I wrote:Online play is great for most modern 3D games (i.e. apart from fighting games and anything else that requires near-zero lag) and in many respects superior to split-screen or even LAN play, since each player gets his own screen and you can't peek in the other guy's screen to see what he's doing; but the voice chat function could be vastly improved. Right now it's working exactly the same way as split-screen/LAN works, and it's as if the other person(s) are in the same room with you. But developers have to understand the difference between player and avatar. When you are in the options screen or a lobby it's great to be able to talk to everyone to set shit up, but in the fucking game I am supposed to be Chuck Greene or Elliot Salem not Alex Kierkegaard. Why can I hear my partner talking in my fucking ear even when he's IN ANOTHER FUCKING BUILDING? Even when he's in the same room as me there should be realistic voice modelling -- if he's at the other end of a vast hall he should speak up for me to hear him. Go in the next room and you'd have to shout your lungs off to be heard at all -- and there's no question of the other player being able to make out what you are actually saying. Go down and if I've no idea where you are you are just going to have to sit there and quietly bleed to death, end of story. This would encourage players to stick together and move more methodically, and would make items such as radios, batteries, etc. as important as health packs. Of course there are the suit-wearing gimps a la Halo or Crysis, who presumably have radio equipment built-in, and that's fine if a dev wants to go that way -- but then he'd be restricted in the kind of setting he could employ, and that's how it should be.
If you hear of any games that work like this let me know here.
