The New Chat Restriction in The Feast

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

When the one sour person is telling you to kill yourself or Uninstall, and player response is "tough, get a thicker skin, lol internets," until the company removes chat entirely, THEN the player response is "give it back, we needed it, beef up your reporting system," maybe it's time to looked at the player base as part of the problem rather than just demand rollbacks.

I'm enjoying Feast, don't get me wrong. I have my Goten and Raigo and I'm still playing with friends. I'd like to have the chat back. But I also have friends who said they tried it and the toxicity was so bad they haven't stepped foot in it since. And I've also seen matches that could have been so much better if only we could have strategized.

Raging at underperformers does nothing but make that rager part of the problem.

I'd like to point out that the ONLY place I've ever heard things that bad has been outside of PvP.

As far as people trying things and receiving toxicity for it, I need to remind people of something: If you're new, you're going to mess up. You're going to lose, you're going to fail. It's a natural step in learning something. Were it not, we'd all be clearing Savage raid content on day 1. We'd all be high ranked in the Feast. But fact is, and especially in competition, you are never going to get it right 100% of the time. Some players forget this, or are a bit too passionate in their anger and fire off hurtful words. If you back down and give up because of that, you are accepting defeat. Sure, not everyone has that kind of will and fighting spirit. But you gain nothing if you just walk away at the first sign of adversity. That's not how you win, not in videogames OR life.

So if someone's being so toxic, no you don't have to take it. You don't even have to fire back at them. The best thing you can do is report if it's that bad, and keep trying. When you learn and improve, you'll notice people mouth off less to you, and you'll be able to prove them wrong besides.

[TiramisuMacaron]

Bans, they do happen for PvE. For PvP the GMs simply fail to do their job. I mean in one instance I had enough to take the person to court and win; guess what was the outcome of the report...
The only thing that could ever get you banned in PvP was going in with your lore (or esoterics) at anything less than 2k, because that was considered "lore/eso farming = win trading" with some logical leaps.

And no, you can't crowdsource bans/chat bans. And you shouldn't want to in the first place - you are still paying a subscription for services. supposedly.

Win-trading actually rarely gets you banned, either does account sharing, or speed hacking. I also know for a fact that people have gotten suspended/banned for tossing slurs out in PvP. It has happened on Primal, it has happened on Aether. One of our players has gotten so many reports that he was suspended for a period of time, and when he came back he was never toxic. People hated playing with him, and then.... silence, if all trolls were handled that well it would be great. The problem is consistency, it is so case by case that it is an issue.

In my example the chat ban wouldn't be law, it would temporary until a GM can go over the case and decide on what to do with the person. I don't think it is an ideal outcome, but I'd rather have a feature that people would have to maliciously exploit than to not be able to chat at all.

EDIT: I just wanted to add the fact that things like wintrading, throwing, account sharing, or hacking are just brushed off is hilarious considering the pinned post in this forum.

[Februs]

Bans, they do happen for PvE. For PvP the GMs simply fail to do their job.

Incorrect.

We've had reports of bans here on the forums over harassment as well as cheating. There have been several threads about it in the past, including one in which SE actually requested that we report illicit activities so that they could respond promptly. PvP is not some magical exception to the ban hammer; however, that does not mean that SE will hand out a ban just because someone had their ego slapped around in the arena. This is especially over an issue like Harassment, which may not be a simple black and white case. What one person finds super offensive may very well be making someone at SE burst into fits of giggles.

[loreleidiangelo]

It's kind of strange...both here and on Reddit, the people I see against the ban are people who are actually on the ladders, give respectful, intelligent PVP advice in various threads, have all 3 PVP mounts, and are just generally way more active on this subforum than the posters who are for the ban. The posters for the ban I have never even seen in any of my matches since the event dropped. It baffles me that feedback is not being weighted with these imbalances in mind.

[Februs]

When the one sour person is telling you to kill yourself or Uninstall, and player response is "tough, get a thicker skin, lol internets," until the company removes chat entirely, THEN the player response is "give it back, we needed it, beef up your reporting system," maybe it's time to looked at the player base as part of the problem rather than just demand rollbacks.

The player base is the problem, but there are two sides to that coin.

