps and FCs that use TS, which seems kind of strange to me.

Back in days of yore (2005) I was in a WOW guild that was originally an FPS guild and consequently used TS, but when I became GM we switched to Ventrilo because all the top guilds on the server used that for raiding. TS was nowhere near the same voice quality and ability to hold low latency with 40 people in the room.

Fast forward to 2016, so now I see FCs in EVE are still using TS. Did something change? Apparently not. According the following article:

Leetspeak Mumble vs Ventrilo vs Teamspeak Assessment

Teamspeak is still just a non-starter as it was in 2005. So, what is the deal? I kind of thought EVE players were big spenders, or at least bigger spenders than WOW players, so the cost should not be an issue. Maybe its a culture thing, oh, we like inferior voice coms for nostalgic reasons? What's the rationale?

The only strange thing about it is that TS3 requires a license or a licensed host to run, where Mumble can be installed on your own hardware without paying anyone. Other than that TS3 works just as good as any of the alternatives.

It doesn't actually make any difference.

No matter which VOIP software you choose you will still suffer latency and artifacting from the analog to digital conversion, compression, and conversion back. For really clear comms, you have to get a physical connection.

How much exactly does sound quality matter? In my experience TS3 sounds about the same as a phone call if not better. The only exception being ppl with poor mics or other hardware/connection issues in which case no comm software is gonna save them. It's not like we're trying to transmit high fidelity music tracks across comms. "Primary, warp, jump, bail" that pretty much sums it up. TS sounds a heck of a lot better than most comms I used in the military and ppl on our TS last night had no trouble hearing my son crying in the background from the opposite side of my house so obviously the quality isn't that bad so.... I think it's good enough for EvE fleets.

Mumble is a pita when you're setting up fleets, especially public fleets. TS3 wins hands down for speed and ease of use alone. Perhaps instead of reading "reviews" you should just jump in a fleet on comms and see for yourself. Worrying about pin drop sound quality on fleet comms is kinda like demanding l33t 4k resolution to play eve on a 15inch monitor.

Cell phone quality is actually really bad, typically around 8k bps. Old landline phones have better quality than that. Ventrilo in the old days was CD-quality sound which it achieved using a proprietary compression algorithm. I would think TS3 is probably at least 16k bps or better. I know Mumble advertises sound quality up to 64kbps which is HD-quality sound, the full range of human and animal hearing. At those level, the quality of the microphone and speakers become the controlling factors.

As for the "why", it is critical so you can detect that little quiver in the voice of the corp thief as he tries to palm some lie off on you.

What's WOW and why should I care what it's players do? They aren't me, so are hardly important.

Oh no. A Ventrilo vs. Teamspeak vs. Mumble thread on our forum.

Ooh, look another troll attempt by Droidster