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Which is also a complete cop-out meant to save $$$ that lacks any basis in fact or reality. Dota 2 is churning along quite comfortably with integrated voice ch

Which is also a complete cop-out meant to save $$$ that lacks any basis in fact or reality. Dota 2 is churning along quite comfortably with integrated voice chat despite having more inter-region mixing. Any time this subject comes up the Dota 2 community nearly unanimously agrees that voice chat in no way encourages "toxicity" and more likely actually prevents it by assigning a human voice to the player as opposed to just disembodied words.

xfalcox 11y ago
As an avid Dota 2 player I can attest this. If people start flaming you, replying on voice chat and saying something positive, like "Sorry, my wife was calling me. But don't worry we can win this", will change the tides immediately.
- jgrowl 11y ago
  Yup. The most toxic players in my experience tend to be keyboard warriors anyway.
iN7h33nD 11y ago
Not to mention the fact that most toxic people can only spam the chat wheel commands and cannot actually talk as they are chat banned for X hours. EDIT: Are there any articles like this on the architecture of Dota 2 or Steam?
- Omniusaspirer 11y ago
  Look into SteamRE for a good primer on interfacing with Valve chat services, although if you want gory details of server architecture I don't think they've ever written about that in detail.
- Namidairo 11y ago
  And if players start turning to auto-matching voice services (Curse Voice and Razer Connect did this at one stage), they'll go and threaten bans for all.
Mimu 11y ago
It does not encourage it. It also sometimes lead to funny stuff like someone broadcasting sad music if we are losing or epic music if we are winning ahah. Although the mute system is still a must have.
Mimu 11y ago
It does not encourage it. It also sometimes lead to funny stuff like someone broadcasting sad music if we are losing or epic music if we are winning ahah. Although the mute system is still a must have.
res0nat0r 11y ago
Or they're just doing what WoW did, WoW if I remember correctly added in-game voice support for raids years ago, but dropped it because of lack of user uptake. No one was using it because it wasn't as good or easy to use as already existing third party programs, so they dropped it. Riot is probably thinking the same, and can spend their resources elsewhere on something that isn't already done better by someone else.
- Omniusaspirer 11y ago
  WoW already had persisting social structures that lead to those groups setting up voice servers that provided them a lot more intricate controls. People who chose to speak in game had already assembled the infrastructure to do so, why use a worse system? I played Eve Online and it was the same scenario, every single group ran a voice server and often individuals did as well. Contrast this to LoL where you're dropped into a game randomly with others random players for <60 minutes who you don't know but are forced to communicate with to maximize strategy. Communication is utterly critical yet the best option for doing so is slowly typing a message in a micro intensive game or a nondescript ping. The resulting player behavior is exactly as one would expect.
  - res0nat0r 11y ago
    Maybe also they're taking their cues from Xbox Live and all of the raging that comes from a similar aged user-base dropped in with random groups and don't feel like enabling young kids the ability to tell random strangers to go kill themselves...
    - Omniusaspirer 11y ago
      You'll always have outliers, but nothing stops those same kids from doing so right now with text chat (and probably at a higher rate). Mute functionality is there for a reason.
    - pikzen 11y ago
      And we've solved this problem ever since the invention of the "Mute this player" button.
tehwebguy 11y ago
Maybe, but they just bought a stake in Curse Voice
bigtunacan 11y ago
I'm an avid LoL player and not having voice chat support built in is the largest downside to LoL. Plenty of players are "side-loading" their voice chat through a variety of applications. This is a huge PITA as I need Skype, TeamSpeak, whatever the rest of my team is using. Players aren't consistently using voice chat since it's not built in. If you are in a match up where one team is on voice chat and the other is not; the team with voice has a huge advantage as text chat is less visible and has more delay.
jcoby 11y ago
I have ~1k games in Dota 2 and have run across less than a dozen ragers in voice. A quick report+mute and they're taken care of. Usually getting a chat ban in the process. If anything it makes the game better when people start using voice. I've had games that I've given up on and people started using voice to ask for things like shared unit control for dominated creeps to stack ancients and actually communicate where they're going instead of trying to guess what's going on in four silent teammates' minds. OTOH, I had one game on EU W where two Russians were talking (nicely) to each other and some British guy comes in and just says "I can't stand Russians. Good bye." and leaves. And I've had my fair share of LAN cafe players with an open mic blaring music and their friends conversations. Mute and move on. I really do wish we could mute the mic and not chat and vice-versa.
- mreiland 11y ago
  I can't speak for Dota, but I quit playing league because I got tired of how badly Riot has implemented their ranked system. There's so much talk about toxicity in league, and very little about what CAUSES the toxicity. Hands down the biggest issue is not coming down quicker on trolls and AFK's in ranked. They have a system in which they literally FORCE you to play out an hour long game when someone never connects, leaves after 5 minutes, doesn't get what they want so intentionally feed, and so forth. For someone trying to climb that's automatically 2 hours gone. 1 hour for the game they're forced to play out, and 1 hour for the game they have to win to even out their ranking loss. I have literally seen streaks of 60-70% of games with one of the above (troll or AFK). Eventually people get frustrated by it and that's when the toxicity starts. If Riot wants to improve toxicity they need to protect the ranked experience better. I have so many things going on in my life that losing 2 hours because some asshat on the internet decided to troll is just not worth the time. 2 hours is a LOT of time, and while I loved the competitive nature of the game, eventually I just walked away from the game. Shortly after I decided to walk away from the game, I came across the following video, and it describes EXACTLY why I stopped playing, and where my frustrations with the game where. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UfO7qOHx5M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UfO7qOHx5M The day I quit was when I sat down on a Saturday to spend playing league (one of those rare days where I got to do what I wanted). I spent 2 hours waiting on dodges (where it makes you wait when you leave during champ select). I kept dodging because I kept getting trolls in champ select. And then something like 4/5 of the games I did get into had either an AFK or someone who got pissed off in game at someone and started trolling. I just thought to myself, what am I doing? There are so many more productive things I could have done today, this game does nothing but frustrate me. I haven't played a game since, although I still watch LCS.

