Remove the headset icon on comms

[MickyD47]

Pretty much what the title says. I cant think of any useful purpose for this other than to metagame voice changers. How would you even tell the difference between different headsets anyway? Do they sound different? One part of it to possibly keep is an icon to tell if the comms message came from a headset, radio or intercom purely so you can tell just where the sound is coming from.

[davidchan]

 

I've always taken the headset/comms icon as just characters picking up on the quality or sound of the transmission.

 

Station Intercoms and Bounced Radios would sound like someone on speaker. They have powerful mics that pick up sound in a wide area as they aren't meant to be held up to a person's mouth for optimal use.

 

Regular headsets might have a bit more grainy sound as the icon and sprite graphic shows them off to the side of a person's mouth over their cheek, where as bowmans clearly wrap around to sit under a person's chin to get the best quality.

 

Borg/AIs use voice synthesizers so never quite sound like a person and rarely, if ever, have background noise of the station.

 

I do agree that the change was a minor nerf to the voice changer, but it would be better to give the voice changer the ability to mimic certain kinds of headsets or intercoms so the well thought out agent could better hide the deception.

 

[Shadeykins]

The icons are also a surefire way to metagame someone who's stolen a security headset or something of the sorts, simply because they talked on comms.

[dadols]

 

Yup, never liked this "Feature".

 

+1

 

[pazneria12]

+1

[flimflamm]

 

I like it. It tells you something about who is talking.

 

pAIs use bounced radios for instance... Helps me tell them apart from IPC people...

 

If players were smart they would unscrew the encryption keys from stolen headsets and load them into their own. It's not really meta in that sense, it's just advanced IC knowledge...

 

[davidchan]

 

Yah but that partial immunity to flashbangs though.

 

I mean, it's like people feel it shouldn't be possible to notice someone's illicit gains or theft.

 

[Rurik]

I see the bonus, and the drawback mutually. Ima stay neutral on this one

[shazbot194]

 

I've always taken the headset/comms icon as just characters picking up on the quality or sound of the transmission.

 

Station Intercoms and Bounced Radios would sound like someone on speaker. They have powerful mics that pick up sound in a wide area as they aren't meant to be held up to a person's mouth for optimal use.

 

Regular headsets might have a bit more grainy sound as the icon and sprite graphic shows them off to the side of a person's mouth over their cheek, where as bowmans clearly wrap around to sit under a person's chin to get the best quality.

 

Borg/AIs use voice synthesizers so never quite sound like a person and rarely, if ever, have background noise of the station.

 

I do agree that the change was a minor nerf to the voice changer, but it would be better to give the voice changer the ability to mimic certain kinds of headsets or intercoms so the well thought out agent could better hide the deception.

 

What if instead of mimicing different headsets, we just have two-three icons. Any kind of station bounce radio and wall radio would give off the hand radio icon. All headsets would give off a generic headset icon, and all borgs could give off either borg head, binary, or no icon. This would more or less bring the voice changer back to its original state without removing a feature.

 

[MickyD47]

That sounds reasonable Shaz. Id just like avoid situations where people can tell what a headset is down to a department I can see how AIs and intercoms might sound different but how does a cargo headset differ to a service headset for example? Something that would lessen this issue is having some sort of proper IC reason as to how you can tell the difference.

[Fox McCloud]

 

It's very meta-y; smart players have been using this for literally years to be able to tell if someone has a stolen headset (admittedly, there's easy ways around that, in some circumstances), but yeah, you shouldn't be able to tell which headset a person has by looking at an icon.

 

a security headset having extra ear protection would have zero impacts on the quality of the radio sound.;

 

Text size/font choice is a much better way of expressing qualities in sound than an icon.

 

[davidchan]

 

That sounds reasonable Shaz. Id just like avoid situations where people can tell what a headset is down to a department I can see how AIs and intercoms might sound different but how does a cargo headset differ to a service headset for example? Something that would lessen this issue is having some sort of proper IC reason as to how you can tell the difference.

 

Far as I can tell you can't tell what headset a person is using just by the chatlog, only the type (Intercom, Bounced Radio, Headset, Bowman, Borg/AI) so I'm not sure what you're going at. The major thing people are complaining about here is that the voicechanger can't let you imitate the Captain/Blueshield/HoS/Warden/Sec Officers or Detective unless you get your hands on a bowman first, or vice versa if you have a bowman and try to imitate anyone else it'll stick out a bit that you're using a method they can't.

 

[Shadeykins]

 

That sounds reasonable Shaz. Id just like avoid situations where people can tell what a headset is down to a department I can see how AIs and intercoms might sound different but how does a cargo headset differ to a service headset for example? Something that would lessen this issue is having some sort of proper IC reason as to how you can tell the difference.

 

Far as I can tell you can't tell what headset a person is using just by the chatlog, only the type (Intercom, Bounced Radio, Headset, Bowman, Borg/AI) so I'm not sure what you're going at. The major thing people are complaining about here is that the voicechanger can't let you imitate the Captain/Blueshield/HoS/Warden/Sec Officers or Detective unless you get your hands on a bowman first, or vice versa if you have a bowman and try to imitate anyone else it'll stick out a bit that you're using a method they can't.

 

Also if you stole a bowman and talk over comms whilst unseen, everyone knows.

 

[Chaznoodles]

 

-1

 

If you want to avoid people knowing what you're using, just remove and replace encryption keys.

 

[necaladun]

I'd say have a icon for headset, SBR, intercom, or AI. That's all you should really be able to tell from sound.

[MickyD47]

 

That sounds reasonable Shaz. Id just like avoid situations where people can tell what a headset is down to a department I can see how AIs and intercoms might sound different but how does a cargo headset differ to a service headset for example? Something that would lessen this issue is having some sort of proper IC reason as to how you can tell the difference.

 

Far as I can tell you can't tell what headset a person is using just by the chatlog, only the type (Intercom, Bounced Radio, Headset, Bowman, Borg/AI) so I'm not sure what you're going at. The major thing people are complaining about here is that the voicechanger can't let you imitate the Captain/Blueshield/HoS/Warden/Sec Officers or Detective unless you get your hands on a bowman first, or vice versa if you have a bowman and try to imitate anyone else it'll stick out a bit that you're using a method they can't.

 

You can see what headset they are using down to the department. The icon is quite small but you can see the different colour for each department.

-1

 

If you want to avoid people knowing what you're using, just remove and replace encryption keys.

 

Replacing encryption keys wouldn't help at all though. Lets say you are an engineer and try to impersonate someone from science people will see you are using a engineering headset right away and know you are using a voice changer right away. The only thing changing the keys would do is hide the fact you might have stolen a particular headset but if you talked on a channel using a headset that usually wouldnt have access to that channel the fact you stole that headset would be revealed anyway.