heroes Introducing Voice Chat

[Stan 5,240]

Voice chat is finally available in Heroes of the Storm and this post by Blizzard will guide you through the basics of the system.

All players must opt-in to join the team voice channel at the start of a game or upon entering a draft lobby. If you don't have a microphone, you will still be able to hear your team. The voice chat tab in the options menu can be used to adjust all settings to your liking. Use the Test button to hear how you'll sound in-game and don't forget to set up your Push-to-Talk Key.

Blizzard (Source)

We’re excited to announce that voice communication is now available in Heroes of the Storm! Whether you find yourself in a draft lobby, partied with a friend or two, or with your whole squad in Team League, voice communication will free your hands from the shackles of typing and make it easier than ever to coordinate with your teammates. Before you head in-game to try it out, take a moment to learn how voice channels work in Heroes and get to know the various settings you can adjust to make voice communication your own.

Team and Party Voice

We’ve added voice channels to Heroes of the Storm to accommodate both party voice and team voice. If you’re in a party, you’ll automatically be added to your party’s voice channel, and only party members will hear what you have to say. The opposite is also true: if you’re in a partial party and using the party voice channel, you’ll be unable to speak to or hear allies outside your party unless you switch to the team voice channel.

By default, all players must opt-in to join the team voice channel at the start of a game or upon entering a draft lobby. A notification will appear in chat to remind you that team voice is available, and you can click it to easily join the channel. Keep in mind that voice channels—even party voice—are completely optional. You can use the new voice chat tab in the options menu to adjust auto-join settings and notification sounds to your heart’s content.

Voice Settings

Digging a bit further into voice settings, you can click the dropdown menus at the top to pick which device you’ll use to hear your allies’ voices, and set up the microphone you’d like to use for your own. You can click the Test button to hear how you’ll sound to your teammates in-game. However, even if you don’t have a microphone, you can still join party and team voice channels to listen-in as your allies make plans and shotcall.

As mentioned previously, the checkboxes under Auto-Join Voice and Notification Sounds on the left side of the voice chat options menu can be used to select which voice channels you’d like to join automatically during each game, as well as to enable or disable any voice notification sounds.

Click the Transmission Mode dropdown to decide whether you’d like to set your microphone to Push-to-Talk or Open Mic. When using push-to-talk, your allies will only hear you while you’re holding down your push-to-talk hotkey (the ` key by default). With open mic, they’ll hear everything you have to say. If you do opt for an open mic, you can adjust the sensitivity slider to stop your microphone from transmitting sound under a certain volume. Finally, run a quick test to make sure your mic is sounding good and your sensitivity is set correctly—broadcasting noise is a surefire way to get muted by your teammates!

In addition to push-to-talk, you can set up hotkeys to quickly switch between party and team voice channels, or to turn your microphone on and off. 

In-Game Voice

Outside of the voice chat options menu, you’ll see a voice widget appear in the top-left corner of most game menus. Clicking this widget will allow you to quickly join, switch, or leave a voice channel. Once you enter a game, you’ll find this widget on the tab screen.

You’ll also find microphone and speaker icons across from player names on the tab screen, which you can click to mute or unmute allies individually.

We’ve also added a new reporting option called Abusive Voice that you can use to report players specifically for misbehavior over voice. Additionally, we’ve implemented a voice silence penalty that’s separate from chat silence penalties. This means that players who are frequently reported for Abusive Voice can receive a voice silence, which will prevent them from speaking in team voice for the duration of that penalty. They can, however, still join the team voice channel to listen to allied comms, and can still join and use the party voice channel normally.

We hope the addition of voice in Heroes of the Storm will help you and your allies communicate more effectively on the road to your next string of victories, and perhaps make a new friend or two along the way.

Until next time, we’ll see you in the Nexus!

[Undeath 67]

Oh, so f-ing amazing, so wow, much excited. Now, let's see.

Potatoes who can barely control their heroes in mid plat - check

People telling me to kill myself - check

People telling me to kill myself twice as efficient over my speakers - now check

Me being reported for not joining fucking voice chat - NOW EFIN CHECK

Bliz pls. 

Edited February 21, 2018 by Jonar

[Undeath 67]

21 minutes ago, Stan said:

 

Additionally, we’ve implemented a voice silence penalty that’s separate from chat silence penalties. This means that players who are frequently reported for Abusive Voice can receive a voice silence, which will prevent them from speaking in team voice for the duration of that penalty. They can, however, still join the team voice channel to listen to allied comms, and can still join and use the party voice channel normally.