xfalcox 11y ago

As an avid Dota 2 player I can attest this. If people start flaming you, replying on voice chat and saying something positive, like "Sorry, my wife was calling me. But don't worry we can win this", will change the tides immediately.

jgrowl 11y ago
Yup. The most toxic players in my experience tend to be keyboard warriors anyway.

iN7h33nD 11y ago

Not to mention the fact that most toxic people can only spam the chat wheel commands and cannot actually talk as they are chat banned for X hours. EDIT: Are there any articles like this on the architecture of Dota 2 or Steam?

Omniusaspirer 11y ago
Look into SteamRE for a good primer on interfacing with Valve chat services, although if you want gory details of server architecture I don't think they've ever written about that in detail.
Namidairo 11y ago
And if players start turning to auto-matching voice services (Curse Voice and Razer Connect did this at one stage), they'll go and threaten bans for all.

Mimu 11y ago

It does not encourage it. It also sometimes lead to funny stuff like someone broadcasting sad music if we are losing or epic music if we are winning ahah. Although the mute system is still a must have.

Mimu 11y ago

res0nat0r 11y ago

Or they're just doing what WoW did, WoW if I remember correctly added in-game voice support for raids years ago, but dropped it because of lack of user uptake. No one was using it because it wasn't as good or easy to use as already existing third party programs, so they dropped it. Riot is probably thinking the same, and can spend their resources elsewhere on something that isn't already done better by someone else.

Omniusaspirer 11y ago
WoW already had persisting social structures that lead to those groups setting up voice servers that provided them a lot more intricate controls. People who chose to speak in game had already assembled the infrastructure to do so, why use a worse system? I played Eve Online and it was the same scenario, every single group ran a voice server and often individuals did as well. Contrast this to LoL where you're dropped into a game randomly with others random players for <60 minutes who you don't know but are forced to communicate with to maximize strategy. Communication is utterly critical yet the best option for doing so is slowly typing a message in a micro intensive game or a nondescript ping. The resulting player behavior is exactly as one would expect.
- res0nat0r 11y ago
  Maybe also they're taking their cues from Xbox Live and all of the raging that comes from a similar aged user-base dropped in with random groups and don't feel like enabling young kids the ability to tell random strangers to go kill themselves...
  - Omniusaspirer 11y ago
    You'll always have outliers, but nothing stops those same kids from doing so right now with text chat (and probably at a higher rate). Mute functionality is there for a reason.
  - pikzen 11y ago
    And we've solved this problem ever since the invention of the "Mute this player" button.

tehwebguy 11y ago

Maybe, but they just bought a stake in Curse Voice

bigtunacan 11y ago

I'm an avid LoL player and not having voice chat support built in is the largest downside to LoL. Plenty of players are "side-loading" their voice chat through a variety of applications. This is a huge PITA as I need Skype, TeamSpeak, whatever the rest of my team is using. Players aren't consistently using voice chat since it's not built in. If you are in a match up where one team is on voice chat and the other is not; the team with voice has a huge advantage as text chat is less visible and has more delay.

jcoby 11y ago

I have ~1k games in Dota 2 and have run across less than a dozen ragers in voice. A quick report+mute and they're taken care of. Usually getting a chat ban in the process. If anything it makes the game better when people start using voice. I've had games that I've given up on and people started using voice to ask for things like shared unit control for dominated creeps to stack ancients and actually communicate where they're going instead of trying to guess what's going on in four silent teammates' minds. OTOH, I had one game on EU W where two Russians were talking (nicely) to each other and some British guy comes in and just says "I can't stand Russians. Good bye." and leaves. And I've had my fair share of LAN cafe players with an open mic blaring music and their friends conversations. Mute and move on. I really do wish we could mute the mic and not chat and vice-versa.

mreiland 11y ago
I can't speak for Dota, but I quit playing league because I got tired of how badly Riot has implemented their ranked system. There's so much talk about toxicity in league, and very little about what CAUSES the toxicity. Hands down the biggest issue is not coming down quicker on trolls and AFK's in ranked. They have a system in which they literally FORCE you to play out an hour long game when someone never connects, leaves after 5 minutes, doesn't get what they want so intentionally feed, and so forth. For someone trying to climb that's automatically 2 hours gone. 1 hour for the game they're forced to play out, and 1 hour for the game they have to win to even out their ranking loss. I have literally seen streaks of 60-70% of games with one of the above (troll or AFK). Eventually people get frustrated by it and that's when the toxicity starts. If Riot wants to improve toxicity they need to protect the ranked experience better. I have so many things going on in my life that losing 2 hours because some asshat on the internet decided to troll is just not worth the time. 2 hours is a LOT of time, and while I loved the competitive nature of the game, eventually I just walked away from the game. Shortly after I decided to walk away from the game, I came across the following video, and it describes EXACTLY why I stopped playing, and where my frustrations with the game where. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UfO7qOHx5M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UfO7qOHx5M The day I quit was when I sat down on a Saturday to spend playing league (one of those rare days where I got to do what I wanted). I spent 2 hours waiting on dodges (where it makes you wait when you leave during champ select). I kept dodging because I kept getting trolls in champ select. And then something like 4/5 of the games I did get into had either an AFK or someone who got pissed off in game at someone and started trolling. I just thought to myself, what am I doing? There are so many more productive things I could have done today, this game does nothing but frustrate me. I haven't played a game since, although I still watch LCS.