I donāt have to have stuck my hand into the fire to know whether itās hot and I donāt have to be a woman to be observant and have had experiences concerning them. Iāve played this game a lot. Iāve had every kind of teammates anyone can imagine. Itās not unreasonable for me to claim to understand the social dynamics of this game. I have much more claim to it than most people, especially since Iāve played on multiple platforms and everywhere from silver to GM and T500. Thatās not invalid because Iām not a woman.
Sure, not everyone has the same experiences. I agree. Thatās why competetive is not for everyone. There are lots casual modes for those who only have the real-life bandwidth to play that kind of thing and thereās nothing wrong with that.
But youāre not trying to leave feedback about the game in general. Youāre trying to tell women who have muted their mic because they have been harrassed too much, that their own personal experiences arenāt valid because of your personal experience. And your personal experience would not be the same as their personal experience even if you were a woman, but itās even less revelant as a man because you donāt have a woman in 100% of your games. Itās dissimilar experiences.
Women who get harassed so much they donāt want to mic shouldnāt be told to get out of competitive.
I didnāt tell them their experiences werenāt valid. I told them having experienced some harassment doesnāt justify automatically leaving chat every time because of it. They should still always give their team a chance to be decent. Itās easy enough to mute people if they feel they need to after that. It takes two seconds.
But if they are getting harassed more often than not, and that is their personal experience, they would likely play better if they werenāt getting titled every single play session. In which case, they should save themselves the trouble and keep their mic off by default.
You donāt know their experience. And you cannot invalidate it with your own.
I donāt think weāre talking about the same thing. If potentially negative internet interactions are too traumatic for someone to even risk briefly exposing themselves to, I donāt recommend that they play competitive online games. Theyāre going to have a bad time.
For some people it would mean they can NEVER play comp, it is NOT up to you to decide of people are to be gatekeepered out of a game mode because of your personal prefence.
Or they can just mute their mic. It doesnāt have to be traumatic to be annoying enough to effect your play. People certainly get tilted by less in games.
Honestly, I lived in a super loud area, I could NEVER have played overwatch, and that would have sucked pretty hard.
I ended up with noise canceling headphones so I could hear what was going on in game, but, there just isnāt really good directional mics out there - I know, I tried.
Iām much more understanding of that when itās clear that someone is at least in the chat channel and makes it clear theyāre listening. Using āunderstoodā or something after someone says something to them. The mic is less important than the listening.
Oh totally, I am ALWAYS listening. There are times where I canāt talk, but damned if I will be out of a channel where someone can call that someone has ult, or they are flanking.
We are not in a communist dictatorship state. No game can force you to talk in voicechat.
I dare someone to report me for not talking in voicechat but still joining to listen, and playing to the best of my ability, see what happens (answer: nothing )
Same. I often donāt mic for a variety of reasons but I pretty much always listen. A LOT of the problems that come from talking on mic donāt apply to listening.
Its the middle of winter there are no jobs, also you cant make assumptions about the work around me, even if there was work a stable mic costs $100-$200 dollars keep your stupid opinion to yourself. you have no right to tell me i can make money while knowing nothing about my situation or surroundings. Believe me if i could afford a mic i would buy one but you arenāt taking into consideration the wide variety of scenarios that take place.
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