Unmute Arena Gamechat

@sot-player30 I couldn't agree more with everything that you said. Every point you made just then is the actually truth.

Yes, or make it muted by default and have the option to unmute

@ste4lthles said in Unmute Arena Gamechat:

Yes, or make it muted by default and have the option to unmute

This. And maybe when you start a new session with new crew and such. It auto muted again.

@ste4lthles I agree

@stevethegent Well said

@nismoxlifestyle
I think a honor level like in league would be a good idea. Get muted after getting x reports or really bad ones

While I get what people are saying here, generally, I do disagree that the metrics they provided are a stupid reason to take the approach that they did. The reality is there is an economic factor that has to be taken into account when talking about this. Every report that is sent in requires some amount of human work hours be focused on assessing and addressing that report. Even if the odds of reports will be higher due to higher player contact, there has to be a tipping point from a company standpoint where it becomes unreasonable to continue to dedicate the work hours to dealing with those situations. In the case of Rare it appears that threshold is somewhere around 3% of the player population resulting in 50% or so of the reports coming in. In particular for something that they are under no obligation to provide with their product.

Don't get me wrong, it is sad they decided this was the most viable approach for them to take, but I absolutely can understand why that might very well be the case.

@bullgooseloony7 I couldn't agree more !

@capt-stoic Yeah so only take away game chat to those who want to make the gaming experience so negative whilst the other pirates whom are actually doing well can enjoy the game.

@redeyesith I can understand where your coming from but I've got to put into view that games will have it fair share of toxicity, it the duty of care of the creators of the game to handle these situations with solutions that best suits everyone. I feel they are killing the immersion of arena, because they are unwilling to handle it or unwilling to give jobs out for people to handle this on their game so we all can continue to enjoy the game without m=being muted. As brutal as it sounds, i think what they done is a lazy decision to solve this problem of removing toxic behaviour on sea of thieves. They forget people can to be toxic in team chat and through "PM" all throughout consoles, so it solves nothing in the end.

Hi,

Getting rid of chat in arena is a terrible idea, not to mention an inconsistent one when you can easily just go on adventure mode and say whatever you want. It also doesn't really fit in with this whole "shared world" narrative either. And as others have pointed out - you can still use the team chat function to offend others anyway.

We live in a culture that is obsessed with "offense" and being offended as if that warrants the alleged "victim" some kind of medal, to the point where we actually make it worse by just pretending it doesn't happen and instead put a blanket over it, rather than challenging both the person who is offended to be more resilient and empowered and that they won't perish just because of what they hear and then we challenge the alleged offender too at the same time. Just sweep it under the rug and pretend it doesn't exist - that will stop it for sure (sarcasm).

It is kind of ironic that for accompany that is so enbibed in the culture of being diverse, it is wary of taking responsibility for this particular aspect of it's own creation by just assigning the same moderators to the game mode who also moderate adventure mode issues.

But, in their defences also, I understand why they would do it. I understand the business need to be "all inclusive". There should be clear distinctions too as to what is and isn't allowed, but then it can get very clinical. I would say as long as it isn't a form of discrimination or a real life threat - then everything else within reason (hard to say as this is a subjective notion) goes.

But if you hear anything like this:

• "your father was a hamster and your mother smelled of elderberries"

• "Haha, you lost, don't cry!", "get gudworm", "tee hee you got wrecked", "go back to the maiden voyage bucko"

• "You are the worst pirate ever!", "try hard", "I hate you", "you got no scoped 360'd d00d" etc.

• Swear words etc;

Then while I personally would not use the above vernacular in game, they still should not be misconstrued as a "reportable offence", just because you are offended - it does not mean you are right. Pirates were no doubt very rude to each other and would be no place for those who are easily offended to make a career. I bet one of the reasons they removed it is because they probably got lots of complaints about things that weren't really worthy of being reported, much like the same way people moan about PvP to them...in a PvP centric game.

