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Time To Kill Party Chat

James Joell-Ireland at wedotech.net writes: "Since the November 2008 NXE dashboard update on the Xbox 360, I saw a problem coming before the headlights were even turned on. Microsoft's 'Party Chat' feature is the problem and its rearing its ugly head more and more with even developers requesting that the feature be killed in certain games. Thankfully it would appear certain future games on the horizon will prevent users from using party chat whilst playing multiplayer on their titles, and whilst some people will moan, it's for the better good. So many great tactical based games have been seemingly ruined by the Party Chat feature, with people huddling together in their cliques all randomly playing different games and segregating themselves from the outside world. It begs the question, why?"

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wedonetwork.co.uk

[via wedotech.net]

satanicbakedbeanz - contributor
Published: 55 days 16 hours ago | Article | Xbox 360 | Gaming

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GWAVE - 55 days 20 hours ago

1 -

And to think that this is one of those features that supposedly makes XBLIVE "worth" the yearly fee.

IMO, it simply allows cheaters to cheat, and it harms the "online community" aspect of online multiplayer games (you're not talking to the other players, you're just talking to your friends).

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SHAGGY62 - 55 days 19 hours ago

1.1 -

but but party chat teh rulz I'll stick with my better free service PSN

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MrAnonymous - 55 days 18 hours ago

1.2 -

allowing cheaters to cheat? in what way, i know ppl have used it in hardcore s&d in cod4 before but whats the difference between party chat and hardcore clans that lan together online

i love using the party chat with friends even when we arent playing the same games (kinda what i believe it was intended for)...it gives me the sense of feeling like the good old days where friends used to go over to each others houses and just chat and chill while playing games

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Saaking - 55 days 15 hours ago

1.3 -

I think MS should offer options with XBL:

Make Online free but remove gold features such as twitter and facebook etc. Essentially, allow those with Silver accounts to play online and just charge for the extra features if you want them. I have ZERO use for most of the stuff except online play.

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jadenkorri - 55 days 15 hours ago

1.4 - @ saaking

exactly, free online play at least.

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mindedone - 55 days 15 hours ago

1.5 - @MrAnonymous

Regardless of the similarities between gaming in the same room and voice chat, both allow cheaters to cheat. Just because you find one example that's similar that you like and most people like, doesn't negate the fact cheaters can cheat with voice chat.

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sikbeta - 55 days 14 hours ago

1.6 -

This is because there are more kids annoying the guy, but you don't gonna kill the feature for a bunch of big mouthed kids lol

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Lifendz - 55 days 14 hours ago

1.7 - Maybe its because it's PSN

and not every PS3 comes with a headset, but if I encounter a jerk (you know the type, playing music or has a starving child in the background crying), I mute 'em. NOT A BIG DEAL. I don't mute someone for talking ****. In fact, if someone is talking smack and saying how they owned me or someone else, I get my headset out, put it on, and give it right back to 'em. Most times that's when I have the most fun. If I always played in a party with my friends and never heard anyone else I wouldn't have made some of the PSN friends I made.

To each his own, but at this point in time I only hear multi-console owners bishing about party chat needing to be on PSN and I think it's because they don't want to pay that live fee anymore.

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Chubear - 55 days 14 hours ago

1.8 - @1.3 are you kidding me?

If MS did that, there wouldn't be any Gold subscribers

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MrAnonymous - 55 days 14 hours ago

1.9 - @mindedone

actually i wasnt trying to say that cheating on party chat was ok, i was just trying to point out that you shouldnt put down a feature cause of what some ppl COULD do when ppl have been doing that before the feature was there in teh first place

sure, there is cheating that goes along with it (sad that ppl do have to cheat to win a game, as if they really accomplished anything beyond stats) but there are good things that come with party chat as well...i also chat with family from other countries that have live with it while im playing a game and they are playing something else

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i3eyond the Circle - 55 days 16 hours ago

2 -

I like that you can't be in party chat anymore in MW2 TDM.

It feels good being able to get your damn words across and at least have some teamwork going on.

Party Chat wasn't made for competitive online play.

