I always pick random matchmaking with people over playing with bots, but if someone comes in with their mic on, I find I immediately “nope” right to the mute button. I have no patience for pretending to be interested for the sake of small talk anymore nor does it fascinate me how stoned a stranger might be at that moment in time. I want all of the benefits of playing with actual human beings, just without all of the tiring social elements. I have enough friends. I’m at my quota, and it’s exhausting enough just maintaining those relationships.
I spent hours grinding for this new piece of gear, and an AI bot doesn’t give a shit, so just quietly admire my cosmetics, and let’s enjoy the game in silence. Is that too much to ask?
SHOW OFF!
It also sounds shallow… Then again, I don’t play with people from the US so I have no idea how those interactions really go.
Plus it probably highly depends on the game. Some might require coordination and voice chat should be useful in those, while others might just be some shittalking (I heard plenty about you, CoD community :P).
Tim, I don’t get one thing. You say you reached ‘friends’ quota’, so I guess that’s talking about in game as well. How come you create a lobby with strangers and not those friends? What am I missing?
No, it does sound rather shallow, like demanding interaction on your own terms rather than meeting someway in the middle as two rational adults would normally.
well, I know that feel, since friends arent always available when you want for the game you want…
I agree with this sentiment; on a game requiring solid coordination and tactics I really struggle with ‘randoms’. Warzone is a prime example, where there is such variety in playstyles that having a familiar group is key.
I used to play a lot of Overwatch and it was a real mixed bag of toxicity and stoners.
I only play with friends for most team shooters. Stoners are annoying, but the teenage rage monsters and the racist aholes are far more of an immediate ‘GTFO’ scenario. Toxic idiots are just not worth the moments of anyone’s life to call out.
The rates of people (on random matchups) being drunk or stoned has gone way up lately as far as I can tell. Even some on the friends list, but at least most of mine don’t talk to much offensive crap.
I rarely find any racists but the worst for me are the pre-teens and teens. They all seem to be assholes at best. 99% of my friends are older non-gamers so I have to play with randos most times. The fucking 11 year old SCREAMING “PWNED” with all of the bass of a screamqueen is enough to say fuck it and leave. This is why I almost never play online only anymore. If there were games with special age 30 and up areas where you HAVE to validate your age to join I would be more active.
Right? My group isnt going to play warzone at all unless we have enough of us to have only one pubbie at most.
I’m assuming he’s just talking about personally, and not some sort of system thing, due to the “it’s exhausting enough” note. I can completely relate. You only have so much time, energy, emotional availability, etc, especially once you get older and have kids. Want to know why people “get boring” when we have kids? That’s why.
TBH, that’s why I don’t mind the “chat with a phone” bs that Nintendo’s got going on, ’cause I never use it. Tried for a while, and it just was never, ever worth it.
I often do. I recently played through 50 hours of Wasteland 3 co-op with a friend.
But what you’re “missing” is that I am married with two kids and a full time job, as are a lot of my friends. Playing exclusively with those friends requires a feat of scheduling gymnastics that is not always conducive to spur-of-the-moment “oh hey, I have twenty minutes free, let me get a quick match in” gaming sessions.
I feel you, Tim. As a father of two myself I get it. I got all my friends into Sea of Thieves and I tend to be the one playing the least because I don’t have a solid, buttoned down time. The only exception is Friday nights after 7PM, which is my dedicated gaming time with a friends…but we generally play Jack Box games or Among Us (now).
Could you advocate for games with areas for ages 30+ so we can avoid the annoying little shits? Have smaller quests/encounters for people who work and have families that dont have 12 hours to sit and complete one thing.
No need to be so bitter with those quotation marks, really. You’re only projecting assumptions with that. And not correct ones, might I add. You just layed down the exact same scenario of mine. The only difference being is I came to a conclusion that jumping in on a quick match is a waste of time. There’s no guarantee you’ll make it in the small time frame you have and something unexpected might always come up in a household. I noticed you completely omitted the point about in-game friends. Instead talked about your close circle of friends and how they… Read more »
seriously, audio with strangers for random games? no thanks.
