Raiding and Teamspeak.

Something I'm curious about, not to start an argument either.

Do you guys run statics without things like TS or at least with members that for some reason or another cannot take advantage of the benefit of it? The reason I ask is because me and my fiance recently left our raid group that was on A2S for progression and while there was a myriad of reasons one of them was because she has difficulty hearing due to being half-deaf. We cleared A1S without using TS and I would argue using it would not have made much of a difference in the long run.

So where do you stand on the VOIP stigmas?

It does help keep people organized to hear people call out, to know which healer is raising who so you dont burn MP. It just makes things much easier for the group. I know the one I was in didn't require you to speak but you did have to be in to hear them

VoIP is very useful in the game for coordination. I have Mumble running off of a Raspberry Pi for my free company (and it's been regular content so far, no raids yet.) Most of us are also on PS4 so we don't really have a free hand to readily text chat. Voice is the most efficient way to communicate, but as you note - it doesn't work that way for everyone. It's still important to accomodate the rest of your team based upon individual needs.

i cleared every ex primal and all the coil turns in 2.0 without any voice chat o.o/
(final coil in a complete voice chat free static)

i hate voice chat and will never use it

I use voice chat a lot, mostly outside of raiding tbh (bants and such)

But we do use it for raids, helps keep us coordinated and we enjoy talking while raiding, makes it more fun.

Cleared all coils (when recent); A1S; A2S and all EX primals (when recent) without any voice programme. My static started using TS lately it can be nice help to call out the mechanics in A3S but idk been last phase before without and often it is more used for joking and distraction ;)
Can be nice help to coordinate a "I don' have swift up" or when the SMN takes over the raise or to improvise if things go wrong but if team works and has same progress curve doesn't make a difference that much imho but can shorten progression surely.

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Originally Posted by CrimsonThunder

Something I'm curious about, not to start an argument either.

Do you guys run statics without things like TS or at least with members that for some reason or another cannot take advantage of the benefit of it? The reason I ask is because me and my fiance recently left our raid group that was on A2S for progression and while there was a myriad of reasons one of them was because she has difficulty hearing due to being half-deaf. We cleared A1S without using TS and I would argue using it would not have made much of a difference in the long run.

So where do you stand on the VOIP stigmas?

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I stopped using it when raiding. I don't really need it either, in fact no one does. Just persistence and patience with yourself and your party members. Don't have that, you won't clear.

Not to mention the sheer amount of morons who talk crap about their fellow members. Most of these people being socially awkward and have no idea how to talk to people, just flat out d***s who make fun of anyone they're not familiar with, and then the typical elitist p****. Its just not worth it. Makes me a bit glad they didn't give us actual in-game chat, I'd be kicked out from the amount of 20yr old kids I traumatized for lack of respect for fellow players.

I don't use it for my friends either. You met me through chat, keep it that way. People to bias nowadays with voices. If your not clear voiced or sound intimidating they'll want nothing to do with you. Srry for little rant but yeah.

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Originally Posted by CrimsonThunder

So where do you stand on the VOIP stigmas?

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Question: What are the Stigmas of VOIP usage or lack there of?

I always just viewed it as a tool for communication.

Voice chat is vital, imo

The only time I would allow a static member to consistently not use TS would be if they had problems with their hearing, some times a members TS breaks and they go a raid without out it, thats fine but across progression as a whole a VOIP is a necessity.

Raided without it before, honestly not too bad. VOIP is mostly useful when something doesn't go according to plan and you need to adjust on the fly. Other than that, it's mostly call outs for things you should probably already be aware are coming, quicker strategy meetings, lewd jokes, and poking fun at each other.

IMO it's not essential, but it helps a lot, I mean a lot, specially for newly formed statics. If you are confident that you are good and have great synergy with your team, you don't need it. I used to play War of Emperium in Ragnarok Online without it, and it needed much more synergy than raids in high level of play, but I knew everyone in my guild for years, so I basically knew almost exactly how everyone would react to most situations.