The reality is - the real world is generally not a very nice place when you strip back the subtleties of manners and laws. I understand RARE want to create this utopic "safe space" for everyone, but that it is also incredibly hard to do that in a game that encourages the robbing, killing and general pirate like behaviours to others, be it intentionally or otherwise.

What I am saying is that, yes there should be rules against hate speech for example, but that this is also the internet and what people say in game, shouldn't necessarily be taken too literally as an expression of their true self. Of course, just because there is this veil of anonymity within games - this also doesn't mean people should be as horrid as possible. If I attack someone else, or vice versa in game - then I will still remain polite to them no matter what. At the end of the day though, we are all pretending to be pirates after all.

For me, I don't care what people direct against me or say in a pirate game like this. Being offended is merely a barometer of my own self control. Banning voice chat in certain areas might actually be hindering the chance for new players to make friends too. Yes I get it why they want to police it - but what is deemed offensive is so arbitrary, that list of things on it is infinite. If you have chat on - then at least people can be challenged if they say terrible things to others.

RARE, just have a robust and streamlined reporting structure. Make sure everyone knows that clear evidence is required and make sure that expectations of what is and what isn't ok is made clear upon the submission of any reports. The community here actually is quite well mannered and well meaning for the most part I think, let them help police this too - job done.

Cheers

@gunner-rat I really enjoyed reading your technical manner of discussing both RARES point of view and the view of players and yourself included. Everything you pointed out in depth is very true and couldn't of been said any better. I appreciate the thought and time you must of taken away to write your shared opinion on my subject.

Safe Sails

@redeyesith but then you have the people who would otherwise be rightly removed from the game still being able to play, and like @jadescissors32 mentioned a little up, that's just providing cover for them since they aren't very likely to be reported in adventure.

You're assuming it takes loads of reports for action to be taken. It takes one with evidence. So if these people do this in Adventure they are still reported (assuming other players do what they are supposed to in regards to reporting), we get the same results with less overall number of reports.

Everyone all spamming in is more akin to a natural disaster when everyone starts calling emergency services and then emergency services begin to become unavailable and unreachable because they are stuck in a flooded queue of reports (many reporting the very same thing). This in turn slows down response time.

Equating this back to Arena for comparison could easily result in toxicity being able to endure longer and be more persistent as people who have been reported are placed at the back of the queue and thus are able to get into more sessions and continue to be toxic to more players.

That is what we are talking about here with the discrepancy in volume of reports between Arena and Adventure. This can result in more decisive action being taken. In the case of police we are talking potential lockdowns and curfews being enforced in an attempt to slow the volume and address the situation. One can compare this to Rare locking down cross-crew communication in Arena. Will the decisive action potentially impact those who are not a part of the problem, yea it sure does in both cases, but that doesn't change the fact that if you're being buried like that you need to do something to address it.

So, again, if people do their due diligence in Adventure the people that need to be handled will be still, and all with significantly less stuff coming into the queue. Those it does not address via bans it still tackles by preventing them to communicate and do what it was that was a problem but that will be a minority who simply fall in that bucket of still being bad people that are isolated away from causing potential harm (as most of these folks will still play Adventure, still get up to what they get up to, and end up being reported). Unlike the situation with crimes, where it could easily be a matter of life and death (so you don't want to leave those people in that bucket if possible), here you can't be physically harmed by the behavior and so if it can be isolated that is a solution enough.

In reality, cross-crew communication is not needed for a competitive mode like Arena. Plenty of competitive games don't include player communication. Sea of Thieves still has it with your own crew at least (and you also have options of Parties, Discord, etc to further facilitate this). All you need is to be able to coordinate with your own crew realistically. In Adventure on the other hand it is much more important to reduce the amount of hostile encounters and provide the sandbox nature of that mode (but thankfully player interaction is spaced enough that this results in much less problems).

Honestly, I just don't see any really good reason for them to reverse their decision on this.