How about preventing them from joining ranked games, huh? No? If not, I'm effin outta here.

[Hypersonic 119]

Just another game where can I instant turn it off. 

[Migol 433]

All the naysayers should realize that such systems have been in other Mobas like Dota 2 for years, moreover in other bliz games (Overwatch).    They work fine there, and add a lot to communication between teammates.

[positiv2 953]

50 minutes ago, Migol said:

like Dota 2

Oh yes, I can still remember that from EU West - very loud, yet inaudible МИД и́ли ФИД shouting and all that Darude Sandstorm or хард басс blasting through the voice chat. The lack of voice chat was one of the reasons I switched to HotS when it launched.

[Kurosu 58]

56 minutes ago, Migol said:

All the naysayers should realize that such systems have been in other Mobas like Dota 2 for years, moreover in other bliz games (Overwatch).    They work fine there, and add a lot to communication between teammates.

Not in quick play

[MZLICH 43]

Well this f..in system won't work for EU since people are from different countries!  Here more than half of players are Russians n almost 99% of them can't speak English and maybe just eng n finally German players can speak since I know most of spanians can't speak too..here we also got people of West Asia since they can't match up with Chinese n Japanese people in Asia region....  so most of people can't speak English!even me! I just learnd bit to write haha

[Aasgier 36]

5 hours ago, MZLICH said:

Well this f..in system won't work for EU since people are from different countries!  Here more than half of players are Russians n almost 99% of them can't speak English and maybe just eng n finally German players can speak since I know most of spanians can't speak too..here we also got people of West Asia since they can't match up with Chinese n Japanese people in Asia region....  so most of people can't speak English!even me! I just learnd bit to write haha

Practice makes perfect :)

But yeah, I agree it's probably not going to work on the EU server with all the different languages. I turned it off for the time being - maybe I activate it by the time I have a group of friends to play with, even if I probably use Discord with those.

But with random teammates? No thanks.

 

[ReaperChief 2]

In the US voice chat is perfect. Another reason why I prefer it over EU.

[mada7 29]

I could not turn this feature off fast enough. I've heard what sort of stuff gets said on MOBA chats and I have no interest in being a part of that. The irony about this is that the one segment of the player base that would find this useful, organized teams, they likely already have a discord server setup for this purpose. For random teams pinging and written chat is more than enough

[Laragon 269]

"I turned this off because other games were awful with it" Is the worst excuse. Do you not try any new restaurants because one time you got food poisoning? HotS has been years without a feature that is main-stay in any hard core gaming. Yeah, there will be trolls, so you mute them. The chance of having even one other player on your team be able to call out when they are diving/zoning/rotating will be incredible.

If you play QM or Vs AI, sure leave it off. But anyone trying to climb in HL better use it, because it will be a HUGE benefit to those that do.

Edited February 22, 2018 by Laragon

[mada7 29]

10 minutes ago, Laragon said:

"I turned this off because other games were awful with it" Is the worst excuse. Do you not try any new restaurants because one time you got food poisoning? HotS has been years without a feature that is main-stay in any hard core gaming. Yeah, there will be trolls, so you mute them. The chance of having even one other player on your team be able to call out when they are diving/zoning/rotating will be incredible.

If you play QM or Vs AI, sure leave it off. But anyone trying to climb in HL better use it, because it will be a HUGE benefit to those that do.

Any game that includes this feature is worse because of it and arguably the biggest mistake the Xbox 360 made was bundling in headsets with every console. The internet is a cesspit encompassing nothing but the worst of humanity and giving additional communication tools will do nothing but further enable abusive players. The one area where this would be beneficial, for organized teams, already has the tools setup to handle voice chat.

I'll give an example to back up my point. I used to work near people testing LoL and on test servers where the games mean nothing, while sitting within earshot of the people they were playing with people would be yelling at each other into headsets because someone was trying to reproduce a bug (aka doing their job) rather than playing perfectly. This is the type of people that use voice chat.

[EDL666 18]

So, it's just sad that this is actually an amazing feature that's been missing for too long and I think it is actually very well done, but people are just mainly assholes that don't know how to use that properly so it will probably mostly be a joke feature than a real one... A real shame on the whole community and still good job Blizz, we still love you for caring about us and trying to believe in our redemption!

[Godeyes 25]

Oh man what a bunch of whining douches in this thread O_o Always thought that people here are way more then that...

In a game so heavily dependant on team coordination voice chat is one of the best things that could happened. I couldn't count my games when I was pinging retreat to my team because I couldn't get to them on time before TF and they just plainly ignored it. After a 4v5 wipe they ask me why I wasn't with them. When I told them that I pinged and also WROTE IN CHAT not to engage until I come, the answer was like: "didn't see anything".

