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

@capt-karp i agree, dont punish everyone for some bad eggs. Also how many of said reports was cause someone was a sore loser, or new to the game and thought someone was hacking because the player is more seasoned then them? Im with everyone else, mute the arena but give us the option to unmute.

Also how is it this post has the most replies than any in the dev update catagory and no reponse from rare? People in this post are ok with a general mute and an option to unmute and yet rare isnt even going to say anything or reply? Thought this was a social game, guess rare doesnt care about their community. Even if its small.

I think the percentage of "Bad Eggs" is higher than you think. I haven't played a whole lot of Arena, but when I have the toxicity towards the two women on my crew was insane. Constant gender based berating: "B**ch! Make me a sandwich", referencing time of the month, and other extremely sexist things were CLOGGING the pre-game lobby.

I enjoy the fun trash talking as much as anyone else, but when the words become racist, sexist, or pretty much any "ist" the wait gets uncomfortable.

@reverend-toast sounds like you encountered the bad eggs. Im the same way as you, cant stand that kinda talk but general trash talk (you know the fun kind) im good with but when they toss out racial or crud like that they do get reported with the video evidence. But i do have to say i rarely came across that type (well before they muted it) i would say 1 out of maybe 30ish lobbies and it was normaly just one guy.
Im normaly the type to try amd get others to sing, chit chat, heck when among us was big we posted a lobby code and the entire arena lobby joined in and played together while waiting for the match to start. Or how we managed to get an entire lobby to do the cha cha slide lol
The bad eggs will always stand out more then a good confrontation but almost positive majority of the reports rare got was just sore losers or new players that dont understand the game yet.

Honestly, at the end of the day, none of it matters. Personal responsibility does. You have the option to mute everyone in the lobby, you have the option to mute just the toxic people. It is up to you what you want to tolerate. This should not be overlooked. You're punishing a percentage of your player base because people don't want to exercise their right to step away from the toxicity they hate. Instead of muting or blocking the "Toxic" people, they choose to report because they need someone else to do for them what they should be doing themselves.

I agree with a lot of people on here that there are bad eggs. 100%. But I can guarantee that if there was more investigation into these reports you would see the content as poor sports wanting to get revenge for the fact they were just outplayed. Yes Trash talk is apart of any competitive game, not just video games. It just speaks for passion. Does some cross the line? Sure. But a majority is completely harmless and should be brushed off. Many crews and mine have trash talked each other during a fine and then at the end its a GG's for a good fight. We all want good pirates to fight out there and you're chasing them away by telling them they're toxic and muting them.

This is a poor decision and Arena just isn't the same.

@damotree doesn't bother me to not have it but I agree that there should probably be a right to exercise a choice. Really though what's the point of hearing the same old insults over and over?

So this really didn't solve the problem of toxicity. All that has happened now is that I get spammed with Xbox Live messages, Xbox Live Party Chat requests and people renaming their pets to TDM and spamming the pirate chat.

The only difference now is that if someone is toxic to you in an Xbox party or voice chat then you can use the Xbox built in tools to report it directly to Microsoft who will swing the ban hammer down on people.

It feels like a knee jerk reaction to push the responsibility onto Microsoft support rather that Rare support.

Bring back the voice chat and make it opt-in for all. I'm growing tired of the Xbox live spam requests.

don't remove it instead ban them

Please, review this decision! Our communication in arena was comprimised by a minority. maybe punishments can be applied and reports can be considered and evaluated.

Please Rare, listen to the community and re-introduce voice and text communication across all crews in Arena, while keep banning players who are toxic.

I agree with most of the people here and it should be optional to have voice chat on or off. The verbal communication in this game is what makes it so great imo.

@the3sheetsneate i came back to the game and find out you removed chat from arena bad choice there is already a mute setting but you never tell anyone about it if you promoted muting and added a report player setting to crew settings you wouldnt have such a big problem. or let the players vote for this. plus if your gonna remove game chat for arena you also remove adventure and people will hate that like they already hate this choice you cant have one with out the other.

The fact that this thread continues to stay alive almost 3 months later with people asking for just the option to turn VC back on is telling of what is really wanted in Arena. Giving people the option to turn it on themselves isn't that hard. When it was accidentally enabled it worked out great. Not sure why that option was removed.

@savvy-sweets said in Arena - removing the ability to use voice or text to communicate with other crews:

The fact that this thread continues to stay alive almost 3 months later with people asking for just the option to turn VC back on is telling of what is really wanted in Arena. Giving people the option to turn it on themselves isn't that hard. When it was accidentally enabled it worked out great. Not sure why that option was removed.

Yeah, there should at least be an option to opt-in if you want to.

Bring back voice chat. And I don't even like wearing a headset.