Look at your example from the other way. How fair is it for the entire community to be summarily judged because of that one sour person's salty comments? Should those comments be made in the first place? No. But should those comments have been taken so seriously that everyone gets equally punished for them? Also no. Answering a bad act with an equally bad act does not magically make everything right. That's especially the case for something as trivial as community interactions. To paraphrase the Ghostbusters II, "being miserable and treating other people like dirt is everyone's god given right," which is exactly why ESRB does not rate online interactions. You never know what kind of people you'll run into. That's the risk you take playing online ... or even just stepping outside your front door.

Quite frankly, people do need to grow up a little and stop being toxic in the chat box, especially because raging most certainly does lead to under-preforming. That said, people also need to grow thicker skin. It's a big world out here on the internet. People can be cruel. Get over it. Ignore it. Be a better person and move on. SE, as well, should also have taken a step back and re-evaluate their approach before they started violating simple human rights.

[Cordie]

Incorrect. [...]

Maybe you are just lucky, or maybe here on Chaos servers we're not. If it's PvE stuff, everything works just fine. if it's PvP, the message I've taken is "don't even bother reporting", but the truth may actually be closer to an implicit endorsement of offensive behaviours by SE and the GMs (precisely the "giggles" part you mentioned).
Removing the chat certainly gives an easy and most effective way out. As I said earlier, everyone wins.

Edit:

Everyone is FAR from winning with the removal of free chat in PvP.

You need to take the business perspective into account too. Technical measures (chat removal/substitution) can compensate for lacking regulatory mechanisms (because they are not as desirable or because resources are limited or.. or...).
That said, nothing prevents you communicating with other players through 3rd-party channels if you find it necessary. Although it is not necessary: if you need your group to focus on something you have the marks, the waypoints and the short auto-text, using all of which is much easier than typing in messages too -you can keybind everything.

As for "higher levels of play" why do you ppl even need chat in the first place? if it is truly "high-level", with an insanely limited system as a 4-vs-4 encounter with fully known actions, time restraints for each, and no higher order of applicable tactics than "buff/heal ally - debuff/kill enemy", you should be zerging this on flowchart by now.

Edit #2:

Yes, PvE support works perfectly fine. All representatives I've contacted so far have been most helpful. I have yet to find anything to complain about the GM service on PvE matters - and trust me, I'm whinnyyyyy :3
As for bots, it only takes 5-10 minutes to get them removed, and the right-click > report RMT works really well.. I only wish it would also make the bot's text spam invisible to me too. "Farming" bots, well.. you have to report these to the web-site (cheats) -these do take a while to disappear (maybe they have to track all of them, idk)

[KusoWat]

Everyone is FAR from winning with the removal of free chat in PvP.

For you to say PvE works just fine is quite frankly, positively hilarious. Bots live on for days and people have been botting for years and have yet to get so much as a warning. You haven't even PvP'd in the "toxic" feast enviroment enough to distinguish whether or not people are getting account action taken.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

Removing the chat certainly gives an easy and most effective way out. As I said earlier, everyone wins.

You again are overlooking the myriad of issues it causes over the single one it barely fixes.

- New players have no means to learn what to do on the fly, and the quick chat covers only a bare minimum of what they may encounter.
- Experienced players have no means to communicate or give advice; THIS can mislead others to possibly think the Feast is uninviting to new players as they have no other recourse but to learn on their own.
- This was implemented mid-season 3, effectively hindering teams and solo players still trying to advance
- Deaf players have virtually NO means of communication now, as voice chat software isn't an option for them either
- Players who would misbehave regardless are using the quick chat system to spam and troll their teams
- Overall, players who dislike this change are queueing less and less; this will ultimately increase queue times and decrease the level of player's capabilities in the Feast. Once again, for anyone still trying to climb in the ranked ladder, this is a huge hinderance.

[Cordie]

yes.. it limits your ability to type "u sux go practice mode noob" and the like -such a terrible loss of helpful advice from the exquisitely inviting Feast community!
I agree it should be implemented on day 1, not mid-season, not 2nd season, not 3rd season. Better late than never!

[KusoWat]

Okay, you're just here to troll. You can't respond to the people constantly divulging facts and stating the reality of feast.

Your only intention is to anger people, and it is both sad and disappointing.