It was made for socialism and organizing.

2 things that overall make the XBL community more efficient and fluid.

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ThatArtGuy - 55 days 15 hours ago

2.1 - Socialism?!?

You Marxist! ;)

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ubiquitious - 55 days 16 hours ago

3 -

Since November 2008 there have been no 14 year old kids on Xbox Live.

They might be there. But I haven't heard them:D

Keep it. If individual developers feel the need to change that for the online aspect of a game, that's fine.

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Codeman420 - 55 days 15 hours ago

4 - why u ask

in a few words------- Annoying Morons and little 5yr olds cussing everyone out for no reason, broke mics, loud music, other team B****ing, to name a few. beside with the people i play with are team is always full not allowing others to be on our team so party chat would make since for me and my friends.

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momonaboy - 55 days 15 hours ago

5 -

One of the main reasons why i want party chat on the PS3, is cause of games like battlefield. Bad company 2 and 1943 both had non-functioning voice chat when they first launched and dice took a very long time to patch it. I have alot of friends that play multiplayer FPSs on the ps3 and no voice chat totally killed it for us.

oh and also because of games like armored core that dont have any chat feature.

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SacT0wnF1n3st - 55 days 15 hours ago

6 -

No party chat sucks. Sometimes I just can't deal with the immaturity that is Xbox Live.

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kaveti6616 - 55 days 15 hours ago

7 -

Look at the biased people talking about how party chat is terrible. Read what GWAVE wrote. Try and digest the ignorance he is spewing. Party Chat allows for friends who are playing together to join a group and not have to listen to the morons from other teams taunting them. In Halo 3 in the matchmaking lobby when all the players were assembled, members of the opposing team would often shout offensive, senseless taunts at me and my teammates.

Sure we could mute them, which is a great feature, and what Party Chat did was extend that feature further so that a team of people can be in a private group throughout their gaming session and only listen to each other. Since me and my friends amounted to 4 people on Halo 3, we never left out any potential teammates. It's not as if there was one stranger who joined our team and could not hear us due to party chat. Now, if that has happened to some people, then I am sorry. It is an obvious drawback when a group of teammates can leave you left out.

Here's the contradiction of the fanboy argument. Apparently, the Sony fanboys on the top of the post seem to think that communicating with your teammates equates to cheating. "Hey all of those guys who are against us are in a party chat. I wonder what they're talking about. Hey! They must be CHEATING!!!" Really? Does talking to your own teammates about the situation in the game constitute cheating? Because, haha, I thought that was called TEAMWORK!!! You moron fanboys. You have nothing better to do than talk crap about the console that isn't your preferred choice. And let's get something else out of the way. What if one of your friends is on the opposing team, and he wants to help your team win by colluding with you? Does removing the party chat feature really make much of a difference in that situation? I think not. I think that your friend can sabotage his teammates by throwing grenades near them during a battle, or he can just go out and let opponents kill him. A simple telephone call can suffice in that kind of cheating. Party chat is not the feature that really causes this to happen.

Removing party chat does not prevent CHEATING. The main goal is purely up to the developer. Maybe they want to make sure that no one will ever be left out of team communication, as can happen in situations where a person playing online against strangers will find himself left out of the party. In situations such as this, however, he still has the ability to send a message to one of the people in the party and ask to be invited in. And if that doesn't work (HERE COMES THE BURN), then his experience on XBL will be a lot like the experience I have always had playing on PSN. That's right Sony fanboys. Just remember that. The communication abilities on LIVE are at worst on the same level as PSN, where 3 quarters of the people on Unchated 2 BETA (my experience) didn't have a mic or chose not to speak at all.

Another great thing about Party Chat has always been the ability to talk to multiple people who are not playing the same game as me. It's an enhanced version of private chat because more than 2 people can be in a party. I remember the days when I played Bioshock while my friends were playing Halo, and I could always communicate with them, you know, just for the hell of it. Of course, it's not a necessity. It is, however, one of the features that makes XBL feel more cohesive. Now, we can't really cheat in those instances because a plasmid that I pick up in Bioshock isn't going to help my friend win a match in Halo.

