IGN: Splatoon's lack of voice chat is "cheap and lazy"

I hate it really bad. I don't know if its cheap and lazy as much as it is misguided developer design.

It's misguided and cheap and lazy. There is no excuse they or anyone else can come up with that makes the lack of a feature that's been standard for more than a decade acceptable in any way.

Worried about being berated by strangers? Turn the feature off for yourself.
Worried about children? Parental controls and watch what your kids are doing.
Not interested in the feature? Don't use it.
 
Why I hate high level FFXIV in one post.
"Use mumble for fucks sake!"
Im playing a ps4 what the hell are you guys even saying to me.

I also don't see how that would work with my audio setup. For Wii U games, I plug my headphones into the controller for game audio. If I was using Skype, how would I combine the Skype audio and game audio so I get both through my headphones? That's shit's automatically mixed on PS4.
 
I don't care because I never chat with randoms and always go for the mute when there is someone talking. It's ALWAYS a racist kid or someone who is talking to their friends/family and not anyone in the game. OH! Or a baby crying and screaming.

It sucks that there is no voice chat for friends though but doesn't effect me. Must suck for the people who want to call kids faggot and nigger though.

Why I hate high level FFXIV in one post.
"Use mumble for fucks sake!"
Im playing a ps4 what the hell are you guys even saying to me.

Yeah but Mumble FFXIVGAF are a bunch of elitist jerks so it's ok.
 
After 10 years of xbox live I can honestly say having no voice chat is one of Splatoon's better features.
not a joke, fuck shooter communities
 
I mean yeah voice chat should absolutely be supported. At the very least for friend matches.

But the lack of voice chat will have no effect on the actual game or longevity unless you need to talk to people for enjoyment.

There really aren't any group strategies that could be applied to Splatoon. In fact in a lot of cases it's going to simply go to an area away from your teammates to cover with ink.

As for cheap I mean Nintendo doesn't charge for online play at all. This decision was part of someone's design philosophy not because of money.

I disagree, there would definitely be group strategies in Splatoon if there was voice chat to support them. I think that's why the lack of voice chat is so worrying-with no real way to communicate and develop strategies among teams, will the game hit a skill plateau early on? It's a real possibility that could make the game grow boring really quickly.
 
I don't care because I never chat with randoms and always go for the mute when there is someone talking. It's ALWAYS a racist kid or someone who is talking to their friends/family and not anyone in the game. OH! Or a baby crying and screaming.

It sucks that there is no voice chat for friends though but doesn't effect me. Must suck for the people who want to call kids faggot and nigger though.

I don't think I've heard that kind of talk on an online game in years. I don't play Call of Duty or Halo, though. Maybe that's why.
 
Well, if Voice Chat does actually give an advantage, anyone that doesn't use it would suffer for it and those that do use it might not learn to play in the way that I mentioned.
What? Of course people that don't communicate won't win. Thats the whole point of wanting to communicate with others. to strategize and play as optimally as possible. Also voice chat won't take away from looking around you lmao.
 
I also don't see how that would work with my audio setup. For Wii U games, I plug my headphones into the controller for game audio. If I was using Skype, how would I combine the Skype audio and game audio so I get both through my headphones? That's shit's automatically mixed on PS4.
Which is why I hate it

I resort to-
Ps4 controller
Keyboard on my lap
Laptop on my left with mumble and a headset plugged into my pc, no tv volume/out of tv
 
This is the single biggest issue with console gaming, in my opinion. It seems that, despite the stereotype of PC gamers being social outliers, consoles are becoming less and less social. Destiny not having voice chat was absurd. The lack of lobbies for games, lack of voice chat by default with an option to disable, and general lack of creating truly social experiences for players is the single worst trend in gaming in the last five years. Everything that Halo and Gears of War did right seems to have been forgotten as far as console shooters go.

Now, I know that there are always going to be immature people calling each other names, but the mute feature was more than good enough to stop that. I haven't made any friends in a console game, with the exception of finding them on GAF first, in years as opposed to meeting interesting people in Halo all the time. It's something I miss and deciding force that drove me to getting a better PC.
 
Who chats on a console anymore? Serious question. I never do with randoms, and I don't play with friends a ton and even when I do we don't really chat.

This too.

Well I do when playing MK and MCC and so have the dozens of other players I've played with. It's fun to talk with randoms and possibly make friends with online.

It's too bad that splatoon devs and nintendo fail to see this
 
What? Of course people that don't communicate won't win. Thats the whole point of wanting to communicate with others to strategize and play as optimally as possible. Also voice chat won't take away from looking around you lmao.
If only you could look at the map and see what needs to be inked over.

