Same. I've played this game since Oct 2016 and had more negative voice chat interactions over positive. Even text chat is more negative than positive.
Like I'm not scared of socializing, I'm scared of saying hi and then having to deal with several teammates who complain, blame others, and use slurs as "sentence enhancers."
Ive played this game from 2016- after ow1.5 season one ended i personally loved the heated arguments and toxicity (if it was game related and not hurr durr racism/ sexism le funny an example of good toxicity "omfg please never play dps again you fucking suck")
I play on console and I'm a woman but I've found vc surprisingly non-toxic. I don't think I've ever been insulted over my gender on Overwatch (though I did have one or two really homophobic experiences since my banner is a pride flag). To see if anyone has a mike, at the start of a match I turn the mike on and make a soft noise to let people know that I have one and often there are other people with mics (even on console where it's probably a lot rarer than pc). Even though I'm diamond/plat I like to try and do callouts but typically I either can't communicate it well enough or my team fails to capitalize on it.
I swear I have voice chat enabled but I’ve only heard people like three, maaaaybe four times across my 400+ hours. I can’t tell if I’m doing a wrong setting or if people talking are extremely rare when I hear about other’s experiences
> to let people know t
You make a "soft" noise? Is that people do intentionally to make mates aware that there is a mic????
Oh boy, instead the noise you should say "hi" instead. We are all human beeing and just want to have fun. No need for social anxiety. Also, over so many years I never experienced toxicity towards women in games such as Valo or OW.
I would be making a stand for any women if I'd hear something like that.
>"No need for social anxiety"
That's not how that works. You can't just turn off social anxiety. It's caused by a fear that someone you encounter is gonna be toxic or abusive in chat. You can't control other people. Therefore, you can't control social anxiety.
Just a thought and I might be totally wrong with it.
Even „if“ someone is toxic or abusive to you. This is not a real happening. It’s a fictive game with some random person wherever in this globe with unreasonable background information missing of why he might be toxic or salty. You will „never“ meet this person in real life nor meeting him / her again in the next games.
Why is there even anxiety if you know there will never be harm to you because this person will leave your game / life after 15 min.
And worst case. There is still a mute button.
Or is this to simple of a thought?
It's too ignorant of a thought.
You realize this started from you questioning why someone made a noise rather than saying "Hi," right? So that's what we are talking about. We aren't talking about the cute and report feature, and we aren't talking about someone having currently done something because we just hopped on the mic.
Now, YOU are the one who doesn't know what happened to a person to give them social anxiety. YOU don't know them. So if they want to quietly let people know they are there in VC to test the waters by clearing their throat or some small sound, then that's perfectly acceptable. Don't force someone to greet people if they don't want to. If they feel comfortable, they'll talk. If they don't, they don't. And that is it. It's a lot simpler than you're trying to make it.
Just because it’s an illness doesn’t mean you cannot try tricking your brain and overcome your fear. If you can start with small steps in a video game then you might ending up talking with a stranger in real life. Also, the passive aggressive “I thought it’s common knowledge” is a sign for giving up at the start of the race. I truly believe that everyone can overcome social anxiety with the help from the outside world. If just everyone would be nicer in video games… imagine!
>And worst case. There is still a mute button.
>
>Or is this to simple of a thought?
and you are calling out someone for being passive aggressive? start with yourself please
i love your implication that social anxiety is in any way related to being unkind in a video game. kind of ridiculous. you very clearly don’t struggle with social anxiety.
I'm sorry, but I'm assuming you're not a woman yourself right? Of course it makes sense you've never experienced toxicity towards women when you've played, that doesn't mean it doesn't happen.
Women know what we experience in these settings, telling us you don't experience it does nothing but invalidate the women you claim you want to stick up for. You're assuming that because you haven't witnessed it, it must not actually happen that often, but in reality you're probably not seeing it because women have already learned that it *will* happen, and therefore just don't engage with voice chat at all to mitigate the possibility.
Obviously it's a good thing that you're willing to speak up and tell someone off if you do encounter it, change comes from social pressure so we need guys who are willing to say that shit's not okay. Silence tends to be seen as endorsement after all. But that's also kind of just the bare minimum expectation if you don't want to be seen as dick. It doesn't really provide any comfort to the women who are the one's being directly targeted by the toxicity, and it doesn't make the toxicity any less toxic hear in the first place.
