Forced Push to Talk

[Sarantini]

I bound PTT To Q
Spotting to Tab
and scoreboard to a random key ( I believe 9, almost never use it in bf3)

[RazY70]

Admins here tend to try to be less kick happy than other places, we're all here for fun and we dont want to come across as nazi's. PTT was turned on due to streaming music and people eating meals, chips, slurping soda, munching chips, yelling at their mom or brothers for half an hour, etc.

More input is always good as the admins can get a feel for what the community wants.

So instead of dealing with the occasional offender the preferred solution is to collectively punish the many who'd rather use voice-activation? I don't understand this rational.

I've tried PTT a number of times. It doesn't work for me. It either hurts my game-play (which is problematic enough as it is), or makes me much less communicative.

If someone makes intolerable noises on TS I ask them to stop or mute them. So far this has never happened. Either way, I'm sure admin's don't need to be kick-happy, and are quite capable of making sensible judgement calls regarding obstructions on TS. Isn't that what's administrating is about?

Don't destroy my and others fun because of a few occasional and mostly minor problems.

[Hitman47]

As everything else in life, you can get used to it. Before BF3 we have always enforced push to talk policy, only in BF3 suddenly there are ppl who can't master this mysterious skill of pushing a button to talk, and yea even air force could manage. Try it for a couple of battledays, if it is still a big issue, make a list of ppl who can't learn to use PTT and if its a significant number then switch back. About ruining the fun of ppl, there's a flip side to that too, ppl using voice activation tend to become annoying to the the rest of the community using PTT. I am sure everybody who is used to using voice activation can learn to use PTT for everybody's benefit, whilst imagine if we made voice activation a must, it would be chaos.

[Necromancer]

i've never been annoyed on GC's TS by anyone. voice activation or not. first time that happened was after campaign over last battleday with that music.
as most of us here are grownups, i trust that if you tell someone his mics goes off by itself and bother others he will stop. either mute himself, stop doing what ever he did that triggered the mic or just leave the channel.
again, i didn't find voice activation to be any problem, and im saying it as a person that always used PTT.
so its not a wide spread problem, just a few voice activation users that made someone angry.
i don't see why you need to impose such a restriction and try to tame all the voice activation users just because of a few abusers. they are the ones that should be dealt with, not the voice activation, which is a good feature.

[Calloutman]

I'm fairly sure most people use PTT which is why you'd never have had any problems. I used to be totally with you, but I got used to PTT and quite like it now.
It was annoying when someone didn't have PTT enabled and would be burping/coughing into the mic. I'm not really sad about the change.

[Necromancer]

i was in the armor division, and as such i spent half of the campaign gunning in a tank for sterpod who used voice activation.
and when i wasn't in a tank i was placed in the same inf squad as Razy. so i have a bit of experience with voice activation users
i don't know how people can use voice activation, and i taught that nobody uses it too, but looking around shows a different picture.
people are annoying, not voice activation. if they wouldn't stop when asked, then they will be equally annoying with a PTT.

[ZebraPeps]

...
people are annoying, not voice activation. if they wouldn't stop when asked, then they will be equally annoying with a PTT.

So true, well said Necro. I use voice activation and I know a lot of others that do as well. During C4 there never were any issue with these users. The only time I've heard it being misused was on the last BD during the post campaign scavenger thingy...

[RazY70]

It's not a matter of getting used to it (as I mentioned I already tried it already and couldn't). It's a matter of being forced to use something which adversely affects my game and my enjoyment from it.

It's also not about enforcing PTT only or voice-activation only. It's not a case of either this or that, but of having the freedom to choose the mode I prefer to use. People who are annoyed by others using voice-activation have the option to address them or at extreme cases mute them. I'm not given any options by being forced to use PTT other than to not talk or suffer the consequences.

The fact that PTT used to be enforced prior to BF3 is irrelevant in my opinion. It wasn't enforced for quite a long while, and I'm yet to see a single thread complaining about voice-activation or problems on the TS. As soon as someone made what appears to be an arbitrary decision for whatever obscure reason you immediately see that there are people who find it problematic. I think that should be enough of a reason to reconsider.

[Dragon2796]

It's not a matter of getting used to it (as I mentioned I already tried it already and couldn't). It's a matter of being forced to use something which adversely affects my game and my enjoyment from it.