It's more friendly for everyone with no voice chat plus it adds more to the chaos
 
After 10 years of xbox live I can honestly say having no voice chat is one of Splatoon's better features.
not a joke, fuck shooter communities

Don't throw all communities in the same bag, I've only had good experiences in Killing Floor 1 & 2. Talking with your team has lots of benefits in those games and the vast majority of people use the voice chat appropriately.
 
What? Of course people that don't communicate won't win. Thats the whole point of wanting to communicate with others to strategize and play as optimally as possible. Also voice chat won't take away from looking around you lmao.
And that's another valid reason it's not necessary. Makes those that don't want to VC suffer.
I'm not too sure if that can be taken to heart. I think that's people that connected online to the eshop/people that buy from the eshop and there's a tiny fee if you are under a certain age so most people just lie saying they are older.
 
The only game genres that don't really need voice chat compared to others are 1V1 styled multiplayer games. Fighting games, strategy games, RTSes. Even then talking to a friend during a friendly match or practice can be really beneficial.
 
With the shallow 3 minute turf matches exclusively with randoms that will be shuffled between rounds, I don't see that it matters much. Once you are able to team with friends, then it will be missed.
 
I think the IGN article is a little over dramatic. However, I do agree that not giving players the option to communicate and coordinate is a poor design choice for a team based game.
 
I'm rather concerned about the (not sure if confirmed) lack of match customization options. Different playlists that provide longer variants of Turf War or different team setups (3 or 4 teams or straight up free for all, anyone?) would already add so much to the game.
 
Who chats on a console anymore? Serious question. I never do with randoms, and I don't play with friends a ton and even when I do we don't really chat.

This too.

Don't get me wrong, I think chat should be in Splatoon, but your question is valid and sadly quite true.

Will we ever reach 2007 levels of online console gaming? :(

Sure there were the teabaggers, and the idiots, but I'd take that plus the fun new people you'd meet over the isolated parties of today.
 
Shit happens so fucking fast in Splatoon that having voice chat isn't even needed. You should know what to do just by your surroundings and/or map.

I remember playing Titanfall (pc) on release and no one ever fucking said a word. It's hilarious how many people complain about voice chat compared to the amount of people that actually use voice chat for legit reasons.
 
It can be opt-in to listen and to talk.

Sure, but I don't listen to other people when they give out orders or directions. When I talk on online games, they don't listen either. Hell, I don't even play Counter Strike anymore with the amount of vitriol that comes out of my own team's mics. Voice chat is an option in those games too and you know what happens? The team doesn't help you or they purposely try to sabotage you if they feel you are the cause for the losing.

The devs are right in this case to not have voice chat at all.

As social psychology has shown as well, opt-in systems don't work like people think they will work. The culture that initiatives are implemented in dictate the way those initiatives are used. The culture in competitive/FPS is toxic. Hell, the gaming community as a whole can be pretty toxic. The only people that will use voice chat are the ones you don't want to use voice chat.
 
I can understand being annoyed there's no party chat, but honestly, out of all the games I've played over the years I've never had a good worthwhile chatting experience with randoms. It's always either nonesense smalltalk at best and the most racial homophobic shit you can imagine at worst. It's for the best global chat isn't in there.
 
I can understand being annoyed there's no party chat, but honestly, out of all the games I've played over the years I've never had a good worthwhile chatting experience with randoms. It's always either nonesense smalltalk at best and the most racial homophobic shit you can imagine at worst. It's for the best global chat isn't in there.

Nintendo should be doing everything they can to mitigate the Wii U's lack of OS-level party chat. Friends-only voice chat in Splatoon would probably be acceptable for the vast majority of players.
 
i cant believe people are defending no voice chat in 2015 when its the standard in any online multiplayer game thats even halfway worth a damn
 
In terms of long term playability I completely agree. One of the notable features of the trial for me was how much it felt like I was playing against/with bots.
 
I don't think I've ever been so annoyed regarding a topic on GAF as I have with the repeated Splatoon voice chat shit.

Why the fuck would you defend that? If you don't use it, cool. Doesn't matter. That shit can even be defaulted off and hidden in a menu to enable so you don't ever need to deal with it or act like it exists. Zero impact. Yet a choice remains for people who want to talk. Magic!

Voice ALWAYS HELPS, you directly and instantly can coordinate. That's to say nothing of actually teaming up with friends and having someone to talk to and laugh with/talk to in the post match while waiting for another game to start. Human interaction enabled by a connected online experience that you see everywhere. Instead I was in silence refreshing gaf to post stuff because the entire thing is so isolated and sterile feeling. Sure, the game is fast paced, but there's still strategy involved.

Like...fuck. It's an option. Who cares if you don't use it, restricting people who want it is stupid. I don't use gyro, guess they should remove it and give nobody an option because I like to bash my head against brick walls as a hobby.
 
Sometimes the tea-bagging grade-schoolers are on your team, Fran.

