Although there is the classic tale of trolls playing music down their microphone, shouting profanities and generally ruining the experience for everyone who doesn't reach for a mute button, online voice chat in multiplayer shooters is pretty much a given. How else can you coordinate with your team unless you're using some external software?
Well you'll have to in Star Wars: Battlefront, as the game will not come with voice chat functionality. This was confirmed by the official EA Star Wars twitter account yesterday, when it was asked whether there would be a way to chat with other players on your team:
"You can choose your favorite third party software to communicate with friends on PC" was the official response.
While this might seem irritating, it does at least mean - as PCG points out - that the in-game soundscape won't be ruined by someone's idle chatter and you won't be forced to listen to the expletives of 12 year olds when you kill them, but it may make the experience less competitive for those that don't have friends to play with.
It's also not an uncommon trend in gaming at the moment to have restricted communication in games. While titles of the past decade may have pushed for better and better voice chat, slower paced titles like Hearthstone have removed the functionality altogether and many games, like Heroes of the Storm have it turned off by default.
That helps cut back on in-game toxicity it seems.
Where do you stand on the debate?