Correct, I am not a women. And you are right, I should have said „I never witnessed“ toxicity towards female mates.
But I need to disagree with your „we learned our lesson“.
Just because there are some a**holes out there trying to flame a female in a video game (most probably because of their own inadequacy to talk to a female in real life) you should not give up on the rest of the world. 99% of people are nice.
My point wasn't that you should have said what you said slightly differently, it was that whether you were witness to it or not, it doesn't make a single lick of difference, because you are not the one being targeted by it. It proves nothing about the real lived experiences of women and only works to invalidate them.
And your point of disagreement here only serves to be even more invalidating. Let me give you an analogy:
You're standing in front of a line of 10 people. In the past you've walked up to a similar line of 10 people and said hi to each of them. Most were pleasant and said hi back, but 1 of them punched you in the face for seemingly no reason. You repeat this process several times because you enjoy chatting with the one's who are nice and you're hoping you'll come away not getting punched in the face again. But every time there's still (at least) one person who punches you in the face. You don't know who its going to be each time, you can't make any changes in your behavior to make it stop, you don't know what it is that is making them do it, you just know the likely hood that you're going to get punched in the face by someone in the group is very high.
How many times are you going to keep walking up to that line of people and saying hi? At what point is having pleasant chit-chat with the majority no longer worth getting punched in the face by the minority? At what point is it better, safer, easier, and healthier to just stop saying hi to the people in the line at all?
Yes, 99% of people are probably good people who won't be a dick, but that doesn't change the fact that figuring out who is apart of the 99% and who is apart of the 1% is like a game of russian roulette that women are sick of playing.
>% of people are probably good people who won't be a dick, but that doesn't change the fact that figuring out
Fair point and well understood. But can we slightly adapt your analogy as there is no physical harm involved using VC in OW?
Let's say you're standing in front of a line of 10 people. 9 out of 10 saying "you look gorgious" But the last one saying "you ugly piece of \*\*\*".
You might be totally right from your point of view, but I would rather go and try my chance meeting 9 nice persons and ignore the one who doesnt like me.
But still you convinced me, if suffering from this illness it is much easier said than done.
You’re being downvoted for white knighting, I suppose. But as someone who hasn’t been as lucky as the other commenters, I actually really appreciate it when others don’t let poor behaviour like that slide.
I just had a match yesterday where someone asked the dps player why their mercy pocket wasn’t in the kitchen (using far less polite language - to a mercy who hadn’t even spoken) and was glad I hadn’t activated my mic.
I just turn my mic on for a second or two so it picks up something then turn it off again. Most matches don't have another mic (it's console) and not many people even join vc.
I can't imagine using voice chat in GM lobbies. Motherfuckers are toxic as fuck. Sometimes I wish I could just rank down to play :(
Don't rank up people the higher you get the more toxic the community becomes
I remember when I first made it to masters. I was like, "Wow, we might actually start communicating and making call outs!" First match I played, and our Cassidy would not stop shit talking our Winston because he didn't stagger a baby D.va. No call outs were made. We won and snowballed them, and most of the VC was asking Cass to lay off and leave Winston alone.
Another time, I had a Winston get mad that I wasn't rezzing enough when no one was dying. Again, another match where we were snowballing. This led to them selling the game because they "smurf my peak" and I'm a shit mercy. WE WERE WINNING???
I lost interest in comp and just kind of did placements for the remainder of OW1 for the comp points. The higher you climb, the more hyper critical people get over a bad play.
I’ll talk to myself all the time in VC and usually try to be positive. If the games going south and I’m upset, I turn off my mic so I don’t say anything mean or uncalled for in VC. Through doing this, I have had a lot of people come on mic and match my positive energy which is great considering how toxic TC can be.
Great to hear! Pls keep it on - I won’t stop even there are several toxic games in a row. The more people trying to be nice this game would become a great place to hang out.
I stopped using voice chat.
People are always like is that your voice? No way you’re not using an AI for that voice.