@jadescissors32 said in Unmute Arena Gamechat:

@redeyesith First who's fault is it, that Rare is overwhelmed, its Rares own fault. If they had in-game report player option than they would be able to see there are multiple reports on the same user, than review biggest offenders.

I don't see how an in game report feature does that any more than the current system which would still in theory be able to have the same data listed. I also don't see how it is Rare's fault here, that is an incredible stretch to say they are at fault for the behavior of others.

Number two here is disabling arena voice chat is unlike curfew. They did not limit amount of people joining arena they just took away ability to communicate because too many people complained. So unlike curfew they did not affect offenders just hit people reporting offenses.

But it does stop the offenses because it removes the ability of those who would offend to commit the offense in the first place. It also doesn't really impact people who were sending the reports because they can still communicate with the only people it matters for them to be able to communicate with in a competitive mode - their own crew. This is not a mode where negotiation is expected to occur, where as in Adventure that is part and parcel with the experience.

Third, Adventure is full of brand new crews many not knowing how to report people, very unlikely somebody will get reported, so yeah they pretty much allowing offenders to hide.

Considering the information is readily made available with minimal effort I would suggest that it is on the consumer to ingest the information which is provided. If nothing else, the toxic communication can be reported as well via Microsoft directly as they are more than happy to provide communication based bans and have a reporting system built right in for the console players (and I believe game bar). This has been around for awhile too. None of this information is being obfuscated in any way. It is a lack of motivation to report someone and nothing more, since there is really no fear of reprisal in reporting in video games really, in which case I would argue the person wasn't really all that offended to begin with.

So, yep, I still see no good reason to reverse this decision or carry on in this conversation any further without some valid point being made. Enjoy your thread.

There was no point in force muting everyone in Arena, take out the report function and just tell people if they have problems, to mute other crews or as others have stated, have it auto set to mute and people can unmute should they choose to participate and take out the ability to report since most people just seem to be "salty" and waste Rare's time with too many reports.

@jadescissors32 said in Unmute Arena Gamechat:

Can someone imagine if Police operated like Rare, and in response to high volume of 911/999 calls in high crime area simply disconnected a number?
Crime? what crime ?, nobody is calling us.

Is there really nobody in Rare management to see stupidity of this action ?

imagine comparing a emergency line to a gaming company the comparison is laughable i mean rare solved the report problem

they made it so nobody can insult anyone anymore while your comparison makes it seem like the problem still goes on and that rare is simply ignoring the problem

if it does its not in-game and its in xbox and from there you can EASILY report someone

if kids cant play nice you cant have nice things

police do the exact same thing if you prank call they'll click you and if your extremely unlucky you get a tasty fine or jailtime

pranking the police takes up the time from someone who might actually need emergency help

trash talking in a lobby for 40 mins doesn't save anyone just spams the report system and it takes up the spots for people who are actually being mistreated

if i remember correctly arena creates the highest amount of reports while only seeing 3% of the playerbase's playtime which is insane which means almost nobody who plays arena can't keep their tongue clean (inb4 someone gets upset by this comment pay attention to the word "almost")

at that point i wouldn't blame rare for sewing people's lips shut

drastic problems require drastic solutions simple as that

it sucks that if majority misbehaves the people who do behave gets the stick aswell

rare simply got tired of recieving a ton of spam reports from people behaving like a bunch of kids in a sandbox

"he called me this he did this he said im bad" yadayada

@jadescissors32 said in Unmute Arena Gamechat:

Speaking of the Devil...
Just joined open crew and happened to be joined with one disgusting human being.
So I left the crew, but this is whats happening now, a lot of those kind of people are now in adventure.

They've always been in adventure... And i can tell you one thing

Arena being muted is not the reason they magically exist in adventure because those kinds of people are quite literally everywhere

They exist in adventure now and they existed in adventure prior to the arena mute

you finding a toxic player in adventure is not the result of arena being muted

How about this: we give Arena Players a two month unmuted trial. If they can stop being jerks and the report numbers come down. They get to keep voice chat.

If they go back to their old ways, boom. It’s gone.