Push to talk? Why is it missing? No, really... why?

Suggestions
#1

Hey guys,

I played this game during the Oculus Gold Rush… and despite the early difficulties I encountered (like dying 999 times in the first few hours) I loved the interaction and feel of the game so now I finally managed to buy it.

However… one of the biggest issues I have with the game is the lack of a push-to-talk function. That is simply a MUST in a game like this. I know steam users can set one up in the openvr advanced settings mod, but even that is just half-functional as it mutes your mic completely and doesn’t just cut it off from the game itself. So for example if you’re streaming the game or recording or anything, you simply have no way of using your mic to interact with an audience and have it cut off from the game aside from disabling it completely from the menu.
On the oculus however you don’t even have that option… you literally have nothing…

What you have on the other hand is a bunch of useless buttons in excess which could be flawlessly used for push-to-talk… (like… we don’t need one of the actual buttons on each controller to bring up the menu… when the left controller already has a dedicated menu button… those buttons could be freely used for push-to-talk without affecting combat or any other interactions.)

So please consider adding a PTT function, it’s not even remotely hard to do… echo arena has it… other games have it… Orbus should have it…

And yea, I searched the forums prior to posting it and all I found was a bunch of unanswered suggestion threads from earlier that have been closed and a few wonky workarounds… so I’ve no idea what’s the stance of the devs on this topic or why didn’t they include it to begin with… Seems like something so easy and intuitive to add… yet it’s missing… so there has to be some reason…

Cheers

1 Like
#2

I simply go to settings > audio > mute when not talking to others. It’s not push to talk but it’s just as easy once you get used to switching it, takes less than 3 seconds

#3

Unfortunately that isn’t even remotely a viable solution… It might work for when you have your set party and you wanna do some… dungeon of whatever together and for the duration of that, sure… But when you have to mute after every word (say… interacting with an audience, responding to their chat comments - going off the streaming example from above) you can’t seriously think that’s an option…
Also I don’t think I’m the only one who’d like to see a push to talk function… am I? :open_mouth:

1 Like
#4

Fairly unpopular opinion, yeah. A hot mic was a special point in the vrmmo. Nearly forcing players to be social. Honestly if that isn’t your cup of tea, by all means…mute yourself in game.

4 Likes
#5

Well, no… not really :slight_smile: If you have the option of muting yourself then how is that ‘forcing you to be social’ or a special point? No it’s not… it’s simply a lacking feature…
And I have no problem with the hot mic option, as long as there is a push to talk option as well and I can choose freely, like in literally every voice communication software used in gaming or other games with voice (they can’t ALL be wrong, can they? or do you also hate discord?)

So nobody here argued to have the hot mic removed…, that can stay so you can relax, in fact this is a suggestion to add something and not to remove anything and imo it would allow all the other people with loud background noise / other conversations going on… who want to be considerate of other people to be social as well, which is better than having them muted.

TLDR version: Idk if that was your intention, but your comment comes across to me as rude and dismissive for no reason. This is a suggestion to add something without removing anything existing so if you don’t like it… relax, it won’t affect you in any way if it gets implemented. But if you don’t have anything productive to contribute to the discussion, then please, just don’t… Thank you!

#6

I have to agree with this. I wish there was a push to talk function. I have a lot of noise in the background and wish we had that option. Although we use discord for all our raids and dungeons so it doesn’t matter anymore. I still have to use external headphones to mute myself.

3 Likes
#7

I don’t mind the open mic but I wish there was a “push to mute” option. Occasionally when I sneeze , cough, or someone comes in to ask a question from the real world and the orbus community doesn’t need to hear it or the answer. Maybe holding your hand over your mouth to mute?

2 Likes
#8

I don’t think gestures are the way to go for something like this. You don’t want it accidentally triggering and you don’t want it not triggering when you need it… It also needs to be instant and not interfering with combat / etc… (for example if you’re drawing a bow with a hunter, you should be able to still use it). Plus it might feel weird IRL if you have to hold your hand over your mouth when talking to somebody in the room.

Imo, they could take one of the inventory buttons from one of the controllers (I’m talking Oculus atm, but I’m sure it’s similar for the vive) and dedicate that as the mic button, then in the menu they could include various options, like the one you mentioned as well to define what the button does…
There could be a simple radio-button selection below the mic enable / disable slider like:
Mic button function:
o - Hold to talk
o - Hold to mute
o - Long press (2s) to toggle mic on / off

How’s that sound? Imo like this, there would probably be an option for everyone.

