Raiding and Teamspeak.

[Mutemutt]

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.

[Eothas]

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.

[Cynric]

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.

[Tint]

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

I always just viewed it as a tool for communication.

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

[AskaRay]

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.

[Tint]

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

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

[Kurogaea]

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

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

[Judge_Xero]

the stigma is you HAVE to use it.

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.

[Maero]

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

[CrimsonThunder]

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

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.