The defining factor of this game is playing with more than 3 friends...

It would be interesting if they allowed cross squad chat only between squad leaders. It would keep the heavy chatter down, and help team organization that feels limited by the 8 person max party system.

I for one like hearing from everyone on my team.  If a person is annoying then mute them.  I also found myself getting a little lonely when I was running around bc2 and not being able to hear others.  About 1 in 6 games I played had someone talking.  

It needs full chat rooms. I can't always get a full squad and it gets boring.

Worse case is when theres loadsof us but can't join a game :(

never had a prob gettin 8 in any bf game, might take a few matches to get everyone in and on the same team, but it doesnt even take that long now, the real prob is with 8 peeps on the same team the other team rarely has a chance and they all quit when they realize it, but if they got a few good squads too... well now that gets real interestin

I wish they simply had team chat instead of squad chat, my friends and i normally just end up in party chat because there are normally more of us playing than just 4.

Oh I definitely want to be able to talk to my squad, but what I'm saying is that squad leaders would also have the ability to say, highlight any other squad leader on their team and talk to them to promote better coordinated team tactics. just squad leaders can talk to each other this way, then they have to switch back to regular squad chat to relay the information to us. Kind like real orders for battle plans. I know that often when Im in a party of 6 or more it gets hectic and before you know it people are just chatting away and you can't get a word in edgewise.

This way squad leaders could coordinate with other squads, or warn them of attacks or enemies or let them know what your squad is trying to do so the other squads can act accordingly. Say your squad is focusing on the B crate and the other squad can now focus on A. Or one is all support and cover, and the other one is cq.

Its a decent way to have a whole team working together without the crazy room of noise and random kids rapping, and freaking out, or those players that never seem to be able to take anything seriously when they get into a chat with another player and it ends up just turning into stories about weed while you're trying to call out positions or ask for help, and all that nonsense.

Thing is,not everyone plays with mics or communicates with there squad,its a good idea in theory but may not work if your match has loads of people playing solo.

I don't agree with squad leader communication. A simple fix would be to make it so that you have to press down on the d pad (or some unused button) for team chat. This will filter out local squad chat but allow you to chat with your whole team if you want to. Halo 2 did this in Big Team Battle matches to reduce latency. I don't see why it wouldn't work in this game.

As another poster pointed out, even when I did successfully get my 5+ squadmates in the same match on the same team, we usually dominated because we were facing squads of individuals that weren't communicating. There needs to be some kind of matchmaking system in this game similar to Halo Reach that ranks you with people according to your skill and the amount of people in your party.

With open team chat you also get the chance to meet new people who use a mic that you wouldn't normally meet. Slowly you'll get people who talk in squads which means better games!

Party chat is killing the social aspect of XBL. Everybody is in their party chat bubble to "get away" from all the negative people when from my experiences it really isn't that bad aside from the occasional person every 20 games. If somebody is bothering you that bad that's what mute is for.

If we can't have full team chat I'll settle for squad chat+ team proximity chat. A full team with everybody using their mics at the same time would be counter-productive.