It’s become a bit of a standard ever since, well, Half-Life really. But there have been rumblings about the value of voice chat towards the overall quality of a game. Does it really make for a better experience if players have the potential to vocally abuse one another?
Heroes of the Storm was one title to draw a line in the sand. Star Wars: Battlefront is another.
In a response to a question from Travis Porter on Twitter, DICE said those playing Battlefront on PC could “choose your favourite third party software to communicate with friends”.
@RaiderGaming15 You can choose your favorite third party software to communicate with friends on PC
— EAStarWars (@EAStarWars) October 13, 2015
The response on social media — well, you can probably guess what it was like. Swift like The Force, shall we say.
@EAStarWars @RaiderGaming15 Thanks for giving me a reason to cancel my PC preorder. This poor effort will quickly go the way of Titanfall.
— MaX (@MaXGTS911) October 13, 2015
Others were perplexed. Shooters, like control schemes, have developed certain standards.
@EAStarWars @RaiderGaming15 It’s a team-based shooter. Why can’t I talk to the rest of my team? That makes no sense whatsoever..
— detrimental (@itzDETRiMENTAL) October 13, 2015
Mind you, not all of the complaints made total sense.
@EAStarWars well thanks for giving me another reason why not to get it. No custom servers so now I cant join a server team speak
— raul (@BucsAddict08) October 13, 2015
This gamer was particularly dismissive of Dota — presumably Dota 2 — which is weird, considering the legacy of its developer.
@EAStarWars seriously no VOIP? this is 2015 you know that right? even DotA has VOIP
— Blayne Hasmed Tee (@realBlayne) October 13, 2015
DICE will be making “full Beta feedback details” on what changes and fixes they will make as a result of the beta feedback. It’ll be interesting to see what changes they make to Walker Assault — particularly the way spawns are decided — but adding in-game voice chat for PC won’t be one of them.
It’s worth noting that party voice chat will work as per normal for those playing on PS4 or Xbox One, something DICE made a note of confirming. And the studio also tweeted that progression will not carry over from the beta to the full game, as the unlock and reward mechanics had not been fully finalised.
Comments
26 responses to “Star Wars: Battlefront Doesn’t Support Voice Chat On PC”
DICE are doing you a fucking FAVOUR with this…
Now I don’t have to mute the screaming dickheads and can just get onto Ventrillo or Teamspeak with friends like I would have anyway.
Exactly! The one thing I always hated about shooters was all the 11 year olds screaming all the curse words they know. Anyway, the game still has text chat, which is more than enough. But really, I didn’t see any need for chat in general during the Beta.
Absolutely!
Agreed! I only played the beta for a few hours, but I enjoyed the no irritating kids squawking. Plus if you listen, your team mates and the voiceover do yell out tactical information anyway.
So instead of being able to just click mute in game, you would rather them remove the whole feature?
Ive always turned off viop since games lost dedicated servers. At least with dedi servers you had a regular community and moderators to kick/ban the losers.
Hrmm, this actually makes me more interested in this game now. The voice “chat” in most multiplayer games really turns me off it, knowing that no-one will have it by default, and that there’s no expectation for you to be listening to that is good in my book.
Totally happy with this decision. I see it as supporting casual play over ridiculous cut-throat stat wh*res.
I’m happy with this, I don’t want my immersive Star Wars experience ruined by screaming kids/teenagers. Skype with friends is where it’s at.
Don’t worry, the cards and pick ups mechanic will break that for you!
is there voice chat software that will put a filter over the voice to make it sound like star wars radios? That’d be neat
BF3 and 4 had ‘built in’ VoIP but hardly anyone used it, and when someone did, it was the poorest quality ever
Battlefield 3 did not have built in voip. Which pissed off everyone on the PC. There was a shitty way you could do voip in battlelog with people on your friends list, but no one used it because you would use teamspeak or skype with friends anyway.
Thats what I meant by ‘built in’: it was still provided by DICE and for BF3 and 4, just terrible implemented. And the battlelog version DID work across teams and fire squad because I remember seeing the little speaker icon whenever someone talked ingame, esp from a squad member.
And I think peoples preferences for their own third party VoIP in the end was because DICE didnt have the battlelog system in place at the start
No one really uses voice chat for the right reasons on public servers anyway. It’s always a couple of dick heads spamming the mic with shitty weed jokes and terrible singing.
The only time built in VoIP for me worked well -both in execution, quality and use- was Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, and I havent had the same awesome experience of calling in for support and getting it since 🙁
Aye, there is always some twonk with a mic on and using speakers instead of headphones so you get mad feedback. This is a good move by DICE
The big reason this is a good move for PC is because on PC you can very quickly type out chat that would take you half a fucking hour on the consoles. Voice chat’s kind of a necessary evil there, but on PC? Exorcising that particular devil is a move that isn’t going to diminish anyone’s experience.
If you want to voice-chat with friends, use Ventrilo or TeamSpeak or Mumble or Steam’s voice-chat (which is actually surprisingly good).
Small problem: you can’t type while dead in Battlefront, only when you’re alive.
So?
Ohhh, so the point of difference is that people want to be able to communicate without losing control of their character, and they’re too into it to huddle in a corner praying for safety like we had to in the old days, while walking uphill 20miles in snow to school, both ways?
Oh. Well, in that case… lol scrubs lern2type 120wpm or gtfo
Anyone that played the Beta knows the game is incredibly casual and basic. I find it annoying, but then 20 people on the maps on each team in chat seems like it’d be annoying. If there were squads, then no voice chat would be much worse. Instead it has the broken partner system which is really just to speed you getting back into the action. Not for team play.
I played with mates and it wasn’t a good game for that. We were just playing in different pairs and not together as a whole. Which sucked as we are used to playing CSGO or Battlefield.
Battlefront seems to fall into the mix of solo FPS game and then objective based, but lacking any design for people to work as a team. How are people meant to co-ordinate if they aren’t in squads. It’s just hoping from the randomness that people end up working together, when in fact it just becomes people ignoring the objectives.
They really should have made a Star Wars Battlefield game, as this game will not have a lasting appeal. Once the fun of it being Star Wars wears off, there’ll be little to play. It’s really simplistic and these lack of squad, the making objective based modes with out any way for a team to co-ordinate will kill it.
Following Blizzard’s lead of “Our voice-chat attempts sucked, and everyone already has Vent.”
Fair enough.
If you are using in-game chat on pc, you are doing it wrong.
But yes. I really can’t stand uncontrolled voice chat. All those attention seekers.
I am totally against strangers crowding my voice space. If i am going in as a team, it will be my friends and friends of my friends period.
The only people who will complain about this are the very loudmouth children who this decision stamps out. I love it.
This is amazing. I wasn’t sure I’d buy this, but now I’m going to just to support their stance on voice chat.