They actually do have chat. All, team, and party. My problem with the chat box is that it shows up right where my score/kills displays at the end of the round.
Maybe you have your chat disabled, Skalber?
There is no voip. I disabled mine in BF4 anyway, so this wasn't a deal breaker. Discord works just fine with BF2042.
I think the game is worth it. It has a lot of BF qualities that were lacking in WW1 and WW2. I think it's especially worth it if you intend to play with friends in Discord. Squading up is awesome in this game with some great features and gameplay.
I wasn't sure how I was going to feel about the wingsuit, but it really opens up some cool options for flanking and getting around the map.
The operators also don't bother me. I don't really understand why so many people are up in arms about them. You can pick whichever operator your squad needs at any given time with whatever perk they have and keep the same gun loadout throughout the operators, or change them between respawns. The ability to change scopes and muzzles on the fly is also amazing.
The portal experience is pretty cool. You can dial in the game that you want in so many different ways that it will be interesting to see what becomes popular and the creativity that comes along with that. I loaded into Al Alamain from 1942 and thought it was awesome. I'm sure there's more of that to come.
They definitely need dedicated servers run by the community. This game will fail if they don't implement that. COD gets away with it because of the consoles. BF is a PC game and they need to fix that shit, pronto!
There are definitely things missing and things that could be better, but that's always the case. If memory serves, there was quite a bit of bitching on BF4's release and extended on for several years after release. Now it's a great game. I think this one will be, too.