Party Chat single handidly killed Online Multiplayer

[Loonyyy]

I feel as though party chat has allowed people to shut themselves in a house without any windows or doors because people can sometimes be jerks. You don't do that in real life and I don't think you should do it online either. I feel the people who do are doing themselves a disservice.

I think you miss the point, and I think that may be because you don't encounter enough people using the microphone. You shouldn't have to subject yourself to rubbish to enjoy a game, and often that's what using voice comms means. It's a wide world of squeakers, literal screaming manchildren, people who think we share their love of fucking Pendulum or Darude, shit-talkers and assholes out there. All of these people stand in the way of your leisure time, and as an adult, I don't have time for their maladjusted bullshit. Gaming is how I enjoy myself, and no part of that means being forced to deal with jerks.

An important difference between games and real life is that there are far more consequences for being a jerk. If you want to troll, eventually you'll have no friends, and someone will probably hit you. People can only get away with this behaviour in anonymous online environments where people are forced to put up with them. HENCE Party Chat. If the game is full of assholes and there is no system for dealing with them, people are going to use voice comms with their friends and fuck that noise. If the spammers and trolls, the screamers and mentally unhinged were punished, removed, or at least automuted, then maybe it'd be worthwhile.

Right now my favourite title is CS:GO, which basically requires some team comms, usually mic, and you put up with so much fucking shit, just so you can be a decent teammate with coms, from people literally screaming in your ear, to spamming music, to seeing how many racial slurs they can fill chat with. This is a developer problem. They didn't fix it, because too many people are willing either defend it, or suggest that one "should [not avoid jerks] online".

Play a month or two of CS:GO where you need mic, and then come back to me telling me the problem is people not giving it a chance, and not developers refusing to give people the tools to make their games better. I've had some amazing games with great leaders, really funny people, and had some real great times, and also some really shit ones where I've been forced to put up with some asshole for 70 minutes because he has one friend who's lobbied with him making him unkickable.

 

[Something Amyss]

To your second point, it works perfectly well since a number of people have mentioned Call of Duty in their posts.

Which does not make it the only game. People are likely going for it for the same reason you are.

To your third, in what ways and on what games. Even more than most other games people really don't like to talk in fighting games. How were people jerks/assholes?

Okay, 1. I've already given examples. 2. If people don't communicate in fighting games, how does that help to make your case (answer: it doesn't). 3. How big a list do you want?

I can start by saying I can't think of a single genre of game where I haven't either been called a homophobic or sexist slur simply for playing the game, depending on how specific (male-sounding) my username is.

Finally, I'm not dismissing anyone.

Then trying to pawn this off as some sort of anti-social reason is a bad way to get your point across.

Also, since people keep quoting your house with no doors or windows, that's hardly the case. It's a normal house being set up in a virtual environment. People don't get to just come into your house and make a fuss or a mess. And I would rather play games in that environment than at a park with screaming children.

 

[DudeistBelieve]

Quite right. I feel more inclined to find ways of avoiding BS because I feel like I've less time to enjoy life as it is so it behooves me to fill said time with the least amount of stressors as possible.

Yup. My leisure time is limited. I want to enjoy my games. I'm getting too old for this shit.

Personally I rarely use party chat and mute the voice chat if there's an ingame way of doing so. I've no interest in talking to random folks online anymore, whether its the old-man hermit coming out or what I'm unsure (probably is though, I do feel the compulsion to sit on my porch and yell at kids in the neighborhood to keep off my lawn).

I mostly play with friends, and sometimes their friends. Partying up is perfect for that. And, I would stress, the alternative is that I probably would stay off mic and mute people anyway, so as it relates to the topic it's not a game changer.

Even when I'm not playing with friends, I deal with people mostly through party chat. I generally accept party invites because they're usually also people who don't want to have to figure out which of the 30 people talking at once is the one screaming "******" every ten seconds. And if they're not? It's easier to leave than to start muting everyone.

A different note: I've noticed that people can be dickwads in text chat as well, so having voice chat/party chat didn't really change the game so much as make it easier for dicks to be dicks. But they were always there. Pre-chat window games could be flooded by folks on PC who wrote scripts... and I recall a lot of shitheads flooding Quake games back in the day with horrible language atrocities (vulgar or otherwise). So, adding in the voice chat and party chat actually gave me an out by way of allowing me to mute those bastards, something the pre-chat window (and sometimes even post-) didn't allow.

