So, it seems that Star Citizen will contain both, a facial tracking feature and VoIP feature. The facial tracking feature will work via web cam, and to be honest what I’ve seen so far is that it looks pretty accurate. Since I am not a tester at the moment, I can’t tell you if the feature can be disabled, but if you don’t own a web cam, you don’t have to be worried. If you do and if you are concerned about your privacy, you can at least plug out your camera. But so far many people are happy that a face tracking feature will be included in the game, which is surprising in times where companies are known for exploiting customers data. But younger people just don’t care about these issues anymore.
But it’s even more surprising that quite a lot of commentators say that these features will increase the immersion. Generally this sounds true, but just recently a guy on YouTube called Robbaz has shown how the face tracking feature could be exploited by less serious players. I tell you right away, it’s not that I can’t laugh about it. He actually used the face tracking on a funny way. But on the other side it’s pretty sad to see that this is one of the first ideas how to promote this type of feature.
So far Star Citizens looked like a very serious science fiction game and when I tested the game in the past, the whole game world was immersive by design, even without face tracking. Do you think Star Citizens would be still as serious or immersive if you would constantly run into persons that abuse the face tracking feature to have fun, I mean on a comical way? Imagine running into a kid in puberty that has both VoIP and facial tracking enabled. Imagine you’re immersed and you run into someone making strange faces and screaming into your ears. It’ll be everything else but not an immersive game. As said, I am not tester at the moment, but one of the first things that came to my mind when I saw the video was “Can this feature be disabled so that I don’t have to run into trolls that abuse the feature?”. I hope it can be disabled, because so far Star Citizen looked very interesting, but this feature would be a game breaker if it can’t be disabled.
I don’t own a web cam and I generally wouldn’t be interested to make use of this feature anyway. But I am also not interested to see kids or grown up people crossing my path in a game and playing the retarded clown on my screen, because I am sure this gets old quickly. But I wouldn’t wonder if that’s all it will be used for. Remember how the in-game chat of most multiplayer games look like. Now imagine giving these clowns a facial tracking feature. It’s probably not the game you will enjoy unless you can disable the feature of having retarded guys popping up on your screen and screaming stupid stuff into your ears. Talking about VoIP, I don’t need that feature either because we have our own Teamspeak server, that’s where I can have fun and awesome chats with friends. What is your opinion about these features?
Diary of Dennis 
In the past I have used a mic, I have used several different kinds of communication, but frankly I prefer text to voice. Voice can be terribly distracting, and even text, if used endlessly. Most times in a game i will turn off all voice, all text. Unless Im involved with other players directly I see no point in it. And too often in international games you can find yourself immersed in a group of Latvians, or French, or a mixed bag where no one knows what theyre doing. It is also way too easy for leaders to abuse the privilege that goes with voip or whatever passes for communication.
Guess Im turning into a loner in my old age. =)
I don’t have much issues with voice chat, but I prefer to have that in my own circles. Our friendcircle has their own Teamspeak server and I am adminthere too. We sometimes invited strangers to increase our group, but if a person did not fit into our gaming circle because he/she caused much drama (trolling, causing disputes and stuff like that), we told them and banned them from the server. On that way we created a very healthy gaming circle over the decades. When I log into the server in the evening, I can expect to have a fun time with friends, and to have nice chats. That would be less likely if I would use integrated VoIP of certain games. We always play with voice enabled if we play together, I am used to do both playing and having conversations with friends. We also use this for strategic reasons… it’s amazing how you can dominate games, for example in World of Warcraft PvP when you work together with your friends. We barely lose a match, because we communicate strategies when we play. I once used the integrated VoIP of the game called Rust… I do agree, I couldn’t understand anyone because most people I met were Chinese or Russian players. 😀
In Star Citizen, I am sure facial tracking and VoIP will be abused by trolls. That will then kill the immersion for those who seriosly want to dive into a science fiction universe.
Level up! Sounds like stage one of a full immersion world as in Ready, Player one…
I had to google this, but now I want to see Ready Player One 😀
The book is worth reading… Full of 80s reference which I enjoyed