I don't think VOIP is required or necessary. It can help for some stuff. But it's one of those things that's like, if you play without it, you'll never need it, if you played with it, you don't want to play without it. Using voice chat can help with call outs, bad situations, and general communication.


However, in the same sense, if you need a call out to know a mechanic is coming then you probably should pay better attention, if bad situations are happening then people should improve. Voice chat is a crutch, Call outs are a crutch. Do they make the game easier? Of course they do, but you could also just learn the fight to the extent you don't need someone to tell you what to do.

Situation : swiftcast is down. Now do you really need the healer to communicate to you that swiftcast is down? Or did you just not notice the person who's dead has been dead for longer than 10 seconds?

In many ways Voice chat is useful. In many ways it can dampen your raid awareness to the point that you rely on Voice chat and believe you can not succeed without it.

In experienced groups voice chat just becomes casual small talk during raids, with the occasional "oh crap this thing happened".
Socially, typing and voice chat are about the same, though for some people voice chat is much easier and quicker to use than it is to type something out.

I will say it feels more fun to use voice chat while raiding. It's a stronger sense of synergy when you can talk on the fly about things and get responses quickly. However some people aren't able to respond even on voice chat, especially when they are heavily focusing on mechanics or not dying.

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Originally Posted by Judge_Xero

Question: What are the Stigmas of VOIP usage or lack there of?

I always just viewed it as a tool for communication.

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the stigma is you HAVE to use it. many FC chats are dead because the people are all in TS. often the people don't read the chat, don't answer in chat so without TS you have no chance to build some friendships or clear content with your FC. almost all raidgroups requiere TS and don't want any non-TS people, even random groups for ex primals and stuff want a full TS group sometimes.

if a FC says "TS optional, only for raid" it always ended this way, being alone because the "hardcore" players are always in the TS and only 2-3 other people are online besides them and they don't want / can't do any content...

it took me a whole while but i found a 100% non-TS FC. and back then also a non-TS raidgroup. TS optionl is: "we are in TS and don't care about you"

so this tool of communication leads easily to less communication if you don't want / can't use it

Depends on if you're willing to work without it.
One of our healers in my old static refused to talk on it, but he would set it up so he could hear orders /strat being called out. Sometimes, he wouldn't even do that, but it still ended up being fine. You just have to know your team if you don't want to use a voice chat.

Personally I don't really like voice chatting....it's like a phone to me and I hate phones, but I can see when and why they are useful.

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Originally Posted by AskaRay

Depends on if you're willing to work without it.

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it depends more on the other people if they are willing to work with a person without voice chat. most people are not.

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Originally Posted by Tint

it depends more on the other people if they are willing to work with a person without voice chat. most people are not.

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Which is why you choose who you associate with. There's quite a few players who raid without it. PF is your friend for sure, just filter out the jerks and you'll be fine. Also forum recruiting, that's ok too i guess :p

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Originally Posted by Tint

the stigma is you HAVE to use it.

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I was just curious because as a stigma it would indicate that people who don't use a VOIP are looked down upon. I had never heard of that before.

The only conflicting situations I've seen are where people are unable to handle mechanics and would benefit from having things called out over voice.

I don't think in that regard a player is being looked down upon for not using VOIP but rather because they lack skill.

VOIP > Skill is just never something I've witnessed.

Teamspeak just generally for a smoother run. Our FC has switched to discord however.
It is not needed just makes things easier

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Originally Posted by Judge_Xero

VOIP > Skill is just never something I've witnessed.

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Many believe that these two are one in the same, that surely how could anyone be a decent progression raider without using VOIP? This is where the issue comes from and it's more prominent in FFXIV because half the community is playing on a console, not a PC.

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Originally Posted by Judge_Xero

VOIP > Skill is just never something I've witnessed.

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It does happen, not sure how frequent in FFXIV though. I remember when playing Wildstar, whenever using "duty finder" there, It was quite common to enter a dungeon with a premade group that would demand you to enter their TS/Mumble server or else they would kick you. I got kicked a few times for not wanting to enter TS with a bunch of randoms even though I could do the dungeons perfectly.