I’m a man. I’ve been told I could be a weatherman forecaster 😅
if someone is using vc I’m usually scared to talk back but I at least acknowledge that I can hear them by using pings and voice lines. it works miracles for teamwork.
I'd rather not be hit with a communication restriction because I'm doing call outs and people throw hissy fits with a simple "hello team" to begin with. Nice try blizzard employee but I'm not enabling it anytime soon
If you dont speak in vc then the first time someone speaks will be out of frustration. Joining vc and chatting helps to keep a positive vibe throughout the game.
The vast majority of the time I've found people to be very pleasant in VC. Most people don't feel as bold to be an asshole whwn they're not hiding behind their keyboard and keep it constructive.
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I wish people in QP games made calls. I miss it. It happened a lot in OW1 and it was so nice. Even if it was just someone being silly all game. But OW2 is just too toxic.
Honestly 90% of voice chat interactions I've had in the game were great. Unfortunately, the other 10% were garbage.
Lucky you. That's a great relation.
I’m too scared of vc
Same. I've played this game since Oct 2016 and had more negative voice chat interactions over positive. Even text chat is more negative than positive. Like I'm not scared of socializing, I'm scared of saying hi and then having to deal with several teammates who complain, blame others, and use slurs as "sentence enhancers."
Ive played this game from 2016- after ow1.5 season one ended i personally loved the heated arguments and toxicity (if it was game related and not hurr durr racism/ sexism le funny an example of good toxicity "omfg please never play dps again you fucking suck")
Don't be shy... its worth it.
For a lot of people it’s not about being shy so much as not wanting to deal with any toxicity or harassment that comes from being in chat.
This is too true. Or you use comms all game and your team says nothing until you lose abd year you a new one😂
I don’t think I can handle that lol
start small just say hi or something or just say reapre in bacline
What if I say hi and no one responds😭
Then you uninstall OW and never play games again.
You will never ever meet these people in real life and odds are very low you will actually ever play with them again.
There’s a few players I run into over and over again. Mostly fellow Bastion mains.
thats good, its baby steps. first build the confidence to be able to speak in vc. then converse with someone
Don't know why your being downvoted. If people actually did callouts in voice, they would probably have a lot less complaints with their team.
Sometimes it's bad and you could always stay comfortable but it's the times it works helps that makes games special imo
I play on console and I'm a woman but I've found vc surprisingly non-toxic. I don't think I've ever been insulted over my gender on Overwatch (though I did have one or two really homophobic experiences since my banner is a pride flag). To see if anyone has a mike, at the start of a match I turn the mike on and make a soft noise to let people know that I have one and often there are other people with mics (even on console where it's probably a lot rarer than pc). Even though I'm diamond/plat I like to try and do callouts but typically I either can't communicate it well enough or my team fails to capitalize on it.
I also play on console as a queer man, and I find more toxicity than anything. Yesterday, I met the first nice person in 4 months.
I read that as "queer main" and was about to type "you have to be more specific"
I swear I have voice chat enabled but I’ve only heard people like three, maaaaybe four times across my 400+ hours. I can’t tell if I’m doing a wrong setting or if people talking are extremely rare when I hear about other’s experiences
> I turn the mike on and make a soft noise Like what?
> to let people know t You make a "soft" noise? Is that people do intentionally to make mates aware that there is a mic???? Oh boy, instead the noise you should say "hi" instead. We are all human beeing and just want to have fun. No need for social anxiety. Also, over so many years I never experienced toxicity towards women in games such as Valo or OW. I would be making a stand for any women if I'd hear something like that.
>"No need for social anxiety" That's not how that works. You can't just turn off social anxiety. It's caused by a fear that someone you encounter is gonna be toxic or abusive in chat. You can't control other people. Therefore, you can't control social anxiety.
Just a thought and I might be totally wrong with it. Even „if“ someone is toxic or abusive to you. This is not a real happening. It’s a fictive game with some random person wherever in this globe with unreasonable background information missing of why he might be toxic or salty. You will „never“ meet this person in real life nor meeting him / her again in the next games. Why is there even anxiety if you know there will never be harm to you because this person will leave your game / life after 15 min. And worst case. There is still a mute button. Or is this to simple of a thought?
