The lack of in-game communication in Destiny is troubling

Recently I talked about PUGs in Destiny. It made some of you in-site commenters not like me too much.

That’s fine; I promise I’m a pretty okay guy once you get to know me.

In it, I talked about the fact that Destiny isn’t going to solve the issue of PUGs in online games; there will still be problems, people will still die a lot, you’ll sometimes feel like you’re the only one who’s legitimately trying, and more importantly, there won’t be any communication.

Despite the fact that every Xbox One and PlayStation 4 come with a headset bundled into the console, I heard zero voice-chat during my time in the Destiny beta. This could be a blessing in disguise; I won’t have to go through the process of muting a bunch of people before games. However, the lack of communication when playing harder missions isn’t worth the trade-off at all. Not to mention, PUGs, at least in the beta, had no voice chat functionality whatsoever.

It’s perfectly okay if someone’s skill level isn’t up to snuff with someone else’s. I’m not the best player in the world; my many, many deaths in Destiny’s multiplayer proved that. But an ability to pick up on boss patterns, realizing where you should and shouldn’t be standing, and having the presence of mind to pick up on your surroundings is going to be pretty damn important in Strike missions when Destiny launches this September. Being able to talk with your teammates over voice chat can help eliminate almost every issue I just talked about.

It doesn’t help that Destiny doesn’t offer the alternative other MMO-type games do. Since this is a console release, the ability to chat via keyboard isn’t available. All I’ve picked up on so far for in-game communication is pointing, saluting, and dancing. Perhaps the internet can come up with some shorthand solutions to work around the fact that people aren’t using headsets.

Or, you know, we could use our headsets.