Is Party Chat that important?

[Veknoid_Outcast]

KylieDog said:

Veknoid_Outcast said:

KylieDog said:

Party chat is a plague to team games.

It should be disabled in any game that requires teamplay/teamwork.

I'm talking cross-game party chat.

Hey, in a perfect world, I agree 100%.

But I gotta say that everytime I play an online multiplayer game with my friends, I beg them to enable party chat. The amount of ugly, annoying nonsense coming out of the lips of other players on Xbox LIVE is staggering. And it takes all the joy out of the competition.

PS3 has regular party chat, if someone in a lobby is a loudmouth it takes splitseconds to mute them, or the entire lobby that isn't in party.  Cross game chat does nothing but ruin teamwork.

Oh, I misunderstood. I was defending party chat, i.e., removing oneself and one's friends from the larger roster of players to avoid hearing all the idiots.

Cross-game chat would certainly impair a team's ability to work together. But do many people take advantage of that feature? Why distract yourself with outside conversation during a multiplayer match?