I always found chat in such games easier to ignore when it was text than audio. Children screaming in text boxes isn't quite as annoying as children screaming right in my ear.

And it's not a "Safe Space" thing either just because I don't want to hear some jerk legit being blatantly racist. It's annoying, especially when I'm paying for shit...

It will probably never cease to amaze me that people can think an environment where groups who are frequently endangered can not be is somehow worse than being mildly inconvenienced.

No, it's not about safe spaces. It's about something far more trivial. I'm not sure why that makes it better.

What I miss was back in the days of PS2 online, the headset didn't come with the adapter or console. You had to pay extra for the privilege of voice chat, so you ended up with people who were relatively less shit bags because of that 30$ gatekeeper.

Well, except it didn't do it then, just like the same claims aren't true now for XBL Gold and PS+. It's almost like people are willing to pay to be assholes. Which is exactly why Microsoft won't step in. They're the big paying customers.

A majority of my interactions with people are very pleasant.

And it's never occurred to you that the number of people who talk about this might have the more typical experience than your single example?

Look at it this way: it sounds like you're the guy who smoked a pack of cigarettes a day for 50 years and didn't get cancer telling other people they didn't get it from cigarettes.

Call of Duty, then yeah you might run into a few foul mouth kids. But there are a lot more games than that and there are a lot more genres than shooters.

I'm not sure stereotyping is going to work, either.

My interactions in racing, fighting, and adventure co-op have rarely been anything but, pleasant.

Weird, I've got bad results from all of those. Especially fighting games. And, again, I think you will find that the more common result.

A lot of this love for party-chat seems to be anti-social people simply being anti-social.

Only if you dismiss the experiences of others because you don't share them. And that seems to be the problem here: the notion that you haven't had a bad time so when people mention harassment or trolls or screaming kids, it must somehow be less valid.

If you put chat in Mario games, people will use it for the same purposes. Hell, the lack of communication in the early DS Mario Kart games didn't stop people from making penis emblems and swastika emblems. In a Nintendo Game. Not Call of Duty, not even a shooter. This is exactly why Nintendo limits their communication options, whether people think it's a good thing or a bad thing.

And speaking for myself only, I find party chat to be a social experience, rather than an anti-social one. Why? Because I will actually use it.

Also, while not specifically to you, the part of this post where I address Imp is probably worth the read.

I appreciate the offer, but there's not much to talk about. My family dies younger than most, and I'm reaching that age. Plus it's winter, and I get morbid in winter.

If it makes you feel any better, the mutant stargoat will be here any day now, so it'll probably be a moot point.

On the contrary, Party Chat is awesome. It allows my friends and I to game all evening without hearing one racial or sexist slur. I personally cannot remember the last time I had to converse with someone was going to, as I believe they put it, "come round to my house, kick my door in and rape my family". The number of over-excited 12-year-olds screaming into my ears has been reduced to nil. Online gaming is much more pleasant now that I don't have to put up with the majority of online gamers*.

Since this is about consoles, playing on Xbox Live is going to be a big chunk of the online experience.

I'd also like to stress that the environment you mention, the one we're both avoiding, is the one the community seems to want. This topic has been broached numerous times before and the answer has always been a very free market sort of solution. Free speech (even though that has nothing to do with it), free market, if you don't like it, don't mic up/just mute people/don't play online.

Which is fine, but this is the end result. People pushed for an environment of trolls, jerks, and bigotry. And they got it. And we (which seems to be a large number of people) don't want any part of it.

A similar note is that I always see these topics with people wondering why nobody's willing to help them get their GTA heists done so they can get to Pacific Standard. And I'm sure part of that is money, but there's also the part where so many people are such jerks it's hard to justify wasting your time. I like to be helpful, so helping people get their heists is not a problem for me. It's fun and makes money in a game I like playing. But if I had a nickel for every time someone ran me over or blew up my vehicle at the start of a heist, I would be...well, I wouldn't be rich, because it would take 20 times to make a dollar, but I'd have paid for GTA several times over in any event. I've thought about putting together a video of dick moves.

