We need some kind of faction wide communication that, amongst other things, helps to unify a faction, give it a goal, something to fight for "together". Currently, it's everyone for himself (whether in squad, platoon, or solo), and I mean that literally. A faction wide communication doesn't only help to coordinate, all the people who read it, even if they can't write there, feel like they are a part of something. It doesn't matter whether they follow orders or not, but : the very fact that there are no orders is (yet again) something that shifts players away from objective based gaming, from teamwork, from coordination, and yes thats what the game was always about : STRATEGY, combined arms, TACTICAL COMBAT. You've turned it into a FPS except it has an open world, and I hate you for that, it's what makes you incompetent. Work towards supporting a game that is SO MUCH MORE than simple PEW PEW and GRIND MY KD or GET CERTS. Do SOMETHING ffs, anything, stop moving away from this and start moving back to the core of the game. The orders chat is a small, yet significant way of doing this.
I seriously doubt orders chat had any effect on the playerbase in the ways you're describing, but I do agree we need it back. Stupid to remove it, no point, no reason.
doing what? It's not a huge thing, I agree with you, I said it myself, but it's the kind of thing that makes a difference, if only in giving a feeling to the players, just a feeling, the feeling that they are all in the same faction and that they share the same (or similar) goals. Faction wide communication (even if read only for most players) won't achieve this, but it helps achieve this.
Tentatively - I agree - command chat was useful, if only to attempt to corral the masses in a direction that seems sensible (to the person saying it at least). Command chat was incredibly useful for notifying other squads what you were doing and potentially coordinate attacks. So why 'tentatively' ? Because some people just barked out commands and then complained incessantly at 'noobs' not following orders coupled with toxic abuse (anyone on Cobalt for any period of time will identify with this statement !)
Not to mention insults, some of which were pretty extreme in some cases. This lead me to just putting them on ignore because their 'orders' were far more disturbing than they ever were helpful.
Had its use in getting to the players who for one or the other reason weren't in a squad. It also circumvented squad leaders who were less than willing to pay attention to the leaders chat (or actively ignored intel and requests).
yeah, because EVERYONE could read it, even if people didn't follow the orders, it gave a sense to everyone that they were part of something. And that would tend to motivate them to participate in the "faction effort". There's no way in hell that when SOE was developping the game, they were thinking : "let's just make an open world in which random fights would happen for no reason and people would fight no other reason than to grind or increase their stats, an entire continent of mindless, pointless, senseless fighting. I remember when I started playing I already thought it was mindless because it never ended, I mean it literally never ends, so what's the point? This game was intended to have a lot more depth, a lot more meaning than "click join combat" and "work on your KD". They used to say : "it IS NOT a FPS"..