People that are focused on sth, get tunel-vision and they often don't see things that are under their nose.

Additional thing is that often ppl ignore pings because they don't understand them. Example - I see that 2 ppl disappeared mid. I immediately ping retreat to  Sylvanas that is pushing bot. But she ignores my ping because she thinks that I want her to join team or sth. Guess what happens next.

Yes - I could ping retreat + danger in the bushes but maybe Im in a middle of a fight myself ? Its so way easier just to quickly say "sylvanas back, they are coming" and it leaves no room for misunderstandings.

 

From time to time you will get some bad apples that will spoil your voice chat experience but its not even close of a reason to discard such precious option that blizzard is FINALLY giving us ;) I expect that games quality will raise very much after this addition. And "toxicity" will get lower because its way easier to BM someone on text chat then on voice.

Edited February 22, 2018 by Godeyes

[mada7 29]

27 minutes ago, Godeyes said:

Oh man what a bunch of whining douches in this thread O_o Always thought that people here are way more then that...

In a game so heavily dependant on team coordination voice chat is one of the best things that could happened. I couldn't count my games when I was pinging retreat to my team because I couldn't get to them on time before TF and they just plainly ignored it. After a 4v5 wipe they ask me why I wasn't with them. When I told them that I pinged and also WROTE IN CHAT not to engage until I come, the answer was like: "didn't see anything".

People that are focused on sth, get tunel-vision and they often don't see things that are under their nose.

Additional thing is that often ppl ignore pings because they don't understand them. Example - I see that 2 ppl disappeared mid. I immediately ping retreat to  Sylvanas that is pushing bot. But she ignores my ping because she thinks that I want her to join team or sth. Guess what happens next.

Yes - I could ping retreat + danger in the bushes but maybe Im in a middle of a fight myself ? Its so way easier just to quickly say "sylvanas back, they are coming" and it leaves no room for misunderstandings.

 

From time to time you will get some bad apples that will spoil your voice chat experience but its not even close of a reason to discard such precious option that blizzard is FINALLY giving us ;) I expect that games quality will raise very much after this addition. And "toxicity" will get lower because its way easier to BM someone on text chat then on voice.

If people aren't responding to pings they likely arent going to listen to your voice instructions either. Pinging and text should be enough of a communication tool that this isn't needed and again just enables shitty behavior from whiny jerks. On top of that this was an option anyone that cared to have already would have in the form of discord, teamspeak or a variety of other options. No game has ever been improved by the addition of giving a megaphone to random shrieking teenagers 

[Godeyes 25]

You are so wrong that I dont even know where to start answering. But ok lets try to break it up...

 

1 hour ago, mada7 said:

If people aren't responding to pings they likely arent going to listen to your voice instructions either

So you just simply ignored what I said about tunel-vision and the fact that lots of players just DO NOT see pings (because they are focusing on hitting that stacks with Zul) or ignore them because they dont know WHY you use them. Yes they may ignore them also on voice but that is to be much less likely. Its enough for me.

 

Quote

Pinging and text should be enough of a communication tool

No its not enough because in heat of the battle you can't text people.

 

Quote

just enables shitty behavior from whiny jerks

So far about 95% opinions I heave read on official forum + reddit says otherwise.

 

Quote

On top of that this was an option anyone that cared to have already would have in the form of discord, teamspeak or a variety of other options.

Again wrong. Most of people (including me) won't  use 3rd party comm soft just to play for example a QM or HL game. But if the option is already in game (without no effort to use) I will gladly use it.

 

Quote

No game has ever been improved by the addition of giving a megaphone to random shrieking teenagers 

There are games that don't need a chat to play the correctly and efficiently. HoTS is NOT one of them. Since you can always turn off voice chat, it is just an ADDITION to help you play the game if YOU WANT.

 

And I want to say 1 more thing. I play video games on PC for 20 years now. Every true experience for me included voice chat and communication with people/friends/clan/etc. Only a very small percent of people I met/talked on voice gave me a bad taste in my mouth, which is the same as in real life.

Edited February 22, 2018 by Godeyes

[mada7 29]

Pings make a sound and light up the map. If they aren't hearing the pings they arent hearing your voice.

