The Elder Scrolls Online Likely Won't Have Text Chat on Consoles
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It looks like The Elder Scrolls Online won't have text chat in its console incarnations, despite early promises to the contrary. Robert Purchese at Eurogamer has done a good job detailing all the steps of the saga. In short, while both the lead gameplay designer on the game and a community coordinator initially claimed the game would feature text chat (via USB keyboards) on consoles too, the company later backtracked and claimed the feature wouldn't be available. As a matter of fact, the game's support page makes no mention of the functionality, and only references USB keyboards for a few inputs:
"Console versions of the game will also provide limited input by USB-connected keyboards for features not already supported by voice chat or controller input."
To clarify the matter ,Eurogamer contacted ZeniMax Online and received a reply from Matt Firor, The Elder Scrolls Online's game director, who claimed the studio is working on a "quick chat" system, though it's not clear what that means:
"As with a lot of console multi-player games, player-to-player communication in ESOTU is based around voice chat. That being said, we are looking into implementing a 'quick chat' system, and when we have more news to share, we'll let you know."
At the moment, the only thing that's certain is that the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 versions of The Elder Scrolls Online will use proximity-based voice chat as their primary method of communication, which will no doubt affect the community dynamics compared to the PC version.