And based on the responses I see, this is exceedingly common. Which is why people want to play with friends, who probably already have their heists, and not waste an hour looking for a decent game. Hell, even if I can only play the 2-player Fleeca game, it's more productive and fun to actually do it than to wait for people who will join and NOT wreck the game.

And it's not just GTA, before anyone asks "what do you expect?" It's just an example that comes to mind and is fairly relevant: people don't get why others are slow to play with them, despite numerous reasons.

RE: Safe Spaces

It's because I regard myself as a dirty leftist liberal hippy and fill the need to pull back to the center. People hear me talk about my desire not hear certain shit as typical millennial "ohhhh poor babys triggered feelings are hurt" when really it's a minor aggravation having to hear the bigoted hate coming out of another persons mouth.

 

[DudeistBelieve]

So I should be ashamed with not wanting to deal with assholes?

Yeah no. I play games to unwind, not wade through a sea of dicks to find the gems.

A lot of people have been expressing this sentiment and I don't entirely understand it. Seeing as I clearly have more random online interactions than most I can say that I rarely run into genuine "assholes". A majority of my interactions with people are very pleasant. A major factor seems to be what game you're playing. Call of Duty, then yeah you might run into a few foul mouth kids. But there are a lot more games than that and there are a lot more genres than shooters. My interactions in racing, fighting, and adventure co-op have rarely been anything but, pleasant. A lot of this love for party-chat seems to be anti-social people simply being anti-social. Which is fine, but I'm sensing that most of this reluctance to communicate has grown from shooters specifically call of duty. If that's the case (which I believe it is) it is a shame it has spread to all others genres of gaming and the gaming community in general.

It only bothers me in the sense that I'm paying for the service. I hear bullshit on Twitter, okay whatever. Block and move on. On a paying service I feel entitled to a little more than that rather than something I'm using for free.

One of my regular games to play is GTA: Online and theres always some jerk starting shit in the lobby.

 

[Elijin]

I understand this sentiment but, this only works if most of these friends (I'm assuming real-life) have the same console you have. If they are not real-life but met through online, then at some point you had to deal with "randoms".

My core group of friends, is in fact real life friends. Are we suggesting this is unusual? That friends dont make the effort to be on the same platform? Moving along.

The friends I have which are online in origin come from either PC gaming, through text chat, or other organised PC communities (Like here) where I decide I dont mind their company, and reach out on the consoles. There are a small amount (1-3) of friends which are...randoms invited me to a party, and I found their company decent.

In my 8 years of console gaming, I have never made a friend from public chat/mic. I would place this on several things: Primarily, public chat is an unpleasant experience. Even if its not outright offensive, it tends to come down to small niggles, like users not being aware of their mics producing an echo or picking up a nearby fan. Or talking over each other, poor mic quality, etc etc. With friends, I find these issue frustrating to resolve at times, with randoms I simply mute and move on.

The other thing is the matchmaking nature of console games. The lack of a persistent environment to keep interacting with others, means that even when I do briefly enjoy someone's company, we both get matched on and never see each other again. I dont add people after a single positive experience, because I dont consider it to be special. You dont grab the phone number of every person who is polite and reasonable that you bump into in the street, right? In fact, the 'randoms' I do have on my friendslist, come from Destiny and GTA:O, two games which encourage mid to large playgroups on a regular or recurring basis.

 

[Nathaniel Grey]

It only bothers me in the sense that I'm paying for the service. I hear bullshit on Twitter, okay whatever. Block and move on. On a paying service I feel entitled to a little more than that rather than something I'm using for free.

One of my regular games to play is GTA: Online and theres always some jerk starting shit in the lobby.

I feel you on this.

Personally I feel that the days of multiplayer with strangers being fun has come and gone. Mostly due to the fact that no one talks anymore. Due to the fact that party chat is a thing. I remember the days before its inception when, not everyone but, a majority of people communicated. Finding another person with a mic wasn't like finding a diamond in the rough. Now, I go days without any sort of communication. While this is tolerable, part of the joy of playing with others has been lost. I loved becoming acquainted with new people. People who lived in states and countries that I've only dreamt about seeing. To me this enriched the multiplayer experience. I understand the reasons why people have run to party chat. Apparently there was, and still is, some toxicity. But that has always been there and it will never go away. I feel as though party chat has allowed people to shut themselves in a house without any windows or doors because people can sometimes be jerks. You don't do that in real life and I don't think you should do it online either. I feel the people who do are doing themselves a disservice.
Most of my real life friends have different consoles or we just play different games so parties are rare. I'm used to finding, not necessarily friends, but comrades who share my gaming interests online. At some point all your now friends were strangers and one of you had to say hello to the other. I'm just saying that we shouldn't lose the chance to say hello to a potential friend.