It's also not about enforcing PTT only or voice-activation only. It's not a case of either this or that, but of having the freedom to choose the mode I prefer to use. People who are annoyed by others using voice-activation have the option to address them or at extreme cases mute them. I'm not given any options by being forced to use PTT other than to not talk or suffer the consequences.

The fact that PTT used to be enforced prior to BF3 is irrelevant in my opinion. It wasn't enforced for quite a long while, and I'm yet to see a single thread complaining about voice-activation or problems on the TS. As soon as someone made what appears to be an arbitrary decision for whatever obscure reason you immediately see that there are people who find it problematic. I think that should be enough of a reason to reconsider.

+1
I have used voice-activation since ever, and I haven't gotten any negative comments about it. My headset has a mute mic switch on the cable, so I just flick that off if I need to do something loud.

[Digz]

keep PTT forced. you had it coming. get with the program.

[Bock]

I've been using voice activation since I started playing with GC. In fact, I've used voice activation for my entire history of online gaming. Through prudent use of a mic mute button, I think I've done a good job of avoiding unintended transmissions and being an annoyance, as have most others. The use of voice activation is obviously more prevalent than some people seem to realize. I, for one, would be interested to know how and why this decision was made, as it seems to be a reaction to some post-battleday annoyance. Annoying people are annoying. Voice activation is not. I've played with hundreds of people, and rarely can I tell whether someone is using voice activation or PTT. When it is occasionally an issue, it's usually quickly solved by saying, "hey individual, your mic's hot/we can hear you coughing etc..." They then change their settings/fix the issue and then the problem is gone. In my experience with PTT, I become much less talkative, which is a detriment to my squad's effectiveness. Not everyone has a million mouse buttons to map as PTT keys, so you're forced to bind to keyboard keys which restricts your movement ability. Sometimes, the difference between your squad getting wiped and surviving, is the ability to call out "hey, there's a guy over there" while simultaneously jumping/proning/strafing. Using PTT for channel commander and other things is fine, because you are usually using those channels when you're dead or there is a lull in the action. Sure, I could completely remap my keys to find that magic button that is easiest to push while still moving effectively, and get used to pushing a button every time I want to say something, but why should I have to go through all that hassle and relearn the way I play? It seems that some admin(s) have found a solution in search of a problem. Maybe I'll just use Dafi's workaround which, btw, shows that forced push-to-talk isn't even a solution to "the problem".

TL: DR
PTT is a major inconvenience for a large number of users, and doesn't solve the virtually non-existent problem. As others have said, voice activation isn't annoying. Annoying/oblivious people are annoying.

[LoA]

As everything else in life, you can get used to it. Before BF3 we have always enforced push to talk policy, only in BF3 suddenly there are ppl who can't master this mysterious skill of pushing a button to talk, and yea even air force could manage.

This ^^

[dan1mall]

I preffer not to use PTT, and havent done so in like 4 years.
In GC especially it hard for me to do so, I have 5 macro keys on the left side of my keyboard all bound to different whisper lists, while capslock is channel commander. For flying I use buttons qwe,asd,zxc,spacebar, and controll. Meaning that hand is pretty much already dancing around the keyboard like a balerina on steroids. My mouse sensitivity is also set so high that if I try to press a button on the side of my mouse, it moves about half a centimetre, which at 4.2k DPI is about a quarter of a screen. Meaning those buttons are very much so out of reach for me.

I too have a mute button both on my headphone cord and my keyboard. Which ill use to mute myself whenever I'm eating/dying/talking to RL people.

Id really rather switch back to voice activation if possible.

[Madsgyver]

Oh man. When I joined GC someone told me voice activation was disabled in the GC TS so I've been using PTT all this time. I don't have any extra buttons on my mouse and it is awkward to press the PTT key on my keybord while playing. I hope voice activation is enabled again, it would make it way easier for me.

I've also never had a problem with anyone's mic leaking. If you could hear talking or music in the background that would obviously not work, but for me at least that has never been the case.

[DaFi]

Was it really such a problem during the last month? Or was it just a fast decision made after the music bot thingy two days ago?
No one ever told me, that I had some background noises or were breathing into the mic. And I am pretty sure I never had something like it happen on GC.