For clarity on the performance hits:
Under the system as it is, this would indeed cause performance issues, this is because every message said must iterate over all objects in an area to determine what heard what using distance checks.
An additional check from the perspective of the listener would mean then checking every objects listen score to manipulate that distance allowed.
There is a system on the PGCC that I still need to get some test areas for that uses persistent vfx pulses to replace this setup with on enter scripts to fire message content out.
This unfortunately does mean that the distance checks is removed from the equation so won't be doable once that is finished, in exchange the game only needs to handle the objects that were inside the AoE.
If I think up a solution that permits both, I will look into it.
My immediate thought is letting each 15 hard ranks in listen = 0.5 meter more.
Create an AoE that is the base size + 0.5 and base size + 1m.
When pulsed:
If in base size, dispatch message for whisper, tell other AoE to skip.
If failed above for any reason but is in 0.5m increase aoe and was not told to skip, check for skill req. If valid, dispatch message and tell others to skip.
If failed above for any reason but is in 1m increase AoE and was not told to skip, check for skill req, dispatch message.
Essentially draw three overlapping circles where we prioritise the innermost circle for checks since it ideally will be the first one that we pulse in delays of 0.0, 0.01, 0.02 as we get further out.
This sort of setup I will need to test extensively, as I still do for the PGCC one with walls, doors and terrain differences.