Party Chat sucks.

EDIT: I stress this is strictly a console issue. The PC community doesn't even remotely share this problem since not only do most talk but you can also type.

A lot of this love for party-chat seems to be anti-social people simply being anti-social. Which is fine, but I'm sensing that most of this reluctance to communicate has grown from shooters specifically call of duty. If that's the case (which I believe it is) it is a shame it has spread to all others genres of gaming and the gaming community in general. I'm interested if you all can share the games in which you received the negativity.

You are absolutely correct, however, my reaction to that is completely the opposite. I'm SO glad I don't have to listen to idiots screaming all game into the mic, I'm so glad I don't have to hunt down a menu to mute idiots as often. In general, online multiplayer is dealing with 95% complete idiot morons who have barely a basic understanding of what the buttons on the controller do. I have no desire to talk to anyone as a result of them all being so stupid most of the time, so the silence is golden. Plus, when it comes to shooter games, I'd rather be able to hear footsteps and such then a 12 year old calling everyone a "******".

Random online chat worked when the population of these games were small, when you had a decent chance to see someone again...you'll never see anybody you play randomly with again, if you do, the community you play with happens to be really small.

I'm happy for the silence, stay in your party, I don't wanna talk to you

Moreover, I avoid online multiplayer as much as I can these days, its incredibly rare to find an experience thats remotely close to fun. Battlefront would be fun...if I could play 4 player multiplayer with some friends, but nope, I gotta play with random morons who steal all the power-ups from directly in front of me all game...WOOOOOOOOOO....no thanks. I prefer single player games, always have, always will, multiplayer is fun for MMO's...it pretty much sucks for most EVERYTHING else.

You seem not to like people in general. Do your thing.

I feel as though party chat has allowed people to shut themselves in a house without any windows or doors because people can sometimes be jerks. You don't do that in real life and I don't think you should do it online either. I feel the people who do are doing themselves a disservice.

I think you miss the point, and I think that may be because you don't encounter enough people using the microphone. You shouldn't have to subject yourself to rubbish to enjoy a game, and often that's what using voice comms means. It's a wide world of squeakers, literal screaming manchildren, people who think we share their love of fucking Pendulum or Darude, shit-talkers and assholes out there. All of these people stand in the way of your leisure time, and as an adult, I don't have time for their maladjusted bullshit. Gaming is how I enjoy myself, and no part of that means being forced to deal with jerks.

An important difference between games and real life is that there are far more consequences for being a jerk. If you want to troll, eventually you'll have no friends, and someone will probably hit you. People can only get away with this behaviour in anonymous online environments where people are forced to put up with them. HENCE Party Chat. If the game is full of assholes and there is no system for dealing with them, people are going to use voice comms with their friends and fuck that noise. If the spammers and trolls, the screamers and mentally unhinged were punished, removed, or at least automuted, then maybe it'd be worthwhile.

Right now my favourite title is CS:GO, which basically requires some team comms, usually mic, and you put up with so much fucking shit, just so you can be a decent teammate with coms, from people literally screaming in your ear, to spamming music, to seeing how many racial slurs they can fill chat with. This is a developer problem. They didn't fix it, because too many people are willing either defend it, or suggest that one "should [not avoid jerks] online".

Play a month or two of CS:GO where you need mic, and then come back to me telling me the problem is people not giving it a chance, and not developers refusing to give people the tools to make their games better. I've had some amazing games with great leaders, really funny people, and had some real great times, and also some really shit ones where I've been forced to put up with some asshole for 70 minutes because he has one friend who's lobbied with him making him unkickable.

You're wrong about me not encountering people with mics. My issue is that at one point I could hop in a lobby and everyone was communicating and everything was jolly to now where it is complete silence but, I do see your point. The reason why I made this discussion console only is because while on some games, CS:GO, the world is unhinged, there are others like TF2 where servers have admins that watch for the foul mouthed and the spammers. The fact that CS:GO isn't monitored is more a developer problem. PC multiplayer has the ability to curb bad behavior in order to create better environments. Consoles do not but, I found the experience on consoles to be its most fun when everyone was communicating. Tell me are there no times in which you dealt with (I use quotations cause I don't like this word) "randoms" and had a fun time?