Here's the thing, voice chat is invaluable during progression, sometimes you have a lot to say, discussing strategies and such, there's been times where it's way easier to say it then to type it. Especially on Ps4 where typing is a pain.

I encountered this quite a bit in Lord of the Rings Online, which had optional voice chat built in as part of the game. There was a fair amount of pressure in some groups, to the point where I actually started wondering if it would be easier to just say that I was deaf rather than try to explain why I didn't want to use voice chat.

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Originally Posted by GleepWurp

I encountered this quite a bit in Lord of the Rings Online, which had optional voice chat built in as part of the game. There was a fair amount of pressure in some groups, to the point where I actually started wondering if it would be easier to just say that I was deaf rather than try to explain why I didn't want to use voice chat.

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I feel like doing that sometimes...but it won't fly with my friends, who know I use more sound than visual queues in the game as is :(

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Originally Posted by Zenji

Here's the thing, voice chat is invaluable during progression, sometimes you have a lot to say, discussing strategies and such, there's been times where it's way easier to say it then to type it. Especially on Ps4 where typing is a pain.

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Get a keyboard and plug it into your PS4, problem solved.

I feel that VOIPs are optional for a lot of things, but I think that the SE design team decided to make it essentially mandatory for high end raiding. For most raids it can be bypassed entirely as the fights are extremely scripted, but my static actually had to replace our non-voip member once we got to AS3. Having to coordinate stuns/silence on 4 mobs that spawned in random spots with the party members also randomly positioned when that happened simply could not be typed out on the fly, and we weren't going to give 1 person zero added responsibilities for the encounter just because they didn't want to voip. My group now does have 1 person who doesn't voip, but he lives in a house with another member, and the both of them are also on PS4 chat, so orders can be relayed in worst case scenarios.Because sometime things go wrong in progression or even farm fights, and telling the BLM to put Apoc on someone or Lethergy the Liquid gaol can be the difference between a wipe and a clear.

TL : DR I think the VOIP is optional, but endgame is designed with it in mind

It's a great tool, especially for progression. It's not *necessary*, but it does help a ton.

I will say this, if a group you join is using voice and you are not, you better not mess up a lot (especially on things often called-out, like who is stunning which add in A3S.)

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Originally Posted by CrimsonThunder

Many believe that these two are one in the same, that surely how could anyone be a decent progression raider without using VOIP? This is where the issue comes from and it's more prominent in FFXIV because half the community is playing on a console, not a PC.

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Well to that end, why would you want to be a decent progression Raider and not use voice chat due to the level of coordination required.
I'm not referring to those who do endgame while over geared with Echo. I mean those who progress while a given Raid is still relevant.

I see some from various "Healer DPS" threads here who also seem to disregard VOIP as a valuable tool and I get the same impression of "I should not have to do more than the bare minimum."

That mindset would create more toxicity than any VOIP service usage.

- Unfortunately in your case with your fiancé being hearing impaired and unable to properly benefit from the use of VOIP and from the sound of your initial post, this has caused issues within your raiding static, possibly due to handling mechanics I assume otherwise it would be a non-issue simply due to being unable to use it.

So really it shouldn't even be about whether people use VOIP for Raiding but rather, if someone is unable to use it, but still enjoys Raiding and doesn't want to be hindrance to their team, what are some possible ways to accomplish the same thing though visual communication.

Fortunately there are many options available in this game in that regard:
- Waymarks
- Marking
- Macro Commands to warn of Mechanics in Chat
- probably more if actually looking into it

But that is up to you as a Teammate and any static you join to work out, because if you are not able to communicate on the fly with VOIP then you should have initiated a battle plan ahead of time.

Someone already stated getting to know others on a whole nother level...

Well what if I don't want to? I can agree that having voice comms is 'easier' for communication since you just speak instead of typing but I still don't/won't qualify it as some necessity. You can play and progress in this game perfectly fine without it. Like many of us have been doing for years in MMO's..

