Voice chat is crucial for teamwork. Proper voice chat is therefore crucial for a team oriented game where you will often be playing with random people whom don't share access to something like a teamspeak or ventrilo server for communication.

In recent times, I've noticed a horrible trend of games being released via Steam that rely on Steam's VOIP for in-game voice chat. I couldn't tell you why, but unless it's a Valve game, they seem to have extremely poor implementations. Very recent games I've seen this problem in include Monday Night Combat and Homefront. The volume of incoming chat is usually inaudible and/or muffled. Often times push-to-talk doesn't work - only voice activated. Furthermore, most developers don't seem to put much effort in to offering a visual indicator of when someone is talking or who is talking.

It would be nice to get some official word on these aspects of VOIP for the game for PC users. I think it's a very legitimate concern. Though, I suppose I could just wait a week and find out from friends.

In the "BRINK uses Steamworks" announcement there was this line: "VOIP (in addition to the already existing in-game chat)".

I'm kinda assuming that the "already-existing" chat was referring to text chat. Does that mean that the in-game voice is going to be Steam's VOIP? The only problem I've ever had with Steamworks is that in every game I've played (that isn't TF2 or L4D, for whatever reason) that's used Steam for VOIP (Monday Night Combat is the most recent example I can think of), it was barely audible, when it worked at all, and from what I've heard it seems to be a relatively widespread problem.
I'll admit that I don't know how their recent codec change has altered that at all, so it might be a non-issue, I was just hoping to have some light shed on that.

I'd assume that the standard Voice-Chat for BRINK is based off the idTech Engine VoIP.

Threads merged

I'm pretty sure the "existing in-game chat" will be the autopvssyr where your character lets the team know when you select an objective on the objective wheel, and when you're actively performing the objective, tells Medics when you need help, lets Soldiers know you're running low on ammo, etc.

As for the rest, I don't know. But I thought it was worth mentioning that that game does communication for you to a great extent.

I understand voice chat helps communication between players, but to be honest, I hate the people who get on and start cussing everybody out when they die, or the people who tell everybody what to do 'cause they thing they're the boss, or the little twelve year olds who think they can say whatever they want to their elders just because they are playing a video game. I've had many bad experiences with voice chat...pardon my french but apparently all the [censored]S happen to play Borderlands...although I did find some really cool people on that game...ANYWAYS I just don't want to see the voice chat on Brink be a total headache all day every day.

You won't have to worry... by default voice chat is only enabled for your friends and fire team member if you are in one. You can turn on voice chat for everyone if you want to so you don't nessiscary need to listen to the 12 year olds or people who swear worse than sailors.

I am still slightly confused as to how the console chat works... mainly due to the fact that you are all using terminology that i am unfamiliar with. like fire team members... all i want to know, is if i hop on a random game with ps3, will i be able to communicate with my mic to my fellow team mates? and can i keep the chat to where it is ONLY my team mates who hear me speaking?

Fireteams are groups of 2-8 players. You can invite people on your side to a fireteam at any time during a match. By default, voice chat only functions for people on your friends list or those in your fireteam. I think this is a pretty reasonable measure against voice chat abusers.

From what I heard I thought you could only have fireteams of 2, and I know for certain that if your team loses and you switch severs the match making will find a sever open with 2 slots for you and your partner.

Ok so my fire team is just another word for my squad (to put it into BFBC2 terms) right?

Exactly.

Edit: Ramziez, I thought it was only for 2 players as well, but Napalm corrected me by pointing to the Brink Bible.

awesome, thanks for the clarification. Being such a BFBC2 head, this game seems to be taking a lot from it, at least as far as i can tell. the ideas may have been around longer and what have you, but that was my first true introduction to this kind of game. i see a lot of TF2 (for obvious reasons) in there too

Thanks for the thread merge. I promised I searched, I just got ninja'd!

Anyhow, if there is idTech engine VOIP that has worked well in the past then that largely mollifies my potential issue. I also played a bit of MNC last night and the in-game voice was MUCH better than the last time that I played, so perhaps my fears were unfounded from the start!

Thanks Rev, let's just hope your hunch is accurate

That's a relief thanks :celebration: