By all means, go ahead and avoid me, I encourage it in fact if there is something I do you dislike. This has zero affect on me, so itâs not holding anyone accountable, I wonât even know it.
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I just want to enjoy the game. If voice chat or even text chat is making it hard to do, because so many people want to whine and complain and point fingers and call each other retarded, then I am sorry. That is a completely 100% valid reason for me to turn it off. And I do most of the time because of said people. Live with it.
All this âEXCUSE BUSTEDâ nonsense is⌠well, itâs nonsense. You arenât busting anything, youâre just trying to project your opinion of what other people should do, but the fact is that people can do as they please on this. The option to leave voice chat is there for a reason and no one has to feel pressured into joining it if they donât want to. People paid money for a product and they get to enjoy that product on their terms. Toxicity is something you put up with at work, not during leisure time.
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Let me start out by saying that I rarely mute people, and Iâm not sure Iâve ever fully left voice chat. But this post starts off on a pretty wrong foot, because nobody needs an excuse to opt out of voice chat. Participation is voluntary. Itâs nowhere in the rules/TOS that you have to join. âI donât want toâ is not an excuse. Itâs a boundary.
And if someone who isnât me starts out with a negative attitude, and then the rest of the teammates jump on that person, and comms devolve into a lengthy fight, my positivity is likely not enough to turn that around.
I had a match once where literally the entire comms devolved into two guys arguing over who was being more toxic, and the others yelling at them both to shut up. I didnât leave comms, but n-o-t-h-i-n-g productive happened there for the rest of the match.
Even leaving aside the very real possibility that, yes, there are ways that people end up with functional devices and internet while being too cash-strapped to afford new accessories, it is not always feasible for someone to obtain or use a mic. Minors may not be allowed into online voice with strangers by their parents. People who canât hear, speak, or both, wonât benefit from the mic. People who canât speak the primary language of their regional server wonât benefit from the mic.
So people with awful neighbors who freak out at any hint of noise? People who work a late shift and only get to play late at night? People who live with someone on a night shift who is asleep during the day? People who only have access to the internet through a cafe/public location? People who have noisy pets/siblings/appliances who routinely get yelled at for their mic quality? Are you really going to tell them that they flat out donât get to participate in a competitive game mode?
Thereâs a big difference between âable to focus on multiple thingsâ and âable to focus despite randos yelling things at each other and you on top of all of the noise and color in Overwatchâ. People with certain mental illnesses, people who are hard of hearing, and some people who are neurodivergent have struggles with hearing/processing/sensory overload that wonât just go away by âworking on itâ. It is not a nonsensical excuse at all. If they perform better without VC than with it, then they just do. Thereâs no argument to be had there.
Iâm female. I do not speak in voice chat often because the number of times I have been given grief for my gender is far more than âtwo fingersâ. I listen always, but I donât talk until I have a sense of whether my team is a toxic clowncar or not.
No, âI got harassed in VCâ is anecdotal evidence. âI havenât heard itâ is not anecdotal evidence; you are using your lack of experience to imply that the people making the first claim are lying, or at least exaggerating.
I can mute a creepy weirdo and stop having to hear them. Doesnât stop them from throwing or sabotaging because they canât handle having a woman on the team who had the temerity to mute them. Yes, I can report that person too, but none of it would happen if they donât pick up on the fact that I am feeeeeeemale.
Again, I have never left VC, but I donât blame women who do (or people with noticeable accents that imply something about their race, sexuality, age, etc., who have had enough negative experience to make them decide that VC is not worth the trouble it causes).
Which is my gender. Which means he is harassing me because Iâm female.
Yes, someone might go after FloridaDude56, but probably not when he logs in, and probably not because, âOh great, weâre going to lose because our DPS is a Floridianâ or âOMG A FLORIDA DUDE, PIX PLSâ or âFlorida, huh, I bet you [insert excruciating anatomical details here]â. Women are not the only people who get harassed, but women are one of a few groups of people who get harassed the instant that a certain aspect of their identity becomes apparent, regardless of their performance or attitude.
Using someoneâs gender as a basis for attack, even if that person was a jerk first, is sexist. Women can be toxic and jerkish and itâs no surprise that people take exception to that. Going after them for their gender is still sexist.
While this is a crappy equivalent, if I was harassed by a dude on VC, and I retort with, âUGH, typical dudeâ, the other four men in chat with me would be quite likely to take offense at that, because I didnât just insult him, I insulted him on the basis of his gender.
Also, super cool implying that women who get harassed for their gender probably deserve it.
I have yet to be wounded by the words of a troll. Screamy jerkmuffins on the internet donât cause me any lasting damage. But it is obnoxious, it is distracting, it is unpleasant, and it makes the game a drag to play. If someone is sick of being assailed by toxic jerkmuffins, it is their right to shut off the toxicity input channel.
No you donât. Only people in positions of authority get to âhold you accountableâ. You have a preference for people being present in VC (as do I, as a matter of fact). Other people have a preference for not engaging with VC. Blizzard gives people the option to leave. They are well within their rights and not failing any obligations if they decide to take that option. Iâd 100% rather play in a game with people who had left VC but were using command wheels/etc. than people who were all in chat and yelling at each other over the color of their border.
And again: Language barriers, disabilities, mental health, etc.
Cool, but deaf/hard of hearing people should not be obligated to disclose that to people in order to play a freaking video game without being judged.
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I donât have to have stuck my hand into the fire to know whether itâs hot and I donât have to be a woman to be observant and have had experiences concerning them. Iâve played this game a lot. Iâve had every kind of teammates anyone can imagine. Itâs 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 Iâve played on multiple platforms and everywhere from silver to GM and T500. Thatâs not invalid because Iâm not a woman.
Sure, not everyone has the same experiences. I agree. Thatâs 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 thereâs nothing wrong with that.
But youâre not trying to leave feedback about the game in general. Youâre trying to tell women who have muted their mic because they have been harrassed too much, that their own personal experiences arenât 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 itâs even less revelant as a man because you donât have a woman in 100% of your games. Itâs dissimilar experiences.
Women who get harassed so much they donât want to mic shouldnât be told to get out of competitive.
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I didnât tell them their experiences werenât valid. I told them having experienced some harassment doesnât justify automatically leaving chat every time because of it. They should still always give their team a chance to be decent. Itâs 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 werenât getting titled every single play session. In which case, they should save themselves the trouble and keep their mic off by default.
You donât know their experience. And you cannot invalidate it with your own.
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I donât think weâre talking about the same thing. If potentially negative internet interactions are too traumatic for someone to even risk briefly exposing themselves to, I donât recommend that they play competitive online games. Theyâre going to have a bad time.
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I couldnât agree more.
Iâve long said Blizzard need to make team voice chat compulsory for Competitive with no option to leave.
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Oh hell noâŚ
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.
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Or they can just mute their mic. It doesnât have to be traumatic to be annoying enough to effect your play. People certainly get tilted by less in games.
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My friends and I held an election and it was decided that it actually is up to me.
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Ah, Iâve also had a vote, and the answer was it isnât 
HmmâŚgood move. Weâll table this for now.
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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 isnât really good directional mics out there - I know, I tried.
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Iâm much more understanding of that when itâs clear that someone is at least in the chat channel and makes it clear theyâre listening. Using âunderstoodâ or something after someone says something to them. The mic is less important than the listening.
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Oh totally, I am ALWAYS listening. There are times where I canât 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 
)
I wouldnât report you for it.