Why do players get to decide if others hear text-to-speech?

  • FatBeard1353
    Ship Mate

    Why is it that other players can make a setting for text-to-speech that affects all other players? Last night I was playing and had a bit of a fight with another boat. They were using the speech radials for text chat, and one of them was being read to me by the text-to-speech system...in Mandarin. What the heck is the point?? Why should another player be able to dictate the accessibility behavior of other clients like this, up to and including the language used by their client? It's annoying and completely useless. If a player wants to be able to hear text-to-speech on their machine, then fine. That's just basic accessibility. But why I should I be hearing it too? And why in the blazes would it rely on the localization of their client and not mine when it's directly dictating the behavior of my game? I see no way to turn this off in my settings.

    I cannot for the life of me come up with a reason for this "feature" to exist.

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  • TH3xR34P3R
    Master
    Insider
    Founder

    I use the TTS option so that what I type is not missed mainly, it comes in handy for those situations since I only use voice when in discord with the current crew I have at the time, for those that abuse it when you have the evidence for it then you can use the reporting system to do it via https://support.seaofthieves.com/hc/en-gb/requests/new

    As for disabling it you may have to do it windows wide if the option in game does not work else the only other option is to use the mute other crew option in the game to see if that helps.

  • FatBeard1353
    Ship Mate

    @mintharp184509 But that's pretty absurd. I don't want to mute other crews entirely, and why should I have to selectively mute another player for a "feature" that has no reason to exist in the first place? This should've been removed a long time ago. Someone else's TTS settings should NOT affect the behavior of anyone else's client.

  • Nitroxien
    Captain
    Insider

    @fatbeard1353 No difference between them mic spamming and TTS spamming though.

  • CallMeBackdrafT
    Vanguard
    Insider
    Founder

    @fatbeard1353 i think this is more of a microsoft/xbox issue.

    The settings are tied to a players settings in the microsoft app.

    This then uses the users audio output to broadcast the audio.

    And in other ways it can also be usefull, with players not having a mic it making it audible what they type/quick chat.

    The only annoying thing is that the xbox app settings dont take into regard any sort of translation

  • FatBeard1353
    Ship Mate

    @callmebackdraft And apparently there's no way to override it. Each client should be able to choose whether or not they want TTS speech enabled. If you want to hear what other players are typing, then that's fine. You should be able to set an all-or-nothing flag, or perhaps even set it on a per-player basis too if you really want to get granular. But it should only go as far as your own game experience. Someone else's settings should not override that. Either Rare or the Xbox division need to pull their heads out.

  • FatBeard1353
    Ship Mate

    @mintharp184509 It's not even about spam, although that can certainly be annoying. It's about someone's client overriding the behavior of other clients in ways that it shouldn't, which is bizarre. It's even more bizarre that it doesn't take the receiving client's localization into account.

  • CallMeBackdrafT
    Vanguard
    Insider
    Founder

    @fatbeard1353 it is not overriding any client settings.... that is the point.

    and like i said, this is on microsoft not Rare nor the SoT team.

    The microsoft/xbox app uses the computers Audio settings to broadcast the audio, the broadcaster sends this as regular mic/audio input and this gets broadcast to all players in the game

    since it works like that there is no way for SoT/Rare to split that up and your client just receives audio as it was from another player talking into his mic

  • FatBeard1353
    Ship Mate

    @callmebackdraft Ah, gotcha. Seems like an odd and bandwidth-wasting way to do things when it could simply be TTS'ed client-side.

  • Tenriak
    Marauder
    Insider

    @fatbeard1353 said in Why do players get to decide if others hear text-to-speech?:

    Why is it that other players can make a setting for text-to-speech that affects all other players? Last night I was playing and had a bit of a fight with another boat. They were using the speech radials for text chat, and one of them was being read to me by the text-to-speech system...in Mandarin. What the heck is the point?? Why should another player be able to dictate the accessibility behavior of other clients like this, up to and including the language used by their client? It's annoying and completely useless. If a player wants to be able to hear text-to-speech on their machine, then fine. That's just basic accessibility. But why I should I be hearing it too? And why in the blazes would it rely on the localization of their client and not mine when it's directly dictating the behavior of my game? I see no way to turn this off in my settings.

    I cannot for the life of me come up with a reason for this "feature" to exist.

    Its an accessibility thing. Some players can't talk due to physical injuries... etc. It just lets them talk even if you don't have the setting turned on.

    However, I agree it can be annoying. As, more often, its used to spam in a language you don't understand in attempt to frustrate you.

    I usually quickly block them.

  • DanBeardLuff
    Lord
    Insider
    Founder

    @fatbeard1353 said in Why do players get to decide if others hear text-to-speech?:

    @mintharp184509 But that's pretty absurd. I don't want to mute other crews entirely, and why should I have to selectively mute another player for a "feature" that has no reason to exist in the first place? This should've been removed a long time ago. Someone else's TTS settings should NOT affect the behavior of anyone else's client.

    So you still want to hear other players, but you just don't want to hear what other players have to say if it's read to you by a robot voice? Why?

  • FatBeard1353
    Ship Mate

    @danbeardluff No, I want to hear other mics, but I don't want the chat read out to me by a robot voice. I can see the chat just fine. I find it annoying and unnecessary.

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