Squad Chat Useless/Obsolete? (Edited)

Game Discussion General Discussion
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With all seriousness towards the feature and I am going to put this as bluntly as possible. It is 2024 where many other applications exist to make it 5x easier for communication, why does this still exist? This is a rather odd take but majority of the time if you run random squads, they never communicate to begin with and if you play with friends, you are always using something like Discord so why is the “Squad” chat a thing still when Team chat does the same thing? All it is, is an extra step like the R73 ordeal when you need to communicate and you cannot because you just sent that to the entire server. It is annoyance anymore with this feature, or make it at least optional. Squads having their own chat is just extremely useless and a waste of a button press anymore. All Squad chat is, is an even more exclusive method of communication where it can be seen within the server replays regardless and acts just like team chat where the info you may provide in there may as well benefit the team as well, it serves no actual purpose when barely, if anyone, uses it. And if they do, majority of which may only chat within it by accident because it’s an obstacle in the chat cycling.

This is just my take on it and I don’t know if anyone feels the same, this is just a minor inconvenience but a major annoyance when time is everything.

Further more with the chat cooldown “Chat Spamming” it only adds more issue to it because now that you posted in the wrong area, you need to wait the cooldown to send it again which may as well be too late.

Adding onto this now. If I worded this poorly, then my fault on my end being as late as it was. I never intended for this to come off as ignorant firstly but I do appreciate a teaching moment, but atleast be sensible. I am not going to edit this completely because there’s no point in it but again. If it came off as ignorant, that was not my intent at all. I’ll learn what I can and what is provided but not from unpleasant or harsh replies. I’ll word things better next time.

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The chat spamming is unrelated, and shouldn’t even be a thing.

This ‘R73 ordeal’ you mention sounds like a player choice issue. If you’re dropping messages to all to have issue with others, then you need to prioritize your communications.

The chat itself isn’t useless, you can choose to turn it off if it does nothing for you.

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The squad chat being a cycled feature within the chat itself is what I am speaking of. If I want to send something to my team and I am already in “All” chat and hit tab to swap, it will put me back into Squad and in tense situations when you want to let your team know if they have something near them or around them, you end up sending it to “Squad” chat and then have to wait the cool down.

Also the “Player Choice Issue” was an actual issue, keep personal feelings out of it.

Anyways. I never said the chat was useless, I said the “squad” chat was to begin with as mentioned in the title being the highlight of it. Instead of grazing through instead of reading what you wanted, you would have known this so please read next time.

Squad chat is a feature/obstacle in tense situations where you’d want to communicate but in quick motions end up sending it in the wrong chat just to have to wait the cooldown period which by that time is too late as is where any team communication you want to do can be seen regardless in replays so the use and functionality is the same for both Squad and Teams with only a bit more privatization in a live environment. Nobody uses it, not even in random squads, yet, I dont think random squads have that feature access to begin with.

“Squad” chat is a useless feature that is obsolete in the game with no perks to the functionality of it for cohesive gameplay. All it is, is a obstacle for communication.

To add onto this, there is no way to prioritize the communication. If I want to partake in a convo with the enemy and friendly team then I can by pressing tab to “All” or if I want to just talk to my team, Id swap to team, but if I want to talk to my squad, I would use Discord or other means that allow seamless communication verbally. Why would I want to type to my squad when my team is part of my team? What negative effect would they have to see what we say? Even if you talked crap in squad chat about someone and they can’t see it, doesnt mean they can’t pull up the replay to see it anyways, and this is just an example for no privatization of it making it useless to begin with. All “Squad” is is pretty much “Team” with extra steps.

I can’t count how many times I’ve sent my message in squad chat by accident all because I forgot to hit “Tab” one more time especially when I am talking in 2 places at once for 2 different conversations with “Team” and “All”.

The whole “Squad” chat needs to be an optional item that can be enabled and disabled regardless of being part of a squad like like you can disable seeing messages from the opposite team.

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You have multiple choices here…

Send a message to your team with the Team Chat Channel bind
Cycle through the chat options and don’t act like an ignoramus without conceptual permanence.
Don’t be in a squad?

You also seem to misunderstand some very fundamental details of the chat… Squad Chat does not have a 10 second spam cooldown, while all / team does. You will not have a cooldown when typing in squad chat.

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That’s true sometimes, hasn’t always been true.

OP ignores the large number of players who play in text-only, and want to talk to their squadmates only for all kinds of basic human coordination reasons. Our squadrons have many players like that. Using Discord for that during a game is also non-trivial, especially for people on single monitors or on consoles. It can be done, and I personally prefer it, but sometimes you have to go to the lowest common denominator.

Just because no one you know doesn’t use a feature, in the one mode you like and play, doesn’t mean it’s not used by lots of other people you don’t know.

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It wasn’t true for a select week almost 2 years ago, though it is now. Whether or not it has or hasn’t before makes no difference.

Such as me! Hence why I hate arguments like “b-but I have to cycle through each one!”
I know I don’t prefer it as much as text chat when somebody pops into a channel with a phone that has its mic sensitivity maxed.

I personally only use squad chat. I know for a fact that it has no cooldown, and I know that team / all chat cooldowns are not applied in squad chat.

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Hangar chat was blocked for three days last month, squad and squadron chat included. Cooldowns for all types of chat are continually being tweaked it seems and the current cooldowns or lack thereof aren’t advertised anywhere. If it is running without a cooldown in game now… good to hear.

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Oh my! 3 days?! In comparison to 2022…?

Cooldowns in-game have gone from 30 seconds to 10 seconds in mid '22, and has been the same since.

Squad chat has not had a cooldown since the change back to a 10 second general chat cooldown.

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I don’t get why chatbans affect squad chat, it’s illogical.

Squadchat is almost exclusively useful for sqrb actions. Rarely used outside

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I use squad chat a lot. If one of us is unable to use voice chat, then squad chat is the next best thing as everyone can see it and doesn’t require taking your eyes off the game.

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You can actually use a combo of keys to make that definition.

I broadened it because the chat is the chat… If you don’t squad, then don’t squad, and don’t use it.

Fact is if you do open chat, joined to a squad, you’re actually set by default to Squad, not all, so your story above is bull.

Stop whining to all chat about your issues with the R73… Jesus.

I distinctly mention my point towards this, as I actually use it… Random squads don’t have it, but it doesn’t turn up in the list, unless you ARE squaded…

So if you actually don’t want the chat channel, then don’t use it.

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So this is what people ront about. Nitpicking that Squad chat exists? seriously. A feature, that you call useless may not be useless to others. Good damn think people think.

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I never really expected others too, it seemed like a feature that isn’t widely used but should be an optional at most.

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Thats fair. I see your point.

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I mean, You could provide meaningful input instead of sarcasm but hey. Good job I guess.

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I see… Its just frustrating considering it’s a constant thing that happens and I have not found anything really to limit it either from my side. I only posted this to discuss and maybe learn but all I have found is the arrogant side of War Thunder.

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I was going to type an entire book but you know what. Unless you can get off the R73 topic, I really don’t want to continue talking to you considering it was 3% of the post used to compare but you insist to keep mentioning it…

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I mean moderation as a whole needs to be applied all over otherwise there really isn’t a lesson being taught. If you violated a rule then it applies regardless as a consequence.

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Oh, I wasn’t being sarcastic. I mean what i said.

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Cool.