The NXE Party Lag host is usually not the same person hosting the actually Halo 3 game. As such, the party’s banter has no affect on the game at large, just that one person’s bandwidth. Usually, that one person’s bandwidth can handle party chat and the game (unhosting) just fine. However, the lag is increased when the Party Chat host is ALSO the Game Host, but Bungie’s net code makes this very unlikely, since the Host is decided upon best connection detected in the pre-game lobby. If there is a Party Chat in the pregame lobby, then the player hosting that chat will have a lower ping than most people there and the game will recognize that and give Host to someone else with a better connection, effectively decreasing lag for EVERYONE, since fewer lines of player audio will be handled by the game Host and the Party Chat host will not have to deal with hosting the game.

The ONLY time the NXE Party Chat will contribute to game lag is if, for some reason, the Party Chat host still has a better connection than everyone else in the pre-game lobby. Of course, if that’s the case and everyone has a crappy connection, the game is going to lag regardless.

Truthfully, Party Chat causes less lag than open chat or Push To Talk chat.

Life would be so much simpler if there was no such thing as lag :(

A game without PTT is exactly the same bandwidth-wise as a game where everyone on each team is in party chat. The only difference is you don’t need to set it up before hand.

If people haven’t noticed a major increase in lag when in party chat, then I don’t think increasing the PTT limit will be a problem.