In-game chat OMG!

I join squads. I join platoons. Literally 90% of the time (really, I'm not joking, it's truly 90% of the time) I leave them simply because of the horrendousness of the in-game chat. I can't stand to listen to someone's voice that is WAY TOO DISTORTED. Conversations back in 1969 with people on the moon sounded clearer and were more easily understood.

I'm not entirely sure that this is a failing of the in-game chat. It may be that the users are less than knowledgeable when it comes to setting up their mic and using it. I say this because I've been in some groups where the audio communication was fine. The overwhelming majority are not. It's the same issue with proximity chat.

...and yes...Teamspeak, Mumble and the like are great alternatives but not used when you are just looking for some quick squad action.

I'm not sure what the solution is. Maybe there needs to be a tutorial on mic setup? Maybe I should get off my *** and make one? Hmmm.

I'm curious if you feel the same as me or if you just live with it as a necessary annoyance.

I stumbled upon a fantastic outfit pretty early in beta, so I can't say I have your troubles very often.

From my experiences with the in-game comms, there are a couple of things that can cause massive distortion:

1. Having your incoming volume cranked to an extreme.
2. Having your outgoing volume cranked to an extreme.
3. Having the master volume near an extreme.

In general, I find it's better to keep all of the settings near the defaults, and carefully bump up/down volumes on individuals who come across too quiet or too loud.
Or, to use TS3.

Hi pr0gr4m,

I used to think the in-game VOIP quality was terrible. However, I found that simply turning them down made a lot of that horrid distortion go away. If you are having the same issue, maybe that could help? Some voices will be quiet, that could be their problem though. That sucks, but it's way better than everyone speaking with a horrible bad quality.

Let me know if that helps, okay?

Sturmwaffles

The solution is to stop overvalueing voice comms and look more at the non verbal tools to communicate. A good SL keeps his waypoint updated and types out the plan during downtime. In a PUG that's about as good as you should expect.