Voice chat and anxiety

[Chasely]

(this was fun when my friends and I all lived together and none of us wanted to order something over the phone..we'd all fight about it. good times).

This is why 'm so glad we can order online, now. Luckily, my roommate doesn't mind answering the door. ^^;

[Lemuria]

You know, if someone asked to 'call' me, I'd tell them they're crossing a boundary so I'm going to assume they meant VOIP. Honestly, for my part I hate using voice chat for two reasons. Firstly, I don't really identify with the voice I hear (seriously, hearing your own voice recorded and played back is weird -- I'm not that squeaky am I?). Secondly, voice chat is unfiltered and I have two young children I would rather not have overhear, especially given some of the conversations that have gone on in chat before.

If you're not comfortable with voice chat, don't let yourself be pressured or bullied into it by anyone. Stand your ground and just tell them politely that you're not interested. They'll give up eventually.

[Noxifer]

You know, if someone asked to 'call' me, I'd tell them they're crossing a boundary so I'm going to assume they meant VOIP. Honestly, for my part I hate using voice chat for two reasons. Firstly, I don't really identify with the voice I hear (seriously, hearing your own voice recorded and played back is weird -- I'm not that squeaky am I?). Secondly, voice chat is unfiltered and I have two young children I would rather not have overhear, especially given some of the conversations that have gone on in chat before.

If you're not comfortable with voice chat, don't let yourself be pressured or bullied into it by anyone. Stand your ground and just tell them politely that you're not interested. They'll give up eventually.

TBH, you don't hear your own voice in voice chat (unless you've got bad echoing from someone, of course), but... The best response in your case would probably be, "Sorry, don't have a headset." ^^;


For OP (and the rest of you, of course ♥), there's so much good advice in this thread ^^ I have issues similar to social anxiety, except for me it's just that social interaction (especially with strangers) takes more energy than for most people due to body language dyslexia (aka Asperger's). Was misdiagnosed for a while with SAD, even though it was pretty clear to me that my issues weren't quite the same.
My experiences with TS started with having a personal server for just me and my flatmate, since we both play the game. While we sit in the same room, it's annoying to have to sit with one side of the headphones/headset off in order to be able to talk to each other, so... we tried out various kinds of voice chats till we found TS. Then... at some point we decided to invite one of our best friends into our private server.

Now, we regularly use it with our own FC, but those are people we've known for... over a year. We have one FC member who's muted 95% of the time (mainly due to people sleeping in his house) and others who have issues with getting microphones to work (or using phone app of TS, with bad reception). Of course, I have no way of knowing if those reasons really are the way they claim or if they just don't want to talk but don't know how to say it, but either way it's their decision. (On a random note, I also have allergy issues, so I frequently mute myself in order to blow my nose or cough or something... And then forget I muted myself. Hence the most common thing said in our voice sessions are "Cal, you're muted" xD since my flatmate hears me saying something outside of the headphones but not via voice chat.)

Regarding the PC/PS discussion, there's so far no app that exists to connect both types of players. Either the console players have to use a side application (via phone or laptop or something) to get PC chat, or the PC players have to start up their PS4 and enter into a party chat with the console people. We've done both, since we have some players on PS4, and some people who have both but play FFXIV on PC.

I suggest finding out which option the group you're looking at is using, then ask if you could go into voice chat with just one or two of them, and either say that you have social anxiety (so you'll be muted) and don't do well with lots of new people at once, or just say that you don't have a working microphone if you're not comfortable telling them straight out. Start ut slowly, like others have suggested. Most people I know would be okay with introducing people new to voice chat to it slowly, instead of jumping in at the deep end.
(Though, if you feel that the group would understand, the best option is to tell them you have social anxiety because that also opens up the possibility for you to tell them -- if it's something you think might happen -- that due to this you might need to drop out of voice chat unexpectedly to calm down.)

Good luck with finding a team who'll respect you and your issues ♥

[Kaelah]

My static group all use TS but only 4 of us talk regularly on it, our back up player is also chatty. The other 4 always play muted, but they listen and respond to us via /p chat. It works for us. ^^ A 5th player is slowly starting to talk on there too. I used to be the same, very shy of talking online voice chat. Just ease yourself in until you are comfortable. Or just listen and type. :3 If background sounds worry you, you can get mics with a mute button you can flip when not speaking or most voice chats have a push to talk feature. (Hold a key down when talking.)

Regarding the PS4/PC thing. We use TS, and any PS4 players use an iPad or laptop to join us on it.

[Culfinrandir]

Like many of the replies, I just listen in on the group chat & reply in the chat box where necessary. I have a strong accent to most people (it's barely existent compared to most Geordies) so it's far easier just to listen & type. After all, there's almost always one person who will dominate the voice chat during the duty (calling out moves etc) so it's not like an after dinner conversation.

[Xlantaa]

I do the same. On all statics I have, I always use the chat, but I can hear what other says. No problem till now. YOu cannot force anyone to talk, and I aprreciate when they don't demand me that.

[Ehr]

If you met me irl, I would probably be one of the most silent and introverted people you've ever met. You wouldn't be able to guess that based on how I speak on voice chats. It probably took me a good month or so of just listening to people talk on voice chat and replying to them with the in-game chat before I started to speak myself. I mean, look at me now, people requesting for me to call raids and actively taking a leading role when trying to work out kinks in progression content. I never thought I'd be doing what I do back when I started playing this game 2 and a half years ago. My point is, it comes with time if you're shy about it, a good start is to just listen to people and use the in-game chat to respond. I'm gonna second what Eight said, listen to people and get a feel for their personality and if you like being around them, maybe you'll talk, maybe you won't. I've wound up in PF parties with someone I do not like and that party is also using a voice chat and I'll usually go silent or just up and leave the party. Otherwise I'll be quiet for a bit until I've got a bit of a feel for what the people I'm in a party with are like.

[Jamillion]

My girlfriend (before she was my girlfriend) was extremely shy and would make excuses to not join all the time. I told her about how much fun we had in TS and she joined and had a blast. We started dating a few weeks after that. We've been together for over a year and live together quite happily now.

Finally had time to edit this, so the point of my post was, in your own time you may consider giving it a try just to help facilitate friendly relations with your group. And worse comes to worst you can always just stay muted. The main reason voice chat is used in raiding is callouts

[Vele]

For raid usually you really only need to be able to listen to instructions and call outs. I've met a lot of people who don't talk for various reasons (no mic, shy, sick, lots of background noise, etc) and type responses in-game, nobody thinks anything of it though as long as they're still in the voip and listening.

If you have a speech impediment or an accent (or both) you can request before-hand that nobody comments on them, should you choose to talk... although be prepared for those few who can't help but light-heartedly tease you a bit about it anyways. I stutter, and I'm also French and have issues with 'th' sounds (other sounds like udder, three sounds like tree, etc), sometimes people poke fun and while I know they're not trying to be mean, it still hurts. Just tell them firmly to stop, and hope they respect that.

... should your voice not match your preferred gender, however, you might have to never talk ever ever ever or get a voice changer, otherwise you will be misgendered forevermore because people will never listen to you when you say "I don't see myself as X because (valid reasons) so I would rather be referred to as (opposite gender pronoun)". Trust me on this.

[Confidence_Trick]

You don't need to speak to anyone OP. In fact the beauty of this game is that you don't need anyone at all. Just log in and let the silence roll over you. Works for me.