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SaxScrotumz - 55 days 15 hours ago

8 -

I agree with Codeman420. No one capping and insulting you for no reason other than to be a d#$ck.

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v1c1ous - 55 days 14 hours ago

9 - people who are saying party chat is bad

as a basis to downplay xbox live obviously have never used it.

i agree with blocking party chat during online games that require team strategy. for example, in CHROMEHOUNDS, one of the game's features is capturing combas (satellite towers) that increase the range of your radio with your teammates.

the side with the most combas could check enemy positions on map and talk farther, likewise you could take over enemy combass and prevent them from speaking to each other using radio. it was strategy based.

as soon as party chat was made available, everyone forgot about combass. it turned into free for all battles.

THAT is one example of party chat being exploited. however, nothing beats me playing SF2, my friend playing ninja gaiden, my other friend playing Ace combat 6, and all of us chatting about random crap AT THE SAME TIME.

PARTY CHAT IS A GOOD THING WHEN USED IN THIS SITUATIONS, AND THESE SITUATIONS OUTWEIGH THE 4-5 GAMES WHERE IT COULD BE USED FOR EXPLOITATIon

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ps360master - 55 days 14 hours ago

10 - LOL

i used party chat on my 360 to play uncharted 2 online with some friends......

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dmm5157 - 55 days 12 hours ago

10.1 - @ #10

Yup, got my buddy to finally buy a PS3 (I got one in February in preparation for KZ2, U2, and GOW3) and we were bummed to find out that we couldn't chat when playing solo campaigns. Luckily U2 does support chat with the co-op missions in Uncharted 2. For the solo campaign, we'd play around the same time and talk over our Xboxs party chat.

We were really disappointed to see MW2 disabled Party Chat in certain multiplayer modes, but I can see the reasoning.

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Redgehammer - 55 days 13 hours ago

11 - I say

it should be turned off for ranked matches.

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betrayed gamer - 55 days 8 hours ago

12 -

i think ms will make playing online for free, to a degree. they will leave p2p for silvers, add dedicaited to gold alond with p2p, and add a few more dash features to gold

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Kushan - 55 days 6 hours ago

13 -

I quite like Party chat and I don't use it to cheat. Sometimes, you just don't want to listen to other people on live.

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The Gamer Zone is for members who want a more friendly and civilized discussion. This section is heavily moderated by the N4G staff, so leave your fanboyism at the door please. Members who are unable to behave in a mature and respectful manner will be temporarily or permanently restricted from posting in the Gamer Zone. Using words such as Xbots and Sony droids, or other words from the console war vocabulary, is strictly prohibited in this Zone.
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1 ghamdikh2 | 55 days 19 hours ago - User only got 1 bubble - Show

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chrisulloa - 55 days 17 hours ago

1.1 -

Naruto icon, bad grammar, immature....

Yeah, I'd say you're about 10 years old.

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D4RkNIKON - 55 days 16 hours ago

1.2 -

HAHAHA @ chrisulloa you called it! I am a huge PS3 fanboy but this kid is embarrassing!

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suunyd - 55 days 15 hours ago

1.3 -

Lol, it's always the Naruto freaks with the bad grammar.

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DonCorneo - 55 days 16 hours ago

2 - bu bu butt this is the only feature that bots bring up to justify the xbl fees

LMOA!!1!

so this feature isn't so great after all. keep it out of psn.

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Donnyskillz - 55 days 14 hours ago

2.1 - because i would rather talk to my friends that be called a bunch of names

nobody wants to be insulted, and i find that in games like cll of duty or many other games the insults are intolerable, i get so tired of hearing the N word and having things being said to me by people that wouldnt say them if i was in their presence....party chat is a great thing because it lets me seperate myself from the morons.

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patterson - 55 days 12 hours ago

3 -

I never understood the appeal for party chat. If I'm playing a game, why would I want to talk to my friend who's playing a completely different game? It's just a feature for casuals to chit chat while their team mates are probably tired of their lack of focus. Play the game or get out lol.

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