Same about being married full time job etc. but I give people a shot. Specially if it is about coordination and mechanics when a game doesn’t have good communication without a headset. Want tougher runs. Need to communicate. But I have muted my fair share.
usually we manage to do this once a month, scheduled. Because it’s indeed very hard.
“I want all of the benefits of playing with actual human beings”
Isn’t one of those benefits being able to coordinate strategies over voice chat, though?
Coordinate strategies?
What witchcraft is this, it’s always only the enemy team that does that.
if you mean lol noob learn to play etc as coordinated strategies yes …but team of strangers with mics most likely include idiots, brats, stoners and other trash of society
…and some very judgmental folks too. I’ve nothing against most stoners. They are time wasting and I admit they annoy me, but they mostly aren’t toxic jerks. Brats… yeah… best way of dealing with this was a mod on one of the Arma servers a few years back when a 12 or 13 year old foul mouth would just not shut it down…. “The server rules say nobody under the age of 16 may use the audio channel. So I am kicking you now, will ban you if I must. Come back when your balls drop.” The angry jerks and… Read more »
What’s wrong with brats? A little mustard, maybe some chopped onion, and they’re delicious.
You need to make sure they’ve been thoroughly washed and scrubbed before preparing them, who knows where or what they were doing before harvesting.
“Coordinate Strategies?” I dunno what planet you live on, but it sounds nice 😀
If I’m playing a game where communication is KEY to everyone having a good time (re: Sea of Thieves), then I suck it up and get on voice chat with the randoms.
However if it’s a game where you’re on a “team”, but there’s a single objective and everyone can function autonomously towards that goal (re: Avengers), then shush and let me zone out and smash things. 😉
I only turn my mic on when I find someone actually playing and coordinating will actually improve the game. It’s so so so rare. I have a small “friends” list of folks from Battlefield that I’ve bumped into, and that’s about it.
did you meant “drawback” instead of benefit?
100% agree with that. It’s less that I have maxed my friend quota and more I just have an utter failing at interacting with other humans, but still want to feel like I’m a part of the human race, even by a small percentage.
Plus you don’t have spell check irl, and I’d rather not prove I’m an utter idiot by opening my mouth and getting tongue-tied when I can just type and edit as required. Much easier.
Your reason is the same as Tim’s, you’re just describing it differently. If he really had such a high number of friends, he wouldn’t need to group with random strangers in the first place.
I… think you’re completely missing the point.
That’s a fantastic theory… that doesn’t take into account ANY real-world variables XD First of all, I am anintrovert. I maintain a relatively small circle of close friends as opposed to a large group of acquaintances. Of those friends, maybe 10 of them are avid gamers. I have a family and a full time job, as do some of them. Which means scheduling game time is not always guaranteed, and most days it’s more about finding time to game inbetween other responsibilities. If the stars do align and stuff can be scheduled, then you’re adding in the factor of who… Read more »
You have more than 10 close friends and call yourself an introvert? Interesting…
You know what?
I prefer this version of player. I have been in too many MMO’s where the chat is either drivel. Sorry I live in NJ I really don’t care about the coffee shop in a Chicago suburb.
Or the one that really irks me is the guy that insists everyone has a mic and talks or he is out of there when the match is underway. Usually when it is a five versus five match. So they automatically put you at a disadvantage.
Voice chat is always gonna be one of those things that sits on both ends of the spectrum of value. Its great to be able to listen to genuine interactions, but then you have to listen to people raging, people forgetting their mic is set to ‘always on’, people badly attempting incredibly crude humor that borderlines on bigotry, people literally just saying slurs… etc, etc. Being able to work together with a team of people to accomplish a goal is great, i love doing that sort of stuff, i played the crap out of L4D on expert for example, but… Read more »
Same here (L4D expert). Playing with the right friends is pretty great.
Another annoyance I could really see DIAF is the guy who thinks we only have the audio channel so he can be a DJ and play his favorite music so nobody can talk. I’d personally like it if every beat of his music resulted in a mallet to the happy sack. That’s about the level of education these knowing a-hats need.
