FWIW, there are also a few servers that have public voice coms set up. The {4KU} has a vent server listed in the motd, for example.
As far as integrated voicecom in ET goes, there is no point complaining about it, because it’s not going to happen.
I have played another game where you could form a voice channel (much like an ET fireteam) and that worked fairly well.
Aren’t you social?
Playing such games is lonely even if there are 32 players. Speaking with them with voice chat would be “natural”. Otherwise sociopaths could be produced.
I think its more fun with voice chatting.
I really like voice comms, but only in tightly controlled environments (e.g, matches or on pubbing with my team mates)
Even then, we still use a mix of voice and keybinds. The key binds are faster and we don’t step on each other. Vsays like needammo, needmedic in fact are preferable to saying verbally since you can see who it’s coming from and you get the nice icon.
While I’m sure it’s fun for some to be on a total public voice channel, after all, many pubs offer this and people seem to take advantage of it, I prefer not to participate. Does this make me a ultra conservative, backwards thinking voice neanderthal? I hope not. This is just my preference. Whether the game has a built in voice client or not, it makes no difference to me.
I’d rather use voice when I know that it’s going to make the team experience better rather than just being another source of noise and distraction.
What the fuck is the point of pubbing if you can barely get any team work?
In Counter-Strike, it is hard to get anyone to do anything just by typing something, either people ignore it, or don’t see it. Even worse in ET because the chat is basically crammed as far down at the bottom as possible and starts fading almost immediately. With voice-chat, the players that don’t have you muted will hear it, without any effort on their part, and those applicable can respond. They don’t have to take their eyes off the game to read, they don’t have to stop to type anything out, they can either respond with their own voice-chat or help out.
Jesus christ! If you don’t want to listen to the voice-chat, you can fucking mute it! I don’t understand what is so difficult about that concept? OMG someone might abuse it! Mute them and continue playing with the other serious people. OMG I don’t want to hear other people because I don’t feel like working with them! Mute them all!!111 This is not a difficult concept to wrap your head around. Go play CS for maybe 10-15 minutes and you will discover this. Sure there are a shitload of dipshits that use the chat to be dumbasses, but they are a minority even in a game like CS.
This would greatly improve ET, but unfortunately there are a bunch of things that will, and they will never be added.
The point of pubbing is to have fun. Adding voice comms to ET would not improve the teamplay on pubs because teamplay comes down to the intent of the team. If half the people on the team don’t want to play as a team, yelling at the on the voice comm is not going to help. You have to play with a team who wants to play as a team.
If you want serious team games, and to voice comm with them, then join a clan.
There are a lot of (technical) difficulties:
server costs will at least double ( 4KB/sec/player game data and at least another 4kb/sec/voice date would be needed + more CPU power for the voice-server)
you can’t just mute a single player, to reduce bandwith all voice input is encoded into a single sound stream wich than gets broadcast to all players, so the only solution would be to exclude a single players input server side from this stream = nobody will be able to hear this player. So it’s the same as with muting a player now, you have to vote and all have to agree.
you actually need 2 streams, one for Axis+global and one for allies+global = again high CPU requirements.
muting a player… how do you find out who has a lot of fun blowing a whistle into his headset to annoy all others ? you cant, so the only solution is to globaly mute all players to get rid of the spammer.
how do you solve the difficulties of 6 ppl wanting to communicate there tactics/problems/status report at the same time? On a public server this will probably just result in white noise.
When playing, you sometimes sneak. Imagine sneaking towards the gun controls on Battery, and there are 2000 freaks on the voice comm. screaming. No chance to hear the footsteps of a camping Axis engineer, as you approach “his” gun.
// L.
oh, almost forgot, all the ppl who don’t use headphones but their stereo… have phun will all the feedback 
glad i wasn’t drinking anything when i read that, would have needed a new monitor! 
to be fair, as has been noted elsewhere on this forum, the general standard of play on publics does seem to be (however incrementally) rising, i.e. demonstrate you know what you’re doing and you’ll find like-minded players backing you up soon enough…
You think 2000 sound bad? 2 members of lsr. have enough hilarity between them than those 2000 freaks put together I bet. 
Voice communications on Pubs = Pointless.
for Clan Games = teh Win. Providing everyone is using them correctly and efficiently is down to each player, if one is wanting to run around screaming blaring mp3s down it fair enough, fuck em tbh, there fault your teams getting nowhere. But if not, then the chances of winning with a decent enough, clear speaking, fast acting team even if your split over 2 Fireteams in groups imo, is at least double than normal. As a clan, lsr. we played a few games just before Christmas with the same 6 players with an exception who helped out when someone couldnt make it, and by using voice comms was one reason we won most of these. When we changed team just after new year, voice comm use has dropped and teamplay was decreasing drastically, didnt even help because our team was so used to Voice Chat and with silence on TS noone still seemed to notice the chat text flashing up constantly… its amazing the difference.
I think Vsays are useful because you can quickly identify who in the team needs assistance and where they are. Apart from this the Axis vsays totally crack me up.!
Picture the scene:
fattakin playing as (axis) engineer on a great team that was having loads of fun, you know those games? Another medic (not me) kept asking for ammo, “I need ammo!” over and over. fattakin shows his true engineering initiative and runs over and throws the medic a stick of his dynamite lol
medic: “Danke!”
fattakin: “Bitte Sehr!”
lol, one of the funniest exchanges of vsays i’ve seen on this game so far 
please don’t take my axis vsays away!!!
I’ve played with headset comm and without and I prefer playing without for a couple of reasons.
CoD has a great idea with vsays being audible to everyone as an environment sound, but they are sadly lacking in the number of them and it takes a bit of the enjoyment of the game out if it for me.
I used to hang out on servers with a guy named Oops when RTCW first came out. After a while we had a little schtick going. Here’s what would happen if Oops joined a server I was on.
Derk: Oops!
Hallo!
Oops: Hallo!
Clear the Path!
Derk: The path is clear.
All clear.
Oops: Danke
Derk: You're Welcome
Always made me smile to hear that. 
:chef:
Youd hate me then. To complete that tactic you need TWO people there. The covert has it easier getting there undetected than the engineer does…So wasting the opportunity if an engineer gets there safely undetected is stupid imo
voice chat isnt actually that bad if you have xbox live and play that you get a headset with it and its a damn lto of fun to talk to others while playing and also people who don’t want to chat just dont join in theres not really a bad thing about it as if there is a little *** on the server then you just mute him and carry on it should be added really 
and I mean added into ET as its annoying to have to find special servers which run teamspeak servers aswell