I know this an issue that has been raised before, the fact that if in a PvP match with more than five players on each side, you have no way of communicating with your whole side without the other faction also listening in due to the limit of five players in a team.

What brings me back to the topic is the recent Shuttle Wars, where not only did we have 10v10 matches but we had a mixture of Feds and KDF on each side, making any form of team co-ordination near impossible. If we are going to organise ourself into doing more PvP via challenge matches, this lack of communication ability is only likely to get worse - it wasn't much of a concern in the rapid pace of shuttle wars but when we progress to T3 or T4 ships it will be.

Ideally in addition to Zone and Team chat, we need a Faction chat, that all members of "Read Team" can hear while those on "Blue Team" can not and vice versa, irrespective of if they bothered to actually team up. This might even help with PUGs who refuse to accept a team invite but that is a secondary issue as far as I am concerned.

As I understand it, within a PvP match we have the following channels:

Zone - Open to all and something we need to keep as it is good to be able to talk to the opposition.

Team - Team members only. Restricted to a maximum of five players per "team" and all must be from the same faction (Fed/KDF).

Local - Identical to Zone? Local might do something different in say Kerrat where there are always multiple instances of the same map happening and you can hear those other instances chat in Zone but I've never heard chat from another instance of Cracked Planet for instance in Zone, so have to assume that Zone in a normal PvP match is in fact local to that instance.

So if Zone is actually "local" to the instance you are playing, we do not need Local doing the same thing. Why not make Local be "local" as in everyone on your side of the match i.e. if I type in Local, everyone on Blue team gets it irrespective of whether they are teamed with me or even the same faction as me?

I don't know how Cryptic's code works but it seems to me that since the game must keep track of all "Blue Team" players separate from "Red Team" for scoring purposes, it should be relatively easy to add a filter to Local chat, to check the Red/Blue status of players and only show text accordingly.

Does any of that make sense?

If so, when can we have it please Cryptic?

Local, is as far as I understand, only readable to people withina certain distance to you. Don't ask me what the exact distance is.

Having a Blue/Red chat makes absolute sense to me, whether repurposing Local Chat for that instead of creating a new chat channel is another question. It is possible that Cryptic doesn't want to create too many chat channels with every instance and that's why they haven't done it so far.

Local is local as in a short distance away from you? Hmm, interesting idea, I hadn't thought of it working like that, just assumed it worked the same as it does in non PvP maps, where it is anyone in your instance. Assuming you are right, I can't really see a use for it to be that way though, not unless we are going to get massively bigger PvP maps some time down the line.

Like you, I also suspect that Cryptic would rather not create too many extra channels, as each channel must surely use some processing power / bandwidth, which is why I thought about re-purposing an existing and (to me at least) worthless channel.

Glad to see I at least made sense and that someone agrees its worthwhile, now just need Cryptic to add it to the things to do list...

I like this idea of faction chat.

If only in PVP matches it might work.

I thought local was instance specific. When I'm at ESD, for example, zone gives me chat from all instances - so I see everyone who is at ESD, but local gives me only the chat from my specific instance.

I would like to see this implemented when real open PVP ocurrs.

50 vs 50 anyone?

I had garnered the feeling that STO not separating factions in chat was a welcomed feature.
Besides trash-talking and strategic eavesdropping, what other issues have there been?

What we're asking for wishstone, is the option to chat with ALL members of our side in a pvp match with more than 5 per side, without the other side being able to read it. Right now, in a private PVP match, i ( a Klingon) can be on the same "side"as federation players, yet the only way i can communicate with them is through zone chat, witch can be seen be the other side, thus making planning impossible. this also happens in C&H, where there is more than 5 players on each side. if there were a red/ blue team chat, this wouldn't be a problem as i could shout out "everyone attack X", & only players friendly to me would see it, & the enemy wouldn't all rush to defend X.
does that make sense? I'm a little over medicated ATM.

The issue is PvP - if you want to communicate stuff like "Everyone focus fire on Hale", it can be suboptimal if the opposing faction hears that and knows where to direct all heals. It works fine if there aren't any more than 5 mpeople in a match and everyone joins the team, but if there are more, such information cannot be effectively communicated to members not of the team. That is suboptimal.

For such situations only, faction chat is a very good idea. I think we need to have the zone chat as well - and if only to call out "good game everyone" at the end. But using zone chat to call orders or requires is not the best strategy.