It literally takes about a second or two of your time to mute them in the vast majority of games. And their prevalence is massively overrated. They're largely confined to CoD and to a lesser extent Battlefield and even there they're not exactly the majority. Even in Halo I find them extremely rare now-a-days. I honestly can't remember the last online game I've played where I encountered foul-mouthed grade-schoolers. I feel like most people who use that excuse either never actually play online shooters and are just going off of comments online, or had it happen like three times ever and now swear its every game they play.

And honestly? Ironically enough this is the exact kind of game that wouldn't be overloaded with cussing tweens. It would be too "kiddy shit" for them.
 
Nintendo saw the lovely community that is Call of Duty and wanted none of that nonsense. Shame that they gimped their entire community to get rid of the worst element.
 
Still you will be able to see who's doing what on the map.

let's say, in a hypothetical situation that is not entirely uncommon in multiplayer shooters, you a playing with a total shithead who has no idea where to go on the map

let's say he doesn't even know that there is a map, and his performance is having a huge detrimental effect on the team's success

what do you do to make him aware of the map and get his shit together

And yet, I hear them in PvZ: GW.

is that even on a nintendo console
 
There are a lot of things I'd call the lack of voice chat in Splatoon (Backwards, dumb, lacking, etc) but "cheap" and "lazy" aren't among them
 
let's say, in a hypothetical situation that is not entirely uncommon in multiplayer shooters, you a playing with a total shithead who has no idea where to go on the map

let's say he doesn't even know that there is a map, and his performance is having a huge detriment effect on the team's success

what do you do to make him aware of the map and get his shit together

Wait until the 3 minute match is over and then he is the other team's problem.
 
I don't think I've ever been so annoyed regarding a topic on GAF as I have with the repeated Splatoon voice chat shit.

Why the fuck would you defend that? If you don't use it, cool. Doesn't matter. That shit can even be defaulted off and hidden in a menu to enable so you don't ever need to deal with it or act like it exists. Zero impact. Yet a choice remains for people who want to talk. Magic!

Voice ALWAYS HELPS, you directly and instantly can coordinate. That's to say nothing of actually teaming up with friends and having someone to talk to and laugh with/talk to in the post match while waiting for another game to start. Human interaction enabled by a connected online experience that you see everywhere. Instead I was in silence refreshing gaf to post stuff because the entire thing is so isolated and sterile feeling. Sure, the game is fast paced, but there's still strategy involved.

Like...fuck. It's an option. Who cares if you don't use it, restricting people who want it is stupid. I don't use gyro, guess they should remove it and give nobody an option because I like to bash my head against brick walls as a hobby.

Agreed with all of this.

And I say that as someone who usually mutes everybody online.
 
Nintendo prioritizing potential naughty words in front of children (who SAY those words for the most part) over paying customers is heinous.

Default it OFF and set it to a parental control automatically.
 
let's say, in a hypothetical situation that is not entirely uncommon in multiplayer shooters, you a playing with a total shithead who has no idea where to go on the map

let's say he doesn't even know that there is a map, and his performance is having a huge detriment effect on the team's success

what do you do to make him aware of the map and get his shit together

Or, in a situation I saw during the demo, what if some fuckers are spawn-camping and you want to take them out, but can't cause you're the only one going up against them?

Is it hard to believe that Nintendo wants to have a fun community for everyone.

what community? Community implies communication, but there's no communication in Splatoon.
 
Definitely disappointing that there is no voice chat. Do we think there is a good chance they could implement it in the future? It's kinda weird enough that me and my bro are just gonna plan to use PSN party chat while we play Splatoon lol

Agreed with all of this.

And I say that as someone who usually mutes everybody online.

lol I do the same, but it still doesn't negate all the great things you get from voicechat. Just don't see how someone can think it's a good thing not to have it. Many team based shooters really need that voice chat in order to truly shine. Imagine playing Comp in CS:GO where noone speaks to anyone (well there is already matches like this rofl)


Still doesn't hurt my excitement for the game though since I'm more looking forward to the SP portion lol
 
No voice chat is a joke. Nintendo is so out of touch. There were dozens of times over the 3 hours this weekend that I wanted to give some quick instructions or info to my teammates and I couldn't.

These are the types of things that make the game's community dwindle over time. But what does Nintendo care, they got your 60$ and your 3 amiibos, lol.
 
Gross.

One of my favorite things about Splatoon is the lack of voice chat. I enjoy the casual game and the fact that I'd need to mute the rager telling me how he fucked my mother isn't a selling point.
 
I don't like the lack of voice since it's kinda breaking apart a social aspect of games but then again on PS4 I never use in game chat, I use a party chat system which Nintendo SERIOUSLY NEEDS TO ADD TO THEIR NEXT SYSTEM.
Usually clears up the shitty people and can be hella fun.
 
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