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

  • @epiclowryder this is dumb how is anyone gonns talk to new players and I think the toxicity is hilarious

  • THANK YOU RARE FOR GIVING US THE OPTION. You don't know how happy you just made a lot of people. This is a win win for everyone. Those who don't want to participate do not have to, and those that do can go in and elect to talk to people and engage. THANK YOU for listening to your player base. Much Much respect for your decision.

  • @savvy-sweets did they really give us the option to turn it back on?

  • @savvy-sweets ???

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

    @savvy-sweets did they really give us the option to turn it back on?

    they didnt, i just checked

  • @jadescissors32 false alarm, nope rare is still as uncompromising and strange as ever.

  • This is really sad, I don't think I am even gonna play this game anymore after this decision.

  • What's really lame about all of this is that most of the toxicity comes from how stupidly easy it is to board a ship and then just spawn kill people. Maybe Rare should focus on making it more about boat combat and making it more challenging to board boats rather than censorship that makes the game bland and boring. As usual the ceo or whoever it is making the decisions with these big companies is completely out of touch, big surprise.

  • @turkaspy @JadeScissors32 @Burglebutt

    Yes they did. If you go into mouse and keyboard at the bottom it says toggle to mute. what you'll do is keybind it and when you get into the lobby hit the button and it will unmute everyone. You can talk. I have been talking to people all night in Arena. Its been great!

  • For Anyone who wants to know where you can edit it to talk.

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  • @yellowpuppy25 there was an option to mute all others, it was literally the first setting in "other crews", which is why i still dont understand why they changed it to always off for everyone.

  • @savvy-sweets ok yes, I have been aware of this, I am almost certain it is not intended, which is why I didn't speak about it on the forum.

  • @turkaspy Not sure about this one. I have a feeling they just did not want to do it because this would require much bigger code rewrite than just flipping UI Off and greying it out.
    UI gets switches off when you join Arena lobby, in fact sometimes its delayed so for a second you can hear people before it switches off. Not that is fully intended but I also don't think they were not aware of it either.
    Me I totally forgot that this is there. So pretty happy about, however, after few minutes of listening to 8 years old screaming at the top of their lungs:
    "Can you hear me ?"
    "Do you have a mic?"
    No sure if anybody wants to switch voice back on , A lot of players are not aware that voice is Off so this is completely out of hand.
    Complete failure on the part of Rare.
    I lasted on Arena probably 30 minutes and switched to Forza Horizon 4, I did not want to even play on Adventure.
    It left bad taste. (if you come for dinner and your steak stinks from being old do you still want potatoes ?)

  • Also, I know Rare thinks Arena is only 3% but I am pretty sure Arena is SoT's major source of Emporium sales. This is where everybody can see new emotes, new weapons , new clothes.
    All the purchases I made were because I did see something in Arena lobby. I am pretty sure I am not the only one.
    So slowly killing Arena is pretty much self mutilating approach.

  • @jadescissors32 said in Arena - removing the ability to use voice or text to communicate with other crews:

    Also, I know Rare thinks Arena is only 3% but I am pretty sure Arena is SoT's major source of Emporium sales. This is where everybody can see new emotes, new weapons , new clothes.
    All the purchases I made were because I did see something in Arena lobby. I am pretty sure I am not the only one.
    So slowly killing Arena is pretty much self mutilating approach.

    I'm pretty sure it's not. For one thing the big ticket items, like the ship set cosmetics, are not usable in Arena and you see those all the time in Adventure. In terms of dollars, I'd be willing to bet that Adventure only player emporium purchases far outpace mostly Arena players. It's quite a stretch to think otherwise considering the playtime numbers.