It pains me that my FC's old leader was obvious in her refusal to use it (without ever explaining why), and worse others began to demonize it and cite it as the reason why our FC chat was so quiet at the start of Heavensward. It was quiet for entirely different reasons, and now that I'm running the FC, I see the good and bad reasons for that silence. Still, the damage was done, and voice chat has become some unseen boogeyman to far too many in our mostly-PS4 player FC.

On a personal note, when I got into raiding I was the ONLY one in my FC who raided well until Second Coil, and the static I'd been in used TS. . . I felt closer to them than I did my own FC at the time, and after we parted ways (the majority of them transfered servers), I created - not bought, created - a TS server for my FC that proceeded to go almost entirely unused. The same again with Discord, though it's seen just a little more use than the old TS one, due to the rise of a raiding static within the FC, and many other friends from other FCs whom I invite/am invited by.

I get that people have reasons not to use VOIPs. And I never enforced it at all. Still don't. But it's VERY useful, and for many different situations. Sometimes, often times in a battle/raid, you don't have time to type out what you could call out in less time. I mean, for that very reason, that's why these options exist. What I couldn't accept were the ones who criticized or blamed others for using it or the programs themselves, without ever giving it a chance, or arbitrarily taking a stance against it for whatever given reason. I'll be the mean person and say it - most of the critics within my FC are the ones who DON'T raid, or DON'T attempt content that requires more of them and a party beyond your typical roulettes, and generally are less proactive about progression and/or challenge. That's fine for them, and I'm not saying they're wrong to not try to run content that would make VOIPs a good resource, but I am saying it's wrong to treat it so secondhand without knowledge.

Metaphorically, it'd be like trying to have this same conversation via email or hand written correspondence, while complaining about why a forum like this isn't useful or necessary.

It's just good practice to be understanding and accommodating to members when it comes to what they need to clear or any difficulties they have, voice chat unrelated.

Whether or not an FC uses it (and how) is up to individual culture and management. I've been in FCs where if you didn't use it, good luck breaking into a clique. And another where the regulars tended to use it for themselves but would respond to me when I typed in FC chat, either using voice or typing themselves, just fine most of the time. Back then I was pretty shy about speaking.

Restricting FC members either way seems too dogmatic for a video game, like the FCs that say you can't say "shit" in chat in a game with everything from murder to prostitution--and not because someone's kids are usually listening, either.

Even after the essay I wrote above (lol, sorry for that), my stance is this:

As a leader, I've provided the resource for everyone, and everyone is free to use or not use it. Now, if perhaps a refusal to use it without understanding it leads to having difficulties, you'll find me rather unsympathetic, even if still helpful. In the case of Discord, I share lots of information from guides to videos, to even good information I get here on the forums. I make it available through any and all channels. If someone refuses those channels, then they'd better be ready to do a little leg work of their own to get it themselves.

VOIPs to me, are much like Parsers; useful, even if not always necessary. Mileage may vary from person to person, of course.

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Originally Posted by Kurogaea

I stopped using it when raiding. I don't really need it either, in fact no one does. Just persistence and patience with yourself and your party members. Don't have that, you won't clear.

Not to mention the sheer amount of morons who talk crap about their fellow members. Most of these people being socially awkward and have no idea how to talk to people, just flat out d***s who make fun of anyone they're not familiar with, and then the typical elitist p****. Its just not worth it. Makes me a bit glad they didn't give us actual in-game chat, I'd be kicked out from the amount of 20yr old kids I traumatized for lack of respect for fellow players.

I don't use it for my friends either. You met me through chat, keep it that way. People to bias nowadays with voices. If your not clear voiced or sound intimidating they'll want nothing to do with you. Srry for little rant but yeah.

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This right here

I just don't have much desire to sit in chat channels with people anymore. I was part of a TS group for about 2 years played with the folks everyday. Floating in nullsec for hours just chatting on the buddy buddy shit..

One disagreement and slip of a racial slur later and I no longer feel the need to be in any voip service like that or for that matter getting to know people anymore than I need to in game.

Honestly, the last time I have use TeamSpeak for Raid was when Second Coil released. I'm usually good at learning from my own mistakes after a few mishaps. However, this changes due to the different groups I run with. Group A may do it this way while Group B does it that way.