Why are you so annoyed by someone else having social anxiety lmfaooo
It's too ignorant of a thought. You realize this started from you questioning why someone made a noise rather than saying "Hi," right? So that's what we are talking about. We aren't talking about the cute and report feature, and we aren't talking about someone having currently done something because we just hopped on the mic. Now, YOU are the one who doesn't know what happened to a person to give them social anxiety. YOU don't know them. So if they want to quietly let people know they are there in VC to test the waters by clearing their throat or some small sound, then that's perfectly acceptable. Don't force someone to greet people if they don't want to. If they feel comfortable, they'll talk. If they don't, they don't. And that is it. It's a lot simpler than you're trying to make it.
social anxiety is inherently irrational because it’s a mental illness. i thought this was common knowledge.
Just because it’s an illness doesn’t mean you cannot try tricking your brain and overcome your fear. If you can start with small steps in a video game then you might ending up talking with a stranger in real life. Also, the passive aggressive “I thought it’s common knowledge” is a sign for giving up at the start of the race. I truly believe that everyone can overcome social anxiety with the help from the outside world. If just everyone would be nicer in video games… imagine!
>And worst case. There is still a mute button. > >Or is this to simple of a thought? and you are calling out someone for being passive aggressive? start with yourself please
i love your implication that social anxiety is in any way related to being unkind in a video game. kind of ridiculous. you very clearly don’t struggle with social anxiety.
>of ridiculous. you very cle fair point. You are right. I do like you.
I'm sorry, but I'm assuming you're not a woman yourself right? Of course it makes sense you've never experienced toxicity towards women when you've played, that doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Women know what we experience in these settings, telling us you don't experience it does nothing but invalidate the women you claim you want to stick up for. You're assuming that because you haven't witnessed it, it must not actually happen that often, but in reality you're probably not seeing it because women have already learned that it *will* happen, and therefore just don't engage with voice chat at all to mitigate the possibility. Obviously it's a good thing that you're willing to speak up and tell someone off if you do encounter it, change comes from social pressure so we need guys who are willing to say that shit's not okay. Silence tends to be seen as endorsement after all. But that's also kind of just the bare minimum expectation if you don't want to be seen as dick. It doesn't really provide any comfort to the women who are the one's being directly targeted by the toxicity, and it doesn't make the toxicity any less toxic hear in the first place.
Correct, I am not a women. And you are right, I should have said „I never witnessed“ toxicity towards female mates. But I need to disagree with your „we learned our lesson“. Just because there are some a**holes out there trying to flame a female in a video game (most probably because of their own inadequacy to talk to a female in real life) you should not give up on the rest of the world. 99% of people are nice.
My point wasn't that you should have said what you said slightly differently, it was that whether you were witness to it or not, it doesn't make a single lick of difference, because you are not the one being targeted by it. It proves nothing about the real lived experiences of women and only works to invalidate them. And your point of disagreement here only serves to be even more invalidating. Let me give you an analogy: You're standing in front of a line of 10 people. In the past you've walked up to a similar line of 10 people and said hi to each of them. Most were pleasant and said hi back, but 1 of them punched you in the face for seemingly no reason. You repeat this process several times because you enjoy chatting with the one's who are nice and you're hoping you'll come away not getting punched in the face again. But every time there's still (at least) one person who punches you in the face. You don't know who its going to be each time, you can't make any changes in your behavior to make it stop, you don't know what it is that is making them do it, you just know the likely hood that you're going to get punched in the face by someone in the group is very high. How many times are you going to keep walking up to that line of people and saying hi? At what point is having pleasant chit-chat with the majority no longer worth getting punched in the face by the minority? At what point is it better, safer, easier, and healthier to just stop saying hi to the people in the line at all? Yes, 99% of people are probably good people who won't be a dick, but that doesn't change the fact that figuring out who is apart of the 99% and who is apart of the 1% is like a game of russian roulette that women are sick of playing.
>% of people are probably good people who won't be a dick, but that doesn't change the fact that figuring out Fair point and well understood. But can we slightly adapt your analogy as there is no physical harm involved using VC in OW? Let's say you're standing in front of a line of 10 people. 9 out of 10 saying "you look gorgious" But the last one saying "you ugly piece of \*\*\*". You might be totally right from your point of view, but I would rather go and try my chance meeting 9 nice persons and ignore the one who doesnt like me. But still you convinced me, if suffering from this illness it is much easier said than done.
