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What’s better: heals harming the undead, or voice chat?Vote now!
Vote now!
Last time, you decided thatcool spellcasting gestures are better than seizing control of a rolling boulder trap. I assume you have very cool gestures to conjure a magical meteor or other big rock on command. Maybe a dramatic dragging-down (or up) with two tensed arms and clawed hands? Very cool. As we continue our scientific process, this week I ask you to choose between two things which combine help and hurt. What’s better: heals harming the undead, or voice chat?
Heals harming the undead
Healers might be vital to your party’s success but they rarely get to feel like mighty spellcasters, or even as if they’re part of the fight. There they are, lurking in the back, tending to your wounds. It can feel nice to care for a party, absolutely, but it’s even better when you get an opportunity to turn that magic hostile. You’ve just entered a necropolis, and your sparkly little heals are now shotguns ready to blow your undead foes' heads clean off. Well, as clean as can be expected when they explode into showers of bone dust or rotting guts.
Where should you start with Final Fantasy 7?Speaking of Final Fantasy, here’s Katharine and Liam discussing where to start with the tangled subseries that is FF7Watch on YouTube
Where should you start with Final Fantasy 7?
Voice chat
Some of the finest plays I have ever seen in team multiplayer games would not have been possible over text chat alone. Without the speed, precision, and alarm of spoken language, we would have lost objectives, fallen to ambushes, blown our own ambushes, failed to break through strong defenses, not pulled clutch saves, and missed fleeting opportunities. So many careful blows and grand strategies would simply not have worked, so many amazing moments would never have happened.
The problem is, voice chat has also enabled some of the worst and most annoying behaviour I’ve encountered in multiplayer games. Screaming, spamming, blaring blown-out music, racism, sexism, ranting, raging, blaming, bickering, eating, distracting, arguing with their mum because they don’t want to go to bed, whining, sleazing, telling deeply unfunny jokes, bullying… every manner of dickbaggery you can imagine. Inviting all this into our ears is a terrible mistake. Now when I install a multiplayer game, I instantly turn off voice chat, no matter how useful and fun it might potentially be. I do all my chatting externally over Discord with trusted people these days. But is it right to blame voice chat for conveying the true nature of the Internet?
But which is better?
I haven’t enabled voice chat in a game in yonks, and might never again. And yet. And yet! And yet… Ah, what do you think? It’s your votes that count.
