Meh. Just mute people. That's what I used to do when I played online. I understand emotions run high and people get frustrated, I'm not gonna let my sensibility and their bouts of idiocy (especially when the solution is so simple!) ruin their experience forever. And honestly, they're probably just actual kids... I'm patient like that but I understand some people take things more to heart and whatnot.

let alone play it?

The problem starts with these companies feeling obligated to police what you can say over chat. Just to be clear it's advertisers and payment services that necessitate that. The whole thing about trying to force a "non-toxic community" is a gaslight.

I will never understand why the hell people tilt so hard for an online game. Aren't free time activities supposed to be fun?

I've always seen chat filters as a test in creativity. Telling someone they "misclicked when they hit install" or to "Go 0-1 irl" is way better

I played a lot of Halo on Xbox live as a teenage girl in the late 2000's. I sincerely wish they were more stringent about cracking down on assholes. A lot of the rules were in place to attempt to discourage some of the atrocious behavior I was subjected to.

Your friends are randomly-assigned ten-year-olds?

Or tell them the way to reset bugs in the game is Alt+F4

A lot of the rules were in place to attempt to discourage some of the atrocious behavior I was subjected to.

No doubt, but I don't think microsoft spends money on that because they altruistically care about your online safety, I think they do it because they are pressured by monetary reasons.

I played a lot of Halo on Xbox live as a teenage girl in the late 2000's. I sincerely wish they were more stringent about cracking down on assholes.

I appreciate your perspective, thank you for sharing your experience.

One thing I don't understand is why the built in tools for self managing are insufficient, such as mute and block. If willing, I would be open to hearing your experience with that.

I was never on XBL really, but I've been a PC users on counterstrike and league of legends since their inceptions. I can't say if one service is worse than another but I did watch the efforts to stamp down toxicity over time. I don't know how successful these efforts were, it seemed futile at best.

Would you share if you feel the current efforts from services like this are effective in making you feel like it's a safer place for you to game?

Most competent multiplayer games let you form lobbies with your real life friends? Or you can make the occasional friend online?

It's getting real hard to not make assumptions about your social life with all this, man.

'Kys' simply means 'kisses' in Danish. I refuse to read it as any other meaning.

Offline games are mostly chill

But online games, even though people play it for fun but after sometime it gets too frustrating when you don't get the kills

That's why I left playing online shooting games, those made me more angry

Honestly, I’m not a fan of that sort of censorship.

I grew up in the Time Before Internet, and played all of the earliest online games. Trash talk is simply part of the experience as far as I’m concerned. On Team Fortress Classic, you had to abuse a motherfucker through text chat. And we loved it: everyone was enjoying that novel experience.

Back in the day of early COD on Xbox Live, lobbies were wild. Heck, even Uno subjected you to everything from ‘teach me slurs in your language’ to ‘random dude masturbating on camera while smoking a joint’.

I still play the occasional online game, but they’re boring and soulless. Very few people are on comms, as most seem afraid to actually talk. And with good reason; any sort of mildly spicy talk would get you banned on games. So instead of fostering a friendly atmosphere, from my perspective it ended up killing the entire vibe.

Let folks talk trash. Give as good as you get. And if that’s not for you? There’s other games to play.

There's plenty of coöp games that don't make you beholden to server content rules.

And thanks for the beginning of an insult, but I do tend to spend more time with friends while we're actually in the same room.

Real

I would still consider myself young but starting to adult (bday today :D). But in middle school and early highschool online FPS were the best. Overwatch, tf2 stuff like that. Now the most multiplayer games are helldivers and recently Deep rock but I also have a ton of single player games like modding Skyrim and occasionally playing Skyrim, dead cells, noita (I do in fact have a skill issue) no man’s sky and blade and sorcery

Now my most competition is among my friends rather than against them. Which is much less tilting

I mean usually that’s true tho

"Gentlemen, you can't kiss in here! This is a war game!"

One thing I don’t understand is why the built in tools for self managing are insufficient, such as mute and block. If willing, I would be open to hearing your experience with that.

These tools have improved immensely over the years. It was particularly bad in those days because there was no option for private or party voice chat and a lot of games came with 3-day trial cards for Xbox Live which allowed people to make tons of sock puppet accounts to evade blocking.

I don't really play FPS's any more and I haven't turned on an Xbox in about 7 years. I just play on PC now, almost exclusively with a gaming community on discord comprised of online and IRL friends. My experience is very curated now and the games I play either have minimal social interaction or are well known for their welcoming communities (eg Warframe). It felt a little bit like admitting defeat, but shutting off the public mic and just sticking to private VCs and servers has been a good way of dealing with it. I certainly don't get rape and death threats with a side of doxxing these days.

It’s funny too because it totally depends on the game and how it’s monetized and set up as well. I had some of the most fun in games in my life playing quick play in the original overwatch with my buddies, even though I almost exclusively prefer offline single player open world games.

My skill increased dramatically with our constant playing, I switched between DPS, tank, heals and really learned the roster. Not that far off from playing N64 super smash with those same friends in college and switching to a new character when you felt like you had learned one pretty well.

I would get annoyed at losing, but it was whatever, I wasn’t trying to rank in competitive mode. I work hard enough in life and work, I’m not playing the game to work harder.

That being said, unless someone was a Smurf or hacking, I never got super mad at other players for simply being better than me, usually the characters felt pretty balanced and if we lost it was because of bad teamwork or lower skill. All characters were available to everyone, the only monetary value was skins.

Then I played overwatch 2, and immediately there were battle pass characters locked behind paywalls or engagement, and those characters were seriously unbalanced. The game was “free to play” and “pay to win” right off the bat and I haven’t touched it again, even though I put countless hours into the first game. And that sour taste I have now makes it so I refuse to play any game with a battle pass.