I posted this in Battlefield 1 general chat but thought it actually might be better set for this Discussion group seeing I don’t fully understand the scope of console networking issues but I do for PC.
Why is Local Voice Chat not a thing in Battlefield games and particularly in Battlefield 1?
Being able to talk to some one on your team is so important. A “Team” full of people you can’t talk to is not really a team is it?
Why is there not a (Squad Chat) and a (Local Team Chat)?
Many examples encountered EVERY PLAY SESSION:
I see an enemy just ran into a room. I did not have time to spot him. I started the reload so I can go in there and finish him. Meanwhile, during my reload a friendly is about to run into the room. I can do nothing.
I spawn in a plane not piloted by my squad and I am 2 feet away form the pilot. We have someone on our six. I should able to just say that but, I can do nothing.
I spawn in a tank driven by someone not on my squad. I need him to stop just for a moment so I can take out this guy running at us with anti-tank grenades. I can do nothing to prevent it.
Randomly 6 of us, from different squads, next to each other tightly, pushing on a capture point. I see enemy out of corner of my eye who knifes me before I can spot him. Five team mates then die because I could not just say quickly “guy on the left”.
Being able to communicate in any sport is how solid team work is built. It doesn’t matter if it is American football, Soccer, volleyball, rugby, etc communication is crucial to form a plans and update eachother. Being able to form a plan on the fly or warning someone of immediate danger is so crucial in a game like this.
In a WWI game, The lack of this feature becomes even more frustratingly apparent.
I am a third year computer science major and have already implemented a proximity voice chat in a project for school. It is not difficult at all. The indie dev team of the game Squad implemented this in that game and it works great and is actually one of the reasons that game is such team oriented game.
I could easily create a class, using the visitor pattern and some simple linear algebra, to check the proximity of near by team mates ONLY when one uses the local voice chat. The class would only needing only the positional data of 32 team members. It is really not complicated.
If I alone could do this, If the small dev team of Offworld Industries could do this, then I know the many brilliant programmers at Dice could do this.
TeamSpeak is not an answer to this. This should be an in game feature. Especially a game that is leans so much toward graphical and audible immersion.
