The voice chat in Overwatch causes some problems. Why doesn’t Blizzard form the team together?
Why there is no team chat requirement for voice in Overwatch
No matter how good one may be as a lone wolf in Overwatch, victories are usually only achieved through coordinated attacks from the whole team. For every player to know when and how to react, communication is particularly important for the hero shooter. One would think that it is standard for teammates to all be in the same voice chat – after all, Overwatch has integrated a voice chat.
The reality looks different: players within a group are in the same chat channel. If 2 groups of 3 players are formed into a team in a quick match, both groups have their own voice chat. Jeff Kaplan has now spoken on this topic in the official game forum.
“We implemented this in the game a while ago, [that you automatically join a team chat,] but let me explain why we changed it. Usually, a group is formed in the main menu. When you are in the main menu, there is no team chat because you are not in a game yet. The first problem was that it felt super weird to be in a group but not be able to talk to each other.
We changed it so that you automatically have a group chat as soon as you join a group. Then we changed it so that you automatically switch to the team chat as soon as a game starts. Forcing players from one voice chat channel to another did not go over well, and no amount of warnings in the interface could offset that.”
Those who want to must manually switch to the whole team’s chat channel at the beginning of each round – however, Overwatch only insufficiently informs players about this. A few additional explanations here wouldn’t hurt.
Mein-MMO thinks: Although you can certainly understand the reasoning behind this setting, it seems somewhat strange for the PC version of the game, especially since most group players here are anyway connected via TeamSpeak, Skype, or Discord. However, I am quite glad about this setting, as I don’t even want to know how often I would have had to hear insults that already annoy me in written form.
For more on Blizzard’s hero shooter, you can find on our Overwatch game page. Besides that, our guide section for Overwatch is also worth a look.