The opinions Ive been seeing the most are that it's kept off by default for most people because the internet is full of toxic jerks

if you're not willing to use third party voice chat then it was obviously not terribly important. I've played a bunch of QM games and in general the feature seems to be widely ignored by the player base with teams having at most 2 people in the voice chat channel. It's a lot safer and more enjoyable to just not get into the muck that is voice chat. LoL voice chat is being insulted by shrieking teenagers, DOTA 2 voice chat is the same thing in Russian, and this voice chat, if it gets used, will likely be more shrieking teenagers. That's what voice chat in MOBAs are. I've worked with people testing LoL they will yell at each other over games that mean literally nothing on test servers while sitting next to the person they are yelling at.

[PrivateJoker 27]

I haven't played with the voice chat yet, but I am totally willing to try it out. People are definitely dogshit online, but even playing Team Fortress 2 or CoD with randos online, I've had random convos with cool people before, and especially in TF2, teamwork improves. It's not that hard to just mute somebody who is screeching into their mic, or playing porn audio, or blasting stupid music, or whatever other litany of dumb behavior I've seen in games before. If you have no interest in the feature, by all means, turn it off, but more features isn't a bad thing.

[ExorionAether 11]

Useful for the ones that'll use it. Won't change a thing for the ones that do not want to use this feature. Honestly, I do not understand why so many players (not here alone, mostly referring to Reddit) are already on the brink of madness just because this feature exists.

If you are not comfortable with voice chat, just don't use it. You can cancel joining the voice right from the start of the match and still use chat / pings. So for players such as you this newly added feature should not make any difference. It just gives other players an alternative in terms of communication.

Also regarding the argument "people who wanted such a thing already have Discord etc":
There are lots of people who soloQ, wether in QM or Ranked. So things like Discord are meaningless to them since they do not have a team consisting of the same players. These guys, if they want to communicate per voice, definately will appreciate the newly added voice chat. You can communicate through voice now. Do this for one game and then move on to fight the next match with a completely new team.

There are definately things that turn voice chat into a mess: toxicity, language barrier etc. But saying this ruins the game right from the get go does not seem really seem to be the case. You still have the option to play the game like you used to. And other players have another option at their disposal for communication. So it is a win/win for all.

And with that I will enjoy the quietness of my games while still only using chat / pings.

[mada7 29]

14 hours ago, PrivateJoker said:

I haven't played with the voice chat yet, but I am totally willing to try it out. People are definitely dogshit online, but even playing Team Fortress 2 or CoD with randos online, I've had random convos with cool people before, and especially in TF2, teamwork improves. It's not that hard to just mute somebody who is screeching into their mic, or playing porn audio, or blasting stupid music, or whatever other litany of dumb behavior I've seen in games before. If you have no interest in the feature, by all means, turn it off, but more features isn't a bad thing.

A problem with including it is that it could easily get to the point where it's join voice chat or you'll be reported. I play almost exclusively QM so that isn't likely to happen due to its casual nature but people playing hero league could easily end up pushing this on people as a pseudo mandatory feature

EDIT: And a quick browsing through reddit indicates that this is already a thing that people are doing

Edited February 23, 2018 by mada7

[Migol 433]

So I tried this out last night, and...no real problems over around 6 games?    This was hero league, and the bulk of the talking was actually in the draft where we discussed what we could play and what would be good to counter and whatnot.    However it was also very good to have in game when we had to make split second decisions (of particular note: "Guys they're down 2 for 30 seconds, take their boss!" sort of communication is much easier).

I did have one guy doing a faux transvestite troll attempt...ignored him, and we won the game anyway.    I don't see why people are so up in arms about a feature that's easy to use, and easy not to use.

[Fayte 6]

Anyone meet girls on voice chat?  I'm curious to see how many girls playing this game will avoid voice chat to avoid harrassment

[Anastriana 9]

15 minutes ago, Fayte said:

Anyone meet girls on voice chat?  I'm curious to see how many girls playing this game will avoid voice chat to avoid harrassment

I've spoken a few times on voice so far and haven't come across anything out of the ordinary. Though that was mainly versus AI and the Hammer brawl, so that probably doesn't count for much.

I normally avoid voice chat like the plague, but mostly due to shyness than fear of harassment. However, a few friends have recently opened me up to voice chatting a bit, so since I'm already chatting with them during the game, it's not much of a stretch to speak to the random other people we group with.

I definitely prefer it for quick play-making than trying to type or even ping. I'm not fast enough for either mid-match, unless I'm already dead, of course.

[Slam 40]

I play vs AI most of the time as people are there for fun / or to rush through a game so I'll enjoy some fun chats while relaxing now!
not sure I'll use it much in vs other players (will depend on brain level of others I guess like in OW) but will enjoy saying hi to my team in vs AI!