  • @d3adst1ck SHipsets are unique and they would probably sell more of them if they allowed shipsets in Arena, but I always bought shipset because I was buying something else and it made sense to get matching shipset.
    Purchases can be made anywhere but that 15 -30 minutes in the lobby is great advertisement for Emporium. Once many of 3% get that it spreads through the game.
    I realized that when yesterday I did see piece of clothes on somebody and normally I would ask them where they got it, instead I started digging in Emporium just to get pulled into game. By the time game was finished excitement subsided and even so I found that in Emporium I felt like this is stupid so simply moved on.
    In adventure mode there is a small chance to see new things or have enough time to pay attention too it. Shipsets are unique but other things are pretty much impossible to check. Its not like in the middle of the battle you have time to ask ("hey stop firing cannons I can see you have new set where did you get that from")
    All the things I purchased I did see in Arena first..
    All the things I purchased (minus sails and hull from shipsets) I use in arena because in adventure mode I am black pijama wearing non flashy double gun with ships that are all blackout using default black cannons)
    rare does not have to take a word for it, all they have to do is search their logs for word "Emporium" in lobby.

  • @turkaspy It wasn't in there before. I was in there the day before messing with stuff and then yesterday it appeared. I looked around and there was no mention of it anywhere. Not here, not twitter, not the discord. No one really knew, even the people in chat.

    IF it wasn't intended use it while you can because even if no one posted about it and we all figured it out, it would still get out. Use it while you can and for those that were leaving because of it, at least they know its there to use for now.

    This should have always been the first step in my opinion. Banning it out right was just wrong. Now if people are reporting well you're literally ELECTING to be apart of it. It is on you, yourself as a person. Which it always was, but lets be real people have no self control lol. As much as they want to report the toxicity, they like to listen to it or they would just mute it in the first place and move on. haha.

  • @pyrodigm its just where all the sweaty pvp double gun bots play man. I got my 240 and dipped because it was only getting more and more toxic with no combat balance. The meta is dominated by double gun, jump spam, food spam, overwhelming fire-power. Its just not fun in a pirate game for most. But of course those die hard sweats will disagree. Same as people that relied on noob tunes back in the day didn't want a nerf.

    The voice thing is dumb and takes away from communication and the fun of the game. People had the option to opt out of hearing. I'm already seeing more arena players back in adventure since the change. Which is a good thing. But the combat still needs rebalancing.

  • Honestly, not a good update. If people don't want to hear other crews then they should mute other crews. Its exactly the same as before but this time is just people spamming "rolls on deck laughing" I also used to use proximity chat as an actual strategy before and now I can't. I used to cannon to ppl and pretend I'm an open mic and saying like "okay im going for their ladder...wait I missed their ladder!" and in reality im already climbing aboard. Bad change imo.

  • @razyr-iowa Honestly, people still complain about being bad? This game has no skill gap, the sword is too broken and double gun achtilly requires skill. Also what tf is jump spam and food spam. Before youcomplain about double gun look at sword:

    https://streamable.com/pw4okr

    How is this balanced?

  • @Razyr-Iowa I totally agree with the voice chat thing, it’s pretty lame, but double gun doesn’t dominate arena, because there’s no skill gap in this game anymore. The worst player in this game can pull out a sword and start M1 spamming and W-keying the best double gunners in the game and probably kill them easily. This game used to have somewhat balanced weapons but Rare just made it worse, I was sent a clip today where my friend hit someone 9 times back to back, and then he got backtrack one blundered. Double gunning only dominated arena when you know how to use it and you have skill, spamming blunder and sword doesn’t take skill, and it’s unfortunate that Rare made it so OP to allow noobs to kill god tier players.

