User blog:ComradeJ/Vivox Removal: No More Voice Chat on Combat Arms

Combat Arms recently announced that they will be removing the integrated voice chat feature from the game to "improve stability" from the game.

(In case you missed the announcement, you can see it here.)

Now normally I don't express my opinions on here, but this is one worth mentioning about. Nexon seriously made a mistake with removing voice chat. (I already figured that Nexon is slowly phasing out voice chat. I remember the days when the main lobby had voice chat where everyone had fun conversing with one another. At times it would get noisy and loud.) My question for them is, why would they do that? What they don't understand is that voice chat is one of the main community aspects of the game. While the gaming industry is releasing more games out there in the market with the added feature of voice chat for extra player interaction, Nexon decided to reverse their games and put Combat Arms a thousand steps backward. Instead of adding back the main lobby chat and fixing other issues, they removed it altogether. We never asked through feedback for them to remove it.

Voice chat is a convenient feature that can valuable when playing various game modes. In a game where teamwork and communication is vital, voice chat makes it easier for players to effectively communicate to one another. Without voice chat, the game just got more difficult to communicate. You can't move around while typing at the same time. Not only that, but your team can't tell you quickly enough where the enemy is. By the time they finish announcing the enemy's position, either the enemy already changed positions or their teammate already died. Don't even get me started with discussing about how some players type slow and others are prone to making typos.

While you can say that you can always use third party programs such as Ventrilo, TeamSpeak, or Skype, it can be such a hassle to download additional programs for some due to lag and limitations (not to mention that you can also be vulnerable to attacks). To make matters worse, you can't talk to everyone in your team every time you jump into any game. Your team either take extra steps just to hear voice communications or they don't.

I don't use voice chat, but sometimes it's advantageous when someone tells me that there's an enemy at my six o'clock. It's fun when you hear random things from players, from blurting and raging to random sounds (I even heard a dog speaking once). Now that they are removing Vivox, I am not looking forward to anything else in the game anymore. Not even new noob tubes or explosives (out of all the 7 years, at least they could've added the Panzerfaust or the M202 FLASH).

For those of you who don't like voice chat because it's annoying, there's a way to turn it off: your F8 hotkey.

I doubt removing Vivox from the game will improve stability from the game. The only thing I know for sure will happen is that the playerbase will decrease along with having another reason why many people left Combat Arms for another game.

Voice chat has not been removed from the game yet, so if you want to enjoy every bit of it before it's gone, hop onto the game now and play with everyone that have mics before the February patch. Afterwards, if you want to play Combat Arms with voice chat, you can move over to another server like Combat Arms Europe or Combat Arms Brazil (but don't expect them to speak English all the time or understand you). Or better yet, play another first person shooter game that has integrated voice chat. We only thing we can hope now is for them to reconsider their decision or upgrade to another voice program.