 

[CaitSeith]

You know, I've made a decision. People are always saying that (I know you're joking, bear with me) so many people are "ruining" parts of gaming. And frankly I think it's time to start taking pride in that.

WE CLAIM RESPONSIBILITY FOR THIS! We slaughtered online multiplayer, and our list of targets is long! FEAR US!

Think of all the power we have, given how much we're responsible. FER US, GAMING! TREMBLE BEFORE THE MIGHT OF MODERATE INCONVENIENCE!

I feel the people who are doing this don't feel as you do.

Yeah, I just have to say that I personally feel the novelty of getting called homophobic slurs every single outing gets old.

I'm really not sure what experience people think I'm missing, but this is the one I have and it's part of why I don't play a lot of MP outside of with friends.

It's such a shame that major titles tend to have more jerks. On the other side, if nice people leaves the multiplayer, the only ones left will be the jerks. And that tends to keep nice people away. It's a freaking downwards spiral!

 

[Something Amyss]

People hear me talk about my desire not hear certain shit as typical millennial "ohhhh poor babys triggered feelings are hurt" when really it's a minor aggravation having to hear the bigoted hate coming out of another persons mouth.

I'll be sure to remember that the next time someone tries to murder me for being a minority.

Sorry if that in some way inconveniences you.

It's such a shame that major titles tend to have more jerks. On the other side, if nice people leaves the multiplayer, the only ones left will be the jerks. And that tends to keep nice people away. It's a freaking downwards spiral!

It's honestly not worth the fight, though. I have more serious issues in my life (see above) and play vidya games to relax and and have fun and share some social time with friends. The community has spoken, and they (at least the majority of the vocal) have defended the jerks and trolls. If that's their attitude, they can have it. And hey. Maybe if enough people just give up, when they see the end result, they'll think different. But I won't hold my breath.

 

[DudeistBelieve]

People hear me talk about my desire not hear certain shit as typical millennial "ohhhh poor babys triggered feelings are hurt" when really it's a minor aggravation having to hear the bigoted hate coming out of another persons mouth.

I'll be sure to remember that the next time someone tries to murder me for being a minority.

Sorry if that in some way inconveniences you.

EDIT: Ya know what, fuck it. I'm not battling over what I am with a stranger over the net. I'll just say your view of me as a person is way off base.

 

[Something Amyss]

EDIT: Ya know what, fuck it. I'm not battling over what I am with a stranger over the net. I'll just say your view of me as a person is way off base.

I'd say chatting with you on XBL was what formed my opinion of you and has no relevance here. I judged what you said based on you saying it and I'm not sure why you would think a dog shit comparison would make things any better. Trying to throw a serious issue under the bus to protect you on a trivial one is not cool.

And if you think that's a judgment on the sum total of your character, well, there's nothing I can say. Except that we've shared user groups and gamed together in the past, and given my low tolerance for people in online gaming that should say something.

 

[Something Amyss]

TF2 where servers have admins that watch for the foul mouthed and the spammers.

And those seem to be a minority. And somewhat selective in the way they moderate anyway.

So now the case you seem to be making isn't the one you're arguing for, but rather for only using mics in certain games. It also seems to make the case that it's not party chat that's the problem with games like CS:GO, which appear to be a larger chunk of the overall number of games. You seem to outright acknowledge that there is a problem within the overall online gaming community that validates what people are saying.

So honestly, it seems that even you're aware of the larger problem.

 

[Loonyyy]

You're wrong about me not encountering people with mics. My issue is that at one point I could hop in a lobby and everyone was communicating and everything was jolly to now where it is complete silence but, I do see your point. The reason why I made this discussion console only is because while on some games, CS:GO, the world is unhinged, there are others like TF2 where servers have admins that watch for the foul mouthed and the spammers. The fact that CS:GO isn't monitored is more a developer problem. PC multiplayer has the ability to curb bad behavior in order to create better environments. Consoles do not but, I found the experience on consoles to be its most fun when everyone was communicating. Tell me are there no times in which you dealt with (I use quotations cause I don't like this word) "randoms" and had a fun time?

