Firstly, I understand why it was done. But this implementation shows it just doesn't work and in fact does more against the PVP community than anything for it.
Let us list why it doesn't work.
1) Doesn't remove the BM (Bad Manners/Toxicity) in chat. Players can still spam "Good Job!" for a whole 8 minute match. Yes, I've sat through it multiple times.
2) New players don't have a clue what they're supposed to do and nobody can tell them.
3) There's no way to say specific things or use custom macros even. How do I tell my team I'm out of MP? How do I tell the players not to pick up 8 stacks and run into the enemy? How do I tell them who I'm going to fullswing? How about something as simple as bursting a target at a specific time (e.g. B4B activation)?
4) This chat removal actually makes feeding etc easier. I've played a few matches already where players would run into the enemy base and /dance, while I'm watching the healers drain all their MP keeping him alive. He'll then afk at base while the whole team drop dead. There's no way to bring this to anyones attention.
That's only to highlight a few reasons. Also, why remove it in 4v4 Premade? What exactly does that accomplish? You're already playing with people you agreed to play with.
You know what I think? I think the reason this has been done is because they don't want to punish toxicity/wintraders in PvP. How many times have wintraders/feeders been reported? How many have actually had some sort of action on them? I think it was removed to "silence" the vocal PVP community who wanted players removed from the game for what they were doing.
Before you ask: I think they don't want to punish them just to keep them subbed. They want income. The team wants money and they don't want a vocal minority in the playerbase to become enough of a vocal majority, to force some action to be taken and remove a few subscriptions.
It's either that, or they want less work for the GM's... because the toxicity reason is invalid. It's still there, more than ever.
So where are the players who thought this was a good idea? You might enjoy it for the first 2 weeks, but when you're stuck at your skill level and can't progress, that's because there's nobody in your matches you can ask. When you come across one or two players in the enemy team that actually know how to press buttons, you won't understand what you're doing wrong. You'll become a burden to your team for the remaining 7 minutes.
Also, I'm looking for players who have actually done some Solo Queue Feast since the chat change. What is it actually like? I've got the mounts etc etc so I'm just waiting for Season 4 to roll around.
Feel free to leave your thoughts below. I hope they break their silence on this soon, I can see the JP playerbase is as frustrated as we are.
inb4 se remove "nice job!"