  • @ste4lthles Q: How is this balanced..
    A: ITS NOT FIX GAME RARE

  • I spend most of my time in arena because adventure has become incredibly dull, and this decision to remove communication with other players I think is a really dumb decision.
    Honestly Rare you seem to be making horrible decisions when it comes to managing your community.
    In my opinion, SoT is a slowly dying game and until Rare begins to communicate more with the player base then it'll continue to slowly die. SoT has the potential to be a really great game. But until Rare deals with the insane amount of bugs like hit reg, freezing when you load into a server, flying ships, latency issues for everyone, teleporting, etc, etc, then the game will continue to die. Yet Rare continues to add more bugs with every patch.
    Rare you have a large vast community here. There aren't just PvErs and PvPers there are tons of ways people like to play this game. And until you make it a fair and fun experience for everyone then this game won't go anywhere.
    Like removing the simple ability to talk to other players. Is that really how you grow a community?
    I understand that people in Arena can be toxic trust me I know. The amount of times I've been called toxic simply just for winning a match, or for 2 tapping a sword lord that are spamming M1 or RT is insane. Have you ever stopped and considered maybe your players abuse the toxicity reports? I have 9 cheater reports on my Xbox profile and that's after it got reset 5 months ago.
    Rare you need to carefully consider your next moves with SoT. You need to rethink whatever strategy you have on dealing with game-breaking bugs like hit reg. How is it that you have yet it fix an underlying issue that the game has had for YEARS? Either fix it yourselves or hire someone that actually knows how. And maybe you do understand how to fix it but you cant. And thats what I mean by lack of communication. Just tell the players of your game what is going on and stop leaving us in the dark with 0 info on what the plans are for this game.
    An idea I have to help open communication is to remove the NDA over SoT insider. Games like rb6 have test servers for the players to run around in whatever Ubisoft wants to test out and players give their open feedback on it. The communication between the player and the dev is not perfect but it's far better than no communication. Whoever helps you make decisions on what to put into the game I can promise you does not represent the entire SoT community.
    Simply adding more "content" to a game doesn't make it more fun.

  • @thrawnheart you say you have been playing since launch but only played for 8 days

  • @savvy-sweets sorry I meant no offence in this case
    Yes, I got your points and we have common ground that in no case chat must be blocked

    I had my idea what could make arena a better place in terms of toxicity indirectly, who knows mb my points might attract developers attention or may not, time will show

  • So is Rare going to address the elephant in the room further? Or just pretend like there aren't 620 replies on this post that seems to be vastly unwelcomed by the community? Please reconsider Joe.

  • I've got to say some people are sometimes toxic, but most of the community is kind and welcoming, so plz set it to default and give the choice to change it. Now I don't know how I'll be able to tdm does anyone know a way to do that?

  • I believe the approach is wrong and that an option to enabled voice should be available for those who wish.

    But most importantly the wait times needs to be fixed. First match you play is usually pretty fast but after the first match you go into migration limbo and the server swaps like 5-6 times and i estimate there it at least a 30 min wait time in between each match.

    This wait time is even worse when you are stuck in a small room with people you cannot talk to.

  • @burglebutt

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

    What's really lame about all of this is that most of the toxicity comes from how stupidly easy it is to board a ship and then just spawn kill people. Maybe Rare should focus on making it more about boat combat and making it more challenging to board boats rather than censorship that makes the game bland and boring. As usual the ceo or whoever it is making the decisions with these big companies is completely out of touch, big surprise.

    A 2 second immunity would be good. But boarding is what pirates did so I dopn't mind spawn camping. just jump like crazy and 90% of the time you can get away. Even on black screen.

  • My question is that now that this is removed, how on earth are we meant to get the "Hot Tub Crime Machine" achievement and commendation? I feel like this is nigh on impossible, it already felt crazy trying to coordinate random other people with text chat to get into the arena hot tub now I feel like this is impossible and totally luck-based.

  • This is so stupid to be honest. Why not just add the ability to mute for those who want to like any other game. What are you thinking? Just trying to kill TDM? Listen to your community there isn't one person on here saying that this was a good thing.