That's one of the beautiful things about CS:GO, you go through a bunch of different groups in the solo queues. And you do get a pretty broad view. I have had some wonderful games, with great communication, teaching, leadership, strategies, laughs and jokes, and they've been wonderful. That happens probably once every 3 days, and I play probably 3 or 4 games a day, so about 1/9, 1/12 of the time, I have a positive experience with mics. After that, there's mediocre experiences, not good or bad, and poor experiences. Those happen minimum every day. There's not a day that I won't get someone going salty, or fully toxic, or someone who decides to mic spam their dreadful EDM and drum and bass, or just scream, literally scream as loud as they could in my ear. The good games make my day, they're amazing, and I have a great time. The bad games don't stop me playing, but they often stop my brother, and then I'm on my own, and they do get on my nerves.

It's frustrating in a game like CS when people don't have mic, it really helps with the communication. And when people are positive, it's lots of fun. I do my best to stay positive, compliment good play, and contribute, because it's nice when people get along. It's really nice when you get beaten, but it's entirely civil. Both teams play well, both are friendly, and everyone's just having a good time. Just 'cause you're trying to utterly stomp someone doesn't mean that you have to be a dick about it. I met some cool derankers who votekicked the other players so they weren't stuck with them. I met some cool folks playing strat roulette who let you go if you didn't want to. I met the most awesome mic spammer ever. He only played music in between rounds, or when he was on clutch. I had some people teach me some of the fine points of the game, I've had games where we've just been joking and laughing the whole time, and I've had people being genuinely supportive of other players, even when they don't win.

I do really like the controls on dedicated servers. There were a lot of clan servers for DoD which were heavily monitored, some for good, some for bad. TF2 has a few, Red Orchestra 2 has some, and it really helps clean up the cheaters and toxic players. With the rise of more ad hoc games though, matchmaking, they really need to give players more tools to clean up their community. CS's Overwatch is far too small to do anything, there's no way to deal with a player deranking or going afk in CS (Most of the time they'll just pair up for queuing so they don't get voted off). There's really no consequence for being a dick, so people do. The result of this is that most people aren't good people. I know some genuinely good people, they're like saints. You just know they're decent, and that they're nice. Most of us are not that. Most of us are willing to be nice but we'll respond in kind if someone fucks with us. I've done it far too many times, if someone keeps giving me shit in game, I'll just unload on them, I drove one guy into silence, and another to tears (He screamed in my ear, so he fucking deserved it). That doesn't make the situation better though. I'm basicaly cribbing from Shamus Young here http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=19709 . If the community has enough policing to get rid of the absolute worst, most of us can behave ourselves most of the time. If they refuse to (Which they do), then the assholes get to do what they want consequence free, and they win. They get to ruin the game for everyone else. Which just leaves us trying to ruin the game for them in turn, until we're all screaming at each other like children. Or we just bail altogether. We listen to our dumbass parents and ignore the bullies. We turn off mic.

I still play every round with sound on, and selectively mute people who aren't worth my time, but it's frustrating. I know I'd avoid some antagonism and frustration by playing with the sound off, and I'd also piss off a bunch of people by being a worse team mate. There needs to be some work put in on the Developer end. For a start-mass culling of smurfs and alts. Banning smurfs, and the credit cards used to purchase them, is a no brainer. Smurfs and derankers easily ruin matchmaking games, and are often some of the most antagonistic or toxic players. If you ban all their smurfs and their main, and force them to switch credit card to buy games, then they're going to feel it. Policing voice and mic chat. I should not be able to name myself "Fuck ******" on Steam. Naming myself that should get me some form of moderation. Spamming chat with binds is easily prevented. There is absolutely no reason that someone needs the ability to say "******", "******", "Sand ******", or any number of other shit in text chat. Allowing that just makes things toxic, and people will drop to that level. Detecting this is trivial. If someone is always being blocked on mic, then maybe they should start blocked. Why can I get abused by a 12 year old with dozens of commendations, and all I can do is flag him for mic abuse? Why doesn't he lose his friendly commendation for swallowing his mic and fucking screaming obscenities at me when I'm trying to clutch? Obviously negative commends are easily abused, but so are positives. The system has absolutely no point. Why can't I flag a player and say "This guy is a dick. He's a toxic dick who will destroy your team morale and cohesion" so the next person stuck with him knows what they're getting into? Why is my only option when faced with assholes and bullies, to be an asshole to them, or bully them, until they shut up any play? I mean, it was funny taunting and tagging this one guy, who decided to go full toxic, and throw the rest of the game (We were already losing), until he shot me and got himself a ban, but why was that my only option? Why can't I leave a game when I'm stuck with derankers, or abusers? Why aren't these toxic folks moved to a lower priority so that good players are placed in games first? Maybe then I could play a decent game on a map that isn't Dust 2. Obviously, just dumping them all together just makes them more toxic, but why is it that I have to teach a bunch of youths, children, and grown fucking adults how to be a moderately well mannered human being? It's not like I'm asking a lot, I don't care about swearing, I'll put up with squeakers, and I'll tolerate people just generally being dumb, but why do I have to tolerate spam, racial slurs, and honest to god screaming into mic?

