Voice Chat is back! Yes, Rocket League’s most controversial and previously broken feature in now making a grand comeback to the game. This means that going forward Rocket League is going to have a fully functional voice chat available to all players. The news has left many players nervous and unsure, but is it such a bad thing? In this essay, we’re going to look closely at how this new 2022 voice chat works in Rocket League.
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There is no denying the communication (or the lack of it) can make a world of difference to Rocket League games. When playing with randoms in both ranked and casual, we all feel the need for better communication so many times. Which is why this new voice chat feature has completely new system at work behind the scenes that enables players to effortless talk to each other via team and party voice chat channels.
How to use Voice Chat in Rocket League
- Voice Chat is available to players on all platforms: Epic Games Store, PlayStation 4 (PS4), PlayStation 5 (PS5), Steam, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S.
- Voice Chat is fully cross-platform.
- Voice Chat is enabled by default which means it is always ON unless you choose to turn it OFF.
- The two Voice Chat channels are Team Chat and Party Chat. You cannot speak to or hear players from the opposing team.
- With Voice Chat enabled, a Voice Channel tab (headset icon) appears in your Friends List. This tab lets you join, leave or change Voice Channels.
- When you join an online match, you will automatically be placed into a Team Voice Channel.
- Likewise, when you join or start a party with friends, you are placed into a Party Voice Channel. From here you can see everyone in your party that has Voice Chat enabled.
Voice Chat Settings
Voice Chat Settings can be accessed by going to Settings -> Chat -> Voice Chat Settings. Let’s go over these settings.
- Enable Voice Chat: This is checked by default. Uncheck this option to disable Voice Chat being always ON and enabled.
- Voice Chat Input Device: Lets you select a specific microphone or input voice device to use for voice chat. This option is PC only.
- Voice Chat Output Device: Lets you select a specific output device (speakers, headphones, etc.) for use with voice chat. This option is PC only.
- PTT or Push To Talk: Checking this box lets you use a pre-assigned key or button to enable your input device for voice chat. You can change your PTT button under Settings -> Controls -> View/Change Bindings -> Scroll down to Voice Chat (Push To Talk).
- Preferred Voice Channel: This lets you choose whether to default to Party Chat Channel or Team Chat Channel when both are available and active in online matches.
- Main Menu Notifications: Enabling this shows the names of speaking players while you are in the Main Menu.
- Match Notifications: Enabling this shows the names of speaking players while you are in a match.
- Text Chat Notifications: Enabling this shows notifications in text chat when players leave or join Voice Chat.
- To adjust incoming Voice Chat volume go to Settings -> Audio -> Voice Chat.
How to mute your Mic
So far I’ve played a couple of games and I found that the voice chat feature is helpful. I personally only mute other players when they trash talk, curse or play annoyingly loud music.
On the whole I think voice chat is a great feature to have.
But also I can already see how on somedays I may only want to listen to other but not talk. In that case I’ll have to mute my mic. I think currently there are two ways of doing this.
- Mute yourself from the the voice channel tab under your friends list when you are in a match.
- Mute your mic or adjust its volume from your console settings. I’m on xbox, here’s how those setting look for me.
As a side note, if your Rocket League Voice Chat is not working, ensure that your mic settings are ok. You can do this in windows by click on the sound icon in your taskbar and going into microphone settings and if you are on console, check your mic settings and volume on PS, Xbox by heading into your audio settings section.
If you’re relatively new to RL or video games in general and want to see how to use the Voice Chat feature in Rocket League, then you can watch this quick 90 second long video I made about it.