Find friends, stick to them. If you don’t want to talk to friends, purge your list.
I have had to listen to my son’s trash talk on his games with others for too long to want to listen to listen to any of someone else in a game either, so I’d be muting them immediately as well. As far as coordinating within a game, I would be willing to do that only with others I already know, but leave me alone in that regard otherwise.
I don’t play a ton of online games and the ones I have don’t usually require a massive amount of planning/strategy. I did have a few really great experiences with people talking in Battleborn back when that game was popular/existent. A few times we’d have someone on our team, usually the only person with a microphone calling out strategy and encouragement to other players.
MeatKoala?
Oh, to be antisocial…….
asocial, I don’t understand why people confuse antisocial and asocial so much. asocial : avoid interaction, antisocial : contrary to the law and customs of society.
Because it’s become the accepted ussage over the years, “Dr. Phil”. xP
Someone said it (mistakenly or not), and it jusy ‘stuck’.
Maybe they don’t want to be your friend either. Maybe they would just like to discuss ingame tactics. Muting em after a simple “hi”, well you’ll never know, you’ll just keep assuming they want to be social.
You could have just said “I want to play with humans cuz sometimes it feels like a bot is being controlled by a hamster running over the keyboard” then I would have agreed
He wasn’t being litteral. >_>
“Hi” was just an example of ‘typical mutterings from random players”.
Agreed. I want to PLAY with humans…I don’t want to HEAR other humans. If it isn’t someone with sinus alignment trouble heavy breathing into the mic with a baby screaming in the background while a smoke detector is beeping, then it’s someone screaming racial slurs at people it doesn’t make sense to throw that slur at while blaring the WORST music of all time and getting high.
Sounds like you want better bots who act more like people (but not too much like people)
For some reason I never hear anyone talking in voice, so seems weird to me that anyone would actually mute someone.
Must be that US players actually talk on voice, but in EU we have much of a language barrier?
I don’t know, most of western Europe can speak English with little problem, but yea, my experience is the same. People online talk about how obnoxious voice chat is while I can’t recall the last time someone used the voice chat…
This.
If you’re playing a game where team coordination is important, you’re sabotaging your team by not being willing to talk to them. If the game doesn’t involve that, mute away.
Sooooo basically you want bots with better AI.
Or humans with better I
The problem is that bots are always generally dumb in a few specific ways.
Humans, on the other hand, are just smart enough to be dumb in a beautiful array of random ways.
MeatKoala1278 … sounds like a botter-name .p
Imagine having actual friends that can play videogames with your or share your same taste and not play games that you totally despise………and my friend ask me why I don’t play with them….cause we never have the same games, the same consoles and we do, our working arounds don’t match.
Forget matchmaking, I think you just nailed my sentiments about people in general right now.
From a tactical gameplay standpoint, thats annoying as fuck. I like to be able to ask my teammates “do you need healing, what are you looking for, I think that place over there would be a good place to reconoiter, watch those wrist rockets” and whatnot. I do get that randos can be annoying, but maybe its worse on consoles, idk.
I do it only if I am playing solo. If I am on playing with friends, I am on a private chat group.
I’m with you. I like Destiny in that I don’t have to be forced to hear you. I actually, physically jumped when I heard someone talking on Squadrons over the weekend… I was like…. WTF?! Someone’s talking? I’m done with that… Mute mute mute mute mute…
Hah, yesss, Humans are marginally better than bots, but 99% of the time you don’t want to hear them. I like games that have commands to help coordinate without speaking.
well to be fair anyone named meatkoala should probably start the game auto muted :p Also anyone with a pop culture name followed by a string of numbers or a not so clever innuendo.
If they’re actually willing to be team players, I don’t mind it. Even for just a random round or two session (made my first ‘friends: on 360 way back from some team racing games thay way).
But it’s the “always on” type i can’t stand! Yes.. i get you want to play an online game. NO i do NOT need, nor want, to hear your family conversations in the background as the only thing worthwhile registering on your mic (my luck, usually some foreign language too… or at least sounds it, as garbled as some mics are)!