Also… I understand that long time fans of the game scream NO instantly as someone suggests any changes, but keep in mind this is not just a quality of life function for the player, it’s an actual marketing investment and you all want the game to thrive I assume…
We’re living in a day and age where your game either makes it or breaks it depending on how popular streamers / content creators react to it. Obviously VR is different atm, since it’s a much smaller community… but you don’t know for how long… So continuing based on the first example I mentioned above… Currently a streamer has to choose between interacting with their audience and ignoring players in the game that try to chat with them… or interacting with the players and ignoring their audience… or the third option of being a douche-bag and annoying players around them by constantly talking to their audience with an open mic.

So I don’t know why would anyone have an issue with such a small change… the benefits vastly outweigh any sort of potential drawback and it’s nothing major in terms of effort needed to implement. Seems like a no-brainer, no?

Cheers…

#9

Not a fan of your immediate dismissal of other players opinions as ‘rude’ and ‘not contributing to the discussion’ because they disagree with you in this thread, but I would agree a push to talk would be nice. The players with loud open mics while afk in highsteppe can get pretty annoying and having to mute players over it doesn’t seem like a friendly option.

2 Likes
#10

I didn’t dismiss the opinion, I answered that part properly, but the line “if that isn’t your cup of tea, by all means…mute yourself in game” still comes across as hostile and rude no matter how many times I read it… It’s pretty much the equivalent of an “If you don’t like it, get lost!” type of forum bullying that you can see on pretty much every early access game forum… so I’m not sure exactly who was dismissing whose opinion, but then again language barriers could exist so I might have taken it the wrong way, in which case I apologize.
Hope that clears it up…

#11

Good idea. It’s not sooo uncommon that people use ptt, some steam players I know do it already, and they usually assign it to an unused controller button. Only oculus players are having a hard time.
Inbuilt optional ptt for all would certainly be an improvement, and I wished it was default (opt-out) even. Could easily be part of the tutorial which button to press if you wanna talk.
Sometimes I am really fleeing from Highsteppe asap because background/afk noises, dishes, constant coughing, screaming kids and what not are torturing my ears (and i’m very sure some new players don’t even know all that is heard by everyone…).

1 Like
#12

This is something that has come up many times in the past.

We could certainly figure out a way to add a PTT feature, but I think the real question is, would it be the default?

If it’s not the default, then most of the things brought up in this thread aren’t going to be fixed anyway most likely. Most of the people with open mics who you hear with other stuff going on in the background probably are newer players just starting out in the game who don’t even realize they’re doing it. My guess is by the time you get 10+ hours in, you realize how important voice chat is to the game and you learn to either have a quieter environment or to mute yourself when it’s loud so as not to disturb others.

If it is the default, then my concern is we’re going to lose a lot of the “magic” of the game in that right now everything about the game is designed to encourage you to socialize and interact with others. Talking to someone else in the game goes from “the natural thing to do” or something you might do without even realizing it (e.g. saying “Oh cool I found this neat thing!” without even thinking about saying it to someone else, then someone overhears you and says, “What did you get?”), to something you have to make a very conscious decision to do. Now you’re asking yourself, “Am I really contributing something meaningful and useful and crossing the bar that warrants using my PTT button?”

So yeah, that’s the reason that it’s not in the game. And again, perhaps we should consider adding it but just not making the default, but I don’t think that’s actually going to address most of the concerns people have mentioned here, but it might make it nice for some players who are conscious of their loud backgrounds who feel like they can’t easily participate now due to the cumbersome-ness of muting self currently in the game.

With all of that said, perhaps a better solution is to address it for example with something that detects you are constantly broadcasting for several minutes and say something like “Do you have a loud background? We’ll turn on PTT/mute you” or something like that.

4 Likes
#13

No, I don’t think it needs to be the default option and I somewhat agree with you that talking to people should be just natural. However I still think the option needs to be there for the people who specifically look for it.
When I first installed the game during the gold rush I went to the menu and specifically looked for it, since I knew as a veteran gamer that most other games have a PTT option… yet couldn’t find the option.
Now that I bought the game and I’m playing again I forgot how it used to be and I went to the menu again to look for the option, couldn’t find it again, which lead me to create this thread and I think there are plenty of people like that…

Just think about it… if steam users go through all the hassle to use third party apps to solve the push to talk “problem” (a quick google search will confirm that), that means there is a demand for the functionality, but no, I don’t think you need to make it default. However on a side note I think you do need to put in a more aggressive warning (can’t remember exactly how it’s presented as I didn’t create a new character now) so people know they’re mic is on even if they skip the tutorial otherwise there are concerns for privacy. That could also cut back on the number of hot mic new players broadcasting weird noises who aren’t aware.

