Noob question but voicechat ?

[Gamington]

Does this game have built in voice chat or do people use teamspeak and vent ? I really havent played much online and my desk is small and my hotas is huge and I dont really wanna have to type if I can avoid it ? And if no voicechat built in any plans on doing that.

[-SF-Disarray]

Voice chat is not built into the game. Many people use various programs to talk to people. TS and Discord seem the most popular but I wouldn't be surprised to find that others are in use.

[peregrine7]

Reasonable amount of people on the Wings Of Liberty teamspeak & Official BOS teamspeak, IL2AU Discord for Aussie hours.
 

No integrated voice chat, would be really nice if that were put in the game at some point.

[Gamington]

Wish it had integrated voice chat for teams it would be so much easier to communicate than having to take my hands and reach over my controls to type. Teamspeak is fine but everyone on both sides can hear what you say and there is problably multiple channels and all that.

[-SF-Disarray]

I find that having smaller groups in dedicated comms channels to be more helpful than team wide voice. The amount of traffic produced by just two people coordinating in combat can be significant. While this traffic is pertinent to those two people, if I'm 60 Km away and not involved in that fight it is at best nonsense to me. At worst this traffic will interfere with coordination I'm trying to do with those I'm working with. Text might not be the quickest way to get information across it is unobtrusive and with prowords and abbreviation text can get needed info across the lines fairly quickly. You can even have people you are talking with pass messages for you if it is a real problem, supposing that those people are willing to do so.

 

If you are looking for someone to fly with PM me. I always like having someone on my wing that isn't trying to shoot it off. I use discord mostly though.

Edited July 29, 2018 by Disarray

[Flitgun]

Yep, above exactly. Even two pairs on the same TS or Discord can be a nightmare, if they're both busy. Sometimes single pilots give a monologue commentary of their solo fight, like we care lol.

 

Unless, perhaps, there were separate squadron channels... or location channels within the game that one could enter. That would be interesting and would be a game changer for those who have been reluctant/unable to use voice comms so far. It's not really a problem though, with the readily available 3rd party programs available, to be fair.

 

Anyway, there isn't, so TS or Discord it is, and they work just fine - albeit somewhat fragmented for the players.

[RedKestrel]

To be honest, I don't miss it much in multiplayer. The chat function works pretty good for coordination, surprisingly enough. 

And lets be clear: any voice chat would be compared to Discord and TeamSpeak, and a lot of the people who use either of those are likely to keep using it because they're used to it, not to mention all the extra features. Those services focus entirely on the voice chat angle - for the team to make something as smooth, good and bug free as that would be a lot of work I'm sure they'd prefer elsewhere. In-game voice chat would simply be reinventing the wheel, and wouldn't solve the fragmentation issue because people will want to keep using the service they're used to.

The other thing to consider is the voice chat would have to be handled by the multiplayer server rather than the TS or Discord server...yet more load for servers to deal with.