RE: Live Letter Feedback - DO NOT disable chat in PvP

[lazytrash]

Hi, fellow pvp healer in primal -

I am also asking for a deliberation in this matter - given that I also receive substantial vulgar and dismissal from 4v4 feast. Now you might say if the player is good then the finger-pointing and blaming would not happen - but that's another matter. Being able to play without being harassed should not require top-notch play - so I do see where the decision was coming from (likely substantial amount of harassment report). However, I do think pvp chat is critical to the gameplay - I only hope people would self-police a bit when they lose a match, knowing that for solo queue it is equal likely their (supposedly) sub-par teammates had been allotted to the other side.

[LioJen]

From what I understand, the majority of harassment comes from when unranked / inexperienced players get into ranked matches on a team with veteran PvPers

So it seems to me that the solution would be for more accurate matchmaking and ranking everyone so that you're paired up with someone of similar skill level and experience.

Also, a Novice Hall for PVP would be great and might attract new players to it since all the PvP skills and mechanics can be overwhelming and intimidating, and I still haven't found a decent guide online for them. An in-game tutorial and training exercises would go a long way to making PvP a more enjoyable experience for everyone and calm down the community. I don't think silencing them is going to help much, since the players receiving the harassment can already just turn off the chat if they want.

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

So glad about this change. Might even give it another shot! Was nothing short of distressing to have so many problems with the community as a beginner.

And of course people are getting toxic and confrontational over a helpful change...

[natyusha]

Now that feast is a going to become a safe space people will just find other ways to harass people on their team that they think are bad or causing them to lose. I know people that might even go so far as to make an alt on other player's servers purely to tell them how terrible they are. Often when queuing for feast during the day I know the result of the match as soon as I see the players on both teams so a 'lost the coinflip', 'time to stop queueing' or other such comment may be made by me or another teammates and it is usually due to one healer being significantly weaker than the other. Granted, the reverse is also true when people say 'free win' etc. The other times I see rage are usually related to mismanaged spoils where somebody picks up way too many and throws a game. In cases like that the person in question is usually called some nasty names. I've honestly never seen anything worse than that so these claims of horrible toxicity seem quite exaggerated.

My question is: If the chat triggers people so much why don't they just turn it off themselves while pvping? Why does square have to mute the chat for everyone?

My proposed solution: A right click>mute for people in the party list, that way people can just mute players that they don't like or consider toxic. While the rest of the team can still benefit from using the chat.

[Theodric]

Why do people push for censorship when something doesn't go their way? I just don't understand it. Why not petition the developers to pool more resources into chat moderation and a more thorough report/ignore system?

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

Why do people push for censorship when something doesn't go their way? I just don't understand it. Why not petition the developers to pool more resources into chat moderation and a more thorough report/ignore system?

I can't say I know many people that were 'clamoring' for full censorship. Many people I know were just like me, that felt like they got enough salt for their respective chips from other far more entertaining sources and so opted to simply ignore or avoid the content all together, because deconstructive hate is a far greater motivation killer than simply realizing that there's a couple things they could be doing better.

[Moonlite]

My question is: If the chat triggers people so much why don't they just turn it off themselves while pvping? Why does square have to mute the chat for everyone?

My proposed solution: A right click>mute for people in the party list, that way people can just mute players that they don't like or consider toxic. While the rest of the team can still benefit from using the chat.

First thing same reason the dungeons have more and more gates. The player base can't behave themselves when interacting with random people.

The second, you and others have all had what might be better suggestions for managing the issue of chat. But I am going to go out on a limb and say one is a little bit of work the other is a lot. How long did it take them to manage a decent RMT report function? Years so either they don't have the resources or the game is designed in a way where everything is a monumental task to adjust.

[Walde]

Why do people push for censorship when something doesn't go their way? I just don't understand it. Why not petition the developers to pool more resources into chat moderation and a more thorough report/ignore system?

Disabling the PvP-chat effectively reduces the verbal abuse in the PvP-chat by 100%. No-one is taking your freedom of speech away, you just have to use extra effort to convey your comments (be they negative or not) after the match if you even wish to do so.

[Zojha]

And I say if this is how they try to solve PvP's toxicity, how will they ultimately handle toxicity issues in the much-larger PvE component of the game.

Differently?

When people were wiping on purpose in PotD floor 50, the community policed themselves by telling people they can just DC after the boss instead and SE gave people more incentive to finish with a guaranteed upgrade at 50 and increased chance for upgrades on lower floors.

In other words: They drastically reduced the reason people were toxic in the first place while the community helped convincing the people it wasn't necessary to be toxic. I remember Etro's Soul trying a similar initiative in PvP, but it quite apparently fell flat. And reducing the reason people are toxic in the first place would mean making win, loss and rating matter less or even removing them entirely. The PvEers wanted that. The PvPers do not want that. So they can't solve it this way without opposition.

From what I understand, the majority of harassment comes from when unranked / inexperienced players get into ranked matches on a team with veteran PvPers

From my experiences in League of Legends, I'd cast doubt on that claim: You can miss a single skillshot - the very first time in the game - at the 35 minute mark in a platinum I match and then get told to die because missing it created an opening the enemy capitalized on, thus ruining someone's diamond promo. And that's with very tight matchmaking.

Talking of matchmaking - the issue here is that the PvP community is small. The tighter you make matchmaking, the longer queues will take and then you have people complaining that they can't play at all anymore. That's the precise reason why SE keeps going back and forth with their matchmaking.

Why do people push for censorship when something doesn't go their way?

I can't remember seeing even a single person asking for SE to disable chat in PvP, not ingame and not on the forums. Granted, I'm not omniscient - for all I know, there might have been a very heated petition on that topic that eluded me. But from my perspective, that's simply SE's reaction to the large amounts of reports they got, not a reaction to people's pleas.

[Alleo]

Well first they will have their reason to do this and if they provide the possibility of still being able to form a strategy than this could be really helpful for PVP. I have a friend that tried PVP for the first time, to get the mount and minion. He gave up now. First because some people are just really bad and second because he saw lots of hate and toxicity. He played some matches as a tank and already said that he would not want to play as a healer in this. He read guides, tried to get better and use his abilities and more and yet he was still yelled at by people that were doing the mistakes themselves..it turned him off PVP..even after saying that the mode itself was fun.

I also did some matches for glamour gear and I also saw enough verbal attacks..

In the end the community can probably thank themselves for the chance. I believe that they would not take such a measure if its not necessary in their opinion.