The thing is, there are a large number of people who do not want this to change, and will actively resist this. And developers mostly (Riot tries, and they're proactive, but they still have a very toxic community) don't bother. One CoD dev literally said that it wasn't an issue. Has he played his fucking game? Some of the best moments of gaming in my life have been in CoD, and military shooters, and the worst behaviour has been in CoD, and even more so in Battlefield (Mainly because someone always has to throw a tantrum about CoD in there. Some of these people have serious fucking issues). But many people will get annoyed at the suggestion of "censorship", and talk crap about "free speech" and think up some terrible situations where it was dreadfully unfair that someone got banned for acting like an asshole. They paid for it, they should be able to do what they like. And so people will keep going to private mics. Clans use Teamspeak, or Vent, players use skype, or steam, because the only people they really want to talk to are their friends, and they know that if they call their friends a "fucking cocksucker ****** ******" they're going to get punched in the gut the next time they see them, or they're just not going to have friends anymore.

 

[-Samurai-]

someone who decides to mic spam their dreadful EDM and drum and bass...

This is one thing I've never understood, and it always instantly frustrates me.

"I'll turn on my microphone while not playing with anyone I know and just play music. Herp fucking derp."

I don't even wear my headset when I'm not with people I know. And if I started to talk to any of the strangers in the game, I would have the courtesy to turn my music off(which would NEVER be on while gaming, anyway), so I can, ya know, communicate with them clearly, and not have them fight through my background noise to hear what I'm saying.

There are absolutely zero valid reasons to ever have your mic on with loud music playing. Zero. 0. None.

 

[Loonyyy]

someone who decides to mic spam their dreadful EDM and drum and bass...

This is one thing I've never understood, and it always instantly frustrates me.

"I'll turn on my microphone while not playing with anyone I know and just play music. Herp fucking derp."

I don't even wear my headset when I'm not with people I know. And if I started to talk to any of the strangers in the game, I would have the courtesy to turn my music off(which would NEVER be on while gaming, anyway), so I can, ya know, communicate with them clearly, and not have them fight through my background noise to hear what I'm saying.

There are absolutely zero valid reasons to ever have your mic on with loud music playing. Zero. 0. None.

Yeah. I had no particular animus towards Pendulum, it's not my thing, but hey, you can choose what music you listen to. For some reason, fucking Pendulum, and a bit of Darude (Of course Sandstorm, but also some more, thanks Valve for including some Darude tracks, we needed to attract more spammers) seem to be the favourite of assholes with their mic feed set up to play audio, or their mic literally pulled around to a speaker for extra tinny quality. And then, just for good measure, use your handy dandy macros (Now standard on most gaming keyboards), to set your mic button to perpetually pressed.

Now if I hear that someone likes EDM or drum and bass, I have to take it as a mark against their character. They're like werewolves, you can never really trust them.

If you're caught doing it, you should be hit with the banhammer so hard your head fucking spins. Do it in GO? BAM-perma'd from every Valve title you own. Not kidding.

 

[votemarvel]

Party chat works for me as when playing with friends I don't see in person that often, I want to have a chat with them while doing something we enjoy.

I doubt the people using in-game chat really want to listen to us discuss our lives.

 

[LonePunman]

Party chat has existed for a long time, even before consoles started doing the online thing.

The reason people seem to use party chat more than open chat is because it allows them to scheme and plan how to "rekt" other players and feel supaleet.