Otherwise I don’t think this is something that should be a ‘remedy’ to any specific “problem”, so the reason for adding it shouldn’t be to “fix” anything, but more like to have the option available for the people who prefer that, especially since it’s pretty much industry-standard now to have it, but yes, make them look for it in the menu and keep the hot mic as default imo.

If you are looking for a specific reason though, the streaming one above is a good one to consider. You may have guessed it based on my previous posts, but I am a streamer and I’m currently missing out on all the social interactions of the game if I choose to stream Orbus, simply because I have to have my mic disabled in-game, since I’m constantly using it to talk to my audience, which I don’t want to bother random players around me with.
But having it disabled means I cannot respond to a player near me who asks me a simple question, even though I’d love to do that… If I had push to talk I could constantly talk to my audience and when I wanted to address a player next to me I could simply hold the push to talk button and talk. That’s an example of something that cannot be done with either the hot mic or the mute after constant broadcasting you suggested above. I’m sure thought, that many people who are not new, but still cannot create a quiet environment, like the ones who posted above, would appreciate the functionality and wouldn’t mind crawling through the menu and finding it even if it’s not the default option.

So yea, to sum it up, I still think the best option would be to add it secretly to the menu with the layout suggested above aka:

  • designating one of the inventory buttons as the mic button (maybe the left one on the oculus controller, since that has the game menu button, which doubles as an inventory button so technically the left controller has 2 buttons atm that do the exact same thing)
  • using a similar layout to the one presented above for the menu: mic button function: push to talk / mute while holding / toggle mic on-off (with a delay of 2-4s that would toggle the slider currently in the menu and this being the default option so the default hot mic doesn’t change for new players)…

Thanks for reading! I really hope this gets implemented.

Edit: I forgot to mention that in case you’re concerned that suddenly everyone would use push to talk and ruin the social aspect of the game, I can bring up echo arena as an example, where the hot mic is the default option, but the menu does have a push to talk option, yet most players simply prefer the open mic, unless they have a specific reason to change. And in case they do have a reason it’s still better to give them push to talk than having them constantly muted.

#14

I really don’t want a push to talk button as I believe it will stop the “magic” with lots of small talks disappearing but I don’t see an issue with a push to mute button. Wouldn’t that solve the issues as well as leave the magic left. That is basically what we got now it just makes it way faster to implement if you need to talk to the real world or if you stream.

#16

Trust me there is no reason for PTT in this game, you need good communication and having to hold an extra button makes you need to do another thing making it harder to focus on dodging and dps/tanking/healing.

1 Like
#17

Rather then a push to talk there needs to be a function that is similar to discord and is usable in game. That or a actual in game cooperation between the two.

Just my wish :wink:

#18

Most which are in guilds are already talking via discord, not ingame. What you hear as ‘small talk’ will not disappear because people are choosing to unmute themselves, actively, if someone is not in discord.

A default PTT would rather make background noises disappear which are literally covering Highsteppe sometimes, while new players might not even know they are broadcasting their dog, dishes, kids, ambulance passing by etc. right into the game which also breaks immersion for those who care about that.

2 Likes
#19

I think the biggest reason push-to-talk should be a non-default option (which hasn’t really been discussed in this thread) is people who want to stream. Streamers need to be able to interact with their audience and other players in the game, and right now that is difficult, especially during combat. While I don’t personally care much for streams, it is a great way to draw attention to a game. By having PTT as a non-default setting, it opens up the option for players in niche situations like streamers or those who can’t control the amount of background noise, without taking much away from the “magic” of forced open mic, since the people who go into the menus to set PTT would likely just have their mic off otherwise.

#20

Instead of PTT, I’d like to see a non-settings option of muting oneself. RecRoom has a nice idea, you can mute your own mic by raising your hand to your mouth, this would be quick and easy (unless in combat) way to stop broadcasting for when your dogs hear the monster in the closet, or you need to cough, etc. It would be more awesome if that motion could somehow translate over to discord chat, but I’m pretty sure that’s completely outside of what the Orbus Devs can do.

1 Like
#21

Hi dae! :smiley: I’ve missed you! I hope you have been well.