  • Muting arena imo was a terrible idea along with not updating it. So past week to 2 weeks the que times for the first match are oke but as mentioned above after that match you are in a limbo of not enough players/crews on other teams to start a round. Players had to find an exploit just to get into an arena match (talking about solo queing) players shouldnt have to find exploits just to PLAY a game. As for not updating the arena i honestly think it needs atleast another update, consider the players ideas they have been posting. As for the TDMers im not a fan of it (well let me rephrase that i dont want to end up in someones montage lol) but the arena got stale cause after the update to the single chest it just became a game of who can cannon farm the newbie boat the best, and the TDMers found a way to freshen it up for them selves, they even went to the extreme of sacrificing their wins so they can TDM and not bother the other players llaying the objective. Im not going to TDM but you bet your rump that i have mad respect for them, amd the muting of the arena is now imvading them cause they cant ask for the TDM now. So now its just cannon farm, or rename your pet to TDM and spam the chat wheel in hopes someone else will TDM. Rare you let arena get this bad by not keeping up the updates on it. And with the cannon farming and the TDMers going and no way to comunicate to the new players, of course they will be discuraged cause they have no clue whats going on, especialy since their game chat works in adventure but not arena. I mainly play the arena, as in i will searxh xboxes lfg for hours for one arena post (or post my own) before i sail adventure. Yes there is toxicity in the arena (by toxic i mean racial slurs for example) but its also in the adventure mode to, just its easyer to report a player in arena cause everyone has acess to the other crews list, you dont in adventure. And there are plenty of times players acuse me of toxicity/hacking/cheating etc because i out played them, won, or just have more time in the game. How many of those reports that caused the muting was cause a newguy lost, got out played, or just new. Players arnt going to report the good times they had, just the bad ones. Ive have come across just as much toxicy in adventure as i have in arena, only difference is there is more player interaction in the arena than adventure. The thing i see people agreeing on is rare should just mute players by defualt and let them change the option to unmute. Problem solved. Now we can say gg, talk about a play we made, talk about a play another crew made, chit chat, organize comendations in the lobby, ask for TDM, ask how someone got something, explain to bramd new they should get a grasp of the game in adventure first before trying arena, explaining to new players how arena works.....i can go on. TDMers i got respect for you cause yall found a way to freshen the game up and im sorry rare is going this route. As it stands arena has long que times, if your new then your cannon farmed, no one to talk to other than your own crew, bugs that make the players thing you hacking (hit reg or laggy server) if you was a new player does all that sound "welcoming" to you?
    TLDR: dont mute arena or just mute by defualt with the option to unmute, give arena another shot with the updates cause it got only one then deemed a failure. And listen to the players playing arena for their feedback cause we feel like we are giving our feedback to a brickwall.
    EDIT: sorry about my spelling im fat fingering my phones keyboard and dont care to correct it lol
    Also i noticed this post has the most replys under this catagory and from what i see the general response is dont mute arena or mute it but give the option to unmute. How is this the most replied post and yet they are still going through even though the players dont want it (from what i see anyways)

  • Please change this back. I used to love area and made many friends and memorable moments. Without the voice chat it’s so dead, lifeless, and boring. Why should you ruin so many people’s fun because some people couldn’t press the mute other crews button.

  • Please put this feature back in. Some of my most memorable moments we’re in arena with voice chat. I’ve made so many friends and the pros far outweigh the cons. A simple solution is to make the voice chat option default to off so new players have to go out of their way to turn it on. Please don’t ruin the fun for everyone and kill arena because some people can’t be bothered to press mute.

  • I'm quite sad about this.
    I do understand that it is hard to fight toxicity and you rather just make fun content then deal with these people... But removing a core gameplay feature is not a real solution.
    The whole reason I bought this game was the ability to interact with fellow players. If this ability gets removed, then that's a major blow to the game. Punish the ones that abuse this ability, not the whole community.

    I know you get more reports of toxic players in arena, but I don't think that's because there are more toxic players in arena mode. It is way easier to find them in arena mode as you are guaranteed to encounter everyone in the server in the seadogs tavern. And waiting for the match you have all the time to look up the names of toxic players for a report.
    Because of this, arena mode is actually an easy location to find the bad eggs in the community to do something about them. If you can't handle the amount of reports, then please increase the team handling reports. In adventure mode you encounter toxic players a lot as well, but it's harder to make sure you report the right player, so less likely to make a report. There are likely about the same amount of toxic players in both modes, identifying and reporting is just easier in arena.

    I have used the arena mode often for some nice conversations, storytelling and shanty singing as you are guaranteed to find conversation partners in the tavern. It was one of the reasons I liked arena mode every once in a while. Now I lost a reason to play arena mode.

    And if you want to be subtle with bans, you could make muted ban servers. Where banned people can still play the game, but lose the ability to talk/chat and get separated from the non-banned community. That way they can still enjoy the game and you guys will not feel so bad having to punish them.

    Even though I don't like the current solution at all, I am happy that you try to make this game a pleasant experience for everyone. It's a wonderful game that you made.

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