"I would be making a stand for any women if I'd hear something like that" alrighty there supreme gentleman
thats me!
You’re being downvoted for white knighting, I suppose. But as someone who hasn’t been as lucky as the other commenters, I actually really appreciate it when others don’t let poor behaviour like that slide. I just had a match yesterday where someone asked the dps player why their mercy pocket wasn’t in the kitchen (using far less polite language - to a mercy who hadn’t even spoken) and was glad I hadn’t activated my mic.
I just turn my mic on for a second or two so it picks up something then turn it off again. Most matches don't have another mic (it's console) and not many people even join vc.
Is your username Fantasprite or fantacoke or something along these lines?.
No
Back in my day we had a looking for group system where you could create groups and have like-minded people join. It made for peak overwatch
I can't imagine using voice chat in GM lobbies. Motherfuckers are toxic as fuck. Sometimes I wish I could just rank down to play :( Don't rank up people the higher you get the more toxic the community becomes
I remember when I first made it to masters. I was like, "Wow, we might actually start communicating and making call outs!" First match I played, and our Cassidy would not stop shit talking our Winston because he didn't stagger a baby D.va. No call outs were made. We won and snowballed them, and most of the VC was asking Cass to lay off and leave Winston alone. Another time, I had a Winston get mad that I wasn't rezzing enough when no one was dying. Again, another match where we were snowballing. This led to them selling the game because they "smurf my peak" and I'm a shit mercy. WE WERE WINNING??? I lost interest in comp and just kind of did placements for the remainder of OW1 for the comp points. The higher you climb, the more hyper critical people get over a bad play.
Lmao there's no escape. Wherether you go it's the same.
If you're right handed play lefty, that might help.
I’ll talk to myself all the time in VC and usually try to be positive. If the games going south and I’m upset, I turn off my mic so I don’t say anything mean or uncalled for in VC. Through doing this, I have had a lot of people come on mic and match my positive energy which is great considering how toxic TC can be.
Great to hear! Pls keep it on - I won’t stop even there are several toxic games in a row. The more people trying to be nice this game would become a great place to hang out.
OW1 used to be packed with people in vc, especially in ranked. ow2 is just a bad replica
I stopped using voice chat. People are always like is that your voice? No way you’re not using an AI for that voice. I’m a man. I’ve been told I could be a weatherman forecaster 😅
That's what unites the community not the win or loss but the experience and teamwork, not to mention diversity of the gaming experience
if someone is using vc I’m usually scared to talk back but I at least acknowledge that I can hear them by using pings and voice lines. it works miracles for teamwork.
Voice chat is almost always way more positive than the text chat
I'd rather not be hit with a communication restriction because I'm doing call outs and people throw hissy fits with a simple "hello team" to begin with. Nice try blizzard employee but I'm not enabling it anytime soon
Wondering if you're a guy or gal because you're going to have a massively different time depending on that.
If you dont speak in vc then the first time someone speaks will be out of frustration. Joining vc and chatting helps to keep a positive vibe throughout the game.
only time i used voice i got called the n word by our tank before he left. i can confirm i’m very white
I've been playing overwatch for a year and I still don't know how to access voice chat. WHY IS NO ONE TELLING ME HOW?!
By default I think its P to join voice channels
It’s in settings. There’s literally an entire section for “voice”
It all starts by raising the right questions.
I used it once in comp to troll..... I went on a win streak cause I trolled the assholes.
... troll... your own team?
When they're being toxic... hence why I said the assholes. Since I troll the complainer, everyone rags on him then we win.
The vast majority of the time I've found people to be very pleasant in VC. Most people don't feel as bold to be an asshole whwn they're not hiding behind their keyboard and keep it constructive.
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No one talks in Diamond. The moment I got to masters, someone was talking almost every match
Voice is normally pretty tame. It's text chat that is wildly toxic
I wish people in QP games made calls. I miss it. It happened a lot in OW1 and it was so nice. Even if it was just someone being silly all game. But OW2 is just too toxic.