Arena - removing the ability to use voice or text to communicate with other crews

Please don't remove this function it makes Arena a funny place to be. If new players don't want to hear other players they could deactivate other crews in the settings. I personally play a lot of Arena and without this Function I don't know if I want to play it anymore.

@dastallionducky That already is in the game. For a long time..
Clearly it's not enough to counter the toxicity so I fully support this decision.
Good on Rare for taking the high road.

You could just make it off by default instead...

Way to ruin more parts of the game rare I've got my 240 wins and could count the toxic lobbies on 1 hand

Y do you have to ruin my experience because some people can't turn off voice chat?

Imagine trying to get some of the group commendations in arena now with no other chat.. Poor form rare

@the3sheetsneate I don't think this is the way, Arena already doesn't have many players but it sure will lose more players after this decision. Why don't make it, that the standard setting in arena is a disabled voice chat, but you can activate it, if you want. New players would be protected and people can still activate it, if they want it.
I just want to have the option of writing a gg, explaining a play I did or have the ability to ask the other teams how they managed to do a certain play etc. You'll also lose all of the pvp players who want to tdm etc., I prefer the naval fights but if you don't even update arena or give 'em a new gamemode where they can just battle with Sniper etc., you should atleast leave 'em the option to ask for a tdm in arena.

This is a bad idea. Don't do this, banter is part of any pvp competitive game.

@tholzak You can turn it of if you want to already, but the Voice chat makes Arena not only a Challenging mode but also a funny.

So what's the plan for people doing the triumphant tankard and instruments commendations?. Those require a little bit of communication

@n0tmykd type.

I don't think that's the best way of dealing with toxicity in a game. There will be toxic people everywhere whether it's in sea of thieves arena or call of duty lobbies. You shouldn't take everyone's ability to speak just because someone is being mean.

This is DEFINITELY not the way to go. Unfortunately, "Toxicity" is just something that comes with any kind of multiplayer game style. I use quotes because if you look at it from a distance, sure its toxic. People are rude at times and say off the wall stuff that anyone who doesn't live in that world would see as toxic. When you look at it close up, 90% of the toxic isn't even someone being toxic. Its people riling up other crews so they have people to fight with in the game. Its calling out someone to be your rival for the game. Taking away the ability to communicate with other teams is removing the ability to not only find other crews with like minded players to possibly squad up with later, but is removing a key point on why people play arena. Trash talking is part of any competitive world. Yes if you're sensitive, turn off the option to hear the people talking. That should be the option, but removing it completely is alienating the 2.99% that play Arena and don't care about the public communication. Its the small 0.01% that have issues, and if you really get down to the core of what is actually bothering them, it isn't even the talking. That is just something they're using as a reason to report someone who's beaten them at the game. I know this because they say it out loud in the public forum they're reporting. This is definitely the wrong move, please rethink this decision and come up with a better alternative.

@taaaamas That was my first thought as well, disable it by default so newer players who don't know you can manually disable it, are protected. Everyone who want's to communicate, can enable the option. Great idea!

I partionally agree with this, YES players need a better arena experience.
Yet, I feel like it's important to have those toxic players exposed to others so that reports could actually happen. I have reported and got many players banned for what is to be concidered toxic to the eyes or Rare and I think that simply telling those players to keep it quiet isn't gonna help that much solving toxicity.

If there is no communication, there is no target to point at to report.
Adding to that the simple fact that this bareer is eventually going to help but there are xbox messages still happening and I don't think Rare will care as much if it's xbox messages cause it'd just go to xbox report wich do not work the same way at all.
For Xbox it's not a report themselves that will actually matter but more the accumulation of them (adding to that the fact that all reports expire after 6 months).

So, if I ever needed to make a deeper toxic-dealing methods I'd probably give to some people the authorisation of being able to hear and/or read arena messages to target toxicity.

Other than that it's probably going to be a relief for some players and it is indeed a huge change to arena, but other than muting toxic people by preventing many gameplay mechanics (therefore punishing everyone), wouldn't it be better to simply push the deletion of toxicity much further?

This measure is too extreme. Not only are we not getting sorely needed updates in arena mode, we're having the few features that allow for fun interactions taken away because of some bad apples.

C'mon Joe, we're not all kids. Rather disable cross crew chat and voice by default but leave a way for players to enable it if they want to.

@tholzak They said that they will disable the chat as well, just the "pirate chat" or what ever it's called is still available

@h4x3333 Not at all. You assuming that this change affects me just because I agree with it is wrong.
Spawn camping has nothing to do with anything on this subject.

@daspampigeei Ah, I didn't catch that bit, I thought it only involved voice chat.
In that case I'd advise using pirate speech to gather a crowd or inviting friends in Galleon arena to do the achievement with.

@tholzak ah yes type, when they are removing the ability to type, nice!

Great, now how am I going to convince everyone to get in the hot tub so I can get that ridiculous commendation? smh

I would not say that this is the correct way to exactly stop toxicity in arena, you told yourself doing a dev video, that u would not focus on arena but u are doing it anyways?

doesnt make any sense at all.

Yes, completely agree. Definitely needed as Arena is very competitive and can get out of hand very easily. Also cuts down on reports being sent to the support team so they can give better support to other aspects of the game.