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Originally Posted by PArcher

It's a great tool, especially for progression. It's not *necessary*, but it does help a ton.

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I agree. Some people find it more useful than others. I find it invaluable not only for making callouts for raid mechanics (yes people should be paying attention but we're all human, and I can't count the number of mechanics that have been saved from a screwup because of a callout) but for discussing strategy. Not only that, but there's the social factor. I'm kind of a selectively social person, I suppose. I'm in voice chat almost all the time with people in my FC and static, but don't tend to go around to other chats too much unless it's for a raid or something like teaching content to someone. Explaining complex mechanics can be hard on the hands.

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I will say this, if a group you join is using voice and you are not, you better not mess up a lot (especially on things often called-out, like who is stunning which add in A3S.)

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So much this. If you refuse to get into voice chat for whatever reason, you'd best be on your toes because the party already has a convenient excuse to ditch you if you aren't performing at 100%. I can't tell you how many times we've pugged one person for my static and we get someone that refuses to get into voice chat, insisting they don't need to because they know what they're doing. Some of them even get semi-insulted at the offer. Then they proceed to miss vital mechanics that we were actually calling out.

We offer the voice chat info when people join the party for whatever, whether it be for farming ex primals or for Savage. For easy content it's more like, "Hey, wanna come derp off with us while we farm?" whereas for Savage it's more for tactics.

Personally as I play with a Bard, it helps me play songs accordingly people can tell when and how long I need to sing without having to me keep staring at the tp and mp bars. Though one idiot in my static says do your job and do it yourself... why use voicechat then? Voicechat helps a lot and you don't want to speak, just listening is also fine.

I don't ever use mic on MMO's, I haven't in all my 20 years of gaming across them and I've never seen a benefit from people using it, most of them are still just as clueless with it as they are without it. I feel like a lot of what is being said over mic can be seen easily for yourself if you're paying attention, but so many people never do. I think voicechat is much more suited to games that aren't just mechanics you can learn if you try hard enough, games like FPS multiplayers and Mobas.

That being said I don't give two butts if people use it or don't use it. :)

I haven't used it and I've cleared all the content in 2.0 when I actually cared about clearing stuff. I've seen good and bad for it, but mostly bad, been kicked out of raids and FCs for not using, been accepted into them without it. It's a matter of perspective.

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Originally Posted by Cynric

Situation : swiftcast is down. Now do you really need the healer to communicate to you that swiftcast is down? Or did you just not notice the person who's dead has been dead for longer than 10 seconds?

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Yes, you really do need to communicate that Swiftcast is down. I've seen it happen way too often that a Summoner and healer will both pop their swiftcast at the same time because they weren't able to communicate properly.

Maybe one of them didn't have Swiftcast available, but it only had a few seconds left before it became available again. There's no way they would be able to type that out, but because of the delay, the other person would think they didn't have it available, and would pop their own Swiftcast. With voice chat they can easily say, "My swiftcast is back up in 10 seconds."

Maybe the Summoner has Swiftcast available but didn't notice the dead person because they were focusing on their rotation. Without voice chat, the healer (not wanting to waste their Swiftcast if they don't have to) would wait a bit for the SMN to raise, notice they weren't, assume they couldn't and try raising themselves. At this point the SMN finally notices the dead person and also tries to raise them, and both the healer and SMN waste their Swiftcast and MP. With voice chat, the healer can quickly call the SMN's attention.

It's certainly possible to raid without voice chat, but it's much, much easier with voice chat. Especially if you need to discuss strategies. A team that's doing everything 100% perfectly doesn't need voice callouts, but if there's a wipe, you're going to want to discuss what happened. This can be very frustrating without voice chat, since typing out responses takes much longer and there's no indication that you're even at the keyboard until you hit Enter. Using voice chat is much more convenient and less frustrating for everyone involved.

I know this may be seen as insensitive and I apologize, but I seriously don't understand online voice stigma.

I personally don't see it as any different than talking to somebody in real life. Do the people who are too shy